Wednesday, May 6, 2009

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News Flash: Paying for Coverage Is Still "Taboo" Top
Here’s a tip: If your business is so polarizing that you have to change your name the mere passage of time doesn’t suddenly make it all mom-and-apple-pie. In the last few months I have gotten the same pitch from PayPerPost (now called Izea) all sent from different names. My favorite part is this: “…while compensating bloggers was considered taboo a few years ago, there has been a paradigm shift in thinking over the last year…” Really? Yeah, I guess that whole Google resetting the page rank of PayPerPost bloggers was all the way back in November 2007. I must have slipped into a coma and missed the “paradigm shift” since. Each time I’ve gotten this email, I have written back something like, “I’m sorry, I still consider paying for coverage incredibly controversial and, for a reporter, unethical. Can you explain to me what has changed about this issue?” No response. Month or so passes, then I get the same email. I honestly don’t know if the emails are being sent to me for press consideration or as a nudge that I should sign up, because it’s just obliquely titled “suggestion” in the subject line. So, let me address this publicly, to save the time of future Izea employees cutting and pasting the email and sending it to me again: There is no time during my life on planet earth or beyond that I will *ever* consider accepting payment for coverage. There is no circumstance or situation where I will respect a journalist who does, especially if the details of that conflict aren’t clearly disclosed. P.E.R.I.O.D. The release backs up this assertion that it’s no longer taboo by touting Forrester Research as endorsing “compensated conversation” as a great addition to your PR and marketing strategy. The great test case? Kmart. Wow. I wouldn’t consider trading in my credibility for, say, a lifetime shopping spree at Bloomingdale’s, but it’s definitely not worth talking up the latest blue-light-specials. What’s more, I wonder how they’re measuring that “success” as I haven’t been hearing any great Kmart buzz of late… I’ve always had massive respect for former Forrester analyst Charlene Li and current analyst Jeremiah Owyang and was shocked that the firm would endorse this. So I sent a note to  Owyang who quickly sought to put it in context and with good reason. According to Sean Corcoran, who authored the research note, Forrester said that this could work and could be OK, but with strict parameters including full disclosure of the items or services being received for free, and encouraging the bloggers to be negative if they had a negative experience. At no time, did Forrester suggest that it was no longer controversial and said that journalist-bloggers should never be considered in the “compensated conversation” mix. “We write for marketers and, like it or not, this isn’t going away ,” Corcoran said. “Companies were thoroughly confused, and we want to show them how to do it the right way.” Ok, fair enough. Reviewers are frequently sent free items with the understanding that they’ll write whatever they think. They also usually have to send the item back. I’d argue there’s a world of difference between that and cash payment that’s disclosed on another page of the blog. Interestingly, Owyang tipped TechCrunch to the company in the first post we ever wrote on them saying he had “grave concerns” but that founder Ted Murphy was not “the devil.” More interesting, the post he wrote about it at the time, is no longer available on his site. He says he never pulls any post, and that it’s an old blog and a Web hosting problem. (I believe him.) He also notes that he wrote that in the early PayPerPost days when it was an undeniably shadier service with no disclosure rules. As is clear from Forrester’s careful clarification, the problem with the thinking here– well, one of them– is that it lumps “bloggers” into one category. In reality, blogging is a tool that lots of professionals use, not really one profession. There are bloggers– like the ones at TechCrunch– who are independent journalists and then there are bloggers like Owyang who write about the industry and have smart things to say, but also get paid by clients. Then there are corporate bloggers or in-house employees who write about their companies’ news. It’s basically a more conversational press release and there’s nothing wrong with it, because you go to it realizing the company is going to put itself in the best light. In each case these are professionals using a conversational tool to get across a given message. As long as we get what they do for a living, there’s no harm or foul. I appreciate the insight of an analyst, and more openness from reading blog posts written by companies like Google or Twitter. Then, there’s the Izea concept: Sure it’s been tweaked to include vague disclosures, but as seen by how they positioned Forrester in this release, there’s just an underlying shadiness to the venture. Just go away. Or at least stop emailing me. (For Michael’s endless rants on the subject, go here .) Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Mahalo Answers Is Hijacking Twitter Questions From IMshopping Top
Last week we wrote about a startup called IMshopping , which lets you ask questions to human shopping guides about products to buy. One of the ways you can do this is directly through Twitter by asking a question to @imshopping . I tried this earlier today by asking for Mother’s Day gift suggestions. Imagine my surprise when I started getting back answers not only from @imshopping, but also from @answers , lots of them. The @answers account belongs to Mahalo Answers , the Q&A site that is run by Jason Calacanis. Could it possibly be that Mahalo Answers is hijacking questions directed at IMshopping. Yes, it is. My question is now posted on Mahalo Answers , where anyone there can answer, and every time they do I get another message on Twitter. I never posted this question on Mahalo Answers nor asked them to. Mahalo Answers is stealing my question, isn’t it? Calacanis (who is our partner in organizing the TechCrunch 50 conference), confirms, “We pull in about 100-200 questions a day from twitter… Usually anything with ‘does anyone know…’” And only “less than 1%” of Mahalo’s total traffic comes from Twitter. I asked that also. Finally, Calacanis points out: “It’s all public, so folks love it (ie free research).” I am not sure about the loving it part. If I ask a question on Twitter, usually I am looking for an answer from people who are following me. I don’t know if there is such a thing as answer spam—I mean, I did put the question on Twitter—but this comes pretty close. In the two hours since I posted my questions (I also asked for gift suggestions for my wife since we have children), I’ve gotten three answers on Twitter from IMshopping and 11 from Mahalo answers. Both link to a page where the question is posted, along with all the answers. IMshopping doesn’t send you a new tweet every time there is anew answer, which is a far less spammy way to do it. Actually, I don’t really care that Mahalo is hijacking these questions if I end up getting better answers as a result. And there is an evil genius component involved which is admirable in its sheer audaciousness. Who steals somebody else’s questions? So how do Mahalo’s answers stack up to IMshopping? To be honest, I found both sets of answers equally unsatisfying. The guides on IMshopping suggested a “personalized oversized metal family tree sculpture,” an engraved wooden keepsake box, personalized throw, and chocolates. The folks from Mahalo Answers came up with a digital picture frame, a gift certificate (thanks), tea, and time with her grandchildren. I am still looking for a good, original answer—something that is not too tacky would be nice. If you have one, please leave it in comments. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Despite Recession, ExactTarget Raises A Whopping $70 Million For Marketing Software Top
Marketing email software provider ExactTarget has secured $70 million in funding led by Battery Ventures, with Scale Venture Partners and Montagu Newhall participating. The company says it will use the money to expand its international presence. The company says that the $70 million is a similar level of funding it sought to raise in its December 2007 application for an initial public offering. ExactTarget will delay its IPO plane and has withdrawn its application with the SEC to trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol EXTG. ExactTarget’s software provides enterprises with email marketing platform that powers everything from email coupon offers and automated fraud alerts to e-statements and SMS text messages. ExactTarget's software provides email marketing tools for a widespread group of big-name clients, including CareerBuilder.com, Expedia.com, the Gannett Co., and The Home DepotThe software is also integrated on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Twitter Just Made Its Email Notifications Much More Useful Top
Twitter has just rolled out a small, but somewhat meaningful update to the way it sends email notifications. This includes both direct message notifications and new follower notifications. Both now carry the Twitter logo and turquoise background in each update, rather than just plain text. But more importantly, the new notifications contain a lot more information about the person sending you the message or following you. For example, previously when someone followed you, you received a message like: Hi, MG Siegler (parislemon). XXXXX XXXX (xxxxx) is now following your updates on Twitter. Check out XXXXX XXXX’s profile here: http://twitter.com/XXXXX You may follow XXXXX XXXXXX as well by clicking on the “follow” button. Best, Twitter The only thing that was a hyperlink in all of that was the actual profile URL. Now, when a new person subscribes to you, you see what is in the image below. As you can see, this now gives you how many followers they have, how many people they are following, and how many tweets they’ve sent. You can also see their profile picture. Previously, you would had to click through to a person’s profile on Twitter to see all of that. This certainly will save me a lot of time in checking out the people who follow me. And it actually should help me follow more people that I want to, as it’s not such a hassle to screen through new users now. Direct messages aren’t that much different substance-wise, but they do also contain the Twitter logo now, as well as the Twitter user’s icon (pictured, below). Update : As commenter Jeff notes below, these notifications would be even more useful if Twitter had added the “Bio” data that users include in their profiles. [Thanks Adam ] Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
MeatCards: Print Your Business Cards On Beef Jerky With A Frickin' Laser Beam Top
I’ve made no secret about my disdain for business cards. In an age where we can swap photographs and movies in a matter of seconds wirelessly, why are we still fumbling with clumsy pieces of paper that are both easy to lose and environmentally unfriendly? Today, it looks like I might be eating my words (or, as the case may be, yours). Enter MeatCards . Two weeks ago a number of blogs caught wind of this bizarre and potentially amazing creation, bringing meat and lasers together to create the most protein-rich business cards ever. Some thought it was a hoax. But it’s very real. I reached out to the guys behind MeatCards, and as luck would have it they were preparing for their first run of prototype cards (styled after the design from American Psycho, of course). So I sent in my information, and they printed out the prototype seen above. In the interest of preserving a shred of privacy, I’m blurred out a few digits from my phone number, Email, and our mailing address. But most of the text, like my name and the TechCrunch information in the upper right hand corner, hasn’t been touched. Obviously the laser etching isn’t quite perfect, but it mostly gets the job done. More samples below. I haven’t receieved my MeatCards yet, and thus have been unable to taste the goods for myself. But I have been assured that they should in theory be edible, albeit with a strange laser-burnt aftertaste. That said, the guys behind MeatCards seem to be interested in finding a way to mark the cards with “Do Not Eat” to make it clear that they don’t want you to eat them - it just opens them up to too many possible legal problems and regulations. But they can’t stop you from doing it. So when can you order one for yourself? The product is still in the testing stages, but according to its homepage they should be going on sale some time soon. Make sure to check out this awesome Flickr set to see how it’s done. And for a more conventional business card, check out the cards Google is currently giving away . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Arianna Huffington Says Online Journalists May Have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Top
Arianna Huffington testified today before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet in a hearing on the “Future of Journalism.” The Senate was contemplating the future of news, particularly newspapers, and will consider what (if any) action Congress needs to take to save the industry. Those who testified include Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience at Google; lberto Ibargüen, CEO of the John S. And James L. Knight Foundation; David Simon, writer and producer of The Wire, and former Baltimore Sun employee; Steve Coll, former managing editor of The Washington Post; and James Moroney, publisher and CEO of The Dallas Morning News. You can see the transcripts of their testimonies here. Huffington says in her testimony that traditional media has been afflicted with Attention Deficit Disorder, saying “they are far too quick to drop a story-even a good one, in their eagerness to move on to the Next Big Thing.” Online journalists, she says, have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder because “they chomp down on a story and stay with it, refusing to move off it until they've gotten down to the marrow.” She goes on to say that the two afflictions should be merged to produce optimal journalism. Huffington maintains, as she has said before, that the future of journalism is based on a the link economy, search engines, online advertising, citizen journalism and foundation-supported investigative funds. She warns that if media doesn’t adopt these features, then they will have a tough time surviving. David Simon, the creator of the popular HBO series “The Wire,” took a pot shot at bloggers, saying that they aren’t “in the trenches” like newspaper journalists so often are. He said he has never seen a blogger in a courthouse or bar with policemen (building relationships with sources), which is something that career newspaper journalists do and bloggers don’t. Whether he’d know a blogger if he saw one in a crowded courtroom is not something he addressed. James Moroney, of the Dallas Morning News, suggests that Congress should create tax breaks for newspaper companies, relax antitrust laws so that newspapers can experiment with joint content distributions, and establish laws or regulations to prevent unpaid content distribution over the internet. These are really bad ideas. Marissa Mayer defended Google and Google News (which was referred to as a parasite by Forbes CEO and Chairman, Jim Spanfeller) valiantly, saying that “Google News and Google search provide a valuable free service to online newspapers specifically by sending interested readers to their sites at a rate of more than 1 billion clicks per month. Newspapers use that Web traffic to increase their readership and generate additional revenue…” Google has been taking a beating lately from news organizations ranging from the A.P. to Forbes claiming that it is somehow “stealing” their ad revenues. Can Congress save journalism? Does it even have to? Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
T-Mobile G1 Owners To Get Android v1.5 "Cupcake" Next Week Top
After a somewhat steady stream of T-Mobile USA customers reported that the Android “ Cupcake ” update had hit their G1s last week , all went silent. Not everyone had gotten their update, and it seemed as if the rollout had suddenly stopped. Whether this first batch of updates was a mistake, we’re not sure - but now we at least know when it’s coming for everyone. Read the rest of this entry at MobileCrunch >> Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Against All Odds: Imeem Raises More Cash And Has A Bold New Music Plan Top
Insert your favorite cliche or idiom here: Imeem may have dodged a bullet. Or has risen from the ashes. They have nine lives. Or my favorite: they may have pulled a rabbit out of the deadpool. The point is, they aren’t going to be closing down any time soon, say sources close to the company. And for a free music streaming company, that’s really saying something. Weeks ago they were on the ropes, near the end of cash and with crushing venture debt obligations threatening to shut them down entirely . No one was interested in buying them or putting in more cash with big music label royalty commitments already past due. Then we heard whispers that they may have a plan to build a profitable business. And apparently they’ve convinced at least their current investors to back that plan with more capital. CNET’s Greg Sandoval reported earlier today that the company may have raised new funding (he used the “dodged a bullet” idiom, by the way). We’ve confirmed that the company has raised a new round of financing from existing investors. There’s no word if Sequoia has put new money in, and we’ve been told the amount raised is small, likely in the single digit millions. But it allows iMeem to make payroll and keep the servers running. More importantly, the company has forged new deals with the music labels, we’ve heard, that help it break away from the crushing pay-per-stream model that’s impossible to cover with advertising. Imeem has renegotiated its label deals to allow it to focus more on a revenue per user goal than a pay per stream. Revenues from downloads and ringtones will offset streaming rates, which moves the relationship much closer to a revenue share than a pure licensing deal. It may just give iMeem the room it needs to get to sustainability. The company is also planning on terminating its download deals with Amazon and iTunes, we’ve heard. Downloads will be sold directly by iMeem itself through Snocap, which it acquired last year . Those download sales are very low margin, but it takes money previously being sent to Amazon or Apple and gives it directly to the labels to offset streaming costs. At least that’s what we’re hearing. Imeem as usual won’t comment. But there’s a chance this company may still be around for the foreseeable future. And they may have redefined how streaming deals are done across the industry. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Control Freaks: Hulu Now Blocks Anonymous Proxies Too Top
There are few web services hotter than Hulu these days. It’s about to surge into the number two web video position (behind only YouTube) and it just signed a deal with Disney to give it even more great content. It’s all great — if you live in the U.S. Outside of this country, if you’ve wanted to access Hulu, you’ve either been out of luck, or had to use a proxy server workaround. For several months, there were quite a few options that would work to trick Hulu into thinking you were trying to access it from within the U.S. even when you were not. But Hulu got smarter and started doing geo-checks at the streaming level. But still, a few virtual private network (VPN) creators like Hotspot Shield would get the job done by making your IP anonymous. Not anymore. Hulu has once again tweaked its detection methods and is now blocking anonymous proxies. If you try to access it with something like Hotspot Shield, you will get the message: Based on your IP address, we noticed you are trying to access Hulu through an anonymous proxy tool. Hulu is not currently available outside the U.S. If you’re in the U.S., you’ll need to disable your anonymizer to access videos on Hulu. Ouch. Hulu has been making a habit of cracking down on unwanted access to its service. There is still a back and forth going on between it and the online media center startup Boxee . Boxee allowed users to access Hulu content from within its service, which the content providers behind Hulu saw as a problem because the content wasn’t be run directly through Hulu.com. Even though advertisements were still being shown during these streams, Hulu blocked Boxee, igniting a firestorm among Boxee fans. Boxee struck back by using Hulu’s RSS feeds to get some of the content back, but then Hulu blocked that too. So Boxee made a new web browser based on Mozilla, to make Hulu think it was running on something like Firefox. The message is pretty clear: People want access to Hulu, but Hulu’s isn’t interested in letting others work around its limits. While it’s annoying for users outside of the U.S. not to have access to the great content, considering that many of the proxy servers also blocked advertisements, you can on some level see where Hulu is coming from on that. Of course, those users are now probably just going to use a service like BitTorrent to find and download the content for free anyway. And if you happen to be using one of these VPNs for, you know, actual security reasons — no Hulu for you! Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Facebook Connect Now Live On Digg Top
Digg has done a lot of talking about integrating Facebook Connect , but not much in the way of actual implementing. That changes today, we’ve heard from a source close to the company, and Digg will go live with the service some time today. Facebook gets another big name partner on its increasingly popular Facebook Connect platform. Digg CEO Jay Adelson has suggested that Facebook Connect is the future of Digg , and that Facebook’s massive userbase will both spur Digg usage and provide a collaborative filter on stories. With Facebook Connect users will be able to cross-post, share Digg activities on Facebook and auto-follow Facebook friends. Every time you perform an action on Digg (leave a comment, submit a story, etc.) it will ask if you’d like to share with your Facebook friends. At this point you’ll have to approve sharing every time, but soon you’ll be able to set Digg to share all your activity on the site. What’s taken Digg so long? Facebook’s 200 million users go with Digg like peanut butter and chocolate. CBS had an early implementation of Facebook Connect back in September, nearly 8 months ago. See our recent video interview with Digg’s Kevin Rose . Digg: Facebook Connect Demo from Digg Meetups on Vimeo . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Guess Who Owns Kindledx.com? Amazon. Guess Who Forgot To Set It Up? Amazon. Top
On January 23, Amazon secured the domain kindledx.com , anticipating the launch of its new product today, the Kindle DX. Given all the hoopla surrounding today’s event , you’d think Amazon would have thought to point the domain to the Kindle DX pre-order page — or at the very least, to the Kindle page, or even any page whatsoever. Instead, it’s a dead link. Amazon, which also owns kindle.com, points that domain to the page where you can buy the Kindle. I’m sure Amazon will eventually get around to doing it with its new product, but it may have been wise to do it on a day when the hype and demand are at their peak. Update : Someone out there is listening. Amazon just set up the site to redirect to its Kindle store page. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Ning Apps Bring A New Dimension Of Flexibility And Power To The Social Network Platform Top
Ning ’s social network-building platform is getting a huge boost today, with the private beta launch of Ning Apps, a new suite of applications and features that Network Creators will be able to deploy across their networks with only a few clicks. The news has been a long time coming - network administrators have long been asking for features that could enhance their networks. But because of the nature of Ning, which houses hundreds of thousands of unique social networks, Network Creators were often requesting totally different things. Now they’ll be able to make everyone (or nearly everyone) happy. At launch, Ning Apps is offering 90 new features to Network creators, built by 52 different developers that encompass a wide variety of web services. Network creators will now be able to integrate live video chat through TokBox , condunct contests with Wildfire , and create Wikis. Even better: network admins will be able to easily integrate monetization options, selling merchandise through Cartfly and tickets through Amiando and other ticketing apps. Ning is likely going to be a very enticing platform for developers, too. Unlike social networks like MySpace, when a Ning network creator chooses to deploy an application, they have the option of deploying it to all of their users at once. And with some networks reaching more than 500,000 members, that translates into a huge jump in users. The applications are based on the OpenSocial standard, with some modifications to make them suitable for network-wide deployments. Still, even these changes are pretty minor - Ning says that developers have been porting their applications from other social networks in just two to three days. Access to applications is beginning to roll out to a small number of Network Creators tomorrow, and will be available to everyone by the end of the month. At launch, all of the applications will be free to install (though some of the apps that involve money, like Cartfly, will take a revshare at the time of transaction), but Ning may well decide to deploy premium applications in the future. Before now Network Creators have had access to some added functionality through third party applications. But Ning didn’t support these, and some of them were eventually removed from the site entirely. CEO Gina Bianchini says that Network Creators installing applications through Ning Apps can have ‘absolute confidence’ that the applications will work as advertised. Aside from the launch of Ning Apps, things seem to be going quite well for Ning. The site recently saw the creation of its 1 millionth network (of which 200,000 are active), and is seeing 85,000 to 100,000 new users per day across all of its networks. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Next09 Video Interview: What Would Jeff Jarvis Do? Top
So I finally managed to sit down with Jeff Jarvis here at the Next09 conference in Hamburg, Germany, and we had a chat about his recently published book - What Would Google Do? -, his views on the traditional media industry and their current struggles as well as his profound love for TechCrunch (aye, captain). Jarvis, for those of you who don’t know the man, is a published author, well-known blogger at Buzzmachine ( Dell Hell , anyone?) and an associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York's new Graduate School of Journalism. We talked about his new book and why it is titled the way it is, if he’s really the Google fanboy people make him out to be, and what he thinks about the whole Google vs. the newspaper industry situation. He says the latter is being suicidal by not understanding what he refers to as the ‘link economy’, and I don’t think he’s far off there. (see our earlier posts about this here and here ) Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Co-Founder of iStockphoto Joins Rival Fotolia As North American President Top
Patrick Lor, co-founder of iStockphoto, a Getty owned-online marketplace for microstock photography and video, has joined rival Fotolia as the President of Fotolia North America. iStockphoto and and Fotolia, which were both launched around the same time and serve the same purpose, have a long standing competition in the microstock photography space for the best images, the most talented contributors and customers. Lor retired shortly after Getty Images, one of the leaders in stock photography, purchased iStockphoto in 2006 for $50 million. According to Lor, his non-compete contract expired with Getty recently, which left him available to get back into the stock photography business. iStockphoto was initially launched to democratize photography and let all people use images, Lor says. He was disappointed to hear of iStockphoto’s aggressive price increases following the Getty acquisition and maintains that Fotolia’s prices are much more fair for consumers. Lor says that Fotolia has a lot of potential for growth, which may be true. According to ComScore, Fotolia reached 3.7 million unique visitors worldwide in March, up from 2.3 million in January. iStockphoto had around 5 million unique visitors in March, dropping slightly from 5.2 unique visitors in January. Lor hopes to launch some new services in the future but won’t reveal what those are just yet. In February, Fotolia reached its one millionth registered member and has 5 million stock images for sale, for as little as 14 cents, and typically a dollar or two. Images at iStockPhoto start at $1.50 per image and go up from there. Fotolia says it is registering new members at a rate of 3,000 per day (86,800 per month). Fotolia also started recently selling stock video (something iStockphoto has been doing for a while). Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Next09: Video Interview With Jyri Engeström (Jaiku / Google) Top
I just finished moderating a panel with Chris Messina and Jyri Engeström about emerging social behavior on the web at the Next09 conference in Hamburg, and I got the chance to speak with both of them separately afterwards and recorded part of the conversations on video. The first one I’m featuring is the short talk I had with Engeström, the Finnish entrepreneur who left his senior product manager position at Nokia in 2006 to co-found one of the first micro-publishing services, Jaiku . The micro-sharing application was launched the same year in private beta and became somewhat of a competitor to Twitter (which was nowhere near as popular as it is nowadays) and Pownce (which never really took off and was ultimately put out of its misery by Six Apart ). Jaiku was famously acquired by Google at the end of 2007 before it hit mainstream success and has since often been cited as one of the search engine company’s infamous zombie acquisitions, with little or no further development happening on the service since the takeover and the original founders moving on to doing other things on the company’s payroll. Then Google discontinued a number of services in the beginning of this year, and Jaiku was widely reported to be one of the axed products, but Engeström swiftly responded to those reports with a blog post saying that Jaiku wasn’t dying but instead morphing (into an open-source platform for building micro-publishing services on Google App Engine). Engeström talks about what he’s currently involved with at Google and what the further plans with the Jaiku technology are. (sorry about the occasional sound glitches) Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
For Books Available On Kindle, Sales Are Now Tracking At 35 Percent Of Print Sales Top
The most startling thing Jeff Bezos said today at Amazon’s launch of the Kindle DX , it’s large-format Kindle optimized for textbooks and newspapers, was this statistic: For books that are available on the Kindle, sales are already 35 percent of the same books in print, up from 13 percent just a few months ago. In other words, if a paper book sells 10,000 copies on Amazon, it will sell an additional 3,500 digital copies on the Kindle. Let me repeat that, digital books via the Kindle are selling at 35 percent the level of physical books 18 months after launch. That is an amazing ramp up. The Kindle now has 275,000 titles, most of them are the “head” titles that most likely make up the bulk of Amazon’s total book sales. So how much of Amazon’s book sales are now digital? I tried to ask a few Amazon execs here at the press conference, but they won’t say. It is no doubt a huge number. Amazon sells $2.7 billion worth of “media” every quarter , which includes books, music, and movies. Books is still one of its largest categories, if not the largest. Let’s say Amazon sells $1 billion worth of books every quarter. And its top 275,000 titles represent 80 percent of sales. Kindle book sales alone would amount to $280 million ($1.1 billion a year), and that would not include the cost of the device. See correction below. I am making these numbers up, but even if you change it to 50 percent, Kindle book sales would be trending at $175 million a quarter ($700 million a year). The Kindle might turn out to be Amazon’s biggest growth business yet. Correction : After I posted this, I tried to verify the numbers once again. The 35 percent refers to the number of titles or units sold, not revenues, and is indeed additive. So let’s take the example above again. If 10,000 copies of a book are sold in physical form, and another 3,500 in digital form that is a total of 13,500 copies sold. The Kindle portion selling at 35 percent the rate of physical titles, but represents 26 percent of the total. (Showing it as a percentage of print books rather than as a percentage of the total sales makes for a better slide). So let’s take this new number, 26 percent, and apply it to my assumptions above. At 80 percent of sales, instead of $280 million a quarter, it would be $208 million (26% of $800M). At 50 percent, it would be $130 million (26% of $500M). But there is one more step. You also have to take into account the fact that Kindle books are cheaper than paper books, at least for new titles. A new title on the Kindle sells for $9.99, compared to $24.99 for a hardcover book. You have to factor in paperback books also, which tend to cost about $10 for more recent titles. So there is some discount. For the sake of argument, let’s say it averages to about a 50 percent discount. That would cut the revenue numbers down in half again to $104 million and $65 million, respectively. On an annualized basis, that comes to somewhere between $520 million and $260 million in Kindle book revenues (again, this does not include device revenues). The numbers change based on what assumptions you plug in, but as a point of comparison, Citi analyst Mark Mahaney is estimating Kindle book sales of only $189 million this year, going to $612 million in 2010 (with total Kindle-related sales of $1.2 billion in 2010, if you add in device sales). At the very least, it looks like Amazon is well on track to meet Mahaney’s estimates, and may be ahead of them already. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Hands-on: Amazon Kindle DX Top
It's a madhouse here at Pace U., but I managed to grab a couple photos. Not my hands, but you can see how big this new DX really is. South Paws might feel like they're being left out with only right-hand side controls, but you can flip the Kindle DX upside and it auto-rotates so the controls are on your left (upside down though). Oh, and Pace U. has been confirmed as the sixth University for the pilot program. Video coming shortly. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
URL Shortening Wars: Twitter Ditches TinyURL For bit.ly Top
Sharing links on Twitter can be quite a pain when you need to input a web address that consumes most of the space you have at your disposal for your micro-message. The startup realized that quickly and automatically started shortening long URLs to make its users save on space for their 140-character updates. To get this implemented, Twitter went with TinyURL , a service that shortens URLs down signficantly (but not extremely) and at the time had been around for years already. It never gave a reason for this choice, but it did provide TinyURL with a lot of exposure and a lot of extra traffic. Those days are over. Apparently, Twitter has silently replaced TinyURL as its default URL shortening service with bit.ly , a competing service that launched quite recently and not too long ago raised $2 million from several prominent angel investors. This is actually not that much of a surprise. Betaworks , the startup accelerator behind Twitter related companies such as Summize ( acquired by Twitter in July 2008 ), is also behind bit.ly, and it just happens to also count early Twitter investors and advisors Chris Sacca and Ron Conway as their own backers. Which obviously prompts this inevatible question: does the move signal Twitter paving the way for an outright acquisition of the URL shortening service provider? (Thanks to Avi Muchnick for letting us know) Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
The Big Kindle Revealed (Liveblog) Top
Amazon is revealing its third Kindle today at a jam-packed press conference in New York City.  The new Kindle, which we first caught wind of last year, is expected to have a larger screen to be used for reading newspapers, magazines, and textbooks. ( Don’t expect it to save the newspaper industry, though). Arthur Sullzberger, Jr. of the New York Times is in the house I’ll be liveblogging the event, which should start any minute now. Notes : Bezos just stepped on stage. The Kindle vision is every book ever printed available in 60 seconds. 18 months ago launched with 90K books, 200K books with launch of Kindle 2, added another 45K books. Where we have Kindle editions, Kindle is now 35% of books sold for those titles . It took us 14 years to build up our physical books business. We find this very encouraging. Bezos introduces the Kindle DX, built in PDF reader. No zooming, no panning, just read. shows off cookbooks, a picture of Sushi doesn’t look too appetizing in gray-scale, however, atlases, and textbooks. announcing partnership with three top textbook publishers which account for 60% of textbook sales (Pearson, Wiley and Cengage Learning). 5 universities have agreed to pilot Arizona State, Princeton, Reed, U of Virginia, Case Western Reserve Newspapers have been popular. This summer 3 newspapers have agreed to pilot Kindle DX for a reduced price in return for long term commitments for subscriptions, NYT, Washington Post and Boston Globe. But only for people who live in places where local delivery is not available. Bezos is showing off PDF documents. pilots charts, sheet music, a document from Bezos’ library on rocket thruster. “This is the type of document I would have wasted ink toner on.” With a large screen Bezos is showing that with teh larger screen newspaper headlines can now be accompanied with the first few lines of text when scanning headlines. For textbooks, you can change the number of lines and font size that it displays. Kindle has a 9.7 inch display with autorotation. 3G wireless access to 275K books Native PDF support 3.3 GB of memory $9.99 or less for NYT best sellers, discount subscription coming for newspapers $489 for Kindle DX versus $359 for 6 inch display Here are some pics: Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Stickam's StreamAPI Makes Doing Video Live Cheap And Easy Top
A lot of people don’t realize just how costly and bandwidth intensive streaming live video on the web is from a back-end perspective. There’s a reason YouTube hasn’t launched a live service and Yahoo had to shut its down. Most end users never have to deal with such concerns because they use a service like Ustream, Justin.tv or Stickam to handle their needs on a small level. But what if you have a startup or a company that wants live streaming to be a key part of your business? Then you may want to check out Stickam’s new StreamAPI. StreamAPI is the white label version of a service Stickam’s been offering to several larger companies for a while now. While most startups probably won’t need to scale as big as an MTV-sized audience, there is still a need to have the appropriate resources to stream live to a large audience. StreamAPI can handle that while giving clients an easy to use, customizable interface and very low per-viewer hour stream rates. How low? Well, while Ustream may charge up to $1 per view hour, with StreamAPI, Stickam is willing to go as low as $0.05 per view hour (depending on quality). And a bigger draw of StreamAPI may be that you can set it up without an expert Flash developer. The service offers a drag and drop editor that is very simple to use. Stickam CEO Steven Fruchter walked me through the process of making your own video streaming area — it took just about a minute to have everything in place and ready to go. “We’re trying to power all live video on the internet,” Fruchter told me. And at such low prices and with a service that’s easy to use, StreamAPI is certainly a compelling offering. Stickam launched in February of 2006, before all of its big rivals, but today it’s often overshadowed by many of them. This new API is its attempt to level the playing field by providing an invaluable service to a lot of smaller startups. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Google Testing New Service Features On Chrome First? Top
Chrome is a great browser for Google’s web apps because its JavaScript engine is optimized to run most of them as fast as possible. That alone is reason enough for heavy users of applications like Gmail and Google Reader to use Chrome (if you have a PC anyway — the Mac version is still forthcoming). But Google may also be giving another small advantage to those who surf the web on Chrome: The ability to see new features early. Earlier tonight we received a tip with the screenshots below. As you can see, Google Finance has a brand new interface when browsed to with Chrome versus in Internet Explorer and also Firefox (not pictured). It would seem that Google may be checking for the Chrome user agent and giving those users a glimpse at this new version of Google Finance. Our tipster called it “lame” that Google was only offering the new version of the site to Chrome users. But there is, of course, nothing wrong with Google doing this — provided that it doesn’t mean to permanently offer different (meaning better) versions of sites to only those users using Chrome. But that seems very unlikely. Instead, Google is probably just testing some new features out to a small set of users, just as a lot of other sites do throughout the web. After it was launched last year, Chrome caused a bit of controversy on the web because of Google’s previously strong ties to Mozilla (makers of the Firefox browser). Some were quick to jump to the conclusion that Google entering the browser wars meant that it would specially tailor sites for its own browser and neglect all the others. But Google’s prominent position on the web — particularly with web advertising — pretty much ensures that it has to play nice with all web browsers. Or at least those not named Internet Explorer 6. [thanks Andrew ] Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
HamCrunch - The TechCrunch Meetup In Hamburg Tonight Top
We’re here at the Next09 conference in Hamburg, a two-day conference about the future of the web, so we figured we’d organise an impromptu TechDrunk… sorry, TechCrunch Meetup this evening. Thanks to Neuhaus Partners , eVenture Capital Partners , Cribb and BV Capital we have a little venture capital to buy you your first drink at the 3freunde bar tonight from 8pm in downtown Hamburg ( Clemens-Schultz-Str. 66 , closest metro is Feldstrasse or St Pauli), and we have room for more sponsors if anyone else wants to chip in. Come on down and say hi Robin Wauters of TechCrunch and Mike Butcher of TechCrunch Europe. We don’t bite, honest. If you would like to RSVP just hit the Facebook Event page and anyone else who wants to sponsor can drop Mike a line on mike[@]mbites.com with the subject line "HAMBURG". Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Just How Much Money Can Free iPhone Apps Make? Quite A Bit Top
Earlier this year Pinch Media released a report on the state of the App Store, describing some of the trends it had seen as developers tried to monetize their apps. The verdict: advertising on free applications simply can’t match the payoff from even the least expensive ‘paid’ applications, and would require an unobtainable $8.75 CPM to reach the same income per install. AdWhirl , the iPhone advertising platform formerly known as Adrollo, begs to differ. Since launching last month, the company has signed on over 10% of the top 50 applications in the App Store and is serving 250 million ad impressions per month. And their data tells a different tale. According to co-founder Sam Yam, one of the fundamental flaws in the Pinch Media report is that it assumes that applications only show a single ad impression per user interaction (in other words, every time you open a free app, you only see one ad). Yam says that applications actually tend to serve 3-5 impressions each time a customer interacts with them, with even higher figures for some especially engaging applications. And when you divide that $8.75 CPM by 5, things become much more reasonable. The AdWhirl report, embedded below, says that applications that crack the top 100 in the Free Apps list make $400-$5000 a day - a wide range to be sure, but even at the low end that works out to around $12,000 a month. Among these top apps, AdWhirl is reporting an impressive $1.90 eCPM and 2.6% CTR. And while applications that do reach the peak position in the App Store eventually lose steam, revenue tends to remain consistent over time after the initial dip (see the graph below). Of course, making it to the top of the Free Apps list is easier said than done, and most developers make far less than $400 a day. But the same is true of the vast majority of paid applications too - in fact, there’s actually less competition on the Free side of the store. As for AdWhirl, it seems like the startup is off to a great start. The company allows developers to tap into multiple iPhone ad networks at once, allowing them to compensate when one network doesn’t have enough ad inventory (something that AdWhirl says happens as much as 40% of the time). Finally, it’s important to note that it’s obviously in AdWhirl’s interest to promote iPhone advertising, since that’s their business. But it’s clear that there are definitely quite a few free applications making good money,. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 

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