Thursday, June 4, 2009

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Tesla To Open Three European Showrooms Top
Tesla, which has now delivered 500 Roadsters, will be opening several new sales showrooms this summer, the company says. Currently the company has showrooms only in California. Three of the new showrooms will be in Europe - London, Monaco and Munich. New York, Seattle, Chicago and Miami are also on the list. The company says that the first Roadsters will be delivered to European buyers this summer. At least three Tesla buyers have exported their cars to Europe already, though (one each to Germany, Norway and Spain). The company, which is now more valuable than General Motors , recently unveiled its second model, the Model S . The company also says that it’s looking for showroom locations in Washington DC and Toronto. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Here's What's Wrong With the Palm Pre Top
The Palm Pre—you may have heard of it—comes out on Saturday, but all sorts of media "outlets" have already published their reviews; I don't know when our review will go up. And since it's my feeling that most of you already assume the phone is "good," I've gone ahead and collected a few excerpts of the more critical points. You know, the part of the review that goes something like, "Now, the Palm Pre isn't perfect; we found a few problems with it. And they are..." That part. So let's get on with it. From the Wall Street Journal : The Pre's biggest disadvantage is its app store, the App Catalog. At launch, it has only about a dozen apps, compared with over 40,000 for the iPhone, and thousands each for the G1 and the modern BlackBerry models. Even worse, the Pre App Catalog isn't finished. It's immature, it's labeled a beta, and Palm has yet to release the tools for making Pre apps available to more than a small group of developers. In fact, during my testing, one of my downloads from the App Catalog caused my Pre to crash disastrously — all my email, contacts and other data were wiped out, and the phone was unable to connect to the Sprint network or Wi-Fi. Palm conceded the catastrophe was due to problems it still has getting the App Catalog to work with the phone's internal memory, and explained that this is one reason it hasn't widely distributed the developer tools. ... There are only a handful of buttons, and my only real criticism of the industrial design is that these were rubbery and protruded too little from the body, making them hard to press unseen. The power button is clumsy to use when the keyboard is open. ... But the Pre has a few other important downsides. Battery life between charges is relatively weak. While it's in line with competitors with a claimed five hours of talk time, and matches the iPhone's claimed five hours of Web surfing time, it offers only half the iPhone's 24 hours of continuous music playback and claims just five hours of video playback, versus seven for the iPhone. ... Another downside: the Pre's autocorrect system, for instantly fixing mistyped words, is puny. Even with a physical keyboard, people make typos, and Palm only fixes about 2,500 common words, like "the." By contrast, both the BlackBerry and iPhone have tens of thousands of autocorrections built in, including fixes for long, complex words.
 
If You Hate Posts About Twitter, #BlameDrewsCancer Top
Quite often when we write about something related to Twitter, it’s funny or stupid — or both . But it’s important to remember that Twitter at its core is a powerful medium for disseminating information. And sometimes that power can be used for good — like fighting cancer. Drew Olanoff , a man fairly well known in web circles, recently got some horrible news: He has cancer . That’s just about the worst news anyone could ever want to hear. But rather than sit around and feel bad about it, Olanoff decided to be proactive and use the bad situation for some good. He teamed up with developer Mike Demers to create Blame Drew’s Cancer , a site that asks you to blame everything that goes wrong in your life, on Drew’s cancer. What’s great about this is that people love to use Twitter to bitch about things. Hell, I do it just as much as anyone — it’s a great past time. But usually those tweets just come off as lame complaints to most of your followers. But now, using the #BlameDrewsCancer hash-tag , all of these tweets are pulled into the site, where they will be tallied to lead to what will hopefully be a large donation to the American Cancer Society and the Make a Wish Foundation. As a person who’s been heavily involved in the web space for some time across a range of companies, Olanoff realized Twitter was a perfect medium for his message. And just a few days after the launch of the site, it’s working to great effect . This morning, the cause was a top trending topic on Twitter. And even Lance Armstrong, who has just under 1 million followers, tweeted it out . Here are some other good ones: betosando I # BlameDrewsCancer for the War in the Middle East Farhoudi I blame the US’s 3-0 loss to Costa Rica on Drew’s cancer. http:// blamedrewscancer .com sneezymonica I # BlameDrewsCancer for my sore feet! http:// blamedrewscancer .com/ rhonigwachs I # blamedrewscancer for proprietary linux drivers Luckily, Olanoff’s Hodgkins Lymphoma has a good cure rate. And we wish him the best of luck as he undergoes months of treatment. But what he needs right now is for some companies to step up to the plate and pledge to donate $1 for every unique person that tweets out his #blamedrewscancer message. Pretty much every company these days is talking about how it can use Twitter to futher its brand. I see no better opportunity than this, right here, right now. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
SplashCast Throws In The Towel On User-Generated Content; Looking For A Buyer Top
The allure of building a business around user-generated content is fading fast. SplashCast , a company which launched two years ago around the notion of helping consumers put together videos, text, graphics, and music in embeddable broadcast “channels,” is discontinuing its original product. “Most of us would rather consume than create. This is one of the big ticket findings of the Web 2.0 technology wave,” concludes CEO Michael Berkley. And after failing to raise a B round of funding, he is now trying to sell the company. Instead of trying to make money off of user-generated broadcast channels, he is focusing on his newer Social TV product , which adds social features such as chat, commenting, and polling to professionally-produced videos. The SplashCast product being discontinued was simply too complicated for most consumers. It was a full content-management system which allowed consumers to bring together videos with images, text, and sound. In a candid assessment of why it fell flat, Berkley says: “We were hoping to launch a publishing revolution. What we found, however, is that very few users are willing and able to make an ongoing commitment to publishing and distributing content. Lots of users test; few stick with it.” While more than 100,000 SplashCast accounts have been created, “only a few thousand” use the product regularly, he tells me. Partly, this is the curse of building a business which relies on the creativity of users. “Like so many other Web 2.0 companies,” admits Berkley, “we simply haven’t found a way to meaningfully monetize user generated content. Users are loathe to pay meaningful subscription fees. Furthermore, advertising on user-generated video content hasn’t played out—just ask YouTube.” If only a tiny fraction of users create anything worthwhile, you either need a whole lot of users to make that work or you need to be able to attract the most creative people to your product. But partly, SplashCast also suffered from the curse of not keeping things simple . Berkley is taking that to heart by shifting the company’s remaining resources to making Hulu-quality videos more social on Facebook and MySpace. Berkley says SplashCast videos reach 5.8 million unique viewers per month and it streams 7.2 million videos. A full 90 percent of those streams come from only 25 SplashCast channels, mostly centered around network TV shows like 24 and the Simpsons or major label music artists. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Introducing The Pancake: A Less Annoying Way To Move Through Google Street View Top
Moving around in Google Street View is not always intuitive. You always end up clicking aimlessly a few times before you can really figure out how to move about. Well, now navigating within Street View is easier thanks to the “pancake.” Google is adding a useful tool called the “pancake” to Street View on Google Maps that lets you travel to a new point within a photo panorama by double clicking on the place or object you would like to see. Google says that it has been able to accomplish this by making a compact representation of the building facade and road geometry for all the Street View panoramas. As you move your mouse within Street View, you’ll see the pancake, which you can move up and down a street and then click on a restaurant, road, building or object nearby. The pancake is shown as a circle on roads and a rectangle when following the facade of a building. The pancake will transport you to the best view of an object in that direction. Google also says that the pancake will often show a little magnifying glass in the bottom right to indicate that double clicking will zoom in on the current image rather than transport you to a closer location. The pancake also prevents you from getting lost. If you want to go back to the original view of the street from the pancake, you can hit the return arrow in the address box to get back to the previous location. Previously, you could only move backward and forward along a street to view the next panorama, so the ability to quickly zoom in from anywhere to various spots along a particular road actually makes navigating within Street View much less frustrating. Check it out in the embedded interactive Street View below, or watch the video: View Larger Map Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Make Us Top
I’m not even sure what he’s talking about ( this? ), but this is too good not to post. The most brilliantly paranoid man on the Internet draws a line in the sand with our own MG Siegler . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Beware The Venture Debt: Kadoink Shuts Down For Good Top
In April we reported that San Francisco based mobile startup Kadoink was heading towards the deadpool . Not because they ran out of money, but because Hercules Technology Growth Capital , one of their backers, had seized the company and was shutting it down. CEO Scott Cahill confirmed the shutdown yesterday in an email to investors, saying that Hercules had “foreclosed on its collateral and has sold the company's intellectual property to a third party” : From: “Cahill, Scott” Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 16:42:29 -0400 To: Subject: Final Kadoink Update Dear Angel Investor: This is the final update on Kadoink. On Friday, May 30th, Kadoink completed the sale of its assets. As the attached letter indicates, the company contacted over 600 parties to determine interest in an acquisition of the company's assets. Of those, 22 expressed interest. Following a due diligence period, the Company received 6 bids for the acquisition of the Company's intellectual property. Unfortunately, the highest offer was insufficient to pay the company's secured lender in full. The company's secured lender, Hercules Technology II, L.P. and Hercules Technology Growth Capital, Inc. has foreclosed on its collateral and has sold the company's intellectual property to a third party. While the details of the transaction between Hercules and the buyer are subject to a confidentiality provision, the company can assure investors that the purchaser is not an insider and the transaction was arms-length. The Company's inability to pay its secured creditor in full means that that the Company, with certainty, is unable to make any payments on the general unsecured claims against it. Additionally, investors will receive no return on their investment. The company will be dissolved under state law. Please consult with your tax advisor regarding how you, or your organization, should handle losses arising from the closure of the company. On a final note, I regret that we were unable to return at least some portion of your investment to you. While we were optimistic at the start of the process that this might be achievable and we were ultimately satisfied with the size of the top bidders given what we learned over time regarding sales such as ours, it is disappointing nonetheless. I wish you all the best in your future endeavors and investments. Best Regards, Scott Venture debt looks extremely attractive when things are going well for a startup. The dilution to shareholders is minimal, usually just some warrants attached to the debt. It can make a lot of sense to raise debt when building out infrastructure, particularly since the debt can be secured against hardware being purchased. But the terms of the debt are key, particularly under what circumstances the creditor can come in and shut down the company. Many creditors look for triggers in the financial statements that give them the right to seize assets. That’s likely what happened with Kadoink, and it’s a sad way to end a company that may still have a shot at doing something interesting. Smart entrepreneurs only accept debt agreements that require nothing but payments to be made on time. As long as those payments come in, the creditor has to stay away. Terms are usually less attractive, but in the end it may save you from the deadpool . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Hey There! Tony La Russa Is Suing Twitter. Top
It’s an unlikely relationship, but Twitter and sports have gotten along quite nicely over the past few months. We all know about Shaq tweeting, and perhaps you even heard about the players tweeting during halftime of games. And if you watch ESPN or read ESPN the Magazine, you’ll find it littered with dozens of references to the service. At first, these references were made in jest, but now they’re mostly serious. But the Twitter/sports relationship runs the risk of souring after a lawsuit was publicized today. Tony La Russa, the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals Major League Baseball franchise is suing Twitter claiming that someone is pretending to be him on the site. Of course, he could have just asked the service to take that fake account down — something which it does fairly regularly — but instead, the suit filed last month in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco seeks “unspecified damages.” Twitter has since taken down the fake account. The suit is specifically for “trademark infringement, trademark dilution and misappropriation of name and likeness,” according to MLB.com . It also said the tweets were “derogatory and demeaning.” ESPN has some other details including that La Russa’s lawyers apparently included screenshots of these fake tweets which included, “Hey there! Tony La Russa is using Twitter.” No such tweet exists on Twitter Search, but perhaps Twitter has purged the results. Some of the tweets in question also apparently talk about a couple of Cardinals players who have passed away in recent years, which angered La Russa. Impersonation continues to be an issue on the web in general. Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler recently tried to sue a group of anonymous bloggers for pretending to be him — of course, since they were anonymous, they couldn’t be tracked down and thus, didn’t show up for court. But Twitter is particularly hot right now and so a lot of people are taking advantage of it to make fake accounts for famous people. This is something that made Kanye West mad as hell a few weeks ago. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
The Dot Coms Are Booming Again (Domain Registrations, That Is) Top
VeriSign has just put out its quarterly report on the web domain industry stating that there are now just about 183 million domain names in existence. This represents a 3% increase from last quarter and a 12% increase from last year. But perhaps most interesting is the slight turnaround that has taken place in the all-important .com/.net section of the industry. The fourth quarter of the year is traditionally a slow one for .com and .net registrations, but the whole of 2008 was particularly slow, at least partially due to the “current macro-economic environment,” according to the report. But Q1 2009 saw those numbers turn around: New .com and .net registrations were added at an average of approximately 2.4 million per month in the first quarter of 2009 for a total of 7.3 million new registrations in the quarter. This 17 percent increase from the previous quarter also marked the first positive growth rate in new registrations since the first quarter of 2008. Also interesting is that domain renewals turned around for the first time in a few years. Beginning in Q1 2007, .com and .net renewal rates began declining from a Q4 2006 peak of 77%. That decline continued through Q4 2008, when the renewal number reached a low of 70%. But Q1 2009 brought the first uptick in the number (71%) in over 2 years. So after a small depression, things appear to be looking up for .com domains once again. But that growth looks fairly minimal when compared to ccTLD (Country Code Top Level Domains). Those are the domains that end in things like .cn (China) and .de (Germany), representing countries. While .com is still far and away the biggest domain, .cn and .de have both surpassed .net for the number 2 and 3 spots on the list, respectively. You can find a lot more data in the full PDF report here . CrunchBase Information VeriSign, Inc. Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Intel Set To Acquire Wind River Systems For Approximately $884 Million Top
Intel said today that it plans to acquire Wind River Systems , maker of software for embedded devices - think smartphones, other consumer electronics devices, in-car “info-tainment” systems, networking equipment and the likes- in a deal valued at approx. $884 million (or all outstanding Wind River common stock for $11.50 per share in cash). With the move, Intel aims to grow its processor and software presence outside the traditional PC and server market segments into embedded systems and mobile handheld devices, which it deems an important growth area for the company. The acquisition is expected to close this summer, subject to certain regulatory approvals and other conditions specified in the definitive agreement, and will result in Wind River to become a full subsidiary of Intel under its Software and Services Group umbrella. Wind River has more than 1,600 employees and operations in more than 15 countries, and last reported annual revenues of $359.7 million. Full release can be found here . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Bing Travel Arrives Top
Microsoft this morning announced that it is rolling out Bing Travel , one of the verticals it’s focusing much of its attention on when it comes to the recently unveiled “decision engine” the company set out to conquer market share from Google and Yahoo Search. Bing Travel, as we mentioned when we posted the first screenshots based on the Kumo preview, combines a lot of the airfare and hotel reservation tools from Microsoft’s 2008 acquisition of Farecast with news and other editorial content from MSN Travel (in fact, travel.msn.com already redirects to the new search engine). Bing Travel is one of the initiatives that Microsoft is launching to differentiate Bing from traditional search engines which mostly provide information and links instead of tools that help visitors make more informed decision quicker. Customers will be able to take advantage of tools and features like Price Predictor (designed to forecast how airfare prices are going to evolve), Rate Indicator (set up to highlight the best hotel deals), but also Travel Deals, Comparison Flight & Hotel Search, and Fare Alerts. According to Redmond, 45 percent of people use a search engine to select a flight or hotel. Out of those, a survey by Bing Travel pointed out that 52 percent of potential travelers search three or more sites before booking their airfare, and 42 percent of travelers spend between one and four weeks weighing their travel options (17 percent even spend more than one month). Microsoft wants to reduce that time by centralizing comprehensive results based on searches for travel information in one place. We’ll take Bing Travel for spin and post a detailed post about our findings soon, but for now do tell us what your first impression of Bing’s Travel section is in comments. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Phishing Scam Targets YouTube Partners Top
Some YouTube partners are being hit with e-mails seemingly coming from Google / YouTube teams attempting to trick them into replying with their login credentials and other personal information. One partner contacted us with screenshots of the phishing messages, the first received at the end of May and the second on June 3rd, coming from and delivered to different accounts. While the first e-mail was quite amateuristic of nature and came filled with stuff that should raise quite some warning flags (typos, clumsy phrasing, Youtube instead of YouTube, etc.), the second appeared more genuine and had a body text edited rather professionally (see screenshot below). In both cases, the YouTube partner was told that there was some kind of problem with his or her account, either with videos that purportedly contained copyrighted material, hate speech/bullying, or other issues that violate the service’s ToS. The first e-mail urged partners to respond with their username, password, e-mail address and D.O.B, while the second asked only for the password. It’s unclear whether this phishing scam was aimed at our tipster specifically or if this is a more widespread problem (any YouTube partners wanna chip in?), but in any case YouTube has been alerted by the user and myself, although we have yet to receive a response. YouTube partners, be aware and spread the word! Update: official statement from YouTube: “We are aware of recent phishing emails where users posing as Google or YouTube support have tried to obtain the login credentials of our partners. Security is a top concern at YouTube and action has been taken against these users and we are taking steps to prevent potential future occurrences. YouTube will never send an unsolicited message asking for your password or other sensitive information by email or through a link.” Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
The Europas - The TechCrunch Europe Awards 2009 Top
Well people, it’s time. It’s time we celebrated the tech scene in Europe with an awards event which we can really call our own. So TechCrunch Europe will, on July 9, hold the first Europe-wide awards ceremony for technology innovation in London. “The Europas” - The TechCrunch Europe Awards 2009 - will honor the best tech companies and startups across the web and mobile scene from across the continent of Europe. The first tranche of tickets are now on sale . These awards will recognize and celebrate the most compelling technology startups, Internet and mobile innovations of the past year (Summer 08 - Summer 09), with the tech community invited to have a say in which finalists should be win. Leading lights of the the tech community will be invited to give away the awards to the winners, so you’ll have the opportunity to meet your tech heroes and heroines. The initial filtering will be done by referencing our database on European companies on CrunchBase (so make sure you are in it), then by public vote online, with the final Award winners to be determined based both on the popular votes received through website voting and by The Europas Judging Committee. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
TechCrunch Europe Wants You! Top
In September 2007 we launched TechCrunch UK & Ireland. But within three months we realised the tech story that needed to be written was across Europe. So we went on tour to find contacts and companies. This year we’ve re-launched as TechCrunch Europe and begun running events across the continent to bring the European tech scene together, along with our first ever day-long conference . Today we’re opening up TechCrunch Europe to new contributors from across Europe so that we can really tell the European tech story the way it is. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Ron Conway To Focus On "Real Time Data" Startups: 40-50 New Investments In Next 18 Months Top
Heavy hitting angel investor Ron Conway , who’s been called the “Godfather of Silicon Valley” by Gary Rivlin, is now focusing most of his investment attention on “real-time data,” according to an email he sent out to friends and contacts earlier this week. Conway was one of the earliest investors in Google, and has invested in more than 500 startups, he’s said in the past. Conway is changing his relationship with Baseline Ventures , a fund run by Steve Anderson . Since 2006 Baseline has taken the lead in managing Conway’s deal flow. Now, Conway says, he’s reverting back to doing all of his investments directly. He’ll still work closely with Baseline, he says, particularly in syndicating angel rounds and sharing deal flow. Conway is also accelerating his investing, he says in the email, and has a goal to invest in 40-50 companies in the next 18 months. His focus will be companies exploiting “real-time data,” which he calls “the next billion dollar market opportunity.” Conway is already an investor in Twitter and Facebook, two companies solidly in the real-time space. He’s recently invested in other very young startups like Scoopler and Twitvid . Both are Y Combinator startups. He’s also an advisor to Topsy , a new real-time search engine that launched recently . David Lee and Brian Pokorny from Baseline now work with Conway directly. Anderson is re-staffing Baseline and will continue to invest $10 million -$12 million per year in young startups. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Exclusive: Sarah Lacy's New Chapter On Twitter From Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good Paperback Version Top
Last year ( now TechCrunch editor) Sarah Lacy’s book, Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good came out in hardcover . Here’s an interview we did with Lacy about the book in May 2008. The paperback version of the book was just released ( buy it here ). The book includes a new chapter titled “The Fail Whale” that’s all about Twitter. The chapter begins with a discussion of the infamous Fail Whale , the image that Twitter put up when the service was down. CEO Evan Williams told Sarah “I hate that fucking whale”: Twitter’s unreliability had stretched nearly a year by that summer, getting worse by the month. The site could be down for hours a day, for days at a time. Twitter users were getting impatient. People had started to rely on the system as a sort of personal news feed, a way of connecting with friends, and a tool for tracking events. When it went down, people flew into a rage. It only made them angrier that Twitter’s staff wasn’t saying much of anything about why the outages were occurring or when they would end. The Twitter team wasn’t trying to be obtuse; they just didn’t know what to say. They were just as stumped. The Fail Whale was cute at first. In fact, undeniably so. But when you saw him every time you tried to message a friend or Tweet a new blog post, his oblivious grinning expression became maddening. As furious as users were, they stopped short of tearing Twitter down or abandoning the site altogether. There was something about Twitter that Silicon Valley rooted for; a remarkable sense of goodwill for a company that was continually letting its users down for months. Friendster certainly hadn’t been cut that kind of slack. Even the whale itself developed fans. The problem went on long enough that a weird Stockholm Syndrome developed. A Fail Whale fan club emerged. One guy got a Fail Whale tattoo. The woman who’d designed the art started to produce T-shirts and mugs. She sent a box of Fail Whale T-shirts to Twitter’s offices late in the summer, but the joke was wearing thin on a staff battling the problem day and night. Sure, some staffers found it funny. After a point you just have to laugh, right? But ask CEO Jack Dorsey about wearing a Fail Whale shirt and you’ll get this answer: “l won’t wear any shirt with a whale on it, ever. It has put me off the whole species.” Twitter’s cofounder Evan Williams agrees: “I hate that fucking whale.” The chapter also goes into a lot of detail on the beginning of Twitter. Creator Jack Dorsey tells Sarah that the original idea goes back to when he was just fifteen years old: That’s because Twitter didn’t really start in 2006. It started in Jack’s head back when he was fifteen years old. He was iust a geeky kid living in St. Louis in the 1990s who had an unnatural obsession with the dispatch industry. Particularly the armies of couriers who physically took something, put it in their messenger bags, and dropped the packages off somewhere else. He thought about it the way other fifteen-year-olds think about half-naked girls or Star Wars—with sheer awe that never seemed to end. And when he thought of dispatchers, he would picture a huge map of New York city with blinking lights of couriers all acting like a flock of birds navigating the city individually, but also as one. A symphony of bikers fanning out in different corners of the city, crossing paths seamlessly, each on their own route, then coming back to the same place at the close of business. All controlled by one conductor; one master plan. “I wanted to write software to do it,” Jack says, “I just had to.” On Dorsey’s firing : The question of replacing Jack first came up for the board duriing the summer of 2008, while Twitter was raising another round of money. Taking the money meant that the company likely wasn’t selling, and the board asked whether Jack had the chops to take the company to the next level. Nothing was decided then, but it kept coming back up for two reasons: Things weren’t getting better between Evan and Jack and, increasingly, Evan was discovering that he did actually want to be the CEO of Twitter. Both Jack and Evan complained to the board, and the board decreed that one way or another, it couldn’t go on. So Fred Wilson asked Evan, “Do you want this? Do you want to be CEO?” … Twitter’s investor Fred Wilson and Spark’s Bijan Sabet were in town for a board meeting and the three of them decided the investors should deliver the news, not Evan. It would be easier for Jack that way. And really, the news wasn’t all bad. Jack would be awarded the second largest individual stake of Twitter stock and would be named chairman of the board. It was generous by any standards. Later that night, Jack went out with a few now-former coworkers. “Come on! This is a celebration,” one of them said. Jack smiled, but he couldn’t feel very celebratory on the inside. The next day it was announced with the ubiquitous face-saving line, “Jack Dorsey has decided to step down.” On Twitter’s business model: Indeed, that’s how Evan is thinking about Twitter’s business model too. The plan is to let corporate Twitter users use the service the way they want to - and charge them for it. There’s been a lot of debate over whether Twitter would have some sort of partial subscription business model or an ad-based one. Evan says neither. He’s planning something more creative that’s every bit an extension of the product as any free feature. “There are lame ways we could make money now. We have enough of a user base and enough traffic,” he says. “But it needs to be part of the system.” Evan uses the word “system” a lot. He thinks of Twitter as a living, breathing organism - not unlike a flock of birds - that he needs to keep moving together, now that he’s taken over the lead position in the formation. Revenue is as much a part of that “system” as company culture, features, the user interface, and the behavior that happens on the site. “The revenue piece is pure product design,” he says, getting excited. “What are people trying to do and how much are we going to help them do it? Is this something only companies want? Then how much can we charge? And where’s the credit card field?” These are just small excerpts from the chapter. If you haven’t read the book, you should. Buy the paperback version here . Kindle version is here . Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Offerwire Scores $3.5 Million For Home Service Deals Site Top
Startup Bridgevine has raised $3.5 million in Series C funding from Safeguard Scientifics and Constellation Ventures to launch Offerwire, a consumer focused site that aggregates home services deals. This round brings Bridgevine’s total funding raised to $16.6 million. Bridgevine previously provided an online e-commerce engine for consumers and small businesses to find and compare deals specifically on connection and entertainment services, such as high speed internet, voice and cable TV offerings. Bridgevine’s new consumer site, Offerwire, is an aggregation site of deals and offers not only for connection and cable services, but also for music, dvd rental, magazines, credit cards, security and more. It’s like Kayak for home and entertainment services. Users can comparison shop for deals, bundle services together, and as an added bonus, receive cash back for certain deals. Offerwire has a host of big-name vendors on board including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, AT&T, Verizon, Netflix, and LifeLock. The cashback incentive makes the site particularly appealing. For example, Offerwire says that if you get cable through Time Warner, you could get as much as $100 cash back. Bridgevine’s CEO, Vinny Olmstead, says that the site offers a deal where if you bundle cable, phone and internet services together (the “triple play”), you could receive as much as $300 back from Comcast. Of course, with every referral, Bridgevine takes a cut, which ranges depending on the service bought. Competitors to Offerwire include Digital Landing and WhiteFence. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Bing Versus Wolfram Alpha: A Tale Of Two Search Engine Launches Top
In the past month, we’ve seen some new search engine launches. Two in particular were able to generate a hype cycle of early positive reviews and excitement: Bing and Wolfram Alpha . One was launched by Microsoft, and the other by a startup. It is inherently not a fair comparison because Microsoft has so much more money to spend on marketing ($80 to $100 million is earmarked for Bing)> But most of the buzz so far has been generated by the respective launches with all of the blog and news coverage that entails. So even though it is not fair, let’s compare the two, because it is instructive. There is little data on actual traffic or search volume for either site at this point. Instead, I looked at another proxy of interest: Google searches for both sites as measured by Google Trends . As you can see by the chart above, searches for “Wolfram Alpha” began to build up the weekend that it soft launched on May 15, peaking the following Monday, and then trailing off after that. It had a strong showing, and then interest waned. Interest in Bing, on the other hand, started out just as strong with its unveiling last week . Then when it actually launched, interest shot up even higher. The positive experience many people had with their first search certainly helped. Now, the question is: Can Bing keep up the momentum, or will interest in the latest search experiment fade away as fast as it did for Wolfram Alpha? That is where Microsoft’s big check book and that advertising campaign come in. You are going to be hearing a lot more about Bing overt the next few months: on TV , on the Web, and, yes, even on Google . Microsoft cannot afford to let Bing disappear from view. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Told You: Digg Applying The User Voting Model To Advertising Top
Late last year we wrote about an experimental advertising product that Digg was developing : One experiment Digg is working on, says one source close to the company, is a self service advertising product that will be somewhat similar to Google Adwords, but with a twist. The product would insert advertisements into the Digg news stream (presumably clearly marked). Where those ads end up, and how much an advertiser pays per click, would be based on user feedback. So users would have the ability to vote on advertisements in the same way they vote on stories. The better ads, as determined by Digg users, will get more prominent placement and a lower cost-per-click. Compare that to the blog post from Digg a few minutes ago announcing a new advertising product: Today, we're announcing our plans to roll out a new advertising platform — Digg Ads. Digg Ads will give you more control over which advertisements are displayed on Digg. The more an ad is Dugg, the less the advertiser will have to pay. Conversely the more an ad is buried, the more the advertiser is charged, pricing it out of the system. The platform will launch as a pilot in a few months, and it will be an ongoing work in progress as we learn more from the Digg community and adjust the system. We're still in very early stages of working with advertisers and building the system, but we wanted you to be the first to hear about our plans. Digg Ads will appear alongside stories in the river. The sponsored content will look and feel similar to regular Digg content, but will be clearly marked as sponsored. It may link to stories, video trailers, independent product reviews – many of the same types of content you see on Digg every day. The goal here is to give advertisers a way to present content related to their brands and get immediate input on whether it's relevant to the Digg audience, or not. New Digg ads will appear directly in the news stream and will be clearly marked as sponsored. The more people click on the ads, the lower the price the advertiser will pay. Ads that are buried too often will be priced “out of the system.” Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Vinod Khosla, Risk Junkie Top
I haven't been much of a cleantech bull in the past, at least when it comes to venture capital investing. I think it's a huge market, and there's clearly a pressing social need. I just don't quite think the science, government cooperation and economics are there yet for it to be a great opportunity for classic venture investing. Sure there's low-hanging fruit, and the outliers like Elon Musk who had the cojones to invest $70 million of his own money into building an electric car company. But a huge boom producing several multi-billion winners? Not yet, IMHO. But Vinod Khosla greatly disagrees with me, and, frankly, you should listen to him, because he's a lot smarter. That came across last week during a rare-sit down with Khosla, the famed venture investor and Sun Microsystems co-founder. It was for my Yahoo show, TechTicker, and I'd lobbied—nay, harassed—Khosla and his poor assistant for about eight months to get the meeting. I'd initially intended to talk a lot about investing in India, since I'm going there in November, and it's a cause close to Khosla's heart. But we spent most the time talking about cleantech. Khosla Ventures arguably has the largest cleantech portfolio in the business. I counted more than 30 companies from the Web site alone. And, in many cases these are ambitious, science-heavy, swing-for-the-fences type plays. He is one of the only VCs I know who likes to do "science projects" – usually that's a derogatory term in the industry, even for biotech VCs. Here's a link to our segment where Khosla explains why he believes ethanol—not hybrids and plug ins—are the answer to getting us off oil for good and here's a link to the broader segment we did where he rebuts all my arguments about why cleantech won't be the next big driver of Valley returns. He says that "clearly" ten Googles will be created from this opportunity, because it's not really about solar, wind or biofuels, it's about totally re-architecting the infrastructure of society. Sounds ambitious, huh? I’m still not sure about cleantech as the next big Valley wave, but that ambition was what I liked about Khosla. Because I just don't hear enough ambitious investment ideas these days in the Valley. Facebook apps, Twitter apps and iPhone apps are all great for consumers and for developers who want nice thriving businesses. And certainly, they’re great for Facebook, Twitter and Apple. But with the possible exceptions of Slide, Zynga and one or two others, they're not the next companies that are going to drive the economy of Silicon Valley, mint millionaires, generate fees to support all those attorneys and accountants, and of course generate enough returns so that institutions want to keep investing in this asset class. The fact that Facebook is considered risky scares me a little for the future of the Valley. This is a company that's not necessarily doing something new; social networks have been around a while. It's a company that mostly always been run at break-even. It's a company that's generating upwards of $500 million in revenue a year without really "figuring out" its business model. It's a company that has no problem still raising money at nosebleed valuations . And most importantly, it's still growing in almost every user metric that matters. That is not a particularly risky start-up. Guess what? Twitter isn't either. If you can't look at the growth and usage patterns on Twitter and come up with several ideas to monetize it, you're not very creative. Google built a great monetization engine because it knew intent—in other words, what you were searching for. Twitter knows way more about what's going on at your head at any given moment, and that's ripe for advertising and premium research/customer service products for companies. Is it a slam-dunk? Of course not. The crew still needs to execute, and the Twitter natives are getting restless to see some new features. But it's all execution risk at this point, I’d argue. Compare that to a company that's making liquid biofuels out of bark or switchgrass. Khosla spoke right to this fact in the third segment of our interview, which I've embedded below. I started out by asking him if he'd turned his back on IT, which is after all where he made his fame and fortune. He gave a few examples of investments he'd snapped up in seemingly "over-invested areas." One strong one was Aliph, the company who makes the Jawbone. It did $500k in 2006 to $140 million in 2008, and it's still growing amid the downturn. (He says this at the 2:15 mark below.) At minute 3:55, he talks about the venture capital business, and its troubling new aversion to risk. As he puts it the business is more about “capital” these days and less about “venture.” "There are too many people trying to avoid risk; too many people trying to deploy capital as opposed to invest in risk and invest in breakthroughs," he said. You tell ‘em, Khosla. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
CrunchPad: The Launch Prototype Top
We’ve been working hard behind the scenes on the CrunchPad since our last update in April , and have just about nailed down the final design for the device. We’re showing the conceptual drawings here today. In another few weeks we’ll have the first working prototypes in our office. This launch prototype is another significant step forward from the last prototype. The screen is now flush with the case and we’ve decreased the overall thickness to about 18 mm. The case will be aluminum, which is more expensive than plastic but is sturdier and lets us shave a little more off the overall thickness of the device. I believe the device now actually looks better than the original concept design we published last summer. Compare the images below to the first prototype and you can see how far we’ve come. If you’re interested, here’s Prototype B . Pictures of Prototype C, which is the device we’re actually demo’ing to people now, are here . A lot has happened behind the scenes, too. Our partner Fusion Garage continues to drive the software forward, and we are in deep discussions with key partners to bring the device to market. If you’d like to see the previous CrunchPad in action, we have a previously-private video available on YouTube that shows our vision for the user interface and the last version of the software stack. This is a Linux based operating system and a Webkit based browser. The device boots directly into the browser. The next time we talk about the CrunchPad publicly will be at a special press and user event in July in Silicon Valley. If you’d like to be emailed when new news comes out, send an email to crunchpad@techcrunch.com and we’ll put you on the list. Here is the near-final industrial design for the CrunchPad: Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
The API's Plan To Save Newspapers: Let's Put Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again Top
At last week’s hush, hush meeting of newspaper execs on how to monetize content and save a dying industry, the American Press Institute presented a white paper that offers a step by step plan of how newspapers should move forward with paid content. Nieman Journalism Lab posted a downloadable copy of the report, which has some interesting recommendations. Poynter also provided a comprehensive review of the report. We’ve embedded the document below. The report suggests several models to implement paid content, including micropayments, subscriptions and hybrid models. Google is compared to an atom bomb that “blew up the content business into millions of atomized pieces,” leaving news organizations with the mess of putting things back together. Comparing newspapers to “Humpty Dumpty”, the paper paints a “poor-me” tale of how news orgs are scrambling to put all the pieces back together to “restore their integrity.” And of course, news enterprises are also forced to suffer a second related atom bomb: hyper-linking. The report says: “The culture of hyper-linking and hyper-syndication that fuels the interactive Web has become an atom bomb for the old news business model.” So the remedy for putting the pieces back together according to the API: charge for content, stick it to Google, and renegotiate subscription models with Amazon for the Kindle (which it implies is unfairly making more money from content than newspapers). Apparently, nobody at the API has actually read Humpty Dumpty, otherwise they would know that you can never put the pieces back together again. The API recommends a five pronged business plan, divided by “doctrines,” to charge users for content: True Value Doctrine: Newspapers should create value by beginning to charge for it. Fair Value Doctrine: In order to maintain the value of content, newspapers should aggressively enforce copyrights and right to profit from published content. Fair Share Doctrine: News orgs should start to negotiate with the technology industry for higher prices for content that is aggregated, redistributed, broken up, and linked to. Digital Deliverance Doctrine: Newspapers should invest in technology and digital platforms that could “provide content-based e-commerce, data sharing and other revenue-generating solutions” at “premium prices.” Consumer Centric Doctrine: Newspaper need to refocus their content from advertisers to readers/consumers. The section of the paper that addresses Google is part sad, part funny and part delusional. Google, the “atom bomb,” is also a “frenemy” to newspapers, citing Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, and VP of products and user experience, Marissa Mayer, as the top frenemies at Google. The paper concedes that Google provides 25 to 35 percent of the traffic to news web sites but says that Google is taking a disproportionate share of profits from content creators. Reading between the lines, the paper suggests that Google’s profits are being stolen from newspaper’s profits. In order to seek compensation from Google, the API suggests that news organizations should put legal, political, business and technological pressure on Google, and other “powerful players” in the digital space including MSFT, Yahoo, AOL, and Facebook. That’s right.  Part of the plan is for newspapers, which are technologically challenged, to put “technological pressure” on the technology giants.  That plan is even less likely to succeed than the Humpty Dumpty one. It’s understandable that newspaper organizations are trying to figure out the best way to move forward in the industry, and I think that this report does outline their options for monetization (if that is the remedy) fairly well. Although, many don’t necessarily agree with this. But the passive aggressive finger pointing at Amazon, Google and others seems to be a bit off. As author Michael Connelly wisely says in an interview, “Google doesn’t kill newspapers. People kill newspapers.” apireportmay09 - (Photo credit: Flickr/ Atarkus ) CrunchBase Information Google Amazon Information provided by CrunchBase (Photo credit: Flickr/ Pink Rocker ) Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Chris Hughes Likes Twitter, Hates MySpace Ads And Wishes He Would Have Dropped Out Of School Top
Today at the Startup 2009 conference in New York City, Business Insider’s Henry Blodget interviewed Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes on stage. Hughes recently moved to the city and has been going around to various colleges on the east coast talking to students who have good ideas, but don’t necessarily know how to start companies, as he put it. On the topics of Facebook, the Obama campaign (he was a major player in the online side of it) and even Twitter, he had some interesting things to say. On Facebook, Blodget of course had to bring up the allegations that the idea was stolen when Hughes was still in college with co-founders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz. “Not true,” says Hughes. While both Zuckerberg and Moskovitz dropped out of Harvard to move west to focus on Facebook full-time, Hughes stayed in school. But it’s a decision that Hughes admits he kind of regrets. He wishes that he could have been working on it full-time from the beginning. The back story has been told many times before, but from Hughes perspective, Facebook was started as a way for friends to share what they thought was cool on the web in a trusted environment. And to get updates on what other people were doing. It’s hard to know if that’s a bit of revisionist history (at least the way he’s phrasing it), as those two things happen to be exactly what Facebook is so focused on right now. Sharing things from around the web is finally starting to come into focus with Facebook Connect taking off. And getting updates on what others are up to is the major part of the redesigned homepage which, yes, looks a lot like Twitter — that other service dedicated to status updates. Speaking of Twitter, during the Q&A portion, someone asked for Hughes’ thoughts on the service. Hughes had apparently only just started using it when he was being interviewed for his Fast Company cover story a couple months ago, and the magazine noted that he had done so, “albeit reluctantly.” But now, Hughes seems quite sold on the service. “I think Twitter is great,” he said before going on about how he doesn’t believe that there can only be one service that everyone uses to share things — something which I absolutely agree with. Instead, he sees Twitter as just one of many new ways to communicate on the web, and believes there will be room for “dozens of applications like this.” Blodget then got Hughes to talk a bit about his experience with the Obama campaign. Hughes broke it down into simple terms, noting that all the campaign really did was use existing technology to make campaigns more efficient. The key parts of that were ways to help the campaign raise money easier, and also to connect with voters to form an emotional relationship. He talked about how right after one of former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s speeches in which she belittled what the Obama campaign was doing with its online efforts, the entire team got fired up and starting sending out a mass of emails to supporters. Hughes and the team realized that Palin was an extremely divisive person, and used people’s dislike of her as a way to raise money instantly online. Obviously, it worked to the tune of millions upon millions of dollars. Blodget wondered if that type of campaign victory was a one-time thing, asking if the Republicans had found their “Chris Hughes.” Hughes wasn’t sure if they had, but guessed that in the next round of major elections, the Republicans will probably have a similar game plan. “We weren’t doing brilliant new things,” Hughes said continuing on that they just knew what would work online. The talk then turned back to Facebook, where Blodget wondered if Hughes felt the company was doing the right things in order to become a profitable company. Not surprisingly, Hughes is very optimistic about Facebook’s business potential, noting that the company is just in the process of trying a bunch of interesting ideas and seeing what works. He reiterated Zuckerberg’s claims that by the end of the year, Facebook plans to be cash-flow positive. One audience member asked why Facebook wasn’t doing the type of big advertising site branding that its rival MySpace was doing. “There’s a reason we don’t do that. Ads shouldn’t be in people’s way,” Hughes noted before saying that the best type of advertising is non-intrusive and interesting. Clearly, he doesn’t think too highly of MySpace’s Fanta ads. Hughes is positive that bigger and better online advertising possibilities will exist over the course of the next few years. And he obviously thinks Facebook will be able to take advantage of that in a very meaningful way, given that it has over 200 million users — and is still growing at a nice rate. Hughes became an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at General Catalyst Partners back in March . CrunchBase Information Chris Hughes Facebook Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 

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