Saturday, June 6, 2009

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The Early Google Papers: Rajeev Motwani's Contributions To Search Top
Larry Page and Sergey Brin have always given Professor Rajeev Motwani significant credit for helping them create what would eventually become Google. Today, as I say my personal goodbye to the man who helped so many people in our community, I’m also spending some time going back and reading some of the early papers that Rajeev co-authored describing how PageRank could become the basis for a new kind of search engine. In a 1998 paper called “What Can You Do With A Web In Your Pocket” Brin, Motwani, Page and Terry Winograd say “…we have developed a global ranking of Web pages called PageRank based on the link structure of the Web that has properties that are useful for search and navigation..we have used PageRank to develop a novel search engine called Google, which also makes heavy use of anchor text.” An even earlier paper in 1998 that the four co-authored called “The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web” went into much more detail on PageRank. “In this paper, we take advantage of the link structure of the Web to produce a global “importance” ranking of every web page. This ranking, called PageRank, helps search engines and users quickly make sense of the vast heterogeneity of the World Wide Web.” Today much of what they wrote appears as little more than common sense. But in 1998 it was a revolutionary way of thinking. AltaVista, the leading search engine at the time, turned down the chance to buy Google for $1 million, saying spam would make PageRank useless. Yahoo also declined to purchase Google, supposedly because they didn’t want to focus on search, which only sent users away from Yahoo.com. So what seems obvious today was considered sort of meh by the leading technologists a decade ago. The papers are embedded below. What Can You Do With A Web In Your Pocket? - The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web - Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Facing A Lawsuit And Complaints From Celebs, Twitter Launches Verified Accounts Top
Twitter has faced harsh criticism from celebrities, including Kanye West, about impersonators creating unauthorized accounts on their behalf. 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. Today, Twitter’s co-founder Biz Stone responded to the lawsuit, adamantly stating that Twitter will not settle with La Russa, calling the lawsuit an “unnecessary waste of judicial resources bordering on frivolous.” Twitter, as it has done with other similar situations, suspended the account in question. But in response to the problem of impersonators of brands and famous people, Twitter is giving us a sneak peak of an experimental feature they call “verified accounts.” Twitter says it will start rolling out the beta of this feature this summer for a small set of public officials, public agencies, famous artists, athletes, and other celebs who run the risk of impersonation. Businesses will not be included in the initial beta testing of the verification seal. As you can see from the image, the account holder’s page will have a “verified account” official seal in its profile box. Impersonation is a problem on the web in general. Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler recently tried to sue a group of anonymous bloggers for pretending to be him, which proved to be futile. Facebook, like Twitter, is another platform where impersonators can create unauthorized pages on behalf of celebs and public figures. Of course some Twitter impersonations can result in amicable situations. During the Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN race to a million followers, it was revealed that CNN didn’t own the CNNbrk Twitter account. CNN ended up taking control of the CNNbrk account, under the agreement that the original account holder, James Cox, would act as a “social media consultant” to the network. While Twitter’s verification seal is still in an experimental phase, it seems like a step in the right direction. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Are Social Network Aggregators The New Cheese? Top
Here’s a question that’s been running through my head ever since Michael posted about FriendFeed being in danger of becoming the coolest app no one uses : exactly how many startups out there are trying to be the one social networking service aggregator to rule them all, and how many is enough? It seems like every day startups come up with new applications, be it for desktop, Web and/or mobile phone, that essentially want to be the gateway to our online lives. In reality though, there are not that many people who want - let alone need - continuous access to multiple social networking services, and even if they do, how many people (outside of the tech industry) do you know who are genuinely waiting for a extra third-party that helps them manage all their online personas? Is this a sucker’s game? Is it a battle worth fighting? For example: how many clients exist that basically aim to lure you away from using Twitter’s standard web interface by adding more features to the core micro-sharing functionality and throwing in more eye candy? And yet, the Twitter website remains, by far , the most popular way for users to update their message streams, with dozens of apps like TweetDeck, Twhirl / Seesmic Desktop, PeopleBrowsr, Sobees, Streamy, Tweetie, Nambu, TwitterBerry, and HootSuite trailing in its path (and there are many more where that came from). Don’t even get me started on the plethora of apps that syndicate FriendFeed feeds alongside Facebook and Twitter to deliver the best-user-experience-known-to-mankind when it comes to updating your social graph on your current status. It’s the ultimate social networking service aggregator update management tool, baby! All these applications appeal to only a fraction of the users of the more popular social services, many of which are still trying to figure out how to turn all that attention into cold hard cash themselves. I’m not necessarily saying that that’s a reason not do get into that business, I’m just saying chances are little that they’re ever going to be able to turn it into something even remotely profitable. I sincerely think we’ve seen enough of these social network aggregators, and while I’m sure one or two will live on, get acquired or turn out to be a successful venture in another way, most are destined for failure like most startups in any other market, especially if they’re as saturated as this one has quickly proven to be. I’ll sure be pointing back to this post when the next contestants in this particular arena find their way to our inboxes. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
On Twitter, Most People Are Sheep: 80 Percent Of Accounts Have Fewer Than 10 Followers Top
Let’s face it, most people are sheep. It is much easier to follow than to lead, and on Twitter it is no different. A full 80 percent of Twitter accounts have fewer than 10 followers, according to an analysis of seven million Twitter accounts provided to TechCrunch by Web security firm Purewire (which operates TweetGrade ). What’s more, 30 percent have zero followers. Does this mean nobody is using Twitter? Or that they are using it more as a one-way information consumption service? The fact that an estimated 32 million people around the world visited Twitter.com alone in April certainly indicates that there is something going on there. It just may be that Twitter really isn’t as much about two-way micro-conversations as it is about one-way micro-broadcasting. Indeed, a recent Harvard Business School study suggested that the top 10 percent of Twitter users produce more than 90 percent of all Tweets. Here is how Purewire breaks down activity on Twitter by number of followers, followings, and Tweets: Followers Accounts with 0 followers: 29.4% Accounts with 1 to 9 followers: 50.9% Accounts with 10 or more followers: 19.7% Followings Accounts following 0 people: 24.4% Accounts following 1 to 9 people: 43.4% Accounts following 10 or more people: 32.2% Tweets Accounts with 0 Tweets: 37.1% Accounts with 1 to 9 Tweets: 41.0% Accounts with more 10 or more Tweets: 21.9% What stands out from this data is that about a quarter of all accounts are not following anybody, nearly 30 percent have zero followers, and more than a third have not posted a single Tweet. The problem with all of this data, however, is that it includes abandoned accounts (as most likely does the Harvard data as well). Like any popular Web service, millions of people create a Twitter account, try it once, and never come back again. The Purewire data shows that about 40 percent of users have not sent out a Tweet since the day they created their accounts. You can compare this with the 60 percent abandonment rate claimed by Nielsen . But even these may not be the true abandonment rates. Just because you are not Tweeting does not mean you are not listening. After getting rid of the dead accounts and spam accounts (24 percent of accounts follow nobody), what do we have left? All the activity on Twitter is coming from the remaining people who stick around—that 20 percent with more than ten followers and the 32 percent following more than ten people. If you look at active accounts—which Purewire defined as those with at least 10 followers, 10 followings, and 10 tweets—it shows that Twitter is still filled with sheep. Of those active accounts, 63.6 percent follow more people than they have followers (2.8 percent have the same number of followers as followings). But that is what you’d expect. When only 22 percent of accounts have more than 10 Tweets, people who bother to Tweet on a regular basis will attract more followers than people who prefer to sit back and read. Twitter is no different than any other form of participatory media. A small fraction of users produce the overwhelming amount of content, even if it is just 140 characters at a time. Everyone else just drinks from the stream. Baaaa! (Photo credit: Flickr/ Stacie Brew ) Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Silicon Valley Grieves Rajeev Motwani's Passing Top
The news of Professor Rajeev Motwani’s untimely death on Friday afternoon spread quickly throughout the couple of hundred attendees of tonight’s TechFellow event in San Francisco. The mood of the event turned from cheerful cocktail sipping banter to stunned silence. Most everyone who was there is his friend. And most everyone there had a story to tell about how Motwani had helped them at one time or another, asking nothing in return. I have a couple of those stories myself. Ron Conway , a long time friend of Motwani, was visibly shaken. We asked Ron to make a few remarks to honor Motwani before the event started. His talk was not scripted or prepared. He was in a state of shock before, during and after his talk. And it clearly came directly from the heart. He talked about a man who loved entrepreneurs and who would meet with anyone to at least give them advice. Motwani influenced hundreds of entrepreneurs and students, Conway said, and never refused a meeting. We’ve included the video of Conway’s tribute to Motwani above. Google founder Sergey Brin , who describes Motwani as his “friend and teacher,” also wrote a tribute on his blog : Remembering Rajeev It has been a long time since I have updated this blog. In fact, I have been doing some research for what I thought would be my next post. Unfortunately, life does not always give you the luxury to plan what may be close to your heart next. It is with great sadness that I write about the passing of my teacher and good friend Professor Rajeev Motwani. But I would rather not dwell on the sorrow of his death and instead celebrate his life. Officially, Rajeev was not my advisor, and yet he played just as big a role in my research, education, and professional development. In addition to being a brilliant computer scientist, Rajeev was a very kind and amicable person and his door was always open. No matter what was going on with my life or work, I could always stop by his office for an interesting conversation and a friendly smile. When my interest turned to data mining, Rajeev helped to coordinate a regular meeting group on the subject. Even though I was just one of hundreds of graduate students in the department, he always made the time and effort to help. Later, when Larry and I began to work together on the research that would lead to Google, Rajeev was there to support us and guide us through challenges, both technical and organizational. Eventually, as Google emerged from Stanford, Rajeev remained a friend and advisor as he has with many people and startups since. Of all the faculty at Stanford, it is with Rajeev that I have stayed the closest and I will miss him dearly. Yet his legacy and personality lives on in the students, projects, and companies he has touched. Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it. Goodbye, Rajeev. You will be missed. What a sad, sad day. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
2009 TechFellow Awards: The Winners Top
We’d like to congratulate the twenty-two inaugural winners of tonight’s TechFellow awards , each of whom has made outstanding contributions in one of four different categories: Engineering Leadership, Product Design and Marketing, General Management, and Disruptive Innovation. Below is a listing of the winners, broken down by category. Disruptive Innovation This category is meant to highlight the visionaries, the starry-eyed fools who believe when no one else will. They are undaunted when told NO by stern parents, when told it WON'T WORK by a thousand dismissive VCs, when failure after failure would dash the hopes of lesser mortals. These are the men and women whose incredible ideas burst forth like Athena from their foreheads, and they know what it means to make Fire, the Wheel, and the Printing Press. Scott Banister Andrew Frame Will Harvey Blake Krikorian Mike McCue Engineering Leadership Engineering Leadership candidates are people who have demonstrated technical excellence, built amazing technology infrastructure and products, or led teams that together built complex and elegant solutions that changed our lives. They are the uber geeks who calculate 10-digit squares in their heads, and write a thousand bug-free lines of code on the fly without skipping a beat. Michael Abbott Adam D’Angelo Sandy Jen Elaine Wherry Eric Ries Rich Skrenta Product Design and Marketing Product Design and Marketing candidates are people who have designed insanely great products, who have made technology beautiful, who have created the marketing campaign that blows you away and make you want to go out and buy ten of them for your whole family. These are the storytellers, the artists, the people who make our dreams come alive. Michael Birch Daniel Burka Adam Goldberg Zach Klein Jeffrey Veen General Management General Management candidates are people who have built the teams and organizations that create and deliver great technology and products to the world. They are company builders who provide foundations and processes for all the rest of the geeks and dreamers to make their dreams reality. They are the folks who wake up at 6am and open the doors, make the donuts, play reveille, and lead the charge to take the hill. They make it *happen*. Scott Dietzen Mike Jones Sukhinder Singh Cassidy David Sprosty Jason Rapp Scott Weiss Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
VirtualDatingAssistants.com Lets You Outsource Your Online Dating Life Top
Although TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington recently posted an April Fool’s joke about hiring a matchmaker to find him a wife, matchmaking services are becoming an alternate (and pricier) way to find a mate (think Millionaire Matchmaker ). For those guys who are looking to meet a lady but don’t have the time to devote to the due diligence, outsourcing the job is the obvious option. Trolling Match.com, eHarmony and other dating sites can be a time-consuming and frustrating task. Even setting up an appealing profile on these sites can be daunting. To help these dudes out, VirtualDatingAssistants.com has launched a service to allow busy male professionals to fully outsource their online dating experience. At a price of $480 per month, the company's virtual dating assistants will use "advanced internet dating techniques and strategies to create online dating profiles, interact with women and set up dates with them.” The company says it will work approximately 40 hours per month for each customer and guarantees them a minimum of 2 dates per month (or their money back). Co-founders Mark Anderson and Scott Valdez are overseeing a cherry-picked team of virtual assistants that are referred to as "007" Dating Assistants due to the "suave and sophisticated nature of their undercover interactions." Yes, they are actually called “007″ Dating Assistants. Anderson attests to the power of virtual assistants representing you on online dating sites because that’s how he found his wife. As a pharmaceutical sales exec, Anderson had his assistant manage his online dating accounts and schedule 79 dates with attractive women within a period of a year. One of these women happens to now be his wife. Virtual assistants will help clients fill out their profiles and then search dating sites like Match.com and eHarmony to find women that fit each client’s tastes and preferences. Once the client informs the assistant of necessary information for a profile, the assistant will take over the process of finding, messaging, and setting up dates with women. According to the site, the “007″ assistant will begin “contacting and interacting with the candidates. Once an interesting candidate is qualified as a strong candidate, your 007 Dating Assistant works to stimulate interest, build comfort, and flip her attraction switches.” The client doesn’t have to participate in the process until a “pre-date evaluation” meeting before the actual date. The service makes me a little uneasy. I get that people are busy but the idea that I’d be trading emails with a virtual assistant posing as the potential date seems disingenuous and gives me the creeps. Not to mention that $480 a month is a hefty price to pay for someone to just handle dating websites for you. There’s no doubt that online dating is a huge market, and there have been similar startups that have emerged to feed off this pool, such as ProfileHelper.com, which assists people in creating the perfect profile for online dating. But I think Virtualdatingassistants.com takes it a step to far. It almost seems like misrepresentation. What ever happened to romance? (Photo credit/Flickr/ Nick Slide ) Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Live Stream Of This Evening's TechFellow Awards Top
Tonight many of Silicon Valley’s best and brightest have come together for the TechFellow Awards , a new startup investment program that we have created in partnership with Founders Fund . We’ll be annoucing the winners shortly, and are live streaming the event below, compliments of Ustream . Here are more details about the program: At least twelve fellows will be granted $25,000 each tonight to invest in an early stage startup of their choice. Founders Fund will invest an additional $25,000 alongside those investments and request an additional right to invest another $250,000 when the company raises its next round of financing. In all, Founders Fund expects to devote around $3.6 million to the program. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Rajeev Motwani, Early Google Advisor And Silicon Valley Luminary, Has Passed Away Top
Tragic news today for the Silicon Valley community. Rajeev Motwani , a prominent Silicon Valley angel investor and the Stanford professor perhaps best known for serving as the advisor for Larry Page and Sergey Brin during the formative years of Google, has passed away. Rajeev was an ardent supporter of Silicon Valley startups, investing and mentoring many of them while continuing his research at Stanford University. With investments in companies that included PayPal and Google, he saw an overwhelming amount of success. And through it all he continued to give back to the community though his mentorship, investments, and his time at Stanford, where he continued to teach as recently as last semester. We owe Rajeev a debt of gratitude here at TechCrunch, as he was kind enough to speak at a number of our events and was genuinely supportive of our efforts. Om Malik has shared his thoughts on his old friend, writing that there wasn’t a startup that Rajeev didn’t love on his quest for the unknown. Our deepest sympathies go out to Rajeev’s family. He will be sorely missed. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Apple Gets Pwned, SF Store Is Now Advertising DVD Jon's doubleTwist Top
Apple may be known for its advertising prowess, but this little marketing coup is going to go down as one of the most hilarious ad placements in recent history. doubleTwist , the company co-founded by renowned software reverse engineer DVD Jon , has managed to place a banner for its product directly next to the main entrance to Apple’s flagship San Francisco store. The ad invites passersby to try “The Cure for iPhone Envy”, which they can use to access their “iTunes Library on any device. In Seconds”. It’s clearly a message that Apple doesn’t want anything to do with. We’re hearing that Apple employees are currently scratching their heads as to how this appeared. So how did this wind up only a few feet from the store’s entrance, and directly beneath a giant Apple logo? Apparently the window technically belongs to BART, the Bay Area’s commuter transit system. doubleTwist got in touch with an ad agency that BART deals with and leased the window, giving them the chance to plaster their ad just below the Apple logo in its full glory. This is apparently the first time the window has been used for this purpose (before it just sat bare). And because everything was done legally, Apple’s going to have a hard time getting rid of it. While DVD Jon has a long history of reverse engineering digital media security, doubleTwist is a perfectly legitimate software application that makes it easy to manage media files for a variety of hardware devices. It’s sort of like iTunes, except it works for nearly any device — not just your iPod and iPhone (you can find an extensive overview here , and the app now supports both Windows and Mac). Given that one of the iPod’s biggest advantages over competitors is the seamless experience it offers to users, Apple probably isn’t a big fan. Update : The ad has apparently been taken down, as noted by a few commenters, but Jon Lech Johansen (AKA DVD Jon) has tweeted that it will be back up soon. Thanks to Chester Ng for the tip. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Join Us: TechFellow Awards Live on Ustream Tonight Top
Tonight’s the night that we’re announcing the winners of The TechFellow Awards , and you can watch the ceremony live right here on TechCrunch at 9 pm PST, care of a live video feed from Ustream. The TechFellow Awards is a a new startup investment program that we created in partnership with Founders Fund . At least twelve fellows will be granted $25,000 each tonight to invest in an early stage startup of their choice. Founders Fund will invest an additional $25,000 alongside those investments and request an additional right to invest another $250,000 when the company raises its next round of financing. In all, Founders Fund expects to devote around $3.6 million to the program. An amazing group of people have helped us select winners of the TechFellow Awards and will be attending the ceremony tonight at the beautiful and newly-renovated California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park: Marc Andreessen , Co-Founder and Chairman, Ning Michael Arrington , Founder / Editor TechCrunch John Battelle , Chairman, CEO, Federated Media Ron Conway , Special Partner, Baseline Chris DeWolfe , Co-Founder and CEO, MySpace Esther Dyson , Chairman, EDventure Caterina Fake , Co-Founder, Flickr Shawn Fanning , Co-Founder, Napster, Co-Founder SNOCAP, Co-Founder Rupture Reid Hoffman , CEO and Co-Founder, LinkedIn Joi Ito , CEO, Creative Commons Max Levchin , Founder and CEO, Slide, Co-Founder, PayPal John McKinley , CEO and Founder, OurParents Jonathan Miller , Chief Digital Officer, News Corp Tim O’Reilly , Founder, O'Reilly Media Sean Parker , Co-Founder, Napster, Plaxo, Facebook; Managing Partner, Founders Fund Geoff Ralston , CEO, LaLa and former Chief Product Officer, Yahoo! Terry Semel , Chairman and CEO, Windsor Media and former Chairman and CEO, Yahoo! Danny Sullivan , Editor-in-Chief, SearchEngineLand.com Peter Thiel , Managing Partner, Founders Fund, Former CEO, PayPal Jeff Weiner , Executive-in-Residence, Accel Partners and Greylock Partners Michael Yanover , Business Development, Creative Artists Agency Mark Zuckerberg , Founder and CEO, Facebook Don’t worry if you can’t watch the video stream live. We’ll upload the full video after the ceremony and add information about each of the winners. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
MySpace Ditches New Playa Vista Offices Top
A year ago MySpace and Fox Interactive Media were trumpeting an upcoming office move to Playa Vista in Los Angeles. Peter Levinsohn ( former ) President of the no longer existing Fox Interactive Media, justified the move to the 300,000 square foot space based on the “phenomenal success” of the business, and noted that he expected “even greater growth and achievements in the coming fiscal year.” FIM has experienced phenomenal success in its three-year history, and we have plans for even greater growth and achievements in the coming fiscal year. Given our tremendous track record, it's only fitting that we should enter into the single biggest real-estate transaction in Los Angeles in the last 25 years. When we move to our new facility between June of 2009 and January of 2010, not only will we enjoy the distinction of having one of the largest corporate headquarters in the LA area, but we will be housed in a state-of-the-art facility that reflects our corporate identity and culture. Fast forward through that next fiscal year and just about everything in Levinsohn’s email worked out exactly differently. Peter’s gone. FIM is dissolved. MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe was terminated . And MySpace is facing dramatic traffic declines and the prospect of a world without Google welfare payments . Time to cut costs. And people cuts alone won’t do the trick. Levinsohn said “Given our tremendous track record, it's only fitting that we should enter into the single biggest real-estate transaction in Los Angeles in the last 25 years.” Now new digital chief Jonathan Miller , who has probably noted that with all the layoffs MySpace doesn’t really need all that hip new square footage, is saying they’re backing out of that transaction. In an email to all MySpace employees, Miller said: Everyone, Since coming on board, it's no secret that I have asked each of the executive teams within my organization to conduct a comprehensive strategic review of their businesses to ensure that we are operating as efficiently and effectively as possible. These reviews have included a very close look at our costs and a full examination of our resource allocation – an important exercise that will help us determine whether our resources are aligned properly with our business priorities. This process is still ongoing and we will be communicating the details of the reviews as the results become available. One immediate result is that we have determined that we will not be moving to Playa Vista. After taking many different factors into account, we have decided that the best plan for our businesses is to remain in our current locations for the near future. We're making great progress building strong standalone businesses at each of our LA locations, and the last thing we want to do is to interfere with that momentum. In addition, the realities of the current economy make the prospects of a move incredibly expensive, a fact that I believe makes this decision not only good for our working environments, but also for our bottom line. As I mentioned above, the strategic reviews are ongoing and I assure you that our executive teams are working as quickly as possible to determine what, if any, additional decisions will be made and we will communicate with all of you as frequently as possible in this regard. Best, Jon It’s funny how MySpace PR fell all over themselves to get the word out on the new office space last year, but not a word on pulling out now. We hear the San Francisco office is next to go. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
If Facebook Is Worth $10 Billion, Twitter is Worth $1.7 Billion Top
Last week, Facebook took a $200 million investment that valued the company at $10 billion. So if Facebook is worth $10 billion, how much is Twitter worth? After all, Twitter turned down $500 million from Facebook late last year, and founder Evan Williams might not even sell it for $1 billion . But how about for $1.7 billion? That is the valuation we come up with when we run Twitter’s numbers through our new social network valuation model . The model takes into account the size of each social network’s audience in different countries and the average online spending per capita in those countries. Using Facebook’s $10 billion valuation as a baseline, Twitter would be the fourth most valuable social network after MySpace ($6.5 billion) and Bebo ($1.8 billion). Of course, that $10 billion valuation was for preferred shares, so $1.7 billion might be a valuation a strategic investor or acquirer would be willing to place on Twitter. If you use the $4 billion to $6 billion range Facebook’s common stock is being valued at in private sales, then Twitter’s valuation would come down to $671 million to $1 billion. And if you use Bebo’s 2008 valuation of $850 million as a benchmark instead, Twitter would be worth $781 million. So there is your range: roughly $700 million to $1.7 billion. And remember, Twitter may still have scaling issues, but it doesn’t have all the costs that Facebook has in terms of storage and other capital expenditures. For one thing,Twitter isn’t keeping everyone’s photos on its servers—that is what TwitPic and Yfrog are for. On the flip side, there is also the question of revenues, which remains an open question for Twitter (and for Facebook, for that matter). Is Twitter going to make money from real-time search, corporate accounts, or maybe even figuring out a way to sell followers? Given how engaged a large portion of Twitter’s users are already and how it is becoming a hot testbed for opt-in marketing, it is not inconceivable that Twitter’s users will be worth more to advertisers than Facebook’s. But before we can find out, Twitter needs to pick a business model. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Elevator Pitch Friday: VocabSushi Teaches Vocabulary Using Real-World Examples Top
We’ve taken a break from reviewing elevator pitches for awhile but we’re back with a good one: VocabSushi. The pitch is concise yet detailed and manages to pack in a good amount of content into a one-minute pitch. The founder, Jeff Novich (an SAT tutor), even managed to squeeze in the price points for the services. VocabSushi is an online verbal test prep service that helps you prepare for standardized tests like the SAT, ACT, and GRE by teaching you vocab words with real-world, contextual examples found in the daily news. The site crawls the daily news from around the U.S. to find examples of vocab words to show users context of how a word is used while also seeing the definition of the word. VocabSushi has compiled lists of vocab words commonly tested on each standardized test and contains recorded MP3 pronunciations, definitions and sample sentences for every VocabSushi word. The site’s tests simulate traditional verbal standardized tests, offering you sample definition multiple choice and sentence completion questions. VocabSushi’s tests are intuitive and tracks your progress overall and for every word. When you learn words, they’re automatically replaced with newer, more challenging ones. You can also download word quiz podcasts and print PDF version of tests. Pricing is $10 for month, $25 for 3 months, and $50 for a year’s subscription to the service. Kaplan, Princeton Review and others offer online tutoring for the verbal sections of standardized tests but don’t have the intuitive testing and comprehensive audio pronunciation and real-world context features of VocabSushi. Prepme’s standardized test help system also keeps track of what questions you get right and wrong, remembering what questions you miss and challenging you accordingly. Prepme’s plans are pricier, but the startup offers comprehensive tutoring for all subject matters of standardized tests. Learn10 is another interactive vocabulary learning site. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
News Flash: Google Squared Is A Work In Progress Top
I’ve been spending the last few days fooling around with Google Squared , the search giant’s experimental attempt to generate structured results, and for the most part I’d consider myself cautiously optimistic. Now, Google has made it clear that Squared is still in pretty early stages. The logo has a nice big “Labs” title slapped on it, complete with green beaker. The blog post introducing the product to the public stated that Squared is experimental and that “this technology is by no means perfect” and is merely a first step. There’s no question that Google doesn’t think this product is ready for prime time. It’s just opening up the lab so we can see the nifty stuff that’s starting to form. Which is why I’m already getting annoyed by the stories pointing out how funny it is that Google Squared has declared the current Russian president dead or that President Obama passed away in 1982. Oh, Prince William kicked the bucket, too. And Google Squared apparently hates conservatives . It’s probably only a matter of time before the mainstream press picks up on a potentially offensive result and multiple organizations scream with feigned outrage. For those who haven’t been keeping up with it, Squared is a fairly major departure for Google that could eventually change the way we look up data on the web. If you run a query for “ dogs “, rather than present a list of pages relevant to canines as the ‘normal’ Google would, Squared attempts to generate a spreadsheet of dog breeds, complete with their average height, weight, and country of origin. As with Wolfram Alpha , another structured data search engine, it’s very cool when it works — it just doesn’t work all that often. Anyone who has used Squared for more than two minutes knows that it messes up quite a bit. I think you’d be hard pressed to search more than a few queries in a row that didn’t result in clearly incorrect facts or glaring omissions. Many of the service’s initial reviews pointed this out, and for good reason. We’ve all seen the goofs. But at this point honing in on a poor result just feels mean spirited and lazy. The alternative is for Google to restrict access to Squared until it does work consistently, which could be years, if ever. What Google is doing here is pretty gutsy, and the fact that they’re letting us play with it when it’s still half-baked makes it even more so. So let’s take Squared for what it is, and (hopefully) help it grow into something powerful rather than harp on its self-admitted flaws. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Candy.com Sells For A Sweet $3 Million Top
Just yesterday, we reported how .com domain registrations were starting to turn around again after a lackluster 2008. Today brings further proof as the domain candy.com has just sold for $3 million to G&J Holdings. That makes it the second largest domain purchase this year, following Toys R Us’ acquisition of toys.com . G&J Holdings plans to use candy.com to sell — get this — candy. They would like to become the online destination for all your candy needs by offering expedited shipping and competitively price products, as well as a nice shopping experience. But really, how much does all of that matter when you have the awesome candy.com domain name? The press release claims there are over 800,000 searches for the word “candy” each month — hence, the $3 million price tag. The deal was actually all set to be done a couple months ago, but it took all this time to finalize it (read: for the lawyers to go over it). The site was purchased from the “Domain King,” who has all the details of how it went down. His real name is Rick Schwartz and he made a name for himself last year when he sold the ireport.com domain to CNN for $750,000. He also owned property.com which was sold for some ridiculous amount to foreclosure.com as the economy collapsed. [Thanks Mike ] [photo: flickr/ terren in virginia ] Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Pixelpipe Amps Up Android App With Video Uploads Top
Pixelpipe, the service that lets you syndicate text, audio, video and image files to 80 different social networks, blogs and sites, has launched an amped up version of their Android app. Following the release of the Android 1.5 “cupcake” that has video capture functionality, Pixelpipe’s app lets you upload video and audio directly from the device to over 45 social media destinations. The new app, which previously let you send photos as your status update or blog/micro-blog post, will link to media and send out a shortened link back to the user’s customizable pi.pe landing page. Similar to TwitPic, a pi.pe page is a customized Pixelpipe landing page where media can link back to. The Android app also lets you upload MP3s and audio recordings directly from the handset to music-focused social networks such as Imeem, as well as to Twitter, as a status update or an email. Since video files can be so large, the startup has rewritten its mobile upload service to accommodate large files being transferred from slower mobile connections. Pixelpipe’s app also enables background uploads, allowing users to just press the home key to put Pixelpipe in the background and still continue an upload. This contrasts to its iPhone app, which loses the connection to the application as soon as the application is closed. Pixelpipe’s app will be a boon to Android users out there, especially given the new video uploading capabilities. The true virtue of Pixelpipe’s service is the fact that it lets you publish all types of files to various social networks and sites from a centralized place versus TwitPic, which lets you publish photos to just to Twitter, or TwitVid, which lets you publish videos to Twitter. The latest Androids got some buzz last week at Google I/0, where the company handed out free G2 Androids to attendees as a thank you to the development community. While Android’s market share is still small, a full 18 to 20 different handsets are expected to be released this year from a variety of manufacturers. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
IAB Reports 5 Percent Decline in U.S. Online Ad Revenues For First Quarter 2009 Top
More evidence just came in that the recession has come to online advertising (in case you were still wondering). The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCooper today reported their numbers for online advertising revenues in the U.S., and they are not pretty. Internet advertising declined 5 percent in the first quarter of 2009 to $5.5 billion, compared to the first quarter of 2008. Industry revenues were down an even steeper 9.8 percent sequentially from the fourth quarter’s $6.1 billion . Last quarter’s falloff was first evident after Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL announced their earnings numbers. As I noted in a month ago , the online ad revenues of those four stalwarts declined by 2 percent annually in the first quarter (7 percent sequentially) to $7.9 billion. But that is a worldwide number. Today’s IAB estimate adds further evidence that the U.S. is following the global trend. Does one down quarter make a recession? The typical rule of thumb is two down quarters in a row, but that is for the economy as a whole, not for individual sectors. I guess we can wait to see what happens in the second quarter. The worst might very well be behind us. Or not. Either way, online advertising is hurting and seeing not just slowing growth, but actual dollar declines. Without a pickup in the general economy, online advertising will continue to sputter. Who thinks the second quarter will bring another decline? Who thinks it will show a rebound? Are We In An Online Ad Recession? ( survey software ) Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Robot Pickup Lines On Twitter Will Turn You Out Top
Fridays on Twitter usually mean one thing: Being bombarded with “Follow Friday” messages. You know the ones, they contain usually no information other than a bunch of Twitter names followed by the #followfriday hashtag. But this Friday brings a new potential challenger: Robot Pickup Lines. Thousands of messages are coming across the network tagged with #robotpickuplines . As you might expect, they are suave lines a robot might say to pickup another robot. Here are a few choice ones: jamesBurton #robotpickuplines what’s your IP address? cause I’d sure love to ping you sometime. JRadimus #robotpickuplines I was drawn over by your GUI, but I stayed for the data exchange. BadAstronomer : “Your lips say 0 but your eyes say 1.” #robotpickuplines paulrandal Hey, baby, ever do it AIBO style? #robotpickuplines I have a feeling that the countdown to backlash against this meme is already on, so get your witty line out there before you’re ridiculed for it. I, for one, like this meme just because it beats the boring Follow Friday one, and reminds me of Conan O’Brien’s old Pimpbot 5000 routine . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
One Definite Advantage Of The Pre Over The iPhone: Push Gmail Top
Google has a post today on its blog outlining how many of its applications are built right into the Palm Pre’s webOS. That’s hardly surprising given that it’s an OS built around the web technologies Google knows and loves: HTML, CSS and JavaScript. But buried in the post is a little nugget of information that is sure to enrage some iPhone owners: The Pre will support push Gmail from the get-go. Push technology allows an email to come to your phone without the user having to specifically call up to the server to get it (known as “pull”). This means near instantaneous receipt of messages as opposed to your phone being set to check for new messages at set intervals, which is how Gmail configured through the iPhone’s mail client currently works. Push Gmail has been rumored for a little while. But now it looks like Google is ready to tout it. Push email is a feature that made BlackBerry devices so popular back in the day, but now it’s on a number of phones — including the iPhone with MobileMe email and Yahoo Mail. But, despite users clamoring for push Gmail since the iPhone 2.0 software launched last year, it’s still not available. The Pre is able to do it because it supports the IMAP IDLE protocol, according to the post. Push Gmail also not surprisingly works on Google Android phones. But there is no word on when it will be available on the iPhone other than some short messages in the past that Google was working on it. Considering the budding rivalry between the iPhone and the Pre, and Apple’s close ties to Google, I’m betting we’ll see it come soon to the iPhone as well. Who knows, we could even hear about it at WWDC on Monday — let’s hope. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
OpenSocial Apps Invade MyYahoo: Mint, kaChing, WordPress, And More Top
Yahoo just opened its doors to a bunch of new OpenSocial apps. People who use MyYahoo as a startpage can now add apps from Mint, KaChing, WordPress, and more. The apps include a small view which appear on your MyYahoo page, but can also open up into a canvas view (which is essentially a dedicated page on Yahoo for that particular app). The Mint app , for instance, gives you a dashboard view of your finances and alerts. The WordPress app lets you do a quick post to your blog right from Yahoo. All together, Yahoo added 14 new apps for users to choose from. You can check your meds (Drugs.com), gas prices (GasBuddy), fantasy stock portfolio (kaChing), food and wine pairings (MyRecipes + Snooth), share books (WeRead), or just play Flood-It (LabPixies). You gotta add Flood-It, love that game. The underlying apps will benefit from getting extra exposure on MyYahoo, but it won’t drive much traffic to their sites. People who want to go deeper into the apps will simply open up a canvas page, much like they do on Facebook. But that is okay, because it shouldn’t really matter where your users interact with your service. For Yahoo, this is yet another step in its effort to be the starting point on the Web for its users. The nice thing about the OpenSocial apps is that users don’t have to leave Yahoo to engage with them. So it is really Yahoo’s way of remaining a destination site and keeping its users within its walls, even if they are using non-Yahoo services. Today, Yahoo is also bringing some new add-ons into Yahoo! Mail , including PayPal and Picnik. And Yahoo! TV (which is built into some Samsung and LG TVs) now lets you watch YouTube videos. The apps are built on top of the Yahoo! Application Platform (YAP). The canvas views at least support OpenSocial, but app developers still have to tweak the apps to make them Yahoo-friendly. For instance, the “small view” (i.e. the widgets which actually appear on the MyYahoo page) must be developed using “Yahoo! Markup Language” (YML), which is an extension of HTML with more bells and whistles. Yahoo is trying to bring together YML and the OpenSocial Markup Language (OSML), but right now they are forked. But turning an OpenSocial app into one that works inside Yahoo is getting easier. Yahoo joined OpenSocial last year. No word yet on when MyYahoo will start supporting Facebook apps. Oh right, cause that’s never gonna happen. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Yahoo Mail, Now With Extra Apps: PayPal, Picnik, Zumo Drive and Xoopit Top
Yahoo is introducing a slew of new applications that aim to complement its free webmail service today. Since December last year, Yahoo features a number of third-party applications inside Yahoo Mail, such as Xoopit, Flickr and Flixster, all in a good effort to reduce the amount of websites you need to visit as well as time you need to spend to perform certain task related to communicating with your friends, relatives or co-workers. Starting today, that list includes other tools like online payment handling platform PayPal , basic photo editor Picnik , Xoopit service MyPhotos and file sharing application Zumo Drive . If you already have access to the applications Yahoo brought to Yahoo Mail back in December, you'll notice several of the apps the next time you log in, located along the left side of your inbox. Thanks to the integration, Yahoo mail users get access to a number of useful services without the need to leave the communication interface. That way, Yahoo intends to increase the stickiness of one of its core products, in a relative, open-minded way. After all, users now don’t need to leave the interface to e.g. crop photos, transfer money, share large attachments with others, and so on, and Yahoo is not restricting itself to using or building proprietary tools. Gmail, your turn. In related news, Yahoo is also adding a good number of OpenSocial applications to MyYahoo today. More on today’s Yahoo Mail announcements in this quirky video: A Day in the Life of a Yahoo! Mail app @ Yahoo! Video Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Google Finance Sheds Its Beta Label Three Years After Launch; Still Can't Touch Yahoo Top
The cutesy culture at Google might be coming to an end. The company is finally getting serious by dropping the don’t-blame-us-it’s-only-a-beta label on products that have been around for years. We thought apps like Gmail and Google Docs would be the first to lose the beta label because those are sold to enterprise customers. But Google Finance beat them to it. If you go to Google Finance today, you will see that it has quietly dropped the beta label. It is about time too. Google Finance launched more than three years ago. By now, it is a fully baked finance site. But Google isn’t making a big deal about the fact that Finance is now a full-fledged product. In fact, it isn’t making a big deal about anything on Google Finance. The Google Finance blog hasn’t been updated since last March. Maybe Google is keeping quiet about its finance site because, despite going at it for three years and driving traffic straight from Google’s search homepage (ticker symbols pull up stock charts from Google Finance), it hasn’t been able to make much inroads against the most popular stock site out there, Yahoo Finance. According to comScore, Google Finance attracted just 1.4 million unique U.S. visitors in April, compared to Yahoo finance’s 21.7 million. In other words, Yahoo Finance is 15.5 times bigger than Google Finance (see chart below). In the past year, Yahoo Finance added 2.2 million monthly unique users in the U.S. In other words, it added more people than Google Finance’s entire audience. The worldwide numbers show a similar disparity, with Yahoo Finance at 43.5 million uniques vs. 2.4 million for Google Finance. I find both equally informative, but Yahoo Finance is still my default. Old habits die hard. (Shout out to reader Michael Konen for spotting the change). Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 

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