Monday, June 29, 2009

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YouTube To Broadly Release Call-To-Action Overlays, Allows Linking Off-Site Top
Tomorrow, YouTube is going to release a very important addition to its suite of advertising products, and it has the potential to have a huge impact for politicians, brands, and charities alike. The funny thing is, you probably thought it was already out there. The product’s official name is the Call-To-Action Overlay, and it’s about as straightforward as ads come: it’s a semi-transparent pop-up that links viewers to any website you choose. For example, I could place an overlay on a TechCrunch video inviting users to visit the corresponding post we wrote about it. Yes, it’s that simple. It’s hard to believe, but you’ve never been able to do this on YouTube before now. If you ever wanted to drive users watching your YouTube video to another site, you’d have to include it as a link in the summary at the right-hand side of the page, which most people ignore anyway. Users can include links in annotations, but only to other YouTube videos. Think back to President Obama’s landmark election campaign, which was helped in no small part by his YouTube presence. If he ever wanted to direct visitors to one of his campaign homepages, he’d have to ask visitors to enter his site’s URL manually. That’s a pretty major hurdle to overcome. This gets rid of it. So why has YouTube taken so long to implement such an obvious feature? The answer likely boils down to the fact that this is effectively driving traffic away from YouTube, which isn’t an ideal situation for a site that thrives on views. This is probably a somewhat scary step for the video giant, but it’s taking some initiatives to negate any possible downsides. You can only place these customized overlays on a video that you’ve entered into YouTube’s CPC Promoted Videos program. You don’t have to pay anything extra for the Call-To-Action overlay, but you do have to be a paying YouTube advertiser. The feature has been in testing with select partners and non-profits for some time, and the results have been extremely positive. Last March, the organization charity:water managed to raise $10,000 in a single day by including an overlay on one of its videos. A handful of politicians have also been trying it out, using it to entice voters to sign their petitions . It’s worked well enough that politicians who haven’t had access to the feature are clamoring for it. At this point the potential uses for the links are fairly obvious. Brands can link their commercials back to the products they’re selling. Publishers (like us) can link back to relevant articles. And politicians can link back to their campaign homepages or petitions. But there’s almost certainly some other kind of creative use for the new ads waiting to be tapped, just as YouTube’s annotations were used to create choose-your-own-adventure video journeys. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Web Site Story: CollegeHumor's Epic Internet Musical Top
CollegeHumor has outdone itself again. Just a few days after unveiling Bing, the better way to Google , the site has released Web Site Story , a five minute musical tribute to some of the web’s most popular websites. I’m not going to ruin any of the jokes, but suffice to say if you’ve ever bashed Evite, found yourself a few characters over the Twitter limit, or relied on Pandora to serve up some new tunes, you’re going to love this. See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor . Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Who Needs Clip Art? OffiSync 2.0 Integrates Google Image Search Into Microsoft Office Top
Last month we wrote about OffiSync , a powerful plugin that directly ties Microsoft Office to Google Docs, allowing you to save your desktop files to the cloud automatically. Since launch the plugin has fared quite well, with over 50,000 downloads. And today it’s releasing a new version that could prove immensely useful for those of you that frequently use Office. The biggest addition to the plugin is integrated text and image search. While Office comes with a directory of clip art, it leaves something to leave desired — I almost always find myself just going straight to Google Image search. Now, using OffiSync, you can search Google Images directly from within Office. The plugin supports advanced searches, like sorting by color, size, and usage rights. Once you’ve found an image you like, simply hit ‘Insert’ and the picture will appear wherever your text cursor was. There’s also an integrated browser: just navigate to the page you’d like to quote, highlight the text, and hit Insert. Of course, you could accomplish the same thing by opening up your browser and copy/pasting an image or piece of text into your Office document, but this streamlines things and should also automatically deal with any formatting issues. My biggest gripe with the plugin is the way it handles attribution. Or, rather, the way it doesn’t. When you choose to import and image or piece of text, a popup appears reminding you that the content may be subject to copyright. But there’s currently no way to automatically generate a bibliography or footnote for the content, which means you’ll have to do it manually. It’s not a deal-breaker by any means (plagiarists would just disable the feature anyway), but having to manually keep track of that information can certainly become a hassle. OffiSync is free, with plans to release a premium version for businesses in the future. The plugin is Windows-only for now, but a Mac version is on the way (the company hopes to have it out by the end of the summer). Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Bit.ly's Grand Plans, And Their Inevitable Clash With Digg: Bitly Now Top
URL shortener and analytics service Bit.ly has been working on a new set of products, being referred to as “Bit.ly Now” internally, which will define the next stage of the company’s growth. The company confirmed these plans to us today. The services will include both a destination website as well as a distributed service via expansions to the Bit.ly API. The core Bit.ly service, which lets users shorten web URLs into something suitable for Twitter and other services with limits on characters per post, has continued to grow quickly. 7 million URLs are shortened via the service each day, the company says, and 2-3 million of those are unique URLs Bit.ly has not seen before. Those Bit.ly URLs are clicked on 150 million times per week across a wide range of services - Twitter, Facebook, instant messaging, email, etc. Twitter itself now uses Bit.ly for URl shortening, and the service has quickly taken the lead in their market. The magic behind Bit.ly are the stats that the service makes available on the underlying domains being clicked. Investor John Borthwick explained it all to investors in an email we obtained earlier this month: bit.ly has been on a tear since we launched it last summer — let me sketch out what it is, why its useful and offer some data points on progress. bit.ly is on its surface a link or URL shortener, helping people take long and unwieldy links and make them short and easy to share via email, Twitter, Facebook etc. But once you shorten a link with bit.ly the fun begins. You can put a simple "+" on the end of any bit.ly link and see, real time, the pace at which that link is getting shared and clicked on as it moves around these social distribution networks. Bit.ly Now will take all of this deep (and wide) data on popular real time URLs and turn it into a service. That’s where the inevitable clash with Digg comes in. Digg shows popular links based on what people vote on, filtered massively for fraud. The Digg home page is populated with the top stories voted on by Digg users. But only 20,000 or so new links a day are submitted to Digg (compare that to 2-3 million for Bit.ly). And Digg has to constantly fight users who try to game the system and get access to home page traffic. They also rely on users to categorize links and provide other metadata about the stories. That’s why Digg launched their own URL shortener service , and are planning a new real time product of their own . The goal is to reduce the dependence on this flawed human voting system. Bit.ly’s new Bit.ly Now service will show popular links at any given time, just like Digg (for now, Bit.ly sends the most popular link every hour to a twitter account ). When Bit.ly Now launches, that link data will be combined with additional metadata about the URLs. In particular, they plan to extract important entities, people and topics from the stories in real time, allowing for a categorized approach to popular links. Bit.ly says they are talking to a number of third party services, including Reuter’s Open Calais , to help them do this. Those are two big advantages Bit.ly has over Digg - distributed link clicking data that is far harder to game than Digg, and automated real time categorization of links. But there’s a third advantage as well. Bit.ly says that the data flow they are seeing is so massive that they are getting very good at predicting the number of clicks a link will get in the future. They look at acceleration of clicks as well as the source (Facebook, Twitter, IM, whatever) and whether people are clicking that are outside of the social graphs of other people clicking. In other words, you could say that Bit.ly knows what will be on the Digg home page tomorrow. They knew, for example, that the Neda Youtube video would be popular far before it was featured on CNN and other major media sites and then made its way to Digg. The Bit.ly Now service will be both a destination site as well as a distributed service via the Bit.ly API. Third parties will be able to access the data based on topics or keywords. News sites may find this particularly valuable to monitor trends and supply additional relevant content to readers. Perhaps even Digg may find this interesting. The real time stuff Digg is working on will overlap significantly with Bit.ly, we’ve heard. Digg will be looking for link information beyond what the Digg community adds directly. The last thing Digg wants is to become reliant on Bit.ly data, though, with a directly competing Bit.ly destination site out there. If I were Digg, I’d start talking to Bit.ly now to see if I could find a way to avoid that situation. It’s also clear that the new service will become a huge competitive advantage to Bit.ly’s core shortener service. Sites like ours, which use our own shortener service, will be left out of the Bit.ly service. Publishers who otherwise wouldn’t care will start to use Bit.ly to increase exposure in the ecosystem. Then the network effect kicks in - as more people use Bit.ly they get more data, making the service stronger, and forcing more people to use the service. It’s a great place to be. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Pleo Is Back and We Want to Give You One Top
Pleo is back, thanks to electronics and entertainment leader Senario , and we want to give you one. The $349 artificial dinosaur hit the news this April when Ugobe , its creator, filed for bankruptcy . However, it is thankfully still available from web outlets such as Amazon , Target , Best Buy and BotaBingBotaBoom . In July, it will also be sold on QVC Live, followed by the Sharper Image's Online Store.
 
SharesPost Report: Facebook Worth $4-6 Billion. So Much For That $10B Valuation Top
They may be mysterious and perhaps even a bit shady, but secondary equity markets, which allow employees to sell off their shares to other buyers, are quickly heating up. Because of the rarity of IPOs and acquisitions in the startup world these days, early employees and founders are becoming increasingly anxious to convert some of their shares into cash (one need look no further than reports of employees selling Facebook stock at relatively low prices for proof). Unfortunately, because these markets are trading shares of private companies, buyers and sellers are often left in the dark as to the worth of their stock. SharesPost , a private equity market that’s currently operating in public beta, is looking to help: the site has launched a publication platform for analyst reports meant to complement its equity market. And it’s offering a free two month membership to TechCrunch readers, which you can sign up for here . As a teaser for what’s available on the platform, the site has shared two valuation reports on some of the world’s biggest social networks: Facebook and LinkedIn. You’ll want to check out the full reports here and here to read the full analysis and methodology (you may have to register). Facebook The report concludes that Facebook has an approximate valuation of between $3.1 billion and $6 billion, using three different methods of analysis. This is in line with the recent price we’ve been hearing on the secondary market, which pegged the valuation at around $3 billion. But it’s well short of the $10 billion valuation Facebook earned with its most recent funding round. Using a steady-state growth valuation, which examines Facebook’s main revenue streams including advertising and virtual gifts, and extrapolating growth rates to the year 2013, the report estimates that Facebook is worth between $4.301B (Bull) and $3.253B (Bear) using a 25x market multiple and normalized net margins of 25%. These valuations are largely subject to how much revenue Facebook will generate in the future: the Bullish prediction projects that Facebook will pass $1 billion in revenues by 2013, while the Bear case predicts $800 million for the same year, using a weighted average cost of capital of 15%. Likewise, using another method that guages Facebook’s value based on the performance and valuation of other companies in the tech space, the report estimates that Facebook should be worth $4.2B. As a final measure of the social network’s worth, the report uses the most recent social network transaction, which was AOL’s $850 million acquisition of Bebo in early 2008. This valuation was around 17x Bebo’s 2008 revenue and 7.1x its 2009 revenue. The report uses the same multiples based on Facebook’s estimated 2009 revenue to generate a $3.15 billion valuation. The report discounts the $10 billion valuation of Facebook from the recent Digital Sky Technologies investment , citing the fact that this price was for preferred shares. Instead, the report says we should pay more attention to the common stock valuation: DST offered to buy an additional $100 million of common stock valued at an estimated $6 billion, though the transaction has not yet been made. LinkedIn Another report uses similar methodology to measure the value of professional social network LinkedIn, concluding that the company is worth around $1.4-$1.6 billion. This is in line with the company’s $1 billion valuation from its funding round a year ago. Using a steady-state growth valuation, the report projects that LinkedIn should be valued between $1.64B and $1.42B. Again, this is very dependent on revenue predictions: the Bull cases estimates that LinkedIn will have revenues of $460 million by 2014, while the Bear case uses $380 million for the same year. As with the Facebook study, the LinkedIn report uses the Bebo acqusition to generate a valuation (which I doubt is particularly accurate given the very different natures of the sites). By this metric, LinkedIn’s projected revenue of $210 million for 2010 would yield a valuation of $1.49 billion. SharesPost will continue to offer other reports submitted by third party firms in its marketplace. Of course, the majority of these research reports will not have had access to the actual numbers driving these private companies, so all analysis has to be taken with a grain of salt. No matter how detailed a report is, if its original assumptions about a company’s revenue prospects are off the mark, then any subsequent numbers will be too. That said, these reports are certainly better than nothing — even if the absolute numbers may be incorrect, the logic is usually sound. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Yes, Rackspace Is Down And So Are Many Of Your Favorite Sites Top
Last week, Michael Jackson’s death caused sites to fail left and right. Today, it’s a very different problem. The hosting service Rackspace has been completely down for the past 30 minutes or so. Don’t believe us, just listen to Justin Timberlake or Michelle Malkin , both of which have sites on the service and took to Twitter to complain. Apparently, it’s an entire network outage and so the usually very responsive Rackspace team cannot even respond to emails or tweet (though I’m sure we’ll be seeing some updates from smartphones shortly). Along with sites like Timberlake’s and Malkin’s, the popular event site, EventBrite , is apparently down as well. Update : Here’s the status from Rackspace via Twitter : “We are having an issue that is affecting part of our DFW data center. No details yet. Will update as we get more information.” Update 2 : It looks like a lot of the sites on Rackspace are finally coming back up — including Rackspace’s own site . Downtime looks to have been about an hour. And here’s the all-clear from Rackspace itself : “All power is restored to the DFW data center - all devices affected are starting to come on-line. Details to follow.” CrunchBase Information Rackspace Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Yahoo Kills Maven: From Acquisition To Deadpool In 17 Months Top
At the beginning of last year, Yahoo made a fairly large acquisition with the purchase of online video distribution and advertising platform provider Maven Networks . Under the terms of the agreement, which we reported as a rumor the same day the papers were signed, the company acquired the startup for approximately $160 million . At the time, the press release touted the acquisition to lead to an expansion of the “state-of-the-art consumer video and advertising experiences on Yahoo.com and Yahoo's network of leading premium video publishers across the web”. Now we’ve learned Yahoo is going to kill Maven Networks instead, the most recent in a long series of deadpooling of products and services by the Sunnyvale Internet behemoth. A tipster, who works for a large media company, tells us that he has been a Maven customer for years and was informed last week that Yahoo will cease all development on the platform and will no longer be supporting it in 2010. We’ve confirmed with another source that Yahoo has effectively decided to shelve Maven, firing most of its employees in a move packaged as a restructuring and has already notified customers that the product will no longer be supported as of next year. Furthermore, the source tells us that the Maven technology has never even been used for Yahoo’s own video properties, underscoring why the quote I lifted from the press release in the first paragraph of this post sounds so void today. There’s always the possibility that the platform will eventually live on under different ownership of course, but rest assured that competitors like Brightcove , Ooyala and KIT Digital are currently celebrating over the news. This is the third video property Yahoo has killed off in less than 8 months, after shutting both Y!Live , a live video streaming service, and Jumpcut , an online video editing tool. Remarkably, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz recently declared on stage at a conference that the company is actually still interested in acquiring startups in the business of digital video technology. One month and the shuttering of a $160 million video technology acquisition later, it’s close to comical reading those words again. Then again, Yahoo’s prospects and financials at the time the acquisition was made sure looked a whole lot better than they do today, so maybe it’s just too easy to judge the move in hindsight. Either way, Maven Networks is now a member of the deadpool club, although there’s always the possibility of Yahoo selling off Maven to someone who wants to revive it. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Here's How iPhone App Store Ratings Work. Hint: They Don't. Top
We’ve been a bit baffled by the system Apple has in place when it comes to ratings for applications in the App Store. Is it allowing apps with nudity ? Not allowing them ? Allowing them with a 17+ rating ? We’ve talked to some developers willing to break their NDAs because they think the App Store approval process in general is messed up, and would like to see Apple do a better job handling it. So here’s how the ratings system currently works for the App Store. The Ratings When you go to submit your app through iTunes Connect, one of the steps takes you to a ratings matrix that you must fill out. This contains 10 questions listed under “Apple Content Descriptions.” For each of the 10 questions you must say “None”, “Infrequent/Mild”, or “Frequent/Intense.” Depending on what answer you give for each of these, the rating of your app in the upper right corner will change. These ratings go from “4+” to “9+” to “12+” to “17+” to “No Rating.” That last one is key. If your app gets the “No Rating” label, a warning written in red appears underneath it stating that: “This content will not be sold via iTunes.” So what triggers such a rating? Well, not a lot. Basically, it comes down to the final two questions in the 10 question matrix. Let’s run through them in descending order: Cartoon or Fantasy Violence Realistic Violence Sexual Content or Nudity Profanity or Crude Humor Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References Mature/Suggestive Themes Simulated Gambling Horror/Fear Themes Prolonged graphic or sadistic realistic violence Graphic sexual content and nudity As I noted, those last two are the keys to getting your app banned. But there’s a few interesting things about this. First of all, you may notice that these final two are not capitalized in the same way that the other questions are. That suggests to me that Apple added them at a different time than all the others and possibly even in a rush. Second, you’ll notice that there’s a question about both “Sexual Content or Nudity” and “Graphic sexual content or nudity.” What’s interesting about this is that apps with “Sexual Content or Nudity” are still allowed — even if you select “Frequent/Intense” in that field. You’ll get a 17+ rating, but your app will still be allowed. However, if you click even “Infrequent/Mild” in the “Graphic sexual content and nudity,” your app is banned. I’m not sure what the difference is between “intense sexual content and nudity” and “mild graphic sexual content and nudity”, and neither do a lot of developers. The Gray Area And while you might think that since apps can be classified as having frequent/intense sexual content or nudity, that an app with topless girls would be okay. But apparently, it’s not. In Apple’s words: Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography. So, then what exactly is frequent/intense sexual content or nudity that is allowed? One developer we spoke with believes Apple may be intending that for applications to feature things like sexual education. If so, that is hilarious. Why would only people over the age of 17 be allowed to look at such apps? The questions that pertain to violence are just as bad — maybe even worse. I understand that there’s a difference between cartoon violence and realistic violence, but both of those are allowed. How “frequent/intense realistic violence” differs from “mild prolonged graphic violence”, seems again like a pretty big gray area. Yet one is allowed, and one isn’t. And not only is one allowed, “mild realistic violence” carries only a 9+ rating. “Intense realistic violence” carries only a 12+ rating. Apparently, the jump from “intense realistic violence” to “mild prolonged graphic violence” means skipping over the 17+ rating entirely, and going straight to banned. That makes no sense. That’s the key point to all of this: The ratings range from making no sense to having way too much gray area. Apple is expecting developers to rate their apps correctly, but if it simply doesn’t allow anything in the last two categories to get through, of course those developers are going to wiggle their apps into the “safe” categories. Any why shouldn’t they? A lot of those definitions appear to be the exact same. And that’s probably why we’re seeing a lot of apps that aren’t supposed to get through, slip through the system. Flat out: The system is broken. When the Hottest Girls app got through, just look at the rating that was attached to it: Rated 17+ for the following: Frequent/Intense Sexual Content or Nudity Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes That seems like a reasonable rating for an app with topless girls. But apparently, Apple wanted it rated under “Frequent/Intense Graphic sexual content and nudity” — meaning it wouldn’t have been allowed in the App Store. (Though, to be clear, according to Apple, the app in question was tricky and added content to the app after Apple approved it. But it was just more topless girls, and so the main point remains the same.) And at the same time, Apple is letting in apps that say they have topless pictures right in the title of the app. If it’s aiming to ban all of them, it’s doing a pretty awful job. The Hypocrisy Perhaps my favorite thing about all of this though is the hypocrisy that is staring back at each one of us who have an iPhone or iPod touch. Load up iTunes on the device, you can buy any number of movies that have plenty of nudity, sex, sadistic violence, prolonged violence, and any combination of them. Yet if you want an app that has any of those, forget about it. I can understand why Apple would want to restrict mature apps before it had parental controls in place for them, but now it has those in place — there should be no reason why an adult shouldn’t be allowed to get an application with nudity in it if they want. Especially if that same type of content is available on the device through movies in the iTunes store. (Not to mention through any number of websites using the Safari browser.) I understand that the store is run by Apple and it has the right to accept or reject whatever content it wishes, but again, this is about an absurd gray area for developers and hypocrisy. The gray area, I believe, is making app screeners lives a living hell , and all of us have to suffer for it. I can’t tell you how many emails we get from developers complaining that their apps have been in Apple’s approval queue for weeks or months with no response. Some of these developers are hoping to make a living off of these apps, yet Apple is backlogged in the approval process because it has to check for things like a certain level of nudity in an app, rather than letting the rating system do its job. Apple hasn’t responded to multiple attempts to contact it on this matter. Frankly, I don’t think it knows what it really wants to do in this regard. Judging by its own rating system, it wants to allow “Nudity” with a capital “N,” but not “nudity.” Or maybe it’s that the nudity can’t be “graphic.” But how are topless pictures graphic? And if those are graphic, what is non-graphic nudity? Maybe it means that it wants to allow for “tasteful” nudity, but again, that’s a big gray area. Is Apple — and by Apple I mean app screeners — now going to be arbiters of taste? As if they needed any more to do. I think what Apple really wants to see is the image below. And that’s too bad. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Submit Your StartUp To TechCrunch50 NOW For Your Chance to Pitch Kevin Rose, Sean Parker and Yossi Vardi Top
Digg founder Kevin Rose , Founders Fund partner Sean Parker and leading Israeli angel investor Yossi Vardi will return to our third-annual TechCrunch50 conference Panel of Experts September 14 - 15 in San Francisco. Our experts judge the fifty startups launching at the event and discuss each of the demos on stage as a group. Yossi, Sean and Kevin were experts last year and return based on popular demand with Roelof Botha, Marc Andreessen and Marissa Mayer . We have an amazing line-up of new and returning experts, and additional judges will be announced over the coming weeks. If you’re a new startup, and want a shot to launch at TechCrunch50 and pitch our expert advisors on stage, you have until June 30 to submit your application . That’s tomorrow night. (Late applications will be accepted until we close our 50 slots, but companies who submitted on time will be reviewed first.) All the details for the conference are here . TechCrunch50 is an action-packed conference where fifty new startups launch over two days. The event will be held at the San Francisco Design Center , a huge and beautiful venue where we packed nearly 2,000 participants last year. Tickets for the event can be purchased here courtesy of Eventbrite (extra early-bird pricing is available until June 30). More on the TechCrunch50 blog . Kevin Rose Kevin Rose is the founder and chief architect of Digg . Kevin started Digg in September 2004 as a personal project. His initial idea was to conduct a social experiment in how masses of users could control and promote news and other content on the Web, without external editorial control. After a very short time, he realized the power of his idea, as Digg was becoming a resource for breaking news stories and developed a strong user following. Kevin is also a co-founder of the Internet Television Network Revision3 where as a member of the board he provides strategic direction to the company. CrunchBase profile . Sean Parker Sean Parker is the co-founder and Chairman of Causes on Facebook and MySpace, a new network that aims to enable large-scale political and social activism on the Internet. Sean is also a Managing Partner at The Founders Fund , an early stage venture capital firm based in San Francisco . Previously, Sean was the co-founder of the category defining Web ventures Napster, Plaxo, and Facebook. At Napster, Sean helped to design the Napster client software and led the company's initial financing and strategy. Under Sean's leadership, Napster became the fastest adopted client software application in history. Following Napster, Sean co-founded and served as President of Plaxo, where he pioneered the viral engineering techniques used to deploy Plaxo’s flagship smart address book product, ultimately acquiring more than 15 million users. In 2004, Sean left Plaxo to become the founding President of Facebook, one of the most rapidly growing sites on the Internet today. Sean sits on the boards of several private companies. CrunchBase profile . Yossi Vardi Yossi Vardi is an Israeli entrepreneur most famous for being the original investor in ICQ - the first Internet-wide instant messaging system. Vardi has invested in over 50 tech companies in diverse areas of software, energy, Internet, mobile, cleantech, and others. Vardi has been an active civil servant in Israel through projects involving energy and infrastructure. He also co-founded Alon, an Israeli oil company. Vardi acted as an advisor to the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program on issues of energy in the developing world. Vardi has received many awards including The Prime Minister Award, The Industry Award, Entrepreneur of the Year (Tel Aviv University), and the CEO!'s Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame from the Collegiate Entrepreneurs' Organization. CrunchBase profile. We’re really lucky to have the corporate support of some of the best names in the business. Sequoia Capital , Charles River Ventures and Perkins Coie all returned quickly to support us for the third year in a row. Google , Founders Fund , MySpace and Microsoft are back for their second year of partnership. Additional partners will be named in the months leading up to the conference. Want to learn more? Partner and exhibitor details here . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Xing To Give Up China And Make Way For LinkedIn In The US? Top
LinkedIn has bolstered its position as America’s leading business social network by the month lately , with Germany-based Xing as the only company regarding itself a worthy competitor in the last few years. But now those days seem to be over - in the US and China, at least. Today German newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt published an interview [GER] with Xing CEO Stefan Groß-Selbeck ( who recently replaced founder Lars Hinrichs ), and he revealed a couple of interesting tidbits of information about the future direction of his company (find a horrible, Google-translated version of the full interview in English here ). Talking in broad strokes, Groß-Selbeck said 3.5 million of the 7.5 million Xing members are based out of Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland. This isn’t really that surprising, given the background of the company. But the interview also marks the first time a Xing representative publicly (albeit indirectly) admitted losing in the USA and China. Groß-Selbeck said he rather sees Xing’s future in those countries where the company has opened offices: Spain, Italy and the rapidly growing web market of Turkey . This statement was followed by him dodging a question about Xing’s previous plans to enter the US and China (he specifically responded that the focus lies on said countries and Xing plans to double its German user base in the next years). In other words, Xing seems to have stopped thinking about expanding into those regions for the time being. My guess is LinkedIn never really feared the Germans entering their home market anyway, as a) almost no American really knows Xing, b) about half of LinkedIn’s 42 million members live in the US, c) coffers are filled to the rim and d) a $1 billion valuation is sure to let all key employees sleep soundly (Xing’s current market cap at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange: $220 million). Google Trends shows that LinkedIn outclasses Xing in global traffic, too: But Xing backing up in the US and China isn’t necessarily good news for LinkedIn. Their strategic decision won’t make it easier for LinkedIn to gain market share in said European countries where Xing already boasts a strong brand name and position. Here, LinkedIn is in for an uphill battle, which may take years to win (especially as Groß-Selbeck also said in the interview he intends to boost the number of employees from 240 to 360). And China has no shortage of business social networks either ( Tianji , Wealink [CN] or Alibaba ’s Ren Mai Tong to name just a few). LinkedIn is currently available in four languages (English, Spanish, French and German), with more to come soon . The only office outside the US is located in London . In Europe, LinkedIn is particularly strong in Belgium, Holland, France, Great Britain and Denmark). Traffic in China is negligible for both LinkedIn and Xing. Quick note: German is my mother tongue, which means I didn’t have to rely on the Google translation linked to above when writing this posting. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Apple Wants You To Know Steve Jobs Is Back At Work Top
Steve Jobs is officially back at work, according to Apple PR. Even though he had a liver transplant earlier this year, a detail which was leaked to the Wall Street Journal and conveniently reported on a Friday night after the markets had closed. Last week, Jobs was spotted back on Apple’s campus and was even quoted in a press release! Today, Apple is hammering home the message that Jobs is back on the job, telling multiple news organizations from ABC News to Bloomberg to the New York Times to Reuters the exact same canned quote (sometimes attributed to spokesman Steve Dowling, sometimes not). Steve is back to work, Jobs is at Apple a few days a week and working at home the remaining days. We are very glad to have him back. Hopefully, he is working from home more than from the office until he is fully recovered. But what is all of this messaging about? When Jobs took his medical leave of absence in January, he said he would return by June 30. This is Apple’s way of telling investors that he kept to that deadline despite the seriousness of his operation. The official story is that he is back, even if only part-time. But honestly, if he took another six months, would anyone blame him? Apple’s stock has always been tied closely to Steve Jobs, but if the past six months have taught investors anything it is that the company’s fortunes are tied even closer to its products. And Apple’s products are on fire right now. Over the past six months, the stock is up 82 percent. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Facebook Names Genentech Exec David Ebersman As CFO Top
Facebook has just named former Genentech Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman as its new CFO. The news comes three months after Facebook ousted Gideon Yu from the position, citing at the time its desire to find someone with “public company experience” (which was bizawrre given the fact that Yu had public company experience). At the time of Yu’s departure there was speculation that he had been unable to secure investments at the company’s lofty $15 billion valuation established by the Microsoft deal, and that the company was considering an early IPO. Since then, things have changed: Facebook just raised a $200 million investment from Russian firm DST at a $10 billion valuation, which means it has plenty of money to keep its server farms churning and keeping pace with the site’s staggering growth. Ebersman had been CFO at Genentech up until the company’s acquisition by Roche. From the press release: Facebook today announced that David Ebersman, the former executive vice president and chief financial officer (CFO) of Genentech, the pioneering biotechnology firm recently acquired by Roche, will become the company's chief financial officer. Ebersman will report to Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Founder Mark Zuckerberg. He will oversee Facebook's finance, accounting, investor relations, and real estate functions. He also becomes a part of the company's executive management team, which directs all aspects of company strategy, planning and operations. Ebersman will formally start in September 2009. "We received a lot of interest in the CFO position and had the opportunity to meet with many impressive candidates," said Mark Zuckerberg. "We quickly recognized that David was the right person for Facebook. He was Genentech’s CFO while revenue tripled, and his success in scaling the finance organization of a fast growing company will be important to Facebook." "After meeting with Mark and the rest of the team, I was thoroughly impressed with everyone's drive and sense of purpose to help people connect and share," noted Ebersman. "Mark is constantly pushing the company forward and he's assembled a world-class team that is achieving remarkable results both for its users and as a business. I'm excited to join this effort and this new industry." Ebersman worked at Genentech for nearly 15 years. He served as the firm's executive vice president and CFO from 2006 through April 2009, when Roche Group acquired the company. Prior to joining the company's finance organization, he was senior vice president of Product Operations. He joined Genentech as a business development analyst. Previously, he was a research analyst at Oppenheimer & Company Inc. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Social Commentary Or Extremely Poor Taste? Top
A lot of people know that hunger is a major problem in Africa, but few people ever think about it, let alone do anything about it. One Twitter account claims to be trying to spread the message with the use of very straight-forward tweets pretending to be from a starving African. The tweets range from “hungry,” to “really, really hungry,” to “belly. distending,” and variations on those. Whoever is in charge the the account writes in its bio, “Social commentary illuminating the startling gap between the haves and the have nots.” But is this just poor taste? Apparently the 300-some people that follow the account don’t think so. CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase [thanks Eric] Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
YouTube Launches Reporters' Center, Wants To School Citizen Journalists In Better News Reporting Top
Over the weekend, YouTube launched a new channel dubbed Reporters’ Center , which it hopes will prove to be a good way to educate existing and aspiring citizen journalists on how to report news in ‘the digital age’. The new resource will feature a host of top journalists and media experts sharing instructional videos with tips and advice for better reporting. So far, there are 34 videos uploaded to the channel, featuring people like Facebook Marketing Director Randi Zuckerberg providing 8 tips on how to maximize distribution of your YouTube video on the social network her brother famously co-created, and folks like CBS News’ Katie Couric and legendary Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward explaining how to conduct a good interview and how to be an investigative reporter , respectively. The idea is sound and some of the content is rather good, and I’m sure it will provide a helpful resource for citizen reporters across the globe. Of course, it serves YouTube’s interests as well when more and more people take up the habit of filming whatever happens in their neighborhood and upload the videos to the wildly popular sharing site afterwards. If you have any tips to share, you can also upload your own videos to the channel. (Hat tip to NewTeeVee ) Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Google's Africa Strategy: Search And Trade Via SMS Top
Not only does Google want to organize all the world’s information, it also wants to make all that information available to everyone in the world. For the majority of the world’s population, that means making it available on a cell phone, and not a fancy iPhone or Android with a Web browser either. I’m talking about $10 cell phones with not much more than voice and SMS capabilities. If Google can reach people, especially in developing nations, with SMS, it can reach everyone with a cell phone. In Africa, it is launching a suite of SMS services today, including SMS search , Q&A-style tips , and an SMS-based marketplace. The first country to get these services is Uganda. The search service works like Google SMS in North America. You text a search term, and it responds via SMS with the result. Searches can be narrowed by using specific keywords such as “local time,” “weather,” “news,” “maps,” “translation,” or “currency conversion.” For more complicated searches, the related SMS tips service offers answers in an automated Q&A format. But the most interesting application is Google Trader, which allows people to post items for sale and jobs via SMS. Other people can search for them by texting the service with the word “BUY” preceding the search term. Google Trader connects the buyer and seller together (each listing contains the seller’s cell phone number). Update : Google created these particular apps in partnership with the Grameen Foundation , through its newly-launched AppLabs project. The mobile suite of SMS apps also includes Health Tips, Clinic Finder, and a Farmer’s Friend database. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
In Soviet Union, You Get Palm Pre Top
If you were reading a major paper this weekend, you'd notice a striking ad. There's the Palm Pre resting against an apple core with the words: The Palm Pre does things the iPhone can't. Run multiple applications at the same time with real-time updates and even save $1200 over two years. It's the perfect time to join the Now Network, America's most trusted 3G network, bringing you the first and only 4G network from a national carrier. The real call to action was to iPhone users with lapsed contracts - presumably iPhone users who bought the original iPhone two years ago and never upgraded to the 3G - a cohort that I suspect consists of perhaps five Palm engineers and maybe our tech-savvy grandparents. It's a small number, friends. A small number.
 
Startups Smell Userplane Blood Top
There has been no shortage of talk about the apparent demise of Userplane , the text, voice and video chat software provider that was acquired by AOL in August 2006 for around $40 million (the exact price was never disclosed). Venturebeat ran a story on the property last May, citing sources and Userplane clients as saying the service had been “neglected if not abandoned by AOL”. Yet this morning, I exchanged some e-mails with Darin Ohlandt, General Manager of Userplane, and he responded to the rumors saying they are definitely not shutting down and will continue to offer the existing chat and IM services to third-party sites. However, some writing on the wall suggests he may not be painting a complete picture of what is going on. A recent thread on OnlinePersonalsWatch (which covers the online dating industry, where demand for Userplane and other similar services has always been high) suggested that the site would be deadpooled by its owner soon. A developer commented on the thread claiming he had tried to contact Userplane for weeks through e-mails, voice calls and social networks and received no response, and ultimately went to their offices only to find all doors were locked with no one in sight (Ohlandt suspects the latter may have had something to do with the move to a new office in Santa Monica). And in that very same thread, former senior developer at Userplane Nick Schneble touted his new startup TopicFox , an alternative to the service ( although it seems to be offline now - the website now reads the service was discontinued over a conflict of interest with Userplane). Meanwhile the Userplane website still lists Michael Jones as the company’s CEO. That’s remarkable, because Jones left the AOL executive team to pursue a new startup called Tsavo back in August 2008, and has since signed up as the new COO at MySpace . A month ago, Time Warner announced that its Board of Directors has authorized management to proceed with plans for the separation of AOL from the company. This would likely result in a massive restructuring of AOL, and could have a major impact on non-proven acquisitions made in the past. Other reasons why Userplane is on deadpool alert: AOL is placing much focus on lifestreaming and chat service SocialThing , which recently spread across 75 of its properties , and then of course there’s those other instant messaging services in their portfolio (AIM and ICQ). There are more signs. When Ted Cahall was named new president of the product group at AOL back in January 2009, his memo - which we published in full here on TechCrunch - states that Userplane would be moved into the People Networks business unit under former Bebo President Joanna Shields . But at the end of last month, Shields resigned from her position as Executive VP for People Networks and to our knowledge has not been replaced to date. It’s not surprising that many startups with competing solutions are taking advantage of the rumors about Userplane’s impending shut-down. Toksta is the most outspoken one, having set up a special page for Userplane clients who are looking to switch to an alternative provider. Other competitors in the field who are likely paying a lot of attention to what is going to happen to Userplane include Meebo with its Community IM product and ekkoTV . To be continued, no doubt. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Bring Twitter Talk To Your Site With Tweetboard Top
As Twitter becomes the default conversation spot on the Web, we’re going to start to see tools which combine site-specific conversations with Twitter. One example is Tweetboard , which creates a Twitter-powered forum for any site. Once a site adds the Tweetboard code to their site, a site-wide tab appears which allows visitors to have forum discussions by simply logging into Twitter (via OAuth). All the conversations are threaded, and comments appear on Twitter as well, potentially drawing in a larger audience into the specific conversation. One of the difficulties of following a conversation on Twitter itself is that replies to particular threads aren’t threaded together. On Tweetboard, all the discussions are threaded and nested together, similar to what you’d find on FriendFeed or Facebook. Site publishers can choose to set up a Tweetboard using their personal Twitter accounts or create a new one specific to each Tweetboard. Packaging conversations and presenting them in a forum place extends any particular site’s forum content to the Twitterverse. The next step is to turn Tweetboard into a commenting system for blog posts and the like. Right now it works only as a site-wide tab, but developer Juan Carlos Muriente says he is working on another version which will be page-specific and could be used as a commenting system. (Of course, Disqus already Tweets out comments for anyone who logs in with their Twitter ID). Tweetboard is the first project to come out of Muriente’s startup 140ware , and is currently in open alpha. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Pirate Bay Fires Its Copyright-busting Cannon At YouTube Top
Supposedly, the The Pirate Bay guys were found guilty in their recent trial in Sweden, and, supposedly, they got sentenced to a year in prison and had to pay $4.5 million in damages. But back in the parallel universe which happens to be the real world, they've appealed the verdict and could probably keep doing so for the next few years. So in the meantime they need to keep busy, and what better way to do this than start a new user driven video portal to take on YouTube, called, predictably, Video Bay , allowing users to post and share video clips without having to worry about copyright violations. Seems reasonable. It's not like they need to attract any more legal interest or anything.
 
Kid Swaps iPod For Sony Walkman, Gets A Culture Shock Top
The pictures of the Sony Walkman in this BBC Magazine article made me feel strangely nostalgic - the actual text of the article made me laugh out loud. The Magazine invited 13-year-old Scott Campbell to trade his iPod for a Walkman for a week, and he recounts his experiences with the device, which was launched 30 years ago this week. Campbell, apart from being amazed at the blandly colored portable music player, correctly points out that the Walkman is much bigger, heavier and generally more clunky than the digital media players he’s accustomed to seeing within his social circle. On the upside, he writes, the ‘monstrous box’ comes with a ‘handy belt clip screwed on to the back’. Update: ha, Campbell is one of our interns at CrunchGear ! The funniest part of the story: It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette. Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn’t is “shuffle”, where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down “rewind” and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured. Campbell goes on to speak wise words (”portable music is better than no music”) and lists the pros and cons of the portable cassette player compared to its latter-day successor. Go read it here . Anyone else felt a bit nostalgic about the good old cassette tape after reading? (Picture from BBC ) Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
NYTimes and Wikipedia Save Reporter's Life By NOT Reporting On His Capture Top
This post was written by Gagan Biyani. Earlier last week, New York Times reporter David Rohde escaped from a Taliban prison. He had been a Taliban hostage for the last seven months, but the general public had absolutely no clue. In a joint effort by The New York Times and Wikipedia, the story was kept quiet until his daring escape. In November 2008, Rohde was captured and held hostage by the Taliban, along with a local reporter, Tahir Ludin, and their driver, Asadullah Mangal. But until he managed to escape , most of the general public had absolutely no clue. To prevent Rohde's value in the eyes of his captors from rising, the New York Times kept more than 35 major news organizations from reporting on the story. They believed that the publicity from reporting his capture would inflate the value of Rohde's life, increasing the difficulty of negotiating for Rohde's release. Keeping 35 news organizations quiet was actually not the hard part - but staving off Wikipedia users from publishing the news? That was a bit trickier. Through an elaborate and ongoing battle between Wikipedia editors and an anonymous contributor from Florida, the New York Times and the Wikipedia Foundation managed to keep the story quiet. For seven months, Wikipedia editors were in a constant back-and-forth with this user to delete news of Rohde's capture off of the site. They were unable to contact the user directly, as s/he was anonymously posting on Wikipedia, and thus could not explain to the user why they were trying to keep the news quiet. Infuriated, the user threw insults at the editors who were deleting his addition, and blindly continued their futile fight. All of this ended when Rohde and Ludin managed to climb over a wall and escape the Taliban's clenches. In an interesting twist, the driver chose to join the Taliban and thus stayed behind, according to Rohde. This is a truly inspiring story, and the efforts of the Wikipedia editors and the New York Times are beyond laudable. In a recent tweet , Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said that preventing the news from breaking may have saved his life. Regardless of the merits of this comment, it made Rohde's escape more likely, and was a downright impressive feat of coordination by all parties involved. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Digitalsmiths Launches VideoSense 2.0 Platform With Frame-By-Frame Video Search Top
Digitalsmiths , the video distribution and analysis platform that powers TheWB.com , TMZ , and a number of other popular sites, is rolling out a new product suite today dubbed VideoSense 2.0. The new suite includes a number of features that will make it more appealing to content owners looking to distribute video across the web, but the most interesting new feature for consumers will be the platform’s revamped video search, which can best be described as a “Google for video”. Granted, there already is a Google video search , but this goes well beyond that, allowing users to search for any actor, scene, or piece of dialog they’d like across shows in the Digitalsmiths library. Digitalsmiths has spent years building the technology to perform speech recognition and visually match actors’ faces and environmental elements (it can tell if a scene is taking at a beach or on a mountainside), and it’s quite impressive. Before now the search has been available on a limited scale, but users would have to first fine tune their queries using a number of drop-down menus, specifying which show they’d like to search through and choosing from a number of other options (these helped speed searches up by limiting the content the engine would have to look through). Now Digitalsmiths has refined the technology to the point that it can offer a Google-like search bar, with the engine able to automatically detect if a search term refers to a character or actor name, a location, or perhaps the name of a show. If, for example, I typed in “Seth Cohen Bagel The OC”, the engine would serve up video clips of the character Seth Cohen talking about bagels in the show, The OC. Unfortunately, while its search functionality is much improved, it’s being held up to some extent by the content owners. In theory Digitalsmiths could put together an engine that searched through all of its content at once, which really would make it akin to an extremely powerful Google for video. But the content owners have not agreed to enable that functionality, so for now all searches will be be constrained to partner sites and widgets (e.g. you’ll have to head to TheWB.com if you want to search through its shows). Hopefully the content owners will have a change of heart, as this kind of universal search could prove immensely useful. The new product suite includes a handful of products that will appeal to content owners, including a new Asset Manager, which handles things like video ingestion, storage, and processing, and Publisher, which allows content owners to schedule when their content will be posted. Other players in this space include Auditude and Viewdle . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Need More Michael Jackson? Love "Billie Jean"? This Site Is Awesome. Top
The web is still inundated with Michael Jackson news , but just in case you haven’t had your fill, I highly recommend the site Billie Tweets . The concept is simple: Take Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and pull in tweets that sync words to the music. The site was made by 9Astronauts , the development house that also made the Blame Drew’s Cancer site a few weeks back. Another solid creation by them. Considering that Jackson’s music is utterly dominating all of the online sales charts right now, this site is also a smart play to pull in some affiliate fees for sales from Amazon. You’ll notice the links at the bottom of the site. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
The $99 iPhone Is James Bond. The Other $99 Phones Are Joe Schmoe. Top
While it’s not being talked about too much, the $99 iPhone 3G is a very interesting play by Apple. It takes what was previously a just out-of-reach device for many, and puts it at a magical price-point. Sure, it still won’t sell everyone, like the people who only care about getting the phone that their carrier is offering for free, or those looking for the cheapest possible monthly plans. But just look at the iPhone compared to the other $99 phones out there. That’s what we did. And originally we set out to compare the various specs. But looking them over, it’s really a joke. And you can basically see all you need to see simply by looking at the devices being offering by the major carriers in the U.S. at this price point. Of course, there are legitimate iPhone competitors out there, namely the Palm Pre and the soon-to-be-released T-Mobile myTouch 3G . But the Pre sells for $199 (or $299 before rebate) and the myTouch will also cost you $199. That’s iPhone 3GS territory now. This $99 range is a whole different ball game. When I looked at the $99 phones, I started to think of a high school reunion. Some show up as successful business people, some as boring cookie-cutter suburbanites, some as fat, overweight slobs. And that’s fine. But then there’s that one person who shows up and makes everyone else look worse. Everyone there has something in common (in this case, the high school), but you wouldn’t know it just by looking at this one James Bond-type in the full tuxedo while everyone else is wearing rags. In my opinion, that’s kind of like the $99 iPhone 3G compared to the other $99 phones out there. Let’s take a look. AT&T’s $99 Offerings: James Bond. The successful business guy. Kind of pudgy, pretty boring. The less successful but skinnier business guy. A pencilneck. The guy who thinks he’s James Bond, but bought his tux at the thrift store — and it’s blue. The guy wearing his clothes from when you were still in high school. That odd foreign exchange student that no one still wants to talk to even though he’s popular in Europe. Some crazy-looking dude. A total square. That guy who just got out of rehab. T-Mobile’s $99 Offerings: The girl was popular in high school but now is just kind of ugly, and oddly shaped. Another business guy. Bland. Has his family on his “Fave 5″ though. The short, fat guy with the shiny large head. Verizon’s $99 Offerings: Spunky, ditzy, short girl. No one took her seriously then, no one takes her seriously now. The dude who’s really into guns. The guy who’s trying too hard. Again, nice suit — in 1999. Wanna-be hipster. The short sidekick of the wanna-be hipster. Oh God. Don’t talk to this one. Sprint’s $99 Offerings: The ugly duckling. The homeless guy. Hasn’t bathed in months. Had a bunch of kids at 19. Now divorced and wears bold colors to stand out — which doesn’t work. Business guy with a big chin and a square head. The girl with the Coke-bottle thick glasses. The former high school star quarterback. Still loves sports, but is between crappy jobs. [Thanks Cameron] CrunchBase Information iPhone 3G AT&T Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 

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