Thursday, June 11, 2009

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Scoble's Building 43 Launching Tonight With Practical Tips For Businesses Stuck In The 90's Top
Tonight sees the launch of Robert Scoble’s newest project, Building43 , an online community that he’s building in partnership with web-hosting provider Rackspace (we’re having them over to celebrate with us at our birthday party ). When we first heard about the new site, Scoble described it as a “community that's for people who are fanatical about the Internet”. He’s still sticking with that vague tagline, but now it’s becoming a bit clearer as to what he actually means by that. The site’s goal is to help businesses use modern technology and social sites to increase their exposure and the money they’re making. But rather than focus on the latest in breaking news, it’s looking to offer more practical advice, like how to “Pimp Out Your Facebook Page” (see the video below), or The new economics of entrepreneurship , a blog post by Guy Kawasaki. Scoble says the big difference between the content he’s previously offered and Building43 will be a new emphasis on practical tips, though there will still be more general interviews. He says that we can intially expect to see two new videos a week, but that soon it will have new video features on a daily basis as the site ramps up (there will also be regular blog posts). And he’s kicking things off with an impressive roster of interviewees, including Fred Wilson, Mark Zuckerberg, and Marissa Mayer. Building 43 has five people working on the site full time, but it’s also looking to accept content from the community. Users will be able to upload video and blog posts after agreeing to a Creative Commons 3 license, and the site will also feature a FriendFeed room that monitors for mentions of the term Building43 across the web. The hope is that any time you have a tech tip that could be applicable to businesses, you can share it with the Building43 community by mentioning it in your post or tweet. Building 43 has a good idea on its hands — it’s no secret that there are countless businesses with websites stuck in the 90’s and absolutely no idea how to tap into social media. But it’s still going to have to find a way to make these businesses aware of Building 43, which isn’t going to be an easy task (if they don’t know how to use Facebook, there’s a good chance they don’t know who Robert Scoble is or that Building 43 exists). To hear Scoble talk about Building 43 a bit in his own words and his thoughts on clown computing, check out this Qik video taken at the TechCrunch offices yesterday. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Happy 4th Birthday, TechCrunch Top
On June 11, 2005 I wrote a post titled Technorati Beta Profile , and TechCrunch was born. Today we turn four years old. Over the years I’ve written l ong posts marking the day with lots of stats. I’m not going to do that today though. All I’m going to do is say Thank You to the awesome people who I get to work with, and the awesome people who come here to read this blog. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. We’re having a small party at our office today to celebrate. I know everyone can’t make it, but you can watch along on the CrunchCam if you like. The fun starts at 4 pm PST. And you can’t miss me, I’m the one wearing the yellow Captain Kirk tshirt (thanks @orli! ). ps - ok just a few stats. This is the 12,896th post on TechCrunch (and lots more across our blog network). Readers have taken the time to leave 607,031 comments to those posts (after we’ve deleted around 20 million spam comments). That’s an average of nearly 50 comments per post. 5.5 million of you come to visit us each month, making us by far the largest media company in the world that starts with “T” and ends with “Crunch.” I love each and every one of you. Except for the crazy psychos. I don’t love you so much. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Someecards Have Ads I Actually Pay Attention To. And They're About To Do Video. Top
Most online advertising is lame. Yes, the idea of a click-through ad is great, but let’s be honest, a lot of time that involves tricking people into clicking on your ad. Whatever happened to building brand awareness through compelling advertising? I think someecards is pretty damn good at that — and they’re going to get better. You probably know someecards as the startup that makes those hilarious online greeting cards with the oddly black and white, and usually outdated pictures. If you don’t know what I mean, just look around at any of the examples I’ve included in this post, I’m sure you’ve seen them before. But what you might not know is that the company is also doing branded advertising on some of its cards. For example, they offer cards branded by the hit Sometime show Weeds , the show Bridezillas , the shoemaker Puma and Jose Cuervo . And the branded campaigns are genius because they include the same witty text as regular cards, but tie it into the campaign in some way. They popped onto my radar a couple weeks ago when I saw a few circulating around the web for the show Weeds, and I immediately saw the appeal of advertising this way, because I actually recalled the Weeds promotional part of the card. Most people, when they look at something online now, simply are trained to not even look at the ads. But when the ads are a part of the content, you have to look. Obviously, this approach won’t work for all types of content, but for these cards it does. “You’re getting a lot better affinity for the brand if you’re doing things this way,” someecards co-founder Duncan Mitchell tells us. And while someecards also wraps more traditional online ads around the cards on their main pages, the company realizes that a lot of times those ads that surround content or appear as interstitials in videos, violate the content in some regards. So why not work the ad into the content someway because, “what’s funny is funny,” says co-founder Brook Lundy . While most advertisers are still obsessed with the idea of click-throughs in online ads, they’re “reluctantly moving” beyond that a bit, according to Mitchell. One thing someecards offers for its cards is the immediate share numbers, through the URL shortening service bit.ly . Mitchell says that advertisers like to see when a card is virally spreading on services like Twitter and Facebook. And they’re starting to acknowledge that this kind of word-of-mouth spreading on the web by way of the share is a powerful tool. The next step in the branded movement for someecards is to get into video. In the next few weeks, the company will launch its first video campaigns, promoting a new show made by Comedy Central. The clips, like the someecards, will be brief (around 15 seconds) and will feature the actors of the show performing some dialogue outlined by someecards writers. Someecards has a bunch of other branded campaigns in the pipeline, including some in the pharma area and PSAs, which should be fun. Embedded below find some great branded someecard examples. CrunchBase Information Someecards Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
YouTube Enters The Stream Top
YouTube has just enabled a new feature that allows users to directly share their recently uploaded videos to Facebook, Twitter, and Google Reader. This means you’ll be able to syndicate your newly uploaded content directly into your friends’ feeds. You can link your accounts on YouTube’s ‘Upload’ page. This isn’t exactly a novel feature — many web services have already tied into Facebook, Twitter, and to a lesser extent, Google Reader. But it is notable given the rivalry between Facebook and Google, which which have previously sparred over “openness” and their abilities to tap into the social graph. The new functionality is limited to new video uploads for now, but I won’t be surprised if YouTube builds on it by allowing users to immediately share all videos that they add to ‘favorites’. Of course, there is already a sharing button located beneath each YouTube video that lets you post videos you like to a variety of services, but this would help automate the process. YouTube is clearly looking to expand its sharing functionality (see YouTube Real-Time , which is currently in private beta testing), and increased sharing to these other services seems like a logical extension. This is also going to have a major impact on existing video sharing services on Twitter, like TwitVid . These smaller Twitter-specific services do have one advantage over YouTube for the time being, though: unlike TwitPic, YouTube doesn’t allow you to enter a message to share alongside your video link, which means you won’t be able to share any context with it. It’s also worth noting that I uploaded a video to YouTube to test out the new feature, and while it finished processing over 10 minutes ago, it has yet to get auto-Tweeted. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Crunchboard: Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers… Top
For job hunters in Europe, check out our Europe CrunchBoard. Don’t forget we’re looking for a few good hackers here at TechCrunch. Here’s a few Crunchboard jobs: Web Developer - Fast Growth Sloshspot, Inc - San Jose, CA Software Engineers Extendy - Virtual Location Application Architect frog design inc. - San Francisco, CA Back End Developer Momo Networks, Inc. - Palo Alto, CA Senior Java Developer Flipswap - McClean, IL Click here to see all the jobs on CrunchBoard Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Daily Show Rips The New York Times Top
The Daily Show does a much better job than I did ripping the New York Times. “What’s that? A landline phone? Ha! Look at me. I’m like a reporter from the 80’s.” (Here’s the video on Comedy Central , for our international friends). Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Yahoo Gets A New CFO Top
Yahoo announced today that the company will be bringing on Tim Morse to replace outgoing CFO Blake Jorgensen. Morse, who is the CFO of Altera, a semiconductor firm, also previously served as the CFO and general manager of business development for General Electric Plastics. Bartz seems to be bringing in a seasoned executive with series management chops who has both gone through GE’s rigorous training program and experienced the wild ride of being at a tech company. Yahoo made waves recently with CEO Carol Bartz hinting at a possible search deal, for potential “boatloads of money” with Microsoft a few weeks ago. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Everyone Calm Down, You Won't Have To Pay To Re-Download Apps On The iPhone Top
The web threw a hissy fit a couple weeks ago after some screenshots of the iPhone 3.0 beta software indicated that you would have to re-purchase apps that you had removed from your iPhone or iPod touch. But it looks like everyone can calm down now. In the latest iPhone 3.0 GM build, which went live shortly after the WWDC keynote on Monday, the ability to re-download an app you’ve already purchased, looks to be have been restored. The blog AppAdvice did some digging and found that the new iTunes 8.2 software apparently includes some logic which allows it to tell exactly which iTunes account is authorized for app purchases made. This is to prevent users from sharing apps by signing out of one iTunes account and into another one on the iPhone itself. As was previously reported, with the iPhone 3.0 beta builds you could re-download apps for free on iTunes on the computer, but if you tried to do it on the device, you were prompted to buy it again. With the 3.0 GM software, after you sync it with you iTunes account, you will see the previous “You have already purchased this item. To download it again for free, select OK.” dialog. It makes sense, Apple doesn’t want people swapping apps back and forth without paying for them, so it’s requiring that you tie your iPhone or iPod touch to the iTunes account on your computer that you bought the app with. The previous versions of iTunes simply didn’t have that pairing ability fully intact, but the 8.2 version does. And it works with the 3.0 GM. So, end of controversy. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Mozilla's Jetpack .2 Gets A Boost From The Future Top
Last month Mozilla introduced us to Jetpack , a new project from its Labs team that could well change the way browser extensions are installed over the next few years. The project is still in early stages — its blog describes it as primarily a technology preview — but some very cool things are already starting to emerge. Today Mozilla is releasing Jetpack .2, which introduces us to a handful of new features: the sidebar, persistent data storage, and the future . Sidebars are meant to serve as light and quick side panels in your browser. This kind of feature has existed for years as traditional browser plugins and Firefox extensions, but Jetpack sidebars come with one major advantage: users don’t have to restart their browser to install them. The Mozilla team has put together a sample called the “Video Slide”, which allows you to tuck any video you’re currently watching into the left slidebar, so you can browse the web while the clip keeps playing in view (be sure to check out the video below to see it in action). Jetpack: Slidebar from Aza Raskin on Vimeo . Included with this release the Mozilla team is also introducing a jetpack.future function, which allows developers to make use of APIs that aren’t yet stable (sidebars are included as part of these future-looking APIs). From the Mozilla blog: Jetpack is two things at once: it is a platform for experimentation and it is also a solid set of APIs that anyone to easily build new Firefox features. To enable Jetpack to be both stable and — at the same time — to experiment with not-quite-yet-ready features we've added the ability to import new features from the "future". Finally, the new version adds support for persistent data storage between browser restarts, which will be key for creating advanced extensions. Jetpack is still in early stages and for the time being is probably more interesting for developers than your average Firefox user. But it’s a very compelling project because it could make life much easier for some startups, depending on how robust the technology eventually becomes. We’ve covered plenty of companies building very impressive browser plugins that have fizzled out largely because they couldn’t get users to actually install their plugin — easy as it may seem, that browser reboot can be a real turn-off, especially when you’ve got multiple windows open. By removing this barrier to entry, Jetpack could become a boon for developers. If you’d like to check out some of the other 40+ available Jetpacks, check out the list here , which includes an instant dictionary lookup and a Gmail notifier . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Nobody Recognizes The Chrome Icon, So Google Wants You To Make A Video About It Top
Quick, draw the icon for Google’s Chrome browser. It’s got a bunch of primary colors, but that’s all I can remember about it without looking at it. Most people have never seen it, or even know what Chrome is. (It is Google’s browser). Google wants to change all that with a viral marketing campaign. It is asking people to submit videos showing creative ways to build the Chrome icon. It will pull the best one together into a final reel presumably. Here is where you can submit your videos until July 22 and see what else has been submitted. But just getting the early Chrome to lend a hand with marketing by spreading videos around the Web is indicative of Google’s marketing philosophy overall. This is not a Bing-style marketing blitz on TV and everywhere else. Although, Google is not above running ads on TV anymore. Browsers are a new market for Google where it still has practically zero mindshare. And it will try to get that mindshare any way it can, both on TV and on the Web. I wonder which set of ads will be more effective. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
AOL Buys Local Startups Going And Patch (And CEO Tim Armstrong Brings an Investment In-House) Top
When your main seed investor becomes the CEO of AOL, it does have its fringe benefits. Today, AOL announced its acquisition of two local startups: Patch and Going . AOL’s new CEO Tim Armstrong is a seed investor in Patch, which offers hyperlocal news for small towns and communities. In a note he sent out today to employees, which we’ve obtained from AOL, he notes that he recused himself from the acquisition negotiations and that instead of profiting from the deal he asked to get his initial seed investment back in AOL stock when it goes public . Going is a local event and entertainment listing site based in Boston which raised a $5 million Series A in 2007. Both acquisitions were in the single-digit millions. Below is Armstrong’s email to employees, discussing the reason for the acquisitions, which is to ramp up AOL’s local presence (one of five main strategies he is pursuing: AOLers – Our strategy to win in the five areas we've discussed starts with innovation and passion. Of the five areas, Local remains the largest white space and offers us an ability to improve the lives of many consumers. It's a space that's prime for innovation and an area where we already have strength with a local network that reaches more than 54 million UVs a month and a valuable brand in mapping services, MapQuest. Our vision isn't just about optimizing what we have – it's about overhauling how we approach this space, drawing on our legacy of connecting communities and our long history of organization through DMOZ. It's about taking one of the most disaggregated experiences on the Web today and making it truly quick and easy for consumers to find the local information they need. Today, we're announcing two acquisitions that will enable us to better serve audiences by providing experiences that are highly focused on users' own neighborhoods – Patch and Going. Patch.com was built to provide local towns with a robust and interactive platform to publish news and information, with full-time journalists for each town covering government affairs, education issues, and community events. One of the AOLers in our All Hands meeting on May 29 asked what our plan is to help towns, like his, where the local newspaper has gone out of business. Patch is an acquisition that may eventually help that town. Under the leadership of co-founder and CEO Jon Brod, Patch has been able to launch five initial town sites since February and has just announced four additional communities. Moreover, Patch has already received over 230 user requests for "Patches" spanning 39 states and 12 countries. The second acquisition is a small company located in Boston – Going. Going has developed a local events platform to discover and share information about things to do in a number of leading cities across the country. Under the leadership of CEO Evan Schumacher, Going has launched sites in 30 cities – including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami – and provides users with RSVP tools and advertisers with self-service event advertising. On a personal note, I was an early investor in Patch and committed significant dollars to the vision of improving local communities with deeper online information, accountability through journalism, and a platform for communicating. In discussing our local strategy, AOL and Time Warner looked at Patch as a possible acquisition and I recused myself from that process. At the Time Warner negotiated acquisition price, I was in a position to earn a return on my investment in Patch. However, I have decided to forgo any profit from my seed investment in Patch and I have asked to receive just my seed capital in AOL shares once we separate from Time Warner. Overall, I believe both Patch and Going will add strength and talent to our local efforts and give us an ability to have a unique and defendable local offering that helps people improve their lives. I'm excited that we've reached the stage where we can begin implementing in our five key strategy areas, and with today's announcements we're off to a great start in Local. Please join me in welcoming the employees of Patch and Going to AOL and the future of AOL Local. –TA Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Tesla Co-Founder Sues CEO Elon Musk For Slander And Breach Of Contract Top
Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard is suing CEO Elon Musk, citing allegations of slander, libel and breach of contract. Eberhard's lawsuit, which is 22-pages long, was filed on May 26 in San Mateo County, Calif. Superior Court and seeks unspecified damages. The suit surrounds Musk’s treatment of Eberhard as well as the CEO’s handling of Tesla, alleging that Musk “compromised Tesla Motors' financial health." Eberhard says that Musk began a smear campaign against Eberhard on media outlets, attaching pages of news articles where Musk made negative comments about Eberhard. Eberhard says Musk essentially pushed him out of the company that he founded and consequently took full credit for developing the first electric car the company produced, the Roadster. Eberhard also claims that Musk not only falsely said that he was the founder of the company, but has also misrepresented his past roles, including the extent of his involvement with the company he founded, PayPal. The suit also says that Tesla didn’t pay him severance or issue stock options, which was part of his contract upon his separation from the company in November of 2007. Some of the accusations border on hilarity, with Eberhard accusing Tesla of destroying his customized Roadster before the car was given to him. The lawsuit is embedded below.According to Wired’s report, Tesla calls the suit a “fictionalized account of Tesla's early years.” Tesla has also said that they plan to counter sure Eberhard. While some of the suit seems like sour grapes, the breach of contract accusations take on a more serious tone. It’s unclear how much Eberhard is seeking in damages. Daimler recently took a 10% (or $50 million) stake in Tesla, putting the company’s valuation at $500 million. You can see our full coverage of Tesla and Elon Musk here. Tesla lawsuit - Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
bChamp: The iPhone App That Beatboxes For You Top
At the TechFellow event on Friday, we had the opportunity to demo a musical mobile app that lets you beatbox on your iPhone. Developed by Dutch startup Monodomo, bChamp is $0.99 at the app store. The video gives you a clearer idea of how the app works. bChamp will translate sounds you make into the iPhone’s microphone into beatboxing sounds. bChamp will recognizes three beatbox sounds: Snare (say "k" as in "cabbage"), Kickdrum (say "b" as in "bogus"), Hi-Hat (say "t" sound with your teeth closed). When you make those sounds into the microphone, they will be translated into dfferent drum-like sounds. You can also adjust the pitch of your beats by using the app’s interface to change the pitch. bChamp’s app includes some visual graffiti effects. For $0.99, the app is a simple way for those of us who are challenged in the beatboxing department to pretend that we have some skills. Our demo was particularly effective because the founders of Mondomo hooked the device up to an external speaker. Using headphones or the iPhone’s speaker may not be as much fun when it comes to bChamp’s sound. Other iPhone apps that let you simulate beatboxing sounds include Milky App’s Beatbox Live and BtBx. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Lycos To Relaunch Search Services In Europe, For Whatever Reason Top
Remember Lycos ? Well, believe it or not, they’re not dead yet. In fact, the search engine / web portal has just announced that it has regained the rights to use the trademarked brand names “Lycos” and “Hotbot” within the European territory. In case that confuses you: Lycos Europe had an exclusive license to use those terms within Europe under an agreement dating back to 1997 when the company was formed as part of a joint venture and started up European operations independently from Lycos. In a statement Jungwook Lim, CEO of Lycos (which today is actually a subsidiary of Korean Internet giant Daum Communications ), said: “Lycos continues to have a loyal user base and we expect this consolidation to help revitalize and strengthen our search businesses within Europe.” That made me scratch my head a bit, because I’ve been living and working in Europe for a long time and I don’t know a living soul that’s still “loyal” to anything remotely Lycos. Chuckle along with this additional statement from Edward Noel, General Manager of Search and Business Development for Lycos, too: “Over the next several weeks Lycos will be re-launching the provision of search services within the European territory. Locally targeted content verticals will gradually be rolled out and we will be taking steps to enhance our users’ search experience.” If I read that correctly, it seems Lycos is not giving up on Europe just yet. Too bad European users gave up on them long ago. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Apple's Awesome App Wall Gets Photosynthed Top
The web has been abuzz lately over Apple’s awesome Matrix-style app wall at WWDC, which displays 20,000 of the platform’s most popular applications in a dense, moving grid. It’s certainly a sight to behold, but while it’s been covered pretty extensively across the web, some iPhone app developers who missed WWDC are still left asking, “I wonder if I’m on there”. Here’s your chance to check. Developers Andres Douglas and Greg Pascale (who was behind the iSynth application) have taken a whopping 273 photos of the App Wall and used them to build a virtual recreation using Microsoft Photosynth . Photosynth was one of the cooler things to come out of Microsoft Live Labs, allowing users to stich together hundreds (or more) of photos to build virtual worlds out of static photographs. The Synth works pretty well — you can zoom in and get an up close view of much of the wall so you should be able to check if your app is on there, and zipping through the different zoom levels is fun. But it isn’t quite perfect, as all of the photos were taken using an iPhone’s relatively low resolution camera, and there are some chunks missing. To remedy this issue, Douglas and Pascale are asking for high-res photos from other developers who attended the conference, which they’ll use to create a much higher quality version of the synth, hopefully with every single application visible on it. If you’ve got photos of the wall, head over to this Drop.io account and upload your images. Don’t worry if you’ve only taken a shot of a portion of the wall, as Photosynth can stitch pieces from other photos together. You can find embeds the of the synth on the iSynth website here , or a larger version at the Silverlight Photosynth viewer here . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Toodledo Is In Troubledo Top
Toodledo , a basic but nifty free online to-do list management tool, is having a very bad day. According to a message posted on its website, a storm hit the city where their datacenter is located, prompting the engineers to switch to power generators. This caused Toodledo to wind up with a corrupted database, which it is currently frantically trying to restore. So, here’s the story. A big storm went through the city where our datacenter is located. The datacenter decided to proactively switch to generators. During the switch, something got screwed up, and the power went off for a few minutes. As (bad) luck would have it, this caused our database to get corrupted. We are currently working to bring it back online and restored from the live backup. The crack team at Rackspace is on the job. Thanks Rackspace! Unfortunately, the database is so large, that it will take some time to transfer and verify all the data. Hopefuly not more than a few hours. We know that this is very bad, and we apologize for any inconvience that this will cause. Please check the forums when we are back online for a full report. Update: Its obviously taking longer than we expected and we are really sorry for that. Update #2: I know that our downtime is totally unacceptable. I am literally sick to my stomach about this whole thing. We have successfully restored all of the data up until June 10, 4am CST and we are working very hard to restore the remaining 12 hours of updates that happened before the servers crashed. Obviously, this has been a major event. We had multiple simultaneous errors happen that have made recovery slower than anticipated. Because our database is so large (many many many gigabytes), it just takes a long time to transfer and import the data. I know that many of you are upset, and all I can say is that I am deeply sorry. We are already starting to rethink our backup strategy so that recovery doesn’t take so long in the future. Update #3: Its coming along. I know it is taking forever. We have restored up to June 10, 11:30am CST. At this rate, it should take about *crossing fingers* 2 more hours. We’ll then run some sanity tests and hopefully go live. Again, I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this. The good news is that we shouldn’t have lost any data. I feel genuinely sorry for Jake Olefsky, the sole independent developer behind the Toodledo service. If this is any comfort to him: an Amazon datacenter got hit by a lightning strike this morning, causing its EC2 service to suffer a fairly major outage . Or how cloudy weather can have a devastating effect on cloud-based services. (Thanks for the tip Gavin) Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Skype Co-founders Invest In European Pet Community Network Top
Estonia-based United Dogs and Cats, which operates two pet-specific community websites dubbed UnitedDogs.com and UnitedCats.com , has raised €480,000 in VC funding. The money comes from individual investor Raivo Hein, the state-owned Estonian Development Fund and Ambient Sound Investments , the investment group led by co-founders of Skype that had previously seeded the startup with €170,000 of funding back in April 2008. UDC first launched the two pet communities internationally about two years ago, and the nicely designed social networking services have quickly gained traction with cat and dog owners throughout Europe, in large part thanks to its localized nature with support for 16 languages. CEO Ragnar Sass says the total number of registered users has recently surpassed 200,000 and claims that the site is market leader in its respective segment for a number of European countries like Italy, France, Spain, Lithuania and Estonia. United Dogs and Cats makes money by selling advertisement placements to companies interested in reaching pet owners with related products, and by offering its members a number of paid features like the ability to upload more photos of their pets, access to more hand-crafted virtual gifts and a range of pet profile designs. Paying users also receive bonus points (like a virtual currency) every month, which they can use to send virtual gifts to other pets, etc. I asked co-founder Martin Tajur if UDC was inspired by the popular Dogster / Catster network sites based in the U.S., and he claimed they did not even know about the San Francisco company (which by the way, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is an investor in) when they launched the websites in Estonia. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Online Advertising In Europe: 2008 Was Tough, 2009 Will Be Worse Top
The Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe is currently holding its annual Interact Congress , an event that brings together the main protagonists of the European digital industry here in Brussels. For the occasion, IAB Europe in conjunction with PriceWaterhouseCoopers today released the findings of its annual advertising expenditure survey for the year ending December 2008. The gist: growth in digital advertising significantly slowed down last year, especially in more mature markets, and the outlook for this year is grim. In 2008 the total European online advertising market, or at least the 19 markets analyzed by IAB Europe and PwC, was worth €12.9 billion (approx. $18 billion) with a like-for-like growth rate compared to 2007 of 20%. For comparison, online advertising grew 10.6% in the United States in 2008 (outpacing TV) and was worth €16.6 billion ($23.4 billion). However, the 20% growth figure paints a better-looking picture than the harsh reality, which is that it is far below previously stated expectations, of course caused by the crumbling of the global economy and the huge strain it has put on digital advertising spending worldwide. If you look at the top 10 markets in Europe, year-on-year growth rates were under 20% more often than not. Considering the fact that these markets account for about 93% of the total value of the market, the following chart doesn’t accurately reflect the slowed growth because it over-accentuates the massive growth in Slovenia, Poland and Austria. Broken down by formats, search remains the leading format in Europe with the strongest year-on-year growth rate (26%), accounting for 43% of online ad expenditure in the countries measured and a value of €5.6 billion. After search come classifieds, with growth rates of 17.4% bringing it to 26% share of total ad spend and a market value of €3.8 billion. Alain Heureux, President and CEO of IAB Europe, acknowledges that while the overall picture in Europe is one of growth, what is clear from these figures is that 2008 was a tough year for online advertising. And if you thought that trend was going to reverse this year, Eva Berg-Winters, Senior Manager at PwC, is here to put you back with your feet on the ground: “2009 is set to be a difficult year for online advertising. Decline is likely in a number of mature markets and, where there is still growth, we expect it to be much lower than previously.” In the U.S., IAB as recently as last week reported that online advertising declined 5% 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 . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Betaworks Email To Investors: Read It Here Top
Famous angel investor Ron Conway’s investment focus on real time startups earned him the moniker “ Real Time Ron ” by his close friends. But he’s certainly not the only venture capitalist out there focusing on this space. New York based betaworks , an incubator/VC, is also right in the thick of things. They invested early in Summize and gained a sizable chunk of Twitter stock when that company was acquired in 2008 to become Twitter Search. betaworks’ list of investments is a who’s who of the real time world. Twitter, StockTwits, TweetDeck, Twitterfeed, Tumblr and bit.ly are examples. And they also own a piece of what may be my favorite content site on the Internet - someecards . Anyway, things seem to be rocking at betaworks based on the email to investors from CEO John Borthwick and COO Andrew Weissman that was sent out a couple of weeks ago and forwarded to us. bit.ly, for example, now has a 50% share of the URL shortener market and 130 million weekly clicks on links. The full email is below. From: Borthwick John Sent: Sunday, May 31, 2009 11:23 AM To: Schilling Mathias; Thomas Blondet; Smith Richard; Jean-Charles Charki; Herbert Allen III; Vigil Hank; Tarek Abdel-Meguid (Terry) Meguid; Ellman Stuart; Jaffe Bruce; Lisa Belzberg; Gillian Munson; Pittman Bob; Dominic Becotte; Joshua Stylman; Peter Hershberg; Stan Pantowich; Ron Conway; David Singer; Cappuccio Paul; Jean Marie Messier; Heiferman Scott; Howard Lindzon; Peretsman Nancy; Brad Reifler; Peter Borish; Brian Gottlieb; Strauss Zelnick; Taavet Hinrikus; Eric Martineau-Fortin; Ted Barnett; Robin Transport; Jon Brod; Russell Andrew; Ken Lerer; Gordon Crovitz; Goldstein Seth; Hilary Bergman; Shen David; Armstrong Tim Cc: Andrew Weissman Subject: betaworks / quarterly investor update / June betaworking Once again a busy quarter at betaworks — and a good one to boot. We now have 22 companies in the network. They are listed here http://bit.ly/beta-network . We are still in the early days of building betaworks into a new type of media company - one characterized by a loosely coupled network of companies. A network that is connected by shared data services matched with a bottoms up structure. Chris Anderson wrote last week that “the .. new economy, the one rising from the ashes of this latest meltdown, will favor the small … distributed-information networks would do the same outside the walls of a single company. The Web would be globalization taken to the extreme. Projects would be open to the best of breed anywhere, creating virtual flash firms of suppliers and workers that would come together for one product and then re-form for another. “Small pieces, loosely joined” was the mantra.” Its only eighteen months but this is betaworks. We did a revision to our web site and included a interactive presentation on what is betaworks and how we believe what we are building is in essence a new kind of media company. You can find it at http://betaworks.com On to the update. Over the past quarter we spun out our first project, took a majority stake in one company, made two new investments and made solid progress on our other internal product. bit.ly Eight weeks ago we spun bit.ly out of betaworks into bit.ly Inc, and raised a seed investment round led by OATV (O’Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures), Social Leverage, Ron Conway, TAG, Chris Sacca, Mitch Kapor and the Founders Fund. 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. The pace of growth at bit.ly has been astounding to say the least. Its been a real lesson to us here at betaworks — when you hit a vein things can grow extremely fast. I have had the fortune to work with fast growth products before, bit.ly growth has been like walking up a wall. Some data points. We launched bit.ly late last summer. The growth curve below illustrates the trend. Nine weeks ago when we closed the funding of bit.ly approx. 18m bit.ly links we getting clicked on every week, about 3-4 m per week day (the chart below shows daily clicks through the first week of April). In a little over 6 months we managed to earn a 30% share in the URL shortening market via organic, viral growth. By the first of May we were doing approx. 50m decodes a week. Last week 130m bit.ly links were clicked on. Three weeks ago we rolled out bit.ly as default within Twitter. Twitter has added 20-30% on top of the viral growth - a great partnership that holds a ton of potential. Closing in upon bit.ly’s nine month anniversary it has over 50% market share. The betaworks / bit.ly team has done a phenomenal job scaling the systems and making sure that not once has a bit.ly link been unavailable. And the real time metrics distinguishes bit.ly from all of its competition. Scaling real time metrics is a huge challenge — one of those things that you only hear about when you slip up. Please if you come by the office mention this to the team of ex AOL engineers who run bit.ly — they are doing a great job. Business model wise we are starting to figure out where the money is. My sense is that there should be some very interesting monetization opportunities we can un-pack. Three new things … Partnered with TAG, betaworks took a majority stake in Twitterfeed a content router for publishers to Twitter. Twitterfeed has 150k publishers pushing out a quarter of a million updates daily. It’s a very interesting business — for some background see http://bit.ly/U2QM3 . And we did seed investments in two new companies — Uservoice and GDGT — two wonderful companies, both of whom fit right into the betaworks thesis. Other updates … - Tweetdeck is doing very very well. The most recent version, out for less than a month, has received approx. a million downloads. Over the past quarter Tweetdeck has continued to pull ahead of its competition. Tweetdeck is the preferred way to access the Twitter stream for over 14% of all users and they send more messages from Tweetdeck than from Twitter.com or any other service. - Tipjoy opened up an API to power payments for social applications. User and payment growth have both been strong. This is the first social payments API we’ve seen, excited to see how it grows. Stocktwits is doing very well — premium (paid version) is getting rolled out and they closed a series A in the past quarter. - IILWY — who we told you last time had hired a CEO — rebranded itself to OMG POP. The service is doing great, they closed its B round led by Bessemer. - Some e Cards is rocking. Last October (@betaday) the announced break-even– they have been cash flow positive ever since then, sold out till the fall. They have approx. 600k followers on Twitter and as I outlined in an essay I wrote 2 weeks ago they, and other betaworks, are leading a transformation in distribution (see: http://bit.ly/UWNtS ). - Lastly, we launched Chartbeat in the spring — we now have 500 paying customers, modest but solid start. Phew — I said it was a busy quarter. Press roundup Business Week included in its round up of the Twitter ecosystem five betaworks companies: Tweetdeck http://bit.ly/4sLvnH Stocktwits http://bit.ly/Oyukm Tipjoy http://bit.ly/1911Z1 bit.ly http://bit.ly/10q3FP Twitterfeed http://bit.ly/U2QM3 GigaOm mused about how we could “upstage Digg” at http://bit.ly/3IfpUO (laying out an interesting roadmap for bitlynow). Jenna Wortham from the New York Times http://bit.ly/4fol1L , Chartbeat press: Better Homes ‘n Garden! http://bit.ly/11YCEz “chartbeat is metrics porn” http://bit.ly/f48j5 “I recently stumbled upon Chartbeat and I'm already addicted.” http://bit.ly/6empP And someone @ the LA Times is loving our work product! Thats it for the quarter, onward and best regards to you all best regards JB, AW and our small crew Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Hurt, Trent Reznor Half-Quits Twitter Top
He’s had enough. Trent Reznor, better known as the man behind the band Nine Inch Nails, is apparently fed up with Twitter. In a long, free-flowing rant post tonight in the NIN forums , Reznor let his haters have it. What starts out as a diatribe against the record labels (which Reznor has been one of the main opponents against in recent years), quickly turns directly to Twitter, which Reznor seems to blame for allowing him to give too much insight into his personal life — something which some trolls are using against him. And so he’s taking a break from the social media scene, and has turned his Twitter account into a “one-way” stream of NIN-only material, according to his new bio. And apparently, he won’t change it until “Twitter improves blocking.” The reason for this is people Reznor calls the “Metal Sludge contingency.” Here’s Reznor graphic description of these people: Metal Sludge is the home of the absolutely worst people I’ve ever come across. It’s populated mainly by unattractive plump females who publicly fantasize about having sex with guys in bands. Kind of like a role-playing game where people NOBODY will fuck make up stories about their incredible sexual encounters with people they WISH they could fuck. It would be kind of funny in a sad and pathetic way except the fun doesn’t stop there - hate and good old-fashioned outright blatant racism are also encouraged to spice things up and remind you how truly ugly these scourges are. TRULY ugly on the inside (the outside is obvious). But buried in this stuff, Rezor has some good points. First of all, Twitter is quickly getting overrun by spammers. That’s probably not a shock to those of us who follow and use Twitter a lot, but it’s getting to the point where celebrities are now starting to notice it, and it’s turning them off from the service. As he puts it, “So when you see the new accounts that pop up daily on Twitter spewing [garbage], usually from picture-less creatively named profiles, spewing hate at Mariqueen and I, take a moment to visualize the sad couple people behind them.” Also, he’s thinking about the idea of these networks using real-life verifications to encourage better conversations: I had thought a while ago about attempting to start a mainstream public forum that required real verification of it’s participants for purposes of context. The idea was to have a place where you can actually discuss whatever and have some idea of who you’re conversing with. For example, if we were discussing drumming techniques and you can see that someone participating in the discussion is a drum instructor vs. a 13 year old kid Googling answers, you’d have the proper context in which to have a potentially valid discussion. If we were discussing EDLC’s heart condition and a real cardiologist speaks up, I’d value his opinion over, say FredFuckFaceWhateverHisLastFuckingNameIs’s “opinion”. Know what I mean? Anyway, we’re in a world where the mainstream social networks want any and all people to boost user numbers for the big selloff and are not concerned with the quality of experience. That’s obviously another shot at Twitter, but it really speaks to most networks. Facebook is by far the best as it at least tries to make sure real people are using it. This topic is something I have thought about recently , as well. Reznor kind of gives away what seems to be at the heart of his issues towards the beginning of his rant: Back to Twitter. I approached that as a place to be less formal and more off-the-cuff, honest and “human”. I was not expecting to broadcast details of my love life there, but it happened because I’m in love and it’s all I think about and that’s that. If this has bummed you out or destroyed what you’ve projected on me, fair enough - it’s probably time for you to leave. You are right, I’m not the same person I was in 1994 (and I’m happy about that). Are you? Apparently, some people are disappointed with Reznor no longer portraying himself as the crazed counter-culture icon he was in the early-to-mid 1990s. He’s in love now, and it’s changed him. And thanks to Twitter, millions of people have been privvy to that. Other celebrities should consider that a warning. With Twitter, there is no PR person filtering the message about you. That’s both powerful, but also potentially harmful. Reznor’s post is actually quite insightful, when you’re able to parse it. Especially when compared to Kanye West’s rant about Twitter last month. And his rants have proven useful in the past, especially against Apple’s ridiculous app approval process for the iPhone. Perhaps now, Twitter will step up its game in the fight against spam and trolls. CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Facebook Vanity URLs: Journalists Don't Have To Wait In Line Top
Friday night is the Facebook vanity URL landrush ( first reported on May 31, announced yesterday officially). At 9:01 pm PST on Friday, just log into Facebook and grab the name you want before someone else does. While the masses (that’s you) will be fighting for that perfect name on Friday night, some lucky few people won’t need to bother waiting in line. Facebook employees have already grabbed theirs (taking Facebook.com/Mike , which is what I wanted). And apparently “key journalists” won’t have to wait in line, either. In an email today, Facebook told me “We wanted to let you know that we decided to reserve usernames for the key journalists and outlets we work with. Look out for an email from someone on the communications team with more details.” Other writers here at TechCrunch got the same email. I feel sort of bad about posting this, since Facebook is actually doing us a favor. But I also think it’s kind of BS that Facebook is giving some people, employees included, first shot at the names. My guilt only extends so far, though. You suckers wait in line. I’m grabbing my name in advance. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Video: iPhone Push Notification In Action With AIM Top
Earlier today , Apple sent out an email (embedded below) to developers who are testing the latest iPhone 3.0 software, asking them to help do one final stress test the new Push Notification service. The app picked for this test was AOL’s AIM instant messaging application, which makes sense given that IM apps are likely to be the apps that end up using Push Notification the most. Push Notification, for those who haven’t been following news about it for the past year, is the system Apple developed to alleviate the fact that it won’t allow third party apps to run in the background of the iPhone. Apple claims there are security concerns, battery life concerns and performance concerns that prevent background apps from being feasible at this time on the iPhone (though the company is considering ways to do background apps in the future ). Instead, it has asked developers to use its servers to push out certain tasks (like IMs) that come to your phone even when that application isn’t running. Apple first talked about Push Notification a year ago at WWDC, and said it should be available around September of 2008. When that deadline came and went, Apple was largely silent, only remarking briefly that the system wasn’t yet ready and it wanted to make sure it was perfect before rolling it out. A smart move considering the rough start its MobileMe service go off to. So we waited and waited, until finally Apple announced that it would be a part of the iPhone 3.0 software, due out June 17. Watch the video below to see Push Notification in action with AIM. One quick note: The video makes it look like there may be a delay between an IM sent and received, but I’m told it’s basically instantaneous — under a second. [thanks Kyle ] Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 

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