Tuesday, September 15, 2009

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TC50: Lissn Is A Broader Twitter Meets A Simpler Google Wave Top
A lot of people use Twitter to have conversations with others, but that’s not really what it was built for. Initially, Twitter was just supposed to be a place to update what you are doing; the @reply only came around because people started using it to direct a conversation at another user. Now conversations are one of the most interesting things about Twitter, and a new startup launching in private beta today at TechCrunch50 , Lissn , wants to build a new platform from the ground up with conversations in mind. If you’ve seen the video demos or had a chance to use Google Wave at all, Lissn may seem familiar — it has the same type of real-time conversation aspect. The difference, of course, is that this is the main function of Lissn, while Wave is trying to be a lot of different things wrapped into one. Lissn is all about having conversations with people, and allows others to watch, and join in as they’d like. And because anyone can join in on these conversation threads, Lissn can tell what the most popular topics being talked about are. And it highlights those for other users to see, and lets them get involved in the conversations too. You also have friends on the service, and you can see what conversations your friends are engaged in, and can decide whether or not you want to join them too. Lissn also automatically translates conversations in your native language, using Google Translate. There is also a location-based element to the service. Using your IP address (or manually putting in a city) you can see the conversations happening around that area. Another service that has similar conversation capabilities is FriendFeed. Of course, the future outlook for that service is murky since Facebook recently acquired them. And FriendFeed also had many more features such as aggregation of social data, Lissn is just about conversations, keeping it simple. As for a business model, Lissn will show ads based on keywords within conversations, just like Google does in Gmail. Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased) The experts: Robert Scoble, Sean Parker, Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Mike Schroepfer, Chamillionaire Q: Dick, you’re working for Twitter now, what do you think? DC: I like it but on the business side, Google Ads isn’t going to work. Random conversations are hard to monetize. But I like the idea of sponsored conversations. This is kind of like Twitter meets Get Satisfaction. RS: Conversations are interesting, but I’m not sure I see enough that pulls me in here. Why would I leave Twitter to come here. MA: Twitter is all about short conversations, this takes that idea and extends it to longer conversations. RS: So why is this different from FriendFeed and soon Facebook? DC: I’ll answer this, and I want shares in the company (kidding). The answer there is the local conversation. People looking for a good pizza place in Noe Valley, etc. This is an interesting vehicle, for I want to ask questions in a local context. MS: I think there is a big separation between big conversations and the local conversations. You need to think about how to separate those out. The local conversation has to be colored by your social network, I think. It’s about your friends. RS: That was a huge problem with FriendFeed too. With too many people participating, there’s just too much. C: Right, how many people can have a conversation? Like a trending conversation on Twitter, you can go back so far, to so many message. MA: Yeah, it’s mostly about live conversations. But it’s also interesting to just listen, especially what celebrities have to say. Myke Armstrong showed off the demo of listen today at the conference. CrunchBase Information Lissn Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50: Threadsy, A Communications Stream To Rule Them All Top
Email. Twitter. Instant Messaging. Facebook. Those are just four of the most popular ways to communicate online. And actually, the average 23-year-old has 6 different accounts that they check for messages each day. Maintaining and keeping up with that is either basically impossible, or flat-out impossible. That’s where Threadsy comes in. Launching its large beta today at TechCrunch50 as a free web app, Threadsy wants to take all of your online communication and shove it into a single service. All of the messages directed at you (email and Twitter @replies, for exmaple) will be put into a single stream of message, called the “inbound” column. Meanwhile, all of the activity streams that you simply follow (Twitter, Facebook, etc), will be put into a single activity stream, the “unbound” stream. The result is one service to rule them all. The great thing about this is that you no longer have to sign into multiple accounts while remembering who is trying to communicate with you. Everyone also has a profile on Threadsy which shows all the social networks you reside on. While the thought of putting all of your communication in one place is nice, quantity will obviously be an issue. But Threadsy is more than just communication aggregation, it also promises to provide deep context about the people you are communicating with, so you can filter and manage the stream. You can also filter by the type of service (for example, only seeing tweets or Facebook messages). In terms of monetization, like a lot of other communication platforms, Threadsy will show contextual advertisements. But the service says that unlike something like Gmail, it won’t always show them, and instead will only do so when it could actually help the user. Threadsy currently looks at over 40 social sites on the web to get this information. CEO Rob Goldman and VP of Engineering Udi Nir demoed the app today at the event. Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased) The experts: Robert Scoble, Sean Parker, Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Mike Schroepfer, Chamillionaire RS: I think this is great for me. But are there enough people who will care about this? But I want it right now! RG: That’s a great point, we followed FriendFeed closely, but we’re trying to pull all the information that’s required. DC: This is the PIMP problem (personal information management). I like that this tackles that aspect of day to day problems. RH: It’s a good communications platform but Google has tried this before. It’s a tough challenge. SP: It’s beautifully built, but this is a huge challenge. But this looks very good and clean. I’m not a user of something like this, because this is more for power-users, and I don’t think all inboxes are created equal. A Facebook message is lighter than a regular email, and Twitter even less. RS: How do you make money off the stream? RG: We think current webmail misses the mark by focusing on low value ads across all message. We only want to focus on 2, 3, or 4 percent of your messages. RS: What about hooking up with Tumblr or Posterous for curation? RG: It’s exciting to see what people do with this. MA: So FriendFeed is dead to your Robert, is this it? RS: Maybe. C: It definitely depends on how it feels when you try it out. I feel like I’m cheating on my MySpace, so I think this is brilliant. How safe is this though? Everyone could get everything if they got into your account. Video: Other Coverage: Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50: Hark! Launches A Plugin To Bring Real-Time Sharing To Your Browser Top
Hark , a new startup that’s launching today at TechCrunch50 , is looking to help friends share media and webpages with each other with as little friction as possible. The company offers a browser plugin that makes it easy to share links with friends, as well as interact though an integrated chat room. The company says that there are plenty of link sharing apps, but when it comes to sharing a link from a webpage, there isn’t really a good way to do it — Emailing, Twitter, and other services can be a hassle. Hark’s plugin sits at the bottom of your screen, with a handful of buttons for sharing and a chat window that slides out of the bar. When you want to flag something as interesting, you can send out a ‘flare’, which immediately sends out a small notice to the rest of your friends that have the plugin installed. The plugin allows you to see which of your friends are online, and (depending on their settings) display which pages they’re currently browsing, so you can strike up a conversation. You can also see which other users are browsing the same page as you, and can look at their history of Flares to see if you might have something in common. Q&A with panelists Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Sean Parker, Mike Schroepfer, and Robert Scoble: RH: Downloads are hard. RS: I’m not interested in it. It’s not going to work on my iPhone or Android. I’ve seen this done before, and we had similar chat tech, I don’t see enough gain for me to go get it. A: I would say on the plug-in piece it’s a really challenge to overcome. If you look at Firefox, there have been lots of plugins. If you can provide utility to the user. MS: I would really think hard about virality. You need to have a network set up, there’s a multi-party problem. If I install and nobody else does, I don’t get anything out of it. DC: Assuming you can get past plugin challenge, is that these have novelty and then you wish things on screen would stop. How do you make it more than a cool novelty. SP: I think someone needs to do this with video.. RS: Meebo already did that, I’m not seeing this bring something new to the table. Images: Video: Other Coverage: TC50: Hark! lets friends web browse, share links together VentureBeat. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50: Twitter COO Dick Costolo Talks About His Newest "Challenge" Top
During a break at TechCrunch50, Jason Calacanis and Michael Arrington drilled new Twitter COO Dick Costolo on his new job, why he took the position and what he’s working on. Costolo, who is an early Twitter investor, said he was thinking of maybe starting his own new company, but decided instead to join Twitter because of its incredible momentum: “My first reaction was, you don't get a chance to work on potentially one of the pivotal companies. And the more I thought about it, no matter how successful you've been in the past there is a low chance of success.” Twitter’s definitely growing fast. When Michael asked him “If you were forced to trade off between growth and stability, what would you choose?” he dodged: “I am having a harder and harder time hearing your questions, and I think it is psychological.” Costolo was tight lipped about what he’s going to actually be working on, saying: “I know where the bathroom is and I just found my desk, so we’ll go from there.” Costolo, who joined Twitter after working at Google and founded RSS service Feedburner, sold the company to Google for $100 million in 2007 and recently left Google for greener pastures. If Costolo wants challenge, he’s come to the right place. As we wrote in our post reporting on his move, Costolo is someone who has actual experience building scalable infrastructures, which Twitter needs. The company hasn't launched any memorable new features, while fellow social network Facebook continues to innovate. And there’s the ongoing revenue challenge that Twitter faces. Perhaps once he figures out his dental plan and fills out his tax forms, Costolo will look to launch a few features and perhaps help Twitter figure out their downtime problem. CrunchBase Information Twitter Dick Costolo Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50: CrowdFusion Merges The Best Features Of Blogs, Wikis, And More Into One Unified CMS Top
As content sites on the web mature, they continue to blur the line between straight news sites, social hubs, and references for structured data. No longer are these sites just home to editorial content — many of them have created databases of the products they cover (take for example TC sister site CrunchBase offers a comprehensive directory of companies and people in the startup community). Unfortunately, content management systems and databases that run these increasingly diversified sites don’t always play nicely together. CrowdFusion , a TechCrunch50 finalist launching today, is an impressive new CMS system that’s looking to eliminate these hassles. To put things simply, the platform helps streamline content writing, database management, and social features by combining features of blogs, wikis, and more into one unified platform. To help give an idea of exactly what Crowd Fusion can do, the startup walked us through the process of creating a blog post. First, the CMS can present a writer with stories they might want to cover: the platform has an integrated feed reader, which can intelligently determine when there’s a breaking story that your site has yet to write about. The CMS can then facilitate actually writing the post by importing excerpts into your new posts (with links to the original articles). It can also suggest related blog posts for you to include at the bottom of your post (you can simply drag and drop to rearrange or remove the stories). Say a gadget blog wanted to write about a new phone that had just come out (today’s demo featured our super-secret iPhone Killer, the CrunchPhone). Because the CMS can integrate the site’s gadget database directly into the CMS, adding a new product is simple — you can add it to your database using a small widget on the same page that you’re writing your blog post in, without having to leave the page. And because the blog system is integrated with the product database, you can generate intuitive tables comparing multiple existing phones against the new one. CrowdFusion has a plugin architecture so it’s extensible. The company is open-sourcing the CrowdFusion platform, and will be releasing it in public beta today. Q&A with panelists Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Sean Parker, Mike Schroepfer, and Robert Scoble: DC: There are only so many blogs and companies that will need something like this. The millions of blogs out there won’t need this. We’re talking about the TechCrunch, Glams of the world. I think the challenge will be how big can you make the market? RS: He didn’t say it, but (founder) Brian Alvey built the backend for Weblogs, Engadget, big publishing sites. A: There are top publishers who know what I’ve built (big names like Engadget). But lots of people aren’t going to just immediately move over, so we open source it. Clicker is exactly the sort of thing you build on this. RH: Getting people to adopt will have a slow curve. In tech I don’t think you’re ever the last everything. I think what you’re doing is exactly right, with plug-in arch and open source. A:I’d love to be doing this for 10, 20 years. A:We’re big fans of MySQL model where you have an industrial strength free product anyone can use. We figure we can build a valuable business with scaling, hosting, etc. Videos: Other Coverage TC50: Crowd Fusion wants to be the ultimate tool for web publishing VentureBeat. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50: Find The Perfect Scene, Every Time. AnyClip Is A Search Engine For Movie Clips Top
Darth Vader’s fatherly coming out. Tinanic’s King of the World moment. There Will Be Blood’s sobering lecture on milkshakes. Whether you want to poke fun at something, embellish a love note, or just prove a point, there’s probably a movie scene out there that can help you do it. People reference scenes all the time in their daily lives, and on the web it’s not uncommon for a blogger to accentuate their post with a particularly relevant clip. But for their popularity, there still isn’t an established site that’s known as the place to find a movie clip — YouTube and Hulu are always worth a shot, but they can be very hit or miss. AnyClip , a new startup that’s launching today at TechCrunch 50, wants to be the solution, with a searchable database of movie scenes. There are, of course, other places to look for movie clips on the web. But these all have their faults: YouTube is riddled with content that may be somehow related to the scene you’re looking for, but acted out by people who most definitely aren’t the original actors. All of Hulu’s content is licensed straight from content owners so you don’t have to worry about issues with user-generated clip, but their library is still quite limited. To help make the search engine as accurate and thorough as possible, AnyClip draws its data from a number of sources: first, it has compiled publically available data on the web and associated it with each film. The site has also created a Mechanical Turk-style operation, with a team of humans inputting meta data for each film (workers are contributing from all over the world, with most of them coming from the US and Israel). On average, each film in the database has 500 tags. The site is also launching a public API, which will allow developers to query its database of movie clips from their applications. SP: The content deals are really hard. A: Yes, they’re very challenging. We’re in discussions with everyone. Mickey Schulhof (former Sony of America CEO) is a principle investor. SP: I’ve seen deals like this take a decade… A: Everyone has an emphasis on long from, but nobody is paying attention to the short formats. As a result you can acquire content for less than you would elsewhere. SP: I think fear is a big factor, and if you’re focusing on short form content you may be able to overcome some of that fear. RH: I think you’ll be competing with tags on YouTube clips. Another question is I would elaborate some kind of discovery. One of the other things is that people will only type so much on a search, but they’ll keep clicking on things. And the more money you make the more the studios will try to renegotiate deals to take that.. A: We invigorate interest with these clips, so it helps them. Jason Calacanis: If not all the studios sign up. What do you think you can do with fair use? Could you do 15 seconds of content? A: I’m not that interested in having tons of content that they don’t want us to have. We can’t build a business on the backs of their content illegally and hope it works. Over time we will get it all. AnyClip is a dream, a vision. We can start with very comprehensive comedy, or horror coverage. JC: Do you see this going into other verticals, like AnySportsClip? A: There’s a reason we didn’t name it AnyMovieClip. But we’re on film now because they’re used to selling it. SP: I totally believe your argument that this allows studios to better monetize back catalog. Lets people monetize stuff that there would be no other reason to talk about. This is the kind of thing that absolutely should happen. But it will take twice as you long to make those details. Images: Videos: Other Coverage: TC50: AnyClip searches movies for quotes, famous moments VentureBeat. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50 Backstage: Well, Tell us How you REALLY Feel, Tim O'Reilly Top
Conference organizer, publisher and investor Tim O’Reilly doesn’t mince words. In this video he talks candidly about what he hated at TechCrunch50 today, what he loved and what excites him about the Web right now. O’Reilly is a consummate thought leader in the Valley so the interview is interesting for anyone. But if you’re planning on actually pitching O’Reilly on anything this is required viewing. Oh, he also explains what he and the Cookie Monster have in common. Video is on the jump. (Sorry for the abrupt edits. Trying to keep these interviews on the short-side.) CrunchBase Information Tim O’Reilly Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50: Perpetually.com Is A Time Machine For The Web Top
One of the best things about the web — its constantly evolving, easily modifiable nature — can also be one of its most frustrating faults. Because usually when a website modifies its content, any changes overwrite what came before it, sometimes without leaving a trace of the old content. Perpetually.com , a new site launching today at TechCrunch50 , is looking to solve this problem by offering companies a way to easily back up their sites. The company says that every year, 5-8% of ‘bookmarked’ content vanishes from the web as pages are modified and removed. Perpetually helps solve this problem by recording a history of every change on your site. And Perpetually doesn’t just keep a copy of this content in an ugly search engine archive — you can actually view the content in context, as it originally appeared on the site. You can even select a specific portion of a site that you’d like to focus on and scroll through its history in-line with the rest of the page. The interface is very slick, and is reminiscent of what you’ll find with Apple’s Time Machine backup software. You can also browse through a visual history of your website using an interface that’s similar to Apple’s Cover Flow feature. To get started, companies just have to tell the Perpetually.com service to start monitoring their sites, and the service will do the rest. There’s no software or plugins to install. At this point the service doesn’t allow you to index content behind a password wall, though it sounds like this may be available in the future. Customers can elect to keep their records totally private, for peace of mind. However, users can also use the software to monitor changes on publicly available sites. Of course, there are already some well-established efforts to create a historical record of the web, like the Internet Archive ’s WayBack Machine. But these have their limitations: for one, it’s not really feasible for services like this to track every change on a site, as the processing and space costs would be extreme. The company already has some impressive clients, including the design team over at The Wall Street Journal. Q&A with panelists Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Sean Parker, Mike Schroepfer, and Robert Scoble: RH: it would be valuable to create configured accounts. The freemium could be try it for two weeks then pay. It’s better to let users test something out before paying. SP: you are going to need the benefits of the freemium model. A: Freemium is not what we have today. RS: The business challenge will be convincing the New York Times to use this. RS: How does the customers ad dollars get protecting (the publisher). Jason: HAve you considered making this a tool that the NYTimes can make public on their site that lets people see past homepages. A; Its up to the publisher to do that. We are open to that. Images: Videos: Other Coverage TC50:Perpetually creates a personalized Internet archive VentureBeat. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50: Insttant Harnesses Twitter To Create A Real-Time News And Analysis Engine Top
Twitter has established itself as the best place to find real time information, but anyone who has tried using its native search engine at search.twitter.com has probably found that it leaves a lot to be desired — aside from the day’s ‘top trends’, Twitter does very little to help surface results that are worthwhile. TC50 finalist Instattant may have the answer. The startup has built a new engine for monitoring real-time news, that can also be leveraged to track brands, ad campaigns, and basically everything else that pops up on Twitter. The site features an analytics platform that can perform semantic analysis on Tweets as they come in — in other words, it can tell what a tweet is talking about, and if it has a positive or negative sentiment. The site can also identify links and media that are rapidly rising in popularity, and displays headlines in real-time as they come in. For Tweets with media, the site allows users to view photos and play videos inline. The top of the site features a list of headlines, detailing some top trends being seen on Twitter (for example, it could say that 77% of the tweets about the movie Extract are positive). If you’re interested about a certain topic or person, you can run a search for them and the site will present a list of top headlines related to that query, along with quick stats about the keyword’s appearances. If you run a search on a user, you can see what other users they’re related to and how much influence they have. To help further refine searches Insttant can filter by location, so you can hone in on tweets that most relevant to you. Q&A with panelists Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Sean Parker, Mike Schroepfer, and Robert Scoble: DC: I think market for this for advertisers/marketers it’s great. But I think it would be hard to make this appealing to end users and advertisers at once. MS: Do you track all topics, is there a limit to what topics? How real time is it? A: It’s all topics. We’ll look at “Toyota is___”, “I don’t like ___”. To help determine what something is. RH: I think that getting a lot of different versions of analysis of what’s happening on the real time web is interesting. I think it will be challenging to have a user experience where users are participating in the real time web, and also offering an analytic overlay. I think this would be good for marketers. Video: Other Coverage: TC50: Insttant provides a snapshot of real-time news VentureBeat. Insttant.com – Real Time People Generated News at TechCrunch50 YouVox. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50: Thoora Brings The Day's News Cycle Into Clouds Of Content Top
As the news moves away from traditional media outlets to encompass more blogs and social media, trying to follow the news cycle on the web can be an excercise in futility. There are some great topic-specific sites (the TC staff are all avid readers of Techmeme ). But when it comes to monitoring the news across all topics, many of the current offerings, like Google News, can fall short — oftentimes intresting news sources are ignored, or stories are missed entirely. Thoora , a new site that’s launching today in private beta at TechCrunch50 , thinks it has the answer. The site offers an automated system that aggregates news stories from blogs, traditional media, and tweets, and groups them into “story clouds”. But rather than pay attention to a news site’s authority, Thoora is concerned with how interesting and unique a post is — this isn’t just about the top 100 blogs on the web. The company says that it will find blog posts about a breaking news story, even if nobody else has linked to them (provided they’re interesting, of course). You can easily see how many total blogs and news stories have been published about a story, as well as interesting stats like when the story first broke and how popular it is on Twitter. Users can browse through the site by category (the site includes sections on Entertainment, Businesses, Lifestyle, and more) as well as a section that features recently controversial content. The system is also built to handle the real-time web. As bloggers, Twitter users, and other news sites jump on to a breaking story, Thoora will let you watch as new posts come in. Q&A with panelists Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Sean Parker, Mike Schroepfer, and Robert Scoble: RS: How will you remove noise? A: There are two kinds of stories. We’re going to separate older ones and the ones as they break in real time. RH: The question of news aggregation as a business model has not been solved. Also how to differentiate from Google News. Sustainable competitive edge. DC: You have things like Techmeme. Even when you innovate on UI, you don’t see people flocking to those, I’m not sure why. A: We’re opening up beta today for the first 2000 people to sign up. We’ve built in social integration so you can share. SP: You need a dist. strategy. Either something that’s viral or organic. This is a crowded space, dealing with lots of permutations of the same features. Video: Other Coverage: TC50: Does the world need another news aggregator? Thoora thinks it does VentureBeat. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
WITTC50?: Courtesy of the red, white and blue? Let's show some at TC50 Top
Day two of TechCrunch 50, and the TC50 Drinking Game is in full swing. So far, we’ve seen jokes made at the expense of Arrington, Jason alluding to his personal wealth and countless “great question”s. But disappointingly there has been no real controversy  either from the panel of experts or the startups. Thank Calacanis, then, for The American flag. TechCrunch50 may be organised and sponsored by Americans but one of the best things about it is that it attracts start-ups from around the globe. To my right, there’s a chap speaking in German to his colleague, yesterday an Indian startup – iMo – was the  darling of the day, and half of my friends from London seem to have made the journey across the Atlantic so they don’t miss out on the fun. Each year there’s the inevitable criticism – even from conference judges like Yossi Vardi – that the event is weighted too heavily towards Silicon Valley. But, by and large, that geographical bias is just a natural result of the fact that Silicon Valley has the highest concentration of potential applicants, and also that it’s easier and cheaper to get the Caltrain from Palo Alto to get to the conference than it is to fly in from London, Lisbon or Bangalore. You could equally say that Le Web has a French bias or that DLD has a German bias. And yet. And yet… What kind of message does it send that first thing a non-US entrepreneur sees when they arrive at the conference  is a gigantic American flag on the main stage? Moreover, what does it say to non-US startups who are lucky enough to be pitching that the flag is positioned right next to the judges’ desk? I mentioned this to Arrington yesterday and he agreed with me, without hesitation. More accurately he said “at least we’re not starting with the national anthem like last year.” Ok, so it took him until the very end of the day for it to be moved from the stage, and that was only after I’d build a site called ‘ Istheamericanflagstillthere.com ‘ – but at least it had been moved. This morning, though, the flag was back. For an hour. And then it was removed again. It was only then I realised what was going on. Jason Calacanis kindly came over to explain. “This is America, buddy – the flag stays”. Sure enough, he’d dispatched a poor staffer to replace it. And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. I don’t know what to say, really. I love America. I left my home country to move here so I could visit and write about conferences such as TechCrunch50. Many of the thousands of people in this hall feel the same way. We have no issue with American patriotism, or with the flag being flown in schools, public buildings and private homes. It’s your country, and we don’t have to be here. But, you know what? It’s just not appropriate to fly the Stars and Stripes on stage at a global conference. It smacks of arrogance, xenophobia and ignorance. The same arrogance, xenophobia and ignorance that lead to right-wing commentators forcing (then) Senator Obama to wear a flag pin, lest he be considered a terrorist sympathiser. If any American in the hall is so insecure in their patriotism that they need a flag in their line of sight at all times, then I humbly suggest they invest in a flag pin or an ‘America: Love it or leave it’ t-shirt. It’s not like they cost much (thanks China!). Hell, you can even strap a handgun to your thigh and listen to a Toby Keith album on your iPod during the foreign pitches if you like. But please – and I implore you this as someone who loves America so much that I moved here – don’t let your personal politics turn a brilliantly welcoming and positive conference into something else. Something that is starting to resemble a grandstanding game of capture the flag. Oh! Hey! What’s this? As I write these words, Arrington has just walked on to the stage, picked up the flag and carried it away. Good. It’s the right call, not for reasons of nationalism or patriotism, but simply as a gesture of openness and respect for those visiting from overseas. Two traits that, since the country’s inception, the majority of Americans have held dear. And I’m pretty sure the German guy sitting next to me, the Indian guy behind me and, yeah, the majority of Americans in the rest of room would agree with me. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
MySpace Has Built Its Own Recommendation Engine, And They're Open-Sourcing It Top
As social networks continue to grow in size, recommendation engines are becoming a more vital part to each of them. So vital, in fact, that MySpace has built its own. Called Qizmt , this internally-developed framework was created by the Data Mining team at MySpace. You can see it in action right now with the “People You May Know” feature. But soon, MySpace plans to roll it out to other areas of the site for recommendations soon. More importantly, MySpace plans to open-source the technology for anyone to use. They made the announcement today at the Computerworld Conference in Chicago. From a technical perspective, MySpace explains it as such: What makes Qizmt unique is that it was developed using C#.NET specifically for Windows platforms. This extends the rapid development nature of the .NET environment to the world of large scale data crunching and enables .NET developers to easily leverage their skill set to write MapReduce functions. Not only is Qizmt easy to use but based on our internal benchmarks we have shown its processing speeds to be competitive with the leading MapReduce open source projects on a lesser number of cores. MySpace says it has published the code for Qizmt today. They also note that they have recently open-sourced MSFast, a service they built to help developers track page load performance. Rival Facebook has been doing a bit of its own open-sourcing recently. Last week, they opened up Tornado , the platform that help to power FriendFeed, which they recently acquired . CrunchBase Information MySpace Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50: Everyday Investors Can Help Startups "IPO" On The Sprowtt Marketplace Top
TechCrunch 50 startup Sprowtt has a radical, yet potentially compelling idea launching today—the startup lets ordinary startups and small businesses conduct a “Sprowtt IPO,” which is basically similar to the traditional IPO process. Via Sprowtt, anyone can participate in the funding of companies. Potential investors log on to the site, set up a profile with detailed financial and bank account information. Then they are given a list of companies they can invest in based on their financial capabilities. Investors can check out videos of startups, the amount of money the startup has already raised, and their products and see detailed business plans, on which investors can share their comments. Potential investors can also access the offering circulars and shareholder agreements for the startup. Once an investor decides to put money into a company, he signs the stock subscription agreement, enters the number of shares he wishes to purchase and then the funds are held in escrow until the offering is complete, which happens when the minimum amount for an offering is accumulated. Sprowtt helps to transfer the funds from an investor’s account to the startup. The Sprowtt platform automates the entire stock offering process, including legal compliance in all states and with the SEC and draws up all of the legal documents (i.e. the shareholder agreement, offering circular) for the startups participating in the marketplace. But it’s not cheap for a startup to do this—Sprowtt says that if a company wants to sell $5 million worth of stock, it will cost them roughly $10,000-$25,000 in compliance fees to IPO. When there are enough investors for a startup’s IPO, Sprowtt forms a company with these investors, and then invests the chunk of money as an entity instead of as individual investments . Also in the traditional IPO process, a company’s shares go on an exchange, like the Nasdaq, where they can be bought or sold. With Sprowtt’s IPO, there is no exchange, so it’s more of a private investment than an actual IPO. Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased) The experts: Satish Dharmaraj, Lior Zorea, Bradley Horowitz, Tim O’Reilly, Kevin Rose BH: These companies are all subject to the same restrictions in any other marketplace? A: We’ve consulted with law firms, they crafted business model, everything is dealt with SEC and Federal government. It’s complex. BH: Do you vet companies? A: Yes, we do. TO: I’m confused. This doesn’t change stock and compliance. Once you are public, you incur those costs. A: The automation helps with this. TO: Read Eric Ries’ blog to vet businesses. SD: When someone buys shares, do they get dividends. A: It’s all freely tradeable stock. Sort of an alternate to Nasdaq. KR: How do you plan on attracted companies that aren’t oversubscribed? A: It’s a big question for us-how to we keep best deals there. But this is a compelling model. Jason: Which law firm has vetted this? A: Working with legal counsel. We have had legal counsel in Silicon Valley that has a presence in DC with the SEC. There are things that the law firm will put their stamp on and some that they don’t. LZ: I think IPOs are on their way back. It’s an interesting idea that other folks have looked at it. Based on my practice, I’m skeptical of this. Securities laws were put in place to protect the folks that didn’t have the means to lose their investments. There are difficult challenges in the securities side. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50: Glide Health Lets Docs And Patients Access Health Records Across Mobile And Desktop Platforms Top
The online medical records space is growing fast; with Microsoft, Google and others trying their hand at products that could eventually become the go-to platform for accessing health records online. TechCrunch50 startup Glide Health, which was spun off from Transmedia, is hoping to give these tech giants a run for their money with its web, desktop and mobile apps that provide a centralized repository for patient records. Glide Health’s web and desktop apps hold patient profiles (which can be created by the patient or doctor) that contain pertinent medical information such as insurance information, family medical history, doctors, past test results, past surgeries and procedures, x-rays and more. This browser app is based on the same synchronization engine that powers Glide’s previously launched collaboration OS software; however, this product has been specifically designed for the healthcare space. Today, Glide Health is launching an application for patients, doctors and healthcare professionals to access and manage healthcare from their desktops or mobile phones.  All the data syncs no matter where it is updated across legacy patient management systems and databases. Via the mobile and desktop apps, doctors can manage patient records and health history as well as save any communication about patients between other doctors and professionals. Doctors can also schedule appointments from mobile phones, prescribe medications and write prescriptions directly to pharmacies from the mobile app. Doctors can submit dictations to the Glide Health platform via the mobile app, which will then be transcribed. On the patient side, the mobile app lets users travel with their complete medical history and records wherever they go. The patients can also document and archive any communications with doctors and healthcare professionals as well as access WebMD-like information about personal health and fitness, health news, support groups, insurance policies and health facilities. The platform lets doctors and patients upload health records, transcripts, x-rays and other medical information and images. Glide Health makes money by charging medical professional an annual fee; but the app will be available to patients for free (if their doctor uses the program). Synchronizing medical data across legacy systems is a huge challenge, especially when security is an issue but Glide Health’s Founder and CEO Donald Leka assures that the app is extremely secure and built with several security and privacy layers. Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased) The experts: Satish Dharmaraj, Don Dodge, Bradley Horowitz, Tim O’Reilly, Kevin Rose LZ: barriers, regulatory privacy issues comment? AA: privacy is important, we lost sight of that-we see tremendous benefits from products we see in the market today. We provide a rights spaced environment for sharing. LZ: going to charge providers-how to make the case to switch from previous management systems. A: Have doctors who are investing into these platform, The selling point is the abandonment of traditional models, with a revenue share of ad revenue with doctors. TO: I like the vision of what you like to do except for the advertising. I have a hard time believing you have solved these problems. A: We’ve built the platform-the selling point is universal compatibility. Signed agreements, but launched today. KR: Doctors have to be on the platform for thus to work? A: We are starting with doctors groups to get leverage on the platforms. Video: Other Coverage: Techcrunch 50: Glide Health Geekfluence. CrunchBase Information Glide Health Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50: Have You Considered Tele-Psychiatry? Schedule A Session With BreakThrough Top
Mental illness is a more common affliction in society than most people think. But, many people are embarrassed to admit and confront their mental illness. According to TechCrunch50 startup BreakThrough, one in four American adults have a mental illness but two-thirds of Americans don’t get proper treatment. BreakThrough hopes to provide an easy and private way to connect mental health providers with clients for therapy via video, phone or the web through their newly launched platform. On BreakThrough’s site, clients can search for providers (including psychiatrists, psychologists and nurses) on a variety of criteria, including price, speciality (i.e. depression, schizophrenia, post traumatic stress disorder), and gender. On a provider’s page you can see his or her education, experience, pricing for services, the insurance the professional accepts, and even a video introduction of the provider explaining his or her specialities. BreakThrough certifies all providers are credentialed professionals. If you find a provider that suits your needs, you can see available appointments and schedule an appointment to chat via video chat (via Skype), email or the phone. And you can remain anonymous throughout the process; all you need is an email address to participate in the site. The virtue of BreakThrough is in this anonymity—people may be embarrassed to publicly acknowledge their potential mental illnesses to the public and the site gives people a way to do this in the comfort of their own home. Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased) The experts: Satish Dharmaraj, Lior Zorea, Bradley Horowitz, Tim O’Reilly, Kevin Rose KR: Is anyone else doing this? A: There are advice platforms, but they don’t have licensed providers. Some platforms don’t have the technology. TO: How do you get therapists to participate? A: We have a log of providers who are interested. TO: How do you qualify them? A: We only get licenses medical therapists and make sure to authenticate all professionals. LZ: On the trust side, I’m worried that these are personal issues. Why would you log on to the internet? Also there is a liability issue with fraud, malpractice. A: We aren’t trying to replace in person treatment. BH: Is there something sad about this? A: It’s asking a lot for someone with depression to admit to this publicly. Ten years ago, this would have been a concern. But now we do so much online. TO: Advice-you might consider working with employee assistance programs. SD: Do shrinks learn from body language? A: Yes, shrinks prefer video chat. But therapists can also tell a lot from phone. Images: Video: Other Coverage: Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50: LearnVest Is A Personal Financial Guide For Women Top
Now more than ever, personal finance education and help is crucial to anyone’s financial health. Mint.com, a former TechCrunch 40 company who won the top prize at the conference, has grown incredibly since its launch and was recently acquired by Intuit for $170 million. TechCrunch50 startup LearnVest is serving a different purpose when it comes to online finances; the startup focuses on helping users, particularly women, organize their finances and learn how to become financially savvy. It’s kind of like the online version of financial planner Suze Orman. When you first log in to LearnVest, the site will ask you a series of questions about your financial health (i.e. how much credit card debt do you have), you life stages (i.e. do you rent, are you planning a family soon, do you own a house) and your financial education level (i.e. have you checked your credit score lately). LearnVest will use all this information to diagnose your financial health and education level and will then give you a snapshot of what you need to learn and improve. LearnVest will then give you a customized plan of things you need to do to do and read via a checklist. Sort of like a cheat sheet, the checklist will help you navigate a range of issues such as getting out of credit card debt, budgeting for a wedding, buying a house and much more. As you complete the tasks on the list, you check off each box and earn points for your improvements. Points will give you status in LearnVest’s community and you can eventually trade in points for rewards. As you keep logging on to LearnVest, the site will be completely customized for your financial profile, providing you with news articles that relate to your specific financial goals. LearnVest also aims to be a social community of sorts, where users can ask questions on discussion forums to other users and to experts as well, although I’m not sure how many women will want to share their financial woes with others. Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased) The experts: Satish Dharmaraj, Lior Zorea, Bradley Horowitz, Tim O’Reilly, Kevin Rose BH: This didn’t resonate with me. I don’t know any one who wants to do gaming on this site. KR: I don’t think people will want to admit to debt with a profile. A: we are going after targeted audience, there’s no resource online for financial advice. financial services online for women is a huge market and need. LZ: I like the financial education part of this. I think it will be hard to get people to stay. A: You can open accounts through us, you can execute as well. We are learning from uur user’s behavior. Currently, there is no one helping women forecast their financial future. LearnVest stops this problem. Images: Video: Other Coverage: TC50: LearnVest walks users through life's financial milestones VentureBeat. TechCrunch50: Women get short shrift LA Times. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50: Cocodot Is The Stylish, Prettier, More Social Evite Top
Online event planning and invitation platform Evite was on the forefront of innovation— ten years ago. TechCrunch50 startup Cocodot is hoping to be the Evite of this generation of web technology, serving a style-conscious, eco-friendly event platform that people and brands can use to create an online presence for celebrations. Cocodot’s platform, which is targeted towards women, is a one-stop-shop for event planning and invitations. You can create a high resolution, chic, stylish invitation (that can be printed as well), a vertical event pages, guest management tools, seating charts, and a directory for event planning vendors. When you create event, you can build an event homepage that aims to be a social conversation hub. Once you create an invitation, you can import your contact lists from Yahoo, Gmail, AOL and other contact managers and email services. Cocodot also lets you send links to the event homepage and invitation to Facebook, directly from the platform. Cocodot is also getting into the online greeting space, letting user create a simple “happy birthday” or “Thank you” online card. The graphics and styles are actually pretty impressive. Users can adjust color and text, move the graphics and text and even offers a “copy concierge” to help people think of thoughtful sayings. Unsurprisingly, Cocodot is going after the wedding industry by providing high-end printable online invitations and a event management platform. Cocodot also lets you embed custom event widgets on other sites and features a variety of design-friendly templates. Cocodot plans to make money from subscriptions and per use fees and will sell virtual goods. The startup is also positioning itself to be eco-friendly, by saving paper from sending out invitations. Cocodot will make money via ad revenue, premium features, virtual gifts and through product lines and licensing designs. Cocodot was launched by former MySpace CMO Shawn Gold and raised just under $1 million of seed funding earlier this summer from investors like Anthem Venture Partners and William Morris’ Mail Room Fund . Cocodot is similar to Pinng, which we wrote about here. Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased) The experts: Satish Dharmaraj, Lior Zorea, Bradley Horowitz, Tim O’Reilly, Kevin Rose BH: I don’t want to like this but I think the world needs this. The exisiting invitation tools are not sufficient and this could take off. TO: You think about a company like Hallmark, its a huge business opportunity, and I think you are thinking like a business, will probably be successful. SD: I think you should try to differentiate yourself a little more. What happens after the event is booked? LZ: I like what you guys are doing. How do you get consumer mind share out ther for the product, particularly in teh case of weddings. A: Every invitation is virally marketed because its branded with Cocodut. We are going to do partnerships with other sites like DailyCandy and pursue a revenue share. We are going after PR agencies and companies that don’t like Evite and are using PDF’s, not taking advantage of he efficiencies in the digital medium. Images: Video: Outside Coverage: Cocodot – For Overdoing Invitations #tc50 techgeist. Cocodot creates a slicker version of Evite VentureBeat. TechCrunch50: A ‘Elegant’ Evite and More Subscription Services AppScout. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 

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