Tuesday, September 15, 2009

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TC50: Demopit Winner Chyngle Creates In-Pocket Mobile Marketing Apps For Stadiums Top
What if the next time you went to a football game, there was an iPhone app for that stadium that listed all the bathrooms nearest you, all the food stalls (with menus and the ability to order from your seat), a button to contact medical assistance, and the ability to find car pools back home? One of today’s Demopit winners at TechCrunch50 is Chyngle , has created a branded app for the University of Michigan which does just that. Chyngle’s branded apps use GPS to find out your location and discover services and people nearby. It shows them as red dots on a seating chart of the stadium. If you want to order a slice of pizza, you can send an SMS message to one of the pizza vendors and they will deliver it to your seat. CEO Todd Sullivan calls it “in-pocket marketing.” If you want to find tickets for sale by other fans or a ride home, the app lets you call them anonymously (the calls are routed through Chyngle). The company charges the venue a $2,000 a month for the app, and can create custom apps for any event location. During the Q&A, the judges suggest changing the name. “My second company was called Plaxo,” says Sean Parker, “people thought it was a dental problem.” They also suggested making it a free app and creating different ones for every big venue like Madison Square Gardens Todd Sullivan Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50 Backstage: Reid Hoffman on a LinkedIn IPO and What Startups May Beat Him Out Top
Here’s the thing I love about Reid Hoffman. There’s no “We-don’t-comment-on-rumors-and-speculation” BS with him. You ask him a question and he gives you an answer. So you don’t need a bunch of words from me, just go to the jump and watch our final backstage interview of the conference where Hoffman talks about whether LinkedIn will buy Xing and whether it’ll file to go public this year. Also, Hoffman names the three other tech companies he thinks can price pretty much whenever they want. (And lucky him, he’s an investor in two.) CrunchBase Information Reid Hoffman Information provided by CrunchBase CrunchBase Information LinkedIn Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50: Demopit Winner Socialwok Lays A Great Social Layer Over Google Apps Top
Google Docs has changed the landscape of computing office suites. By moving everything to the cloud, accessing documents is easier now than it ever has been. But unlike a lot of the other things Google is working on, Google Docs isn’t particularly social. Socialwok , a startup that won the demopit competition today at TechCrunch50 adds a great social layer to Google Docs. Right now, if you want to share a document via Google Docs, most people do it by emailing it to other users. The process to do this is very clunky — even though Google obviously runs not only Google Docs, but a hugely popular email service, Gmail. If you try to IM a document to someone, you either have to make it fully public, or put a persons email address in to make sure they’re on a safe list for that document. Socialwok simplifies all of this immensely because its a social network that wraps around these documents. But it’s not just Google Docs, it’s really a lot of Google Apps. You can see YouTube video, and Google Calendar events from Socialwok too. And Calendar integration is particularly nice because you can update and post items right from your stream. If you are a FriendFeed user, Socialwok will look very familiar — the UI is nearly identical. The difference is that rather than having YouTube videos, tweets, and the like in your stream, you have all the various kinds of Google documents. This even includes the still-in-beta-testing Google Wave. You can leave comments on these items (or if it’s Google Wave, pull in the whole Wave), as well as easily share via the various social networks including Twitter, Facebook and yes, FriendFeed. There is also a Twitter-esque, “What are you doing now” box to input messages. Obviously, security has to be a concern here. Not all of your documents have to be shared with everyone in your Socialwok network. But there are groups you can create to limit document sharing. Socialwok has a mobile interface that is just as robust as the web interface. They built the mobile website relying heavily on HTML5, so it works as well as Gmail’s mobile web app works, we’re told. But what’s really great with Socialwok is that rather than having to sign up for yet another social network, you sign in to Socialwok simply by using your Google credentials (the ones tied to your Google Docs account). The company has been working pretty extensively with Google to get all of this working so seamlessly. Simply put, if Google doesn’t buy these guys, they should seriously consider emulating many of the things they are doing or at least heavily promoting what they’re doing. (If there isn’t enough Google tie-ins for you already, all of Socialwok runs on Google App Engine .) Until then, the business model for Socialwok is a freemium model. There will be a basic free version and paid subscriptions will get additional administrative features and dedicated support. Watch more in the demo video below: 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 Backstage: Why Dick Costolo Joined Twitter and the Magic Acquisition Number Top
It’s 5 p.m. and we’re in the homestretch! The experts and the Twitterers seem to be less impressed with the companies this afternoon than the ones this morning. That or we’re all just getting tired after 40-something demos. So lucky for us that some of the most influential and interesting judges were left for the final panel. I caught up with one of my favorites, Dick Costolo, who most people know as the new COO of Twitter, others know as the former co-founder of Feedburner and far fewers know as a former improv comedian. Costolo and I talked about why he gave up a plush post-acquisition Chicago life to move to Silicon Valley and run the day-to-day Twitter operations, when it’s a good idea to hire your friends and when it isn’t, Twitter’s magic acquisition number, and why startup M&A is like teenage crushes. Also, Twitter CEO Evan Williams has been outspoken about not enjoying his time at Google after the Blogger acquisition. Others have cited that as a reason Twitter may not sell to Google in the future. I asked Costolo whether he had the same experience. Video is on the jump. CrunchBase Information 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: Meet The Whuffie, A New Currency That's Based On Your Online Reputation Top
It’s a sad fact of life that many of the most insightful and helpful people on the web (and in real life, for that matter) aren’t financially rewarded for their efforts — they may well be satisfied with the good they’ve done, but that doesn’t help to pay the rent. The Whuffie Bank , a new non-profit organization that’s launching today at TechCrunch50 , wants to fix this by launching a new currency that rewards people for their positive contributions on the web. The startup is hoping to promote change in the web by rewarding users with a positive impact on the web with this karma-like digital currency. The service will monitor your activity across various websites, including things like comments, posts, and more. When you complete positive actions, you gain Whuffies, and you lose them when you do something that the organization deems to be detrimental. The company hopes that as we use the web more and more in our day-to-day life this positivity will extend beyond the web. To get started you enter your username on Twitter (Facebook support will be coming). The site displays how many Whuffies you have, along with a graph of your progress over time. The site ranks its users by Whuffies, in the hopes of helping surface the top users in different fields. The algorithm takes into account ‘public endorsements’, or the number of times a user’s tweets are retweeted, or a Facebook post is Liked. It also takes into account who is making the endorsement, and the content in the messages that are being posted. You can make offers to other users using Whuffies as payment (for example, I could ask someone to help me draw a logo, offering 100 Whuffies as payment). The company says it was inspired by the Creative Common nonprofit model. The name comes from Cory Doctorow’s book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Q&A with panelists Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Sean Parker, Mike Schroepfer, Chamillionaire, and Robert Scoble: RH: The problem with this kind of currency is you need banking system… There are people on the web whose political views mean nothing to me. This will be very difficult, but as a concept I think it’s cool. DC: I was thinking about Reid’s comment and the interesting thing about virtual currencies is that even when they’re not scarce, you can make people think they’re scarce. In Zynga, chips cost a certain amount of money. It’s a challenge to incite scarcity, but you can do it. We’ve seen things like this before. Chamillionaire: I want to hear in one line, what do I get? Seems like a lot of work.. A: We try to have ways to detect people who are trying to exploit the system. This project isn’t sustained on accumulation of work or capital. In order to be wealthy, you have to be respected by other people that are important. Calacanis: Mike, doesn’t Facebook have a social currency going on that’s unspoken? MS: I think the devil is in the details. It depends on context. I could say they have lots of likes and comments. It means they post interesting things, but what does that mean. A: Purpose of making this non-profit. Guaranteed that it would make this independent of any social platform out there, ensures transparency. Images Video: Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50: Clixtr Launches Location-Aware Photo Sharing For The iPhone Top
We’ve all been there: the classic group photo, with twelve friends side by side doing their best to look as happy as humanly possible. The first shot is easy — but wait, the guy next to you has their own camera, so it’s time for another one. And then another. Soon muscle fatigue kicks in, and those happy smiles fade into grimaces as everyone wonders why isn’t an easier way to share their photos. Cue Clixtr , a new location-based photo sharing platform that’s launching today at TechCrunch50 . The app is available on the App Store now, and you can download it now for $2.99 here . Clixtr’s service is primarily designed for concerts, weddings, and other major events where lots of people are taking lots of photos, with no good way to aggregate them all together. The service revolves around an iPhone application that uses the smartphone’s integrated camera, data connection, and GPS to faciliate quick photo uploads to a shared album. Using it is simple: take a photo, and upload it to Clixtr. If the app detects that you’re near where a lot of other people are uploading media, it will group them into an album. You can browse these albums directly from the iPhone app in a stream view. You can also use an ‘explore’ function, which uses the phone’s GPS to locate any events that are going on at any nearby events. To create an event, you simply enter a descriptive name, and then invite friends who are nearby to view and participate in the album. Of course, photo sharing sites have been around for ages. But few of them are really based around location — instead, you usually have to create an album and manually invite each of your friends. If you don’t have someone’s contact information they’re out of luck, and the whole process can be time consuming and tedious. Q&A with panelists Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Sean Parker, Mike Schroepfer, and Robert Scoble: MS: I think that was awesome. I’m curious how you can do mapping to events. Do you have to be invited. Michael Arrington: full disclosure for MS, at some point, you will have location. MS: It’s something we’d like to do… A: When you launch the application, we show events that are nearby. Events are server side and sent back donw. RS: My phone doesn’t let you do anything while it uploads the photo. But it’s a nice install. Don’t have to do signup. Q: How does it make money A: Costs less than a cup of coffee at 2.99. Possibly location based advertising. RH: I think doing local photo could be good. I would up incentive for participation. One thing that could be distinctive for when Facebook app starts doing their own. If all my friends are already on graph A (Facebook), that’s hard. You’ll need to up level of incentive to participate. DC: I would look at what Foursquare is doing, with the game element. People want to be mayor of a certain place. Video: 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: Simply Add A Social Network To Any Site With Stribe Top
The idea of adding a social network to any site is a compelling one. Currently, most sites do this by creating their own networks using service like Facebook Groups and Ning. But those obviously aren’t actually your own site, they are other sites set up under your site’s name. Stribe’s goal is to move the network back onto your site. The service, opening to the public today at Techcrunch50 , provides a free and easy way to place a social networking layer over any site. This layer exists on your site in the form of a bar at the bottom of the page. This is not unlike the Meebo chat bar that you may have seen on this site and others recently. But Meebo was really only about chat (and sharing), Stribe wants this bar to be a full-fledged social network on your site, including members, comments, and yes, chat. Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect offer some of this functionality, but again, that’s not actually your social network, it’s Google or Facebook’s social layer laid on top of your site. As such, neither of those are very customizable, at all. Stribe is completely customizable if you know what you’re doing (or have a developer who does). Maybe you don’t want the bar at the bottom of the site — you can move it. Maybe you don’t want it to be the default black — you can change it. But if you just want the defaults, it’s as easy as installing one bit of JavaScript code onto your site to get it working. People who register to be a member of your site by way of Stribe also become members of the larger Stribe community. This means that if you have a friend who is a member of another Stribe-powered network, you can still chat with them even when you’re on different sites. Stribe will run on the “freemium” model, offering much of their service for free, but charging a fee to those customers who are of a certain size (according to site traffic). That will range from $10 to $50 a month to use Stribe to create a social network for your site. CEO Kamel Zeroual and CTO Gael Delalleau presented at the conference today. Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased) The experts: Robert Scoble, Sean Parker, Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Mike Schroepfer, Chamillionaire MS: No integration with any social network there now? Was that intentional? KZ: The point is that you just need to control and see what is going on, on YOUR website. DC: 37Signals says that sometimes products do too much, you should do less. With many product, you can do too many things, and it becomes difficult to figure out what to use it for. KZ: The low-hanging fruit is the community, but we’re trying to reach out to different markets. C: Are you saying, if I’m Walgreens, this will turn it into a social network? This is different from Twitter, you are just at a site and you want to interact. KZ: That’s exactly the point, man. RS: Enterprises already have tools like this thought. What makes this different? KZ: There are a lot of sites that don’t want to use someone else to become a social network. Images: Video: Other Coverage Connected communities matter: Introducing Stribe Stribe. CrunchBase Information Stribe Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50: Radiusly Aims To Put Twitter In A More Professional Setting Top
While Facebook continues to grow, and some companies are getting more comfortable with using it for things like Pages, LinkedIn still fills the gap for users who want a more professional setting for social networking. A new service launching in public beta today at TechCrunch50 , Radiusly , wants to take the idea of Twitter and put it in more of a professional setting, as well. But unlike Facebook and LinkedIn which exist as two totally separate networks, Radiusly wants to integrate its service with Twitter. Users will be able to publish an update they leave on Radiusly to Twitter (and Facebook, as well). But the key selling-point is that in the Radiusly environment you can also do much more, such as have a professional profile, resume, sample works, and photos. Ideally, a Radiusly users would be someone who loves the concept of Twitter, but wants to be able to maintain their work-related tweets in a separate environment, where they could also share other professional information. As more and more companies wake up to the idea of using Twitter as a means of communication, a service like this could be compelling to them. Of course, there is a lot of competition out there for the business Twitter market. Aside from startups like CoTweet, (TechCrunch50-alum) Yammer, and Blellow, Radiusly could be looking at both LinkedIn and Twitter itself making more moves into this arena shortly. We already know that Twitter is gearing up some professional tools for businesses to use, but whether those will be things similar to what Radiusly offers, no one is sure yet. Meanwhile, if LinkedIn wanted to, it could easily make itself Twitter-centric. It doesn’t appear that they are going to do that, but you never know. Radiusly plans to using a subscription/freemium model, offering some services for free, while charging a subscription fee for others. There will also be sponsored search listings, job listings, and banner ads to bring in revenue. CEO Chris Sel and VP of Business Development Adarsh Pallian presented it today at the conference. Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased) The experts: Robert Scoble, Sean Parker, Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Mike Schroepfer, Chamillionaire RS: I think you’re aiming at the right target, but you hit the wall. Brands tell me they won’t want to advertise on Twitter. You’re just not there yet, I’m not sure why. Q: Reid your thoughts? RH: In a rare position, I agree with much of what Robert was saying. The real key is how do you exchange information on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, not that they need a new way to search for some of this. DC: I agree with Robert and Reid, I don’t really get why I would go there. I kept trying to figure it out, to be fair when Twitter first launched I didn’t get it either, now I work there. C: I gotta be Simon Cowell too. I can’t see why someone would need this. Images: Video: Other Coverage: TC50: Radiusly says companies should forget Twitter, microblog with us instead VentureBeat. CrunchBase Information Radiusly Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
It's Time For Donut! Android v1.6 Launched For Developers Top
Starting to feel like Android's "Cupcake" update (v1.5) from May is getting a bit stale? Google's got a new treat for you. They've just launched version 1.6 (which, under Google's pastry-oriented naming scheme, is known as "Donut") of Android to developers, which packs a hefty handful of new features and polishes up much of what was already there. The bit that plays best to our geeky-blogger side (rather than our geeky-consumer side) is whats been added for the sake of lineup expandability. Namely, we're talking about CDMA support - which, while not immediately awesome, opens the doors to Android handsets on the likes of Verizon, Sprint, and Virgin Mobile. Beyond that, they've also bumped the supported resolutions list to include screens all the way up to 800x480 - in other words, Android can now push much prettier images to higher-end screens. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
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. Video: Other Coverage: TC50: Lissn is like Twitter for longer, public conversations VentureBeat. 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: TechCrunch50: The Better Social Network AppScout. Threadsy: All Your Communications, All in One Place Technologizer. 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: 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: 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
 

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