Thursday, February 25, 2010

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Stealthy Knowmore Loads Up On Talent To Silence The Social Noise Problem Top
Fundamentally, what I liked about FriendFeed was that it gave me a way to take all kinds of social data and create a tailored way to view it . And though the idea never took off in the mainstream before their acquisition by Facebook, the desire for a service that can do this, remains. Despite their efforts, Facebook hasn’t solved this yet. And despite all the hype, neither has the new Google Buzz . There are at least a dozen other startups working on this problem too, but no one has even come close to FriendFeed yet. But a new one, still in stealth, offers hope. Knowmore , is a New York City-based startup founded by Julian Gutman (ex-Google) and Joseph West (ex-Akamai). They’ve already assembled a team that includes Jeremie Miller , the inventor of XMPP/Jabber, Wilson Bilkovich one of the core developers of Rubinius (a Ruby implementation), and Wes Augur, a former principal R&D engineer at Digg. It’s a wide range of talent across a bunch of different fields. The total team is already up to 20 people, according to their jobs page . Talent aside, what sounds interesting about Knowmore is their approach to the social noise problem. Rather than focusing on complex technologies that only seems to make social data more complicated (“why is this being shown,” etc…), Knowmore is building its product around user experience and human-centric design. The person who helped steer the early design of the product itself was Chad Pugh, the visual designer of Vimeo (though he’s not full time with the team). As you can see on their splash page, Knowmore’s slogan is the “dashboard for the social web.” As you might expect, the idea is to port in your data from a variety of social networks, and let Knowmore serve it up to you in a way that cuts through the noise. As Mike wrote earlier this month, “ social today feels like search a decade ago: lots of noise and lots of spam .” That’s exactly the problem Knowmore is going after. They believe Facebook and Twitter cannot tackle these problems because they are communication pipes at their core. Knowmore is aiming to be a consumption platform instead. So will it work? That’s impossible to know without seeing the product in action (the tentative launch date is Q2 2010). But the pedigree of the talent behind this startup and a simple execution of the core idea certainly makes it one worth watching. CrunchBase Information Knowmore FriendFeed Google Buzz Information provided by CrunchBase
 
MobileCrunch Reviews the Fashion-Forward Motorola Devour Top
Short Version: Hey ladies! Your Droid is here. The Motorola Devour (it's actually DEVOUR but I refuse to shout at you) is a social media Android phone with enough style to beat down a million Droids. But is it just one more brick in the Android wall?
 
Gmail Acting Up? It's Not Just You Top
If your Gmail account is down or consistently throwing random errors your way, like my account is right now, note that it isn’t just you . According to the Apps Status Dashboard , a “significant subset of users” started running into trouble at around 9:45 AM Pacific Time. At 11:34 PM, Google posted an update, saying that Google Mail service had been restored for some users, and that it expected a resolution for all users “within the next 4 hours” (estimate). This is the first status update that was posted: We’re aware of a problem with Google Mail affecting a significant subset of users. The affected users are able to access Google Mail, but are seeing error messages and/or other unexpected behavior. We will provide an update by February 25, 2010 8:44:00 PM UTC+1 detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change. Affected users are experiencing difficulties or delays receiving mail fetched via POP from external mail providers to Gmail. These messages are not lost and should still be stored at the users’ external POP service. And the second: Google Mail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users within the next 4 hours. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change. It’s rare that Google speaks of a significant number of users when problems arise – usually they say a ’small subset’ – but a Twitter search actually shows a surprisingly low number of tweets about any issues people are having with their Gmail accounts. We should note this isn’t the first time Google has had issues with Gmail, and just yesterday Google App Engine went down for an extended period of time. Are you noticing anything out of the ordinary with the popular cloud service? CrunchBase Information Gmail Information provided by CrunchBase
 
When It Comes To iPhone Games, What Sells Is Action, Adventure, and Arcade Top
At recent the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, mobile app analytics startup Distimo gave a presentation with some other interesting comparisons, such the relative size of the iPhone App Store (150,000 total apps at the time) compared to the Android Market (20,000) and Blackberry (5,000) others. It showed that in January alone, the Apple App store grew by 13,865 apps versus 3,005 new Android apps, 734 new Nokia Ovia apps, and 501 new Blackberry apps. Android was the fastest growing App store and the Android market has more free apps (57 percent) than Apple (25%) or any other mobile app store (full slide deck embedded below). By far the most popular category in the iPhone app store is games. Distimo reported that 58 percent of all apps in the App Store are games. And in a new report that just came out today ( download it here ), Distimo breaks down the game apps further by price, category, and which ones sell the most. While the biggest category is Puzzles (15 percent), Action and Arcade both come in second with 11 percent each. The average price of a paid game in Apple’s App Store is $2.24, much cheaper than Blackberry games ($4.60) or Windows Mobile games ($4.90), and a little bit above Android games (2.08). Breaking down further by category in the Apple App store, the most expensive games are in the Role Playing category, with an average price of $7.96. Action and Arcade games are cheaper with average prices of $1.68 and $1.39 respectively. Adventure games are in the middle with an average price of $4.43. But when you look the top grossing games, 22 percent are in the Action category, 12 percent are in Arcade, and 9 percent are Adventure. Those are the top three grossing categories. Only 5 percent of the top grossing games are role playing games. (Click on charts at right to enlarge). So the top-grossing games are not necessarily the ones with the highest price points, especially as game developers switch to free or 99-cent games with in-app purchases. According to Distimo, Tap Tap Revenge 3, which became free and upsells songs via in-app purchases grossed more in January than the FIFA 2010 soccer game, which sells for $6.99. Quality games can still command higher prices, but getting players to pay more over time seems to be the strategy many top mobile game developers are pursuing.
 
Yammer Communities Open The Door To B2B Microblog Collaboration And Much More Top
As we reported last night, Yammer has just announced that it will begin allowing users to sign up for the microblogging service without requiring email addresses that are associated with their company domain names (e.g. jason@company.com ). This new feature, called Communities, will open the service to less formal organizations, and even families . And it also opens the door to B2B collaboration, which is how Yammer seems to be primarily marketing the new feature  Communities will launch on March 1. This is a big move for the company. On a conference call this morning, Yammer CEO David Sacks said that one of the problems with Yammer so far has been that communication on the service has been restricted to internal use within a company. The issue many people ran into was that they’d want to collaborate with their clients or business partners as well, but didn’t have a way to do that without inviting them to their company’s internal network (which often wasn’t an option). Now they’ll be able to build networks around each of their partnerships, upcoming events, and clients, while still keeping their internal networks private. Communities appear to function a lot like Yammer’s existing Groups, but now they can include people who aren’t in your company network. The site now features a ‘Communities’ tab at the top of the screen, which allows users to jump between a number of linked networks. There’s also a new tab called ‘Networks’ that allows you to see how many unread messages are available in each of the networks you’re linked to. Communities will include the same administration tools as company networks (and will offer more control than Groups do). Yammer Communities will follow Yammer’s pricing model — it’s free to use, with premium pricing for more advanced features. Sacks says that the company’s iPhone application will support Communities from day one, as will the AIR-based Yammer desktop client. We’ve been using Yammer internally at TechCrunch since it launched (and won) TechCrunch50 2008, and have found it to be a great way to coordinate our team. CrunchBase Information Yammer Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Does Citibank Suffer From Homophobia Or Just A General Dislike For Startups? Top
I just finished reading a very unsettling blog post by serial entrepreneur Jason Goldberg , whose new startup fabulis has apparently had its bank account blocked by Citibank over posting “objectionable content” on its company blog , at least according to a bank employee he spoke to on the phone. (see update below) Fabulis is described on the blog as “the social network that helps gay men connect with amazing experiences nearby and around the world”. Could that be what Citibank is objecting against rather than the content on the blog, which is perfectly innocent any way you look at it indeed? Now, in case you don’t know Goldberg: he’s an accomplished Internet entrepreneur, who had stints at the White House, AOL and T-Mobile under his belt before founding Jobster (and raising more than $50 million for the startup) and after that socialmedian (which he sold to Xing in December 2008). For his latest startup fabulis , Goldberg has raised $625k in seed funding from the likes of Washington Post and Venture Partner at Mayfield Fund Allen Morgan , and essentially aims to become the leading social network and lifestyle website for homosexual men. Which is challenging if your financial institution freezes your bank account and marks it for immediate termination after reading a couple of your – again, perfectly harmless – company blog posts. This is Goldberg’s take on the blocking of the account: In a bit of strange and disturbing news, fabulis discovered today that someone(s) at Citibank had decided arbitrarily to block fabulis' bank account due to what was described to us on the phone as "objectionable content" on our blog. In fact, the account — it turns out — was blocked a few days ago without anyone letting us know about it by phone or email. Huh? Mind you, fabulis is a serious business, backed by some serious players, and for the life of us we can't find anything "objectionable" on our blog besides some good humor, some business insights, and some touching coming out stories from some great and fabulis gay people. So, what gives? And wtf. When did Citibank start reviewing blogs to decide who can bank with them? Calls into Citibank tonight resulted in a temporary lifting of the block while a compliance officer is asked to re-review our website on Thursday. Stay tuned … we'll update you on this shocker as we learn more. WTF indeed. Whatever update comes, this is a PR nightmare for Citibank, and I’ll be curious to see what the company has to say about this atrocity. In a comment on Hacker News , Goldberg says he doesn’t think Citibank is being homophobic, and calls out moronic behavior instead: Do I think Citibank or Citigroup is a homophobic malicious company? No. Do I think some compliance officer is a moron who made a really stupid decision? Yes. Three hours of trying to sort this out provided even more comedic insanity than I even revealed on the blog post. Including a bank manager who didn’t want to talk about this because she was uncomfortable talking about the content of our blog over a recorded phone conversation. Oh, and we’ve learned that the account was marked to be a cancelled by said compliance officer for this “objectionable content.” wtf. All we know so far is that we finally got someone to lift the block on the account, but that the best she could promise is another review of the situation today. insanity. Very uncomfortable for sure, but mostly for Citibank, who for the record, apparently does not want to be reached by e-mail even by press. So even if there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation to this – that the bank’s allowed to share publicly – I can only hope to reach someone by phone when it’s morning in the U.S. who can look into it and tell us what’s up. Update: In a new blog post , Goldberg says that he spoke with a Citibank employee about the issue, and was told that the bank had decided to terminate the startup's account because the "content was not in compliance with Citibank's standard policies." He adds that the bank's management promised to review the situation later today. Update 2: A second update on the fabulis blog says a representative has called and apologized. According to Goldberg, the bank spokesperson said that "all 3 of the citibank individuals who over the past 24 hours each individually claimed that fabulis' account was to be terminated for compliance issues around the content of our site, were all wrong to have said what they said." No kidding. As Goldberg concludes: “Hmph. Something smells.” (Thanks to GigaOm for pointing out the updates to this story first) CrunchBase Information Fabulis Jason Goldberg Information provided by CrunchBase
 
The Facebook Imperative Top
Editor’s note : This guest post is written by Marc Benioff , chairman and CEO of salesforce.com . In it, he explains why enterprise software should take its cues from Facebook and become more social. I quit my job at Oracle in 1999 because I couldn’t stop thinking about a simple question: "Why isn't all enterprise software like Amazon.com?" Why couldn't applications be run from a simple website, without software or hardware to install, and pricy consultants to hire? Why couldn't we just compute in the Internet, or the cloud, and get away from the data center and all its complexity. Simply put, I wanted to simplify the enterprise. It was a pretty straight-forward idea, but from the confines in which I sat, there wasn't anything close to a straight-forward solution. That vision led to the founding of salesforce.com. But the enterprise world wasn't ready for Amazon.com, or eBay, or Yahoo, or any of the innovative services that were changing the way consumers bought, sold, or communicated. I tell this story in my book Behind the Cloud and can't help but note that the factors at play 10 years ago—an inspiring service, wide skepticism, and phenomenal potential—mirror where we are today. But it's no longer Amazon that frames the questions or gives us the answers. In this decade, I've become obsessed with a new simple question: "Why isn't all enterprise software like Facebook?" As we were focused on bringing enterprise computing into the modern age, Facebook redefined the values of consumer computing and helped ignite the social phenomenon. The compelling aspect of feeds, profiles, and groups, amplify the service's stickiness. So does its functionality on a mobile device like an iphone—necessary to secure a service's status as a "killer app." Facebook is where I start my day to find out what my friends and family are doing. It's where I go to see the important events in my social life. Everything I care about and need to know is pushed to me—and it requires no work on my part. What does the social revolution mean for business, though? So far it hasn't meant much. Currently, our methods of collaboration are defined by Lotus Notes or Microsoft SharePoint, but these tools haven't kept up with the changing times. They were conceived before anyone knew what a "newsfeed" was. (In fact, Notes was conceived before Mark Zuckerberg was!) Today, realtime information is possible, which has changed everything: How people consume information has changed, how people learn things about each other has changed, and how people stay current has changed. Most of all, our expectations around immediacy have changed. Now, we need to take this idea to our businesses. We need to transform the business conversation the same way Facebook has changed the consumer conversation. Market shifts happen in real time, deals are won and lost in real time, and data changes in real time. Yet the software we use to run our enterprises is in anything but real time. We need tools that work smarter, make better use of new technology (like the mobile devices in everyone's hands), and fully leverage the opportunities of the Internet. New realtime cloud applications, platforms, and infrastructure offer the path to redefine the future of collaboration. Now in beta, Salesforce Chatter takes the best of Facebook, Twitter, and other social leaders , for instance, and applies it to enterprise collaboration—making people more productive and businesses more competitive. I already see it working: I have an enterprise desktop where without any effort I can learn about what my team is focusing on, how my projects are progressing, and what deals are closing. It is fundamentally changing the way our organization collaborates on product development, customer acquisition, and content creation—making it all easier than ever before. We are on the precipice of a major shift in our industry. It stems from a change we badly needed and the once-in-a-decade question we had to ask. And this time, we are all ready for the answers. Luckily, this time, I don't have to leave my job to find out what they are. CrunchBase Information Facebook Salesforce Marc Benioff Information provided by CrunchBase
 

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