The latest from TechCrunch
- Scribd Turns Three, Gets A New Look And Logo
- Google Puts SearchWiki Out Of Its Misery, Replaces It With Cute Stars
- Mobclix Compares Android and Apple; Android Devs More Likely To Give Their Work Away
- Chris DeWolfe Makes His Move – Raises Big Round, Acquires Gaming Platform MindJolt
- BookRenter Opens Up Textbook Rentals To Campus Bookstores And Other Partners
| Scribd Turns Three, Gets A New Look And Logo | Top |
| Document-sharing site Scribd launched three years ago with the idea of making PDFs and other text-documents more Web-friendly. Now three years later, the site stores more than 10 million documents, which in turn have been embedded more than 10 million times across the Web. Scribd says it reaches more than 50 million people a month worldwide ( Quantcast ). To celebrate its birthday, Scribd just rolled out a redesign with a new Zune-brown logo, much faster document search (to support 1.4 million searches a day), and other small new features such as the addition of collections. It lets you explore by category or trending documents. Scribd took a big hit to its traffic in the middle of last year when it started getting serious about cracking down on pirated documents, from which it still hasn’t completely recovered. But its stronger copyright filtering makes partners like major publishing houses more comfortable using Scribd as a way to promote and distribute its books. Scribd’s biggest competitor DocStoc is also growing at a nice clip and adding new features at a steady clip. Scribd is also making a big push into mobile reading by making it easy to send documents to avariety of mobile devices, including iPhones, Android phones, Blackberries, Kindles, and Nooks. The company has raised $13 million total from Charles River Ventures, Redpoint, Marc Andreessen, Jeff Jordan, and David Sacks (who recently joined its board) . CrunchBase Information Scribd Docstoc Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Google Puts SearchWiki Out Of Its Misery, Replaces It With Cute Stars | Top |
| Personalized search is something that we all know Google feels strongly about. Today, the search giant is adding a new feature to help users mark searches: Stars. So when you see search results, you can click to mark a star next to a result that you feel is relevant. The next time you perform a search relevant to a starred item, the result will appear in a special list right at the top of your results. The feature will be rolled out to users over the next few days and will be available to users who are signed into their Google accounts. Google says that stars will make it it easier for users to remember their favorite results because they don’t have to keep track of them after they star them. Google will essentially do all the heavy lifting by remembering starred items and presenting those results when appropriate. Stars sync with your Google Bookmarks and the Google Toolbar, so you can access your list of starred items in one place if you’d like to see them. Stars can also be used to mark pages when browsing the web; you can click the star icon in Toolbar to create a bookmark, which will show up in your starred items. Google says that stars in search will replace SearchWiki, a tool which we weren’t very fond of. Searchwiki allowed users to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. Apparently others felt the same way, because Google said that users disliked changing the order of Google’s “organic search results.” Stars appears to be an effort to personalize search results in a simpler way. Google notes that if you have been using SearchWiki, your edits will be preserved with your Google Account. CrunchBase Information Google Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Mobclix Compares Android and Apple; Android Devs More Likely To Give Their Work Away | Top |
| Apple and Google are engaged in a fascinating battle of mobile OS’s. Among other things, they’re duking it out on patent infringement, developer relations and carrier support. Lines are being drawn, and everyone’s taking sides. That begs the question: what’s the difference between the App Store and Android Market for developers? And how does this affect their bottom line? Mobclix, a TC50 Company , just released a report comparing the Android Market to Apple App Store. They are a mobile analytics and advertising platform whose footprint includes over 6,500 publishers including ngmoco , SGN , and NewToy (creators of Words with Friends). Read the rest at MobileCrunch >> | |
| Chris DeWolfe Makes His Move – Raises Big Round, Acquires Gaming Platform MindJolt | Top |
| Last year we reported that MySpace founder and former CEO Chris DeWolfe was raising a big round of capital to start acquiring companies. He’s now closed on that round of capital and has made his first acquisition. He’s also “got the band back together” by bringing on a slew of former MySpace executives to help him with the new ventures. His company, called Platform G, has acquired MindJolt , a San Francisco based social gaming platform founded by Richard Fields . Austin Ventures is backing him financially with an initial injection of capital that is rumored to be in excess of $20 million. Chris Pacitti and Tom Ball from Austin Ventures have joined the Platform G board of directors, and the company is now renamed MindJolt as well. Joining DeWolfe is Chief Operating Officer Colin Digiaro (MySpace's former head of Monetization and co-founder of SlingShot Labs), Chief Technology Officer Aber Whitcomb (MySpace's former Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of MySpace), SVP of Business & Corporate Development Josh Yguado (Former VP of Business Development at Fox Networks Group). Richard Fields is also staying with the company and heading up strategy. MindJolt has around 1,300 games from 1,000 third party developers. Those games are then distributed on Facebook and, more recently, MySpace. MindJolt makes revenue from advertising and splits it with those developers. But more importantly, those small developers get a huge platform for their games (19 million people a month play MindJolt games on Facebook alone). And usage is growing by as much as 7% per week . The company is profitable, although they won’t disclose revenues or other financial information. In the future, MindJolt says they will add additional monetization features, including virtual goods, and tools to help game developers build games as well. And the company is going to be making more acquisitions. From the beginning DeWolfe has said that he intends to execute a roll up strategy, and the company is clearly gearing up to buy more gaming companies. Austin Ventures is a good partner on this – the firm founded HomeAway, a rollup of home rental sites , and that company is worth well over $1 billion now. The company will remain headquartered in San Francisco and will open an office in Los Angeles as well. They are “hiring like crazy,” they say. Austin Ventures certainly isn’t being shy about dipping into the MySpace talent pool. Yesterday they backed a company that poached John Faith , until recently General Manager and Vice President of MySpace Mobile. I’m not sure there’s much talent left at MySpace people to steal, but more people will likely be heading for the exits shortly. Possibly to join DeWolfe at his shiny new startup. CrunchBase Information MindJolt Chris DeWolfe Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| BookRenter Opens Up Textbook Rentals To Campus Bookstores And Other Partners | Top |
| Anyone who has bought a textbook, whether during college or graduate school, understands how expensive they can be. College textbook rental startup BookRenter is trying to make the process of buying textbooks more affordable through its online site which loans books to students for a fixed duration. Today, the startup is opening up its platform to other sites to allow any college or business to launch its own online textbook rental store. Competitors Chegg and Barnes & Noble College are pursuing similar partnerships . Partners, such as universities or campus bookstores, will be able to use BookRenter to set up a virtual store on their sites. Partners have access to the same selection of textbooks available on BookRenter’s site (which are electronically sourced from the largest textbook supplier)s. Partners can also use BookRenter's dynamic pricing engine, which updates textbook prices in real time by responding to shifts in market supply and demand, as well as its customer service support. And BookRenter offers partners analytics platform and on-demand reporting capabilities, to give them intelligence on what’s selling. BookRenter allows partners to take 8% of the rental price. The site currently has 3 million titles and and promises to rent books for 75% off the list price of the textbook. The expansion of BookRenter’s platform to other sites makes sense for the startup to expand its userbase. But, 8% is a low cut for a partner and many campus bookstores may see the rental platform as competition for their own textbook sales. BookRenter, which just raised $6 million in funding, faces competition from Barnes and Noble, Chegg, a heavily-funded player in the space (Chegg offers an affiliate API to partners). But BookRenter claims a competitive advantage over Chegg and others by offering more flexible loan schedules and faster delivery (they offer next-day delivery on many titles, and use UPS). Chegg and BookRenter recently got into a tussle over a trademark to the phrase “#1 In Textbook Rentals." CrunchBase Information BookRenter.com Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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