Monday, May 3, 2010

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Apple: Can We Stop With The "Magical" Already? Top
In doing a survey of history, a few things could be called a "magical and revolutionary" products. These include, but are not limited to, Pegasus, pasteurized milk, the polio vaccine, Apollo 11, and that blue stuff you put your combs in at the barber. And, as much as I like the iPad , I feel that Apple's dedication to the "magical" party line is a bit disingenuous. According to the Free Dictionary, the word magical is defined as: mag·i·cal (mj-kl) adj. 1. Of, relating to, or produced by magic. 2. Enchanting; bewitching: a magical performance of the ballet. By this definition, nothing in the above list except perhaps the actual flight of Apollo 11 (in that it can be set to a lilting classical piece or, barring that, something by Enya) and/or Pegasus would be considered magical. The polio vaccine and Barbicide are useful and, some would argue, absolutely essential but I'm sure, through the use of magic, Dumbledore could easily replace them with a flick of his wand.
 
Travel Social Network WAYN Hits Profit, Mobile Apps To Come Top
It's been a while since we caught up with WAYN , one of the earliest social networks (so early they once charged for access). WAYN is a niche social network which focuses on the younger, aspirational traveling classes. Amazingly, despite the recession, they are still gap-yearing around the world using WAYN to meet fellow travelers, and there are now 15.5 million registered users globally. More interestingly, London-based WAYN has revealed exclusively to TechCrunch Europe that the site is now in profit. And next month it is going mobile with an iPhone and Android application created jointly with UK mobile social startup Rummble . WAYN users will be able to check in to places, and Rummble will get access to the WAYN user base.
 
How Can Social Media Save the Starving Children? Top
Social media has superpowers. Or so goes current tech-wonk opinion on Facebook, Twitter, et. al. From creating a “social Web,” to shaking up e-commerce, to mobilizing people behind a presidential candidate, social media has reached its tentacles into pretty much everything. Except places where there aren’t iThings and high-speed wireless. Ya know, most of the places on earth. Until now. Facebook co-founder and creator of MyBarackObama.com Chris Hughes aims to make social media matter more with his latest venture, Jumo. He’ll delve into how social media can create offline change at TechCrunch Disrupt , our conference on media and technology, taking place May 24-26, 2010, in New York City. You can get tickets at our early-bird rate if you visit our ticket page. We’re also happy to announce speakers including Meetup Co-founder and CEO, Scott Heiferman –the guy behind 50K weekly meetups — and Gilte Group CEO Susan Lyne. She’s at the helm of a buzzed-about sample-sale startup that’s caused “couture” and “clickthrough” to occur in the same sentence. Some of our latest sponsors include Google , Bing –yes, you read that right — and DataRockIt . So, back to social media. When I say, “matter more,” I’m paraphrasing a bit. Hughes’ actual wording in an announcement last month was: “leverag[ing] the participatory web to foster long-term engagement with the issues and organizations that are relevant to each individual." If you visit Jumo now, the preview site asks you Hunch -style questions about your preferences such as which do-good cause you’d spend $100 million solving, which language you’d like to learn, and what you’d name your child. (I chose “Grace” over “Crystal.”) At Disrupt, Hughes and Heiferman will discuss how social media can foment positive fallout offline, including in places that aren’t wired and wealthy. (Hughes probably won’t tell us much about Jumo, but we’ll hear some of the inspired thinking behind it, no doubt.) Heiferman’s laudable goal with Meetup is to offer a tool for people anywhere to create communities around any interest. If you want to hear more details on what Hughes and Heiferman are dreaming up with their ventures, you’ll just have to come to Disrupt. Chris Hughes Founder & Executive Director, Jumo Chris Hughes has spent his career developing technologies to make social communication and political organizing easier and more efficient. After co-founding Facebook in 2004, Chris worked first as the site’s spokesperson and later as a product manager specializing in user experience. In 2007, Chris went to work on President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign as the Director of Online Organizing, where he was charged with developing web technologies to engage and empower supporters. Chris oversaw the development of the on-site network  My.BarackObama.com along with the campaign’s distributed presence on all other networks across the web like Facebook and Twitter. After working in 2009 in venture capital for the firm General Catalyst Partners, he is currently embarking on a new initiative called Jumo to use the social web to foster long-term relationships of responsibility between individuals and organizations working to change the world. Scott Heiferman Co-founder & CEO, Meetup Scott Heiferman is Co-Founder & CEO of Meetup, the world’s largest network of local community groups. Over 50,000 Meetups (self-organized community events) happen each week. Millions of people in over more than 100 countries “use the internet to get off the internet” using Meetup, which is built on the idea that every town needs support groups, playgroups, bookclubs, business circles, running groups, community action groups, etc. Previously, Heiferman co-founded Fotolog, a photo sharing network where over 30 million people have uploaded nearly a billion photos. He also founded i-traffic, a top online ad agency in the 90s. He then fled the ad industry and was influenced by 9/11 to start Meetup. Scott graduated from The University of Iowa. He is an angel investor in Betaworks, Founders Collective, Virgance, 20×200, and others. Scott received the Jane Addams Award from the National Conference on Citizenship and was named an MIT Technology Review “Innovator of the Year”. He’s @heif. Susan Lyne CEO, Gilt Groupe Susan Lyne is Chief Executive Officer of Gilt Groupe, an ecommerce company whose event-based sales model is changing consumer behavior and redefining luxury shopping. From November 2004 to July 2008, Ms Lyne was President and CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. In that capacity, she steered the company's recovery and return to profitability, led by a three-fold increase in advertising revenue. Before 2008, Susan spent eight years at Disney/ABC, rising to President of ABC Entertainment where she oversaw the development of shows such as Desperate Housewives, Lost, and Grey’s Anatomy. Ms Lyne's early career was spent in the magazine industry, including The Village Voice and Premiere Magazine. Ms. Lyne is a Board of Director for AOL and The New School and lives in New York City.
 
Mint.com Debuts Android App Top
Personal finance site Mint.com has debuted its Android app today, which lets Mint.com users access a complete snapshot of their financial picture and manage their finances on the go. Mint.com, a TechCrunch40 company that was acquired by Intuit for $170 million last fall, initially announced the development of the free app last November. The app includes many of the key features of Mint.com’s iPhone app, including the ability for users to see real-time account balances, check recent transactions; compare their spending against their monthly budgets, and edit transaction details. The app also includes a few features that are exclusive to the Android app, including easy search for recent transactions, a Mint.com widget that includes snapshot of overall cash flow in real-time, and Android live folders that give users financial updates on the phone's home screen without launching the Mint.com application. Of course, including all of your financial information in one app can pose a potential security threat if your phone is lost or stolen. But Mint.com says that the the password-protected application allows users to immediately disable access to the app from the Mint.com website. CrunchBase Information Mint.com Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Lonely Planet Learns A Lesson From Eyjafjallajokull (Video) Top
Lonely Planet has revamped its price structure— the travel publisher has significantly dropped prices, by up to 50%, on all of its mobile apps. Its European city guides will now be available at $5.99, other city guides will be $7.99 (a few small cities like Macau and Manchester will be priced at $2.99). That's a major discount when you consider that several of the city guides were originally priced at $15.99. Meanwhile, Lonely Planet's just released iPad app, 1,000 Ultimate Experiences , is getting a third price cut at $7.99 (the app was originally released at $19.99, dropped to $9.99 two days after its debut). Why the sudden generosity? Well, it could have something to do with the company's recent foray into "free" and the story of that unpronounceable volcano. In the wake of Eyjafjallajokull's eruption, Lonely Planet offered 13 European city guides for free for four days to help stranded travelers. The response was overwhelming: 4 million downloads in 4 days.  Even more unexpected, revenues rose during the period, according to CEO Matt Goldberg who could not disclose specific numbers— he said many new consumers came for the free apps and ended up buying other apps. Because of the positive reaction, on the expiration of the promotion Lonely Planet offered its entire European city catalogue of 32 cities for the discounted price of $4.99 for about one week. The company is no stranger to "free," it offers a couple of mobile apps at no charge— namely its San Francisco City Guide and the Mexican Spanish Phrasebook (offered as promotional bonus guides)— but the vast majority of its apps have carried premium price tags of $10 or more on average. The basket of dramatic price cuts signals a shift in strategy for the travel publisher. The accidental experiment and the unexpected spike in revenues, revealed that cheaper prices could work for Lonely Planet without hurting profits, by lowering the bar to entry and encouraging new users to buy apps. That may hurt profit margins but it's also offset by all the new customers and repeat purchases. Lonely Planet has tried to guard the value of its premium content by maintaining higher price points, but the latest move, seems to be acknowledgment that the gap between the company's prices and its growing number of  competitors on the iPhone was too wide. The mobile travel app market is a competitive space, new rivals like Nile Guide or Gliider are creating interesting and often cheap solutions to chip away at legacy travel brands. For example, Nile Guide's app (which is a geo-based service that aggregates data from 30 sources to tell you about your surroundings) requires a one-time install fee of $2.99. Meanwhile, Lonely Planet's longstanding competitor, Frommers offers their city guide apps at $4.99. Lonely Planet's apps obviously offer their own premium content, but $2.99 or $4.99 versus $15.99 is a huge differential.  The city guide app was selling well, according to Goldberg—with roughly one out of five guides sold on the mobile platform— but I imagine Lonely Planet took a hard look at the numbers and decided to sacrifice the rich price per app for a bigger user base and a greater share of the travel app marketplace. I chatted with the CEO on Friday— at the time he was not aware of the price drop and still defending the $15 rate—- but he did discuss the growing importance of mobile and said it was the largest contributor to revenues after the core publishing segment (print and e-books). The company which is 75% owned by the BBC, is still undergoing an interesting transformation, from travel book publisher to multimedia platform. Beyond mobile, the company has expanded television production, released an app on the iPad and yes, even launched a magazine in the past year. A magazine! "Books Are A 500-year-plus Technology" And that's what's amusing about this company and the CEO, a former SVP of Dow Jones. As Lonely Planet transitions into a more multidimensional and digital brand, it's comfortable straddling areas that are typically defined as new media and areas of old media. The seemingly slow death march of print publications has given rise to a binary language to describe media, books are old, blogs are new, newspapers and magazines are old, mobile apps are new. And while that logically makes sense, we now also associate "old" with bad, archaic, regressive and “new” with exciting, progressive…correct. Lonely Planet is out to prove that all "new" is not correct and that perhaps the most progressive mind will borrow solutions or elements from old and new media and find ways to synthesize disparate parts. Goldberg is confident that the print book will still be a major money maker in a few years, in fact he lauds it as a "500-year-plus technology" that still works really well: "We do believe in the future of the book." You can call him naive, and chalk it up to the same naivete that introduced $15.99 city guide apps,  but he's got at least one good reason: the company’s “traditional” book segment continues to grow in revenues. Here is part one of our interview: CrunchBase Information Lonely Planet Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Littlehint Tries To Mashup 23andme With Old Fashioned Matchmaking Top
Littlehint is a new startup which aims to take your Facebook friends and bring in the ones who actually want to potentially go on a date, along with the ones who might help you find one. It sucks in your network via Facebook Connect and asks you to fill out your profile. The difference however is that in they plan to offer the ability to submit your DNA as well. Think 23andme for dating. The founders are Anju Rupal, CEO, who has been involved in various startups as an investor at board level, and Bill Liao, co-founder of XING, Germany's LinkedIn. Littlehint is similar to Thread.com which pulls your friends into your dating network (at least those who are already on Thread). LinkedIN founder Reid Hoffman has invested in Thread to the tune of $1.2m. Littlehint is similar also to friend.ly , minus the DNA matching.
 
Apple Sold 1 Million Total iPads, Estimated 300K 3G Models Just This Weekend Top
How many things did you and I sell this weekend? Three cookies, maybe? Something at a yard sale? Well, according to estimates by Gene Munster, chief Apple prognosticator at Piper Jaffray, Apple sold 300,000 iPads 3G this weekend. Estimates is based on calls to 48 stores. This means the iPad 3G as well if not better than the Wi-Fi version on its launch day. To top off that number, as of May 3, Apple states that they sold 1 million iPads since launch in April.
 

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