The latest from TechCrunch
- Flattr Starts To Monetise Its Like Button For Content
- comScore: Q3 E-Commerce Spending Up 9 Percent To $32 Billion
- In The Fight Against IT Waste, 1E Releases NightWatchman 6.0
- Not Disruptive Enough: Audioo Up For Sale
- The Rubicon Project Raises Another $18 Million, Completes Fox Audience Network Acquisition
- From Bootstrapping To $300M In Value: Meet The Founder Of Directi (TCTV)
| Flattr Starts To Monetise Its Like Button For Content | Top |
| In a post back in July we asked, “ Is Flattr the new Facebook Like, but this time with real money?”. With 342 comments, that post got a LOT of discussion going. And it’s even being used by the controversial Wikileaks whistle-blowing site. Now they are releasing data which suggests the service is starting to pick up at a clip. Flattr started testing with alpha users back in February, but went public in August. Now, two months after going public, it says it has garnered over 46,056 registered users with over €114,057 ($158,438) of “flattrs” passing through the system. It now also has Twitter and Facebook integration which should really start to get the platform motoring. | |
| comScore: Q3 E-Commerce Spending Up 9 Percent To $32 Billion | Top |
| Good news today for online retailers. According to comScore, third quarter e-commerce was up nine percent from the same period last year, to $32.1 billion in spending for the quarter. This is the fourth consecutive quarter of positive year-over-year growth following the drought in spending during the recession. The top-performing online product categories were Books & Magazines (which excludes digital downloads), Computers/Peripherals/PDAs, Computer Software (excl. PC Games) and Consumer Electronics. Retailers continue to use free shipping as an incentive, with 41 percent of online retail transactions for the quarter including free shipping. The top 25 online retailers accounted for 70 percent of dollars spent online, up 5.5 percent from a year ago. Online retailers who sell solely through the web accounted for 58 percent of dollars spent online compared to 42 percent among multichannel retailers. For retailers, this is good news for holiday e-commerce sales. With the continued increase in spending online, retailers can expect a stronger holiday sales season. To put this in perspective, online holiday sales in 2009 reached $27 billion, so at the very least, spending should pass $32 billion. CrunchBase Information comScore Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| In The Fight Against IT Waste, 1E Releases NightWatchman 6.0 | Top |
| Computer power management software company, 1E has released a new version of its marquee product, NightWatchman . Like its predecessors, version 6.0, helps corporations manage their network of computers to optimize energy efficiency. It gives IT managers the ability to remotely power down computers and establish energy-saving settings (ie. automatic shutdown of desktops during the weekend). In the latest version, 1E has added three key features: a new web-based dashboard (to help managers oversee the entire company’s computer power usage), improved diagnostic tools to determine why a computer hasn’t properly powered down, and tariff calculations based on location. Given how the price of energy can fluctuate significantly on a region by region basis, the new location-based calculations will help companies more accurately assess how much they’re saving on energy usage. Energy efficiency as it relates to IT management is becoming an increasingly important field, and according to Gartner Research, in two years more than half of mid and large-sized businesses will centrally manage their desktops’ energy consumption. Although the average NightWatchman PC only saves $36 a year in energy costs, those incremental savings yield significant sums in aggregate. Several of 1E’s clients are large corporations with massive IT operations, such as AT&T, Ford and Dell. According to 1E, NightWatchman has 4.6 million licensed users around the world, a group that has collectively saved $530 million in energy costs. CrunchBase Information 1E Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Not Disruptive Enough: Audioo Up For Sale | Top |
| Audioo launched (or rather, relaunched) as a sort of “Blippy for voicemail” at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York earlier this year. Basically,the idea was for the site to grow into a massive database of transcribed voicemails , amusing prank calls, 911 calls and other voice recordings . Unfortunately, it wasn’t much of a disruptive business idea, and the site simply failed to attract a sufficient number of contributors and visitors to stand on its own two feet. Today, AudioMicro (Audioo’s parent company) is putting the site up for auction. No need for Audioo to be deadpooled though, says AudioMicro CEO Ryan Born – he claims it only costs about $500 per month to operate and hopes the auction draws enough interest for the site to end up in the hands of a new owner that can foster it. Meanwhile, Born and co will continue to focus on stock music and sound effects site AudioMicro.com, which is said to be growing at a fast clip. You can find the listings on Flippa and eBay if you’re interested in the Audioo auction details. CrunchBase Information Audioo Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| The Rubicon Project Raises Another $18 Million, Completes Fox Audience Network Acquisition | Top |
| The Rubicon Project, a Los Angeles based display ad optimization platform, confirmed today that it has completed its acquisition of parts of the Fox Audience Network from News Corp. I outlined the main details of the deal last week. Rubicon is purchasing mostly the technology (ad server, MyAds self-service ad buying platform, targeting technology, realtime bidding algorithms) and taking on about 100 of FAN’s technology employees (after the other half of FAN’s employees, the sales team, lost their jobs last week). FAN’s third-party ad network is not part of the deal. At the same time, the Rubicon project raised another $18 million from investors including News Corporation, Clearstone Venture Partners, IDG Ventures Asia, Mayfield Fund, and NBC Universal's Peacock Equity Fund. So News Corp now owns a minority stake in the Rubicon Project as a result of this transfer of assets plus some cash. The company expects revenues to hit $100 million in 2010, and says it hit profitability for the first time in the month of October. [ Release ] | |
| From Bootstrapping To $300M In Value: Meet The Founder Of Directi (TCTV) | Top |
| When the press gathered to shoot pictures and videos of the likes of Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Niklas Zennstrom (Skype), Chad Hurley (YouTube) and Michael Birch (Bebo) last Thursday when I arrived at my hotel in Dublin, where the F.ounders event was being held, I was surprised to see a fifth man get prompted to be included by the event organizers. Particularly because I didn’t recognize who this guy was, and not even his name rang a bell. Over the course of the next few days, I’ve gotten to know him, and he has a fantastically inspiring story to tell alright: meet Divyank Turakhia , one of India’s youngest and most successful pirates – sorry, technology entrepreneurs. Turakhia started his first business when he was 14 years old, and co-founded what is now the Directi Group when he was 18. He famously made his first million when he was 18, and now ten years later it sounds like things are just getting started for him. Directi is a holding company with a current market value of over $300 million (not bad for a venture that was bootstrapped on a $600 budget – loaned to Divyank and his brother from their parents – back in 1998). Its portfolio of products and businesses are all over the place, ranging from collaboration, social networking, instant messaging and content publishing software offerings to major domain parking company Skenzo . As for Divyank Turakhia, he’s set a large chunk of resources aside for his next bet: Media.net , which will formally make its debut at ad:tech New York later this week. It’s a contextual advertising play, and Turakhia aims for it to rival none other than Google AdSense. After what I’ve learned about him the past few days, I wouldn’t bet against him at the very least taking a really good shot at it. On a sidenote: he knows how to rival Lady Gaga, for one. From The Telegraph : “Turakhia arrived in Dublin with an improbably young wannabe actress/singer/model girlfriend he met at Disneyland in tow, having – so the rumour goes – booked out the Presidential Suite of the Westbury Hotel to upstage Lady Gaga, who is in Dublin this weekend. That story, whispered, variously, through snarls of envy and smirks of delight, speaks volumes about this controlled explosion of machismo.” Here’s my (admittedly far too brief) interview with Divyank: CrunchBase Information Divyank Turakhia Directi Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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