Tuesday, December 28, 2010

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Q: What Does Quora Mean For The Future Of Blogging? A: Business As Usual Top
As many of you have noticed, we (and by “we”, I mainly mean “me”) have been using Quora a lot as a source of inspiration for story ideas. Some people seem to think this is a great idea. Others seem to think it’s the end of TechCrunch, blogging, and the world — perhaps not in that exact order. But here’s what it really is: business as usual. One reader, Elias Bizannes, tweeted the following yesterday, “ Blogging 3.0 according to @parislemon 1) Follow the founders of Quora 2) Spend all day on Quora 3) Rehash voted-up Quora posts on TechCrunch “. My response to this was as follows, “ @EliasBiz so was blogging 2.0 doing the same thing on twitter? and blogging 1.0 doing the same thing on blogs? “ My point, again, is that Quora is simply a new medium for what’s been going on since the beginning of blogging. And, to an extent, you could argue since the beginning of writing in general. That is, there needs to be a nugget of information that sparks a story. For the past 10+ years, many people have relied on other blog posts for this. For the past three years or so, many people have used Twitter for this. And now people are starting to use Quora for this purpose. This process usually starts with blogs (like TechCrunch) and then eventually moves to the mainstream media. The same thing will happen here. In a year, CNN will be reporting information coming from Quora. Why? Because it’s a great source of information. On it, you’ll find people like high-profile executives Steve Case and Reed Hastings candidly answering questions about the companies they are (or were) involved with. You’ll also find former employees of companies giving insightful nuggets of information about those companies. It’s really no different than if they each blogged about these things. But they aren’t doing that, likely because it’s the question itself that sparks them to answer. And the fact that all of these answers are connected in a centralized, filtered location makes it much more powerful. That Quora answers can be lengthy (unlike tweets, which are limited to 140 characters) has brought up some unease as well. Aggregators, like Techmeme , have started linking directly to threads there. Other sites, such as Silicon Alley Insider, have started republishing entire Quora answers . But again, that’s no different from the norm. That site also regularly republishes full blog posts found elsewhere. We don’t do that type of full republishing, not because we think it’s bad, it’s just not what we do. Instead, when an interesting Quora thread pops onto my radar, I like to think it over and write it up in a way that I would any other story. That is to say, I like to inject my own words and opinions and expand on the thought. The other day, Robert Scoble wrote a post wondering if Quora was the biggest blogging innovation in 10 years ? I still would definitely give the edge to tools like WordPress and Blogger, and then to Twitter (which serves as both a source of information and a means to distribute content), but Quora, at least as it stands right now, is the next step in the evolution. It’s not just that it’s Yahoo Answers reborn, it’s that it’s Yahoo Answer done right . It utilizes several things that other social services have implemented over the years and ties them all together in a way the surfaces excellent information. There’s always been a concern that as Quora expands its user base, it will get less useful, but all indications are that it has been expanding rapidly in recent weeks — and guess what? It’s actually getting better . In other words, expect more posts based on information found on Quora, not less. And expect that trend to spread across the web. Just like it did with Twitter. Just like it did with blogs. It’s all about the information, not the medium. [image: Disney] CrunchBase Information Quora Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Suit Against Apple Alleges Privacy Breaches By Apps Top
Here’s a bit of a sticky situation: Apple is facing a class-action lawsuit alleging that they are allowing apps and ad partners to identify specific users — a breach of Apple’s privacy policy and supposedly of privacy itself. Apple’s privacy policy touches on this directly, yet leaves plenty of room for movement on their side, which is really what the suit is all about, though Apple is simply the biggest target at the moment. The lawsuit alleges that the “non-personal information” collected by likes of Pandora and The Weather Channel can easily be collated and used to identify individuals. It’s beyond a doubt that given a few key pieces of information, one could be positively identified; studies have shown (Paul Ohm credits Latanya Sweeney) that given birth date, gender, and ZIP code, one can identify a vast majority of Americans. How many times a day do you think you give out one or more of those things? I was tempted to take the cynical side here and say “what did you expect?” However, the truth is that despite the changing nature of privacy and what your personal information is worth, there appear to be shenanigans in play here. It’s not clear to the end user just what is being collected and used, and by whom. To be sure, the privacy policy says: “We may collect information such as occupation, language, zip code, area code, unique device identifier, location, and the time zone where an Apple product is used so that we can better understand customer behavior and improve our products, services, and advertising.” But are apps restricted in some or all of the same ways? Is “our advertising” the same as “advertising on our devices”? Does Pandora consider your music choices “personal” or “non-personal,” and how do they make that distinction? How far must something be anonymized before it can be called sufficiently so? The fact is that a huge amount of potentially personal or private information is being sent out by millions of users who not only have no idea it’s being sent out (which, as far as I’m concerned, is for them to find out at their own pace and peril), but also have no way of controlling it or opting out — other than not using a given service. Some say that’s as much of an opt-out as something like The Weather Channel is required to provide, but that puts a lot of power in the hands of the largest players. The lawsuit targets Apple currently, but the spirit behind it could easily have been directed at Google or a number of other companies that make a business out of creating individuals out of scraps of information. A compromise will have to be achieved here, but I doubt we’ll have a satisfactory one for a couple years, since all these potentially invasive services are at a very early stage. This lawsuit is a symptom of a growing problem, but I doubt it will result in any serious advances. Marketing companies themselves may in fact be the correct object for users’ frustration, and policy changes might have to be made specifically concerning them — though that may be putting too fine a point on that kind of legislation, which should be decisive and encompass as much as possible. As it is, these companies are having a grand time floating through the loopholes and gaping omissions of current privacy policy and law.
 
Groupon Closing $950 Million Round, Valued At $4.75 Billion Top
Lots of excitement today about Groupon’s intention to raise a new monster round of financing, with speculation that the valuation of the still-young startup reaching nearly $8 billion. That speculation is only partially right, says a source with knowledge of the financing. The company is raising big money – around $950 million. And the valuation is an impressive $4.75 billion valuation. Just not quite as impressive as the earlier figure being thrown around. The company, which just recently turned down an acquisition offer from Google, has raised $171 million to date, much of it taken off the table by founders and execs. Our expectation is that much of this new round of financing, if not all of it, will also be used to cash out existing investors. The deal should be closed in a few weeks, says our source. CrunchBase Information Groupon Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Groupon's Valuation Could Be As High As $7.8 Billion [Update: We Have The Document And The Actual Valuation] Top
photo © 2009 Chelsea Oakes | more info (via: Wylio ) Note: A source is now telling us that Groupon’s actual valuation is $4.75 Billion on a $950 Million Raise . According to a VC Experts report, Groupon gave the State of Delaware a heads up on its new funding on December 17th with an Amended/Restated Certificate of Incorporation. The document showed the authorization of an up to $950 million round of Series G preferred stock says VC Experts. While this doesn’t necessarily mean the company will be raising that amount, it does give it the capacity to do so. The report says to expect a SEC Form D with the exact amount of financing to be filed next week. From the VC Expert Blog : “There are a few key differences in terms and pricing between the Series G and its Series F, raised in April. The $135 million Series F, led by Digital Sky Technologies, was priced at $32.12 per share and was junior in liquidation preferences to all preferred shares. This round is priced $.53 less, at $31.59 per share and is senior to all. The latest filing also increased the authorized shares of voting common to 250 million shares, and if all of them are issued, Groupon’s valuation could be as high as $7.8 billion. The financing comes just weeks after Groupon’s rejection of Google’s $6 billion buyout offer. Groupon gave no official reason for the rejection, though reports speculated pricing, strategy and anti-trust issues were to blame.” According to VC Experts’ estimate, the new round gives Groupon a “best estimate” valuation of $6.4 Billion. The filing has reportedly also increased Groupon’s authorized voting common shares to 250 million and if all of them are issued at $31.59 per share could mean that the company is valued at over $7.8 billion. VC Experts says it will release the Amended Certificate of Incorporation filing tomorrow morning to its email distribution list. We are currently looking into it and have contacted Groupon for more information as well. Updates: The entire document is now available for download on the VC Experts site . PDF below. Fortune’s Dan Primack is reporting that Groupon was talking to a Boston-based equity firm before the Google acquisition talks and that the same firm might also be leading this round, which he posits at way lower than the reported $950 million. Groupon CEO Andrew Mason confirms that Groupon is indeed in the middle of a financing round with, what else, a tweet. View this document on Scribd CrunchBase Information Groupon Information provided by CrunchBase
 
SnapPages Lets You Hook Into LinkedIn For Custom Online Resumes Top
Earlier this years Linkedin Labs , which showcases projects created by LinkedIn employees, launched a feature that lets you quickly convert your profile on the professional social networking site into a more traditional resume. It’s quite slick, with a handful of templates to choose from and buttons to convert it to PDF for easy printing (or to share it on Twitter and Facebook). Now SnapPages , a website builder that we’ve covered before , has launched a new feature that does something similar, but with a bit more flexibility. SnapPages founder Steve Testone explains that many of the site’s users have said that it would be helpful if they could create ‘resume websites’ that would let them showcase their work experience in a format that doesn’t look identical to everyone else’s. To help with that, SnapPages has launched a new resume builder . It’s pretty straightforward: first, the tool will ask you to connect your LinkedIn account to SnapPages via OAuth. Next it will ask if you’d like to add any additional contact information, like your email address or Twitter account. Then you’re done — the site will generate a clean-looking website that includes your work experience and links to your social media presences. It looks like SnapPages only offers one template for your online resume (whereas LinkedIn offers a handful of options), but it has one advantage: you can manually customize the appearance and the copy that appears on your web resume. The only way to modify the text using LinkedIn’s tool is to edit your actual LinkedIn profile, which may not always be ideal. SnapPages will also let you add additional images and change font appearance as you’d like. Update: Testone clarifies that you can actually use any of the design templates already available on SnapPages — there are five available for free accounts and sixteen for premium pro accounts. It’s been a while since we last covered SnapPages, so I asked Testone for an update on the drag-and-drop website creator. Testone says that the company is on track to hit profitability in the first half of 2011, and it now has three full-time employees (up from one). The site has added a photos application, which lets you manage photos from Facebook, Flickr, and Picassa webpages and then push them out to your SnapPages site. There’s also an option to upload and host any kind of file. Finally, the site has added a new Developer Accounts option. Testone says that many of the site’s users are actually web designers who use SnapPages to help build sites for clients. So the service rolled out a special account-type for these users that lets them quickly access all of their clients’ accounts, and there’s a project management and ticketing tool built in. For another resume building tool, check out JobSpice . Update : And, as one of our commenters points out, you can also include your LinkedIn information on your About.me profile (which was recently acquired by TechCrunch’s parent company AOL). CrunchBase Information SnapPages Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Keen On… Erick Schonfeld: Will 2011 Be 1999 All Over Again? (TCTV) Top
Only four more days of 2010; four more days till we get to 2011. So what to expect in the new year? What do we most hope for and fear about 2011? For TechCrunch co-editor Erick Schonfeld, 2011 might be the year that touch becomes central to the computing experience. It may also be the year when both mobile and social – John Doerr's third wave – grows up to finally become the dominant sector of the tech industry. Could 2011 be 2000 all over again? Could we see a collapse of all the optimism now surrounding mobile and social? Were Fred Wilson’s warnings about tech's current irrational exuberance correct? Not according to Schonfeld who, while acknowledging that there are too many me-too companies, believes that the established players driving the current boom – Facebook, Groupon, Zynga and Twitter – are for real. Is Schonfeld right? Should we be partying like it’s 1999? Or could 2011, like 2000, be remembered as the year when the music died? What Schonfeld wants in 2011 What Schonfeld fears in 2011 CrunchBase Information Erick Schonfeld Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Awesome Quora Chrome Extension Is Awesome Top
Addicted to Quora ? Wish there were a way to search the Q&A site directly from your browser as well as receive notifications about your notifications while surfing the web? Well, this awesome Google Chrome extension created by  Andrew Brown is just what your browser ordered. Now you can be one click away from a Quora fix everywhere you go online (Brown plans on eventually showing you full notifications while you browse). Die hard fans can grab the repo now from Github or download the extension here if you’re already in Chrome. Thanks: Tristan Walker CrunchBase Information Quora Information provided by CrunchBase
 
The SEC Investigation Into Private Stock Sales Is All About The Glaring Lack Of Disclosure Top
The Securities and Exchange Commission is asking questions about private stock markets like SecondMarket and SharesPost . The SEC has sent “information requests to several participants in the buying and selling of stock” a number of companies, reports the New York Times (although private market SecondMarket says they have received no request from the SEC). Over the past year, trading in shares of still-private companies such as Facebook, Zynga, and LinkedIn has skyrocketed, allowing employees and early investors to sell their shares even without an IPO. About $400 million worth of shares will pass hands this year on SecondMarket, which is the largest of the private exchanges, up from about $100 million in 2009. The lack of liquidity because of the general postponement of IPOs among many Internet startups is fueling this growth. Only qualified institutions and high net-worth individual investors are allowed to participate in these markets, but as more and more shares trade hands the SEC’s 500-shareholder rule could be triggered which would require the companies to report audited financial results just like a publicly-traded company. Investors are buying shares on these markets with little to no knowledge of the actual financial results of the underlying companies. There are no disclosure requirements because these markets take advantage of employees or early shareholders who want to unload their shares to the highest bidder. Investors see these markets as a chance to get in on hot, pre-IPO, Internet startups. Facebook shares are the ones most in demand on these markets. They recently traded at an implied valuation of above $50 billion on SecondMarket, and $42.4 billion on SharesPost. A couple years ago, Facebook won an exemption from the SEC’s 500-shareholder rule by arguing that the shares were mostly held by employees, and it also changed the way it issued restricted stock. But if the number of external shareholders exceeds 500 investors, the SEC might want to revisit that exemption. The same issue would hold for other private companies who end up with more than 500 shareholders through these private sales. The SEC is obviously concerned about the growth of these unregulated markets. To the extent that they become an alternative to public markets, the SEC may require the same sorts of disclosures for companies which gain more than 500 shareholders as a result of their shares being traded there. At that point the companies may as well go public because they gain nothing from these secondary markets other than as a release valve for employees and early investors. (Companies typically do not sell their own shares through these markets, nor do they benefit financially from the trading). In the end, it is all about disclosure. Because nobody can really know what these companies are worth without knowing their true profits, losses, revenue growth, and other financial metrics. If it looks like a public company and trades like a public company then the SEC might just end up regulating it like a public company. Photo credit: Flickr/ andrecismo CrunchBase Information SecondMarket SharesPost Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase
 
TechCrunchTV's Funniest Videos From 2010 (TCTV) Top
During the holiday season, there’s a newsroom tradition to look back at the year’s funny and memorable videos. At TechCrunchTV , we don’t want to disappoint. TechCrunchTV launched this June and since then, we’ve produced around 1,000 videos. We’ve asked tough questions to CEO’s, entrepreneurs, VC’s, and angels. We brought you exclusive interviews with new start-ups and top tech companies. We provided live coverage of Disrupt. And, as you can see in this video, we’ve had our share of funnier moments. Highlights include a backstage moment with our new AOL boss; Jason Kincaid and MG Siegler turn into their favorite smartphones; John Biggs vs Four Loko ; Michael Arrington as a robot ; and two famous words from Yahoo’s CEO Carol Bartz. There’s also a year end tradition to give credit and thanks to the people behind the camera. Our TCTV staff, who producer, direct, shoot, edit, and process much of our content includes John Murillo and Ashley Pagan . We also want to thank our video partners, including Ustream for our live event streaming, Ooyala for hosting our video on demand content, and Newtek for our Tricaster video switcher. We’ve got some more surprises ahead in 2011, so keep on watching.
 
Fancy Is A Social Shopping List For The Design-Obsessed Top
We recently wrote about thingd, the ambitious startup that wants to build a “database of every thing in the world.” The startup, which has raised funding from a group of impressive investors, recently rolled out Fancy, a social shopping/blogging platform to list products. The idea behind Fancy is fairly simple. Via a bookmarklet, you can flag and import pictures of pretty much anything from other websites into your Fancy profile. You can also download pictures and text into your profile as well. Or you can snap a photo of a favorite product from Fancy’s iPhone app. You can tag photos (i.e. shoes, furniture) to make them searchable on the site. The social component of Fancy allows you to follow other users whose product and image collections you like. You can save other products listed on users’ profiles to your profile and you can access a feed of new products added by the users you follow. Users can also embed Fancy images on other websites. And the stark design of the site is visually appealing when combined with the images that users add. Fancy describes itself as “a blog, magazine, wishlist and store catalog rolled into one,” which is pretty accurate. It seems like a a great way to collect, curate and share the things you love through visual images. I think there could also be an opportunity for brands, celebs and designers to use Fancy to publish curated lists of their “favorite things.”
 
Union Square Ventures Is Raising A New $200 Million Opportunity Fund Top
Union Square Ventures is raising $200 million for a new fund called the Union Square Ventures Opportunity Fund LP. According to an SEC filing , the VC firm already raised $135 million for the fund from 19 investors. The last time Union Square raised money was for its $156 million Union Square Ventures 2008 LP fund . Union Square Ventures is the leading early stage VC firm in New York City led by Fred Wilson, Brad Burnham, and Albert Wenger. The filing also lists a new partner, John Buttrick. Its portfolio includes Twitter, Foursquare, Zynga, Tumblr, Boxee, Disqus, Etsy, Clickable, and Indeed. Partner Fred Wilson is well known for betting on startups right out of the gate before most other VCs will touch them, and is also highly-visible because of his popular blog, A VC. He recently raised concerns about too many venture investors chasing returns , wanting to invest in venture startups without really understanding their business. But in that same post he also wrote: The venture capital business is showing good returns for the first time in a decade. The sectors that are performing best are web services and early stage/seed investing. These are sectors we have been investing in for over fifteen years. We’ve seen these sectors boom and bust before and we’ll probably see it again. We are committed to these sectors and have no plans to leave them. Union Square’s new Opportunity Fund will presumably focus on the same sorts of early stage Internet startups Union Square is so good at sniffing out. Although the name is different its previous funds, which are differentiated by date. So it is possible that the Opportunity fund will focus on a different set of opportunities. I have an email out to Union Square about this and will update when I hear back. Update : Fred Wilson says: “We cannot comment at this time because we’re still in the process of raising the fund. We look forward to giving you a full report when that process concludes, which is expected later in January” CrunchBase Information Union Square Ventures Fred Wilson Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Ifbyphone Raises $8 Million Cloud-Based Call Management Platform Top
Phone management system Ifbyphone has raised $8 million in Series B funding from the company’s CEO Irv Shapiro, Apex Venture Partners, Origin Ventures, Spring Mill Ventures, i2A Fund and Second Century Ventures (the National Association of Realtors’ investment fund). This brings the Chicago-based company’s total funding to $16 million. Ifbyphone’s Web-based management applications allow businesses to track, route, and automate phone calls to. Users can use the company’s software to manage call flow, set up virtual call centers, measure advertising, and to automate manual clerical tasks. Earlier this year, Ifbyphone bought Cloudvox, a hosted service that allows developers to place, receive, and control phone calls from their own software (including Python, Ruby, PHP, Java, C#, and simple HTTP/JSON). As part of the new investment, The National Association of Realtors will be collaborating with Ifbyphone to develop voice solutions for its 1.1 million members. CrunchBase Information Ifbyphone Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Sears And Kmart Team Up With Sonic To Launch A Netflix Competitor Top
It looks like Sears wants to get in the online movie market. The retail company, which also owns Kmart, has just announced that it is launching a Netflix-like movie download service, called Alphaline Entertainment. Powered by Sonic Solutions’ RoxioNow platform (Rovi just bought Sonic Solutions for $720 million ), Alphaline allows Sears and Kmart customers to download movies and and TV shows online. The company says that it plans to make the platform available to users on a variety of devices, including mobile. A number of Sears’ competitors including Walmart have already started to dabble in the online movies space. Walmart recently bought Vudu, a service that streams movies to internet-connected TVs. BestBuy teamed up with Sonic to put its movie library in all of the Web-connected devices the company sells at its stores. But when it comes to actual movie rentals from the web, these companies haven’t been able to compete with giants like Netflix. It should be interesting to see how long Alphaline survives. CrunchBase Information Rovi Corporation Information provided by CrunchBase
 
McAfee's 2011 Cyber Attack Targets: URL Shorteners, iPhones, Geolocation Services Top
Intel acquired McAfee has just released its forecast for the top targets for cyber criminals in 2011, and a number of popular platforms have made the list. The antivirus and security software company’s labs group, McAfee Labs, says that Google's Android, Apple's iPhone, Foursquare, Google TV and the Mac OS X platform, are all expected to be targets in the New Year. McAfee Labs says that URL-shortening services, which create more than 3,000 URLs per minute, will be a significant target for cyber criminals in 2011. Because social media sites are already riddles with cyber criminals, these links are going to be used for spam, scamming and other malicious purposes, says the company. Interestingly, McAfee recently launched its own URL shortener, McAf.ee Geolocation services, such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places, are expected to also be a security target as cybercriminals can see in real time who is Tweeting, where they are located, what they are saying, what their interests are, and what operating systems and applications they are using. McAfee says this personal information that is publicly shared allows cyber criminals to create a targeted attack. Of course unsurprisingly, mobile is expected to a huge target in 2011 as more consumers and businesses use smartphones. McAfee says that this increase in usage, combined with “historically fragile cellular infrastructure and slow strides toward encryption,” will put user data on mobile phones at high risk for an attack. Apple is another target that McAfee named for its list. The Mac OS platform has been known for warding off cyber criminals but the McAfee Labs warns that Mac-targeted malware will continue to increase in sophistication in 2011. And as iPads and iPhones populate businesses, there is the risk for data and identity exposure. Web-connected TV platforms such as Google TV, will also be a target for suspicious and malicious apps says McAfee. The company says that these apps will target or expose privacy and identity data, and will allow cybercriminals to manipulate a variety of physical devices through compromised or controlled apps. With the dawn of controversial site Wikileaks, McAfee says that next year will also bring more politically motivated attacks to the web. McAfee Labs says that “hacktivism” will become the a new form of political demonstration. CrunchBase Information McAfee Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Zumigo Raises $420,000 To Help Jumpstart More Location-Based Applications Top
There’s no doubt in my mind that 2011 will be a big year for location and context-aware applications, and thus also for the companies that enable developers and publishers to build or enhance software that takes advantages of information on users’ whereabouts, such as SimpleGeo and Twitter (which acquired GeoAPI maker Mixer Labs about a year ago). Enter Zumigo, a company that offers a suite of fully hosted applications and services that feature advanced mobile messaging and location-based services. The startup hasn’t made any noise to date, but an SEC filing reveals that they’ve just raised $420,000 in funding. Furthermore, the company’s chief executive is Chirag Bakshi , former Vice President, Wireless Messaging at VeriSign and a director at Apple in the early nineties. He’s not the only former VeriSigner on board – the company’s former Director of Product Management Bill Loller is also involved with Zumigo as the startup’s VP of Marketing & Product Management. We’ve added Zumigo to CrunchBase and will keep tracking the startup closely. CrunchBase Information Zumigo Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Dashwire Raises Another $1 Million For Mobile Services Platform Top
Dashwire , which offers a mobile services platform for carriers, handset manufacturers and retailers, has raised $1 million in debt financing, according to this SEC filing . Dashwire’s Dashworks platform (PDF) is a “mobile-plus-web app” solution that helps people setup their phones, migrate from one device to another, backup everything on the phone, keep it in sync online and share photos and videos with others through social networking services. The platform is available for Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry. Dashwire is privately held and based in Seattle. According to its about page , the company is backed by investors who “built the wireless and technology industries” at McCaw Cellular, Western Wireless, Voicestream, Nextel, China Unicom, and Microsoft; and by Best Buy Capital. Founder and CEO of Dashwire is Ford Davidson, a former Product Manager in the Mobile Devices group at Microsoft. CrunchBase Information Dashwire Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Zynga's CityVille Now More Than 25 Percent Bigger Than FarmVille Top
We knew Zynga’s Facebook game CityVille was a hit if the company ever had one (and it’s had several already) but the growth that it is displaying is simply mind-blowing. We’ll kick off by pointing out that the game was released on December 2, 2010, which is less than a month ago. The company subsequently reported that in the game's first 24 hours on Facebook, over 290,000 people had already played CityVille. A few days later: 3 million daily active users. And while you turned your eyes away from the screen for a few minutes: bang, 6 million active users. Last week, the Sim City-esque game logged about 61.7 million monthly active users, effectively eclipsing its other hit game, FarmVille . Today, CityVille is at close to 72.5 million monthly active users, which means that it has already outgrown FarmVille (which boasts roughly 57,4 million monthly active users) by more than 25 percent. CityVille isn’t just the biggest game on Facebook, it’s now the biggest game on Facebook with one hell of a margin. For the record: we got the number straight from the application pages, as AppData’s stats on monthly active users appear to be a tad outdated at the time of writing. And just for the heck of it, here are the current usage stats for the other “Ville” games: FrontierVille : 30,468,070 monthly active users PetVille : 8,394,142 monthly active users YoVille : 6,232,611 monthly active users FishVille : 4,969,283 monthly active users No wonder Google investor John Doerr famously said Zynga is probably his VC firm’s best investment to date. Its growth is simply astounding. CrunchBase Information Zynga Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Flicksquare Sends Your Foursquare Check-In Photos To Flickr Top
Inspired by a tweet from First Round Capital VC Charlie O’Donnell ( “Can someone hack a Foursquare app that cc’s my checkin photos to Flickr?” ), developer Benny Wong has created Flicksquare, an app that takes advantage of Foursquare’s recent enabling of photo check-in features , allowing you to also send your Foursquare photos to Flickr . While Foursquare gave lip service to working on the Flickr and Facebook export capability a couple of weeks ago, Wong has beat it to the punch. Along with being able to automatically publish photos to Flickr, Flicksquare also includes data like the name of venue checked-in to as well as a link to your Foursquare check-in on Flickr’s photo info. Wong even included Foursquare’s machine tags when About Foursquare made the request . You can keep tabs on the photos being sent through the Flicksquare site and turn the service off if you plain old get tired of it. Wong says he’s taken aback by how much positive response the service has engendered since its launch, “Im surprised its being so well received; I spent an afternoon throwing this together since I’m in NY and I was snowed in on Sunday.” Thanks to Wong and Foursquare, you can now check into the Snowocalypse 2010 venue with a photo and simultaneously send that photo to Flickr. Hurrah. CrunchBase Information Flicksquare Foursquare Flickr Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Search Etsy Listings By Color With Glancely Top
Let’s say you want to find that perfect quirky little black dress for New Year’s Eve? Like a mashup of Etsy ,  Flickr color search and Google Instant, Glancely lets you search Etsy visually, sorting instant results by color and by price so you can scan through multiple green knit caps or purple socks or whatever handmade items your heart desires. Hold your mouse over an item to get a closer look and click on an item to go straight to its Etsy profile. The most interesting thing about Glancely is that creator Davin Bentti plans to expand beyond Etsy, his ultimate goal being thousands of retailers and millions of products and searching. He is currently adding more upscale retailers like MacMall, Kidorable, GelaSkins, Scarpasa and Diamond.com and has BestBuy, FinishLine, Linea Pelle and PrincetonWatches in the queue, considering  “pretty much anyone who has images big enough to use.” While TheFind and Milo also offer visual shopping search, the results are sometimes underwhelming from a visual standpoint. Says Bentti, “The concept of visual search results isn’t really being exploited the way I think it potentially could be and the technology is either there now, or will be soon.” Glancely is currently looking for seed funding. Aside from further expansion and product scaling, Bentti plans on eventually having a Glancely mobile app, visual input for search and potentially localized results. CrunchBase Information Glancely Information provided by CrunchBase
 
How Much Did It Cost AOL To Send Us Those CDs In The 90s? "A Lot!," Says Steve Case Top
Like most little kids, I used to love getting things in the mail. And in the 1990s, I was lucky enough to get something new every single day. Sadly, 99.9 percent of those were install discs from AOL. If you lived in the United States in the 1990s, you remember these. They started as 3.5-inch floppies and transitioned into CDs. And I’m not exaggerating. I got one just about every single day. You’ve got mail, indeed. If nothing else, it was ingenious marketing for AOL. While people eventually started bitching about getting spammed by the discs, most of those people probably also installed them at least once and checked out the service. So how much did that cost AOL? “ A lot ,” says CEO at the time, Steve Case . Case himself took to Quora recently to answer the question:  How much did it cost AOL to distribute all those CDs back in the 1990′s ? Case says that he doesn’t remember the total amount spent on the discs specifically, but says that in the early 1990s, AOL’s goal was to spend 10 percent of lifetime revenue to get a new subscriber. He says that since the average subscriber life was around 25 months, revenue was about $350 off of each of these users. So he guesses they probably spent about $35 per user on things such as these discs. “ As we were able to lower the cost of disks/trial/etc we were able to ramp up marketing. (Plus, we knew Microsoft was coming and it was never going to be easier or cheaper to get market share.) When we went public in 1992 we had less than 200,000 subscribers; a decade later the number was in the 25 million range ,” Case recalls. In other words, the discs worked. Case also notes that the subscriber growth helped grow AOL from a market cap of $70 million at the time of their IPO to $150 billion when the merger with Time Warner occurred. I repeat, the discs worked. Well, at least until that merger turned into a nightmare and had to be dissolved. A move which paved the way for the new-look AOL to purchase TechCrunch this year . Another user on Quora looked over some numbers from the 90s and gave a more specific number for how much AOL spent on those discs: $300 million. Update : Jan Brandt, AOL’s former Chief Marketing Officer has now weighed in as well: Over $300 million :-) At one point, 50% of the CD’s produced worldwide had an AOL logo on it. We were logging in new subscribers at the rate of one every six seconds As a side note, it’s great to see people like Case — who is usually pretty candid — answering questions directly on Quora. Humorously, it was SGN founder  Shervin Pishevar who actually asked the AOL question in the first place. How do we know? Because he emailed us about it, overjoyed that Case himself responded. He also sent us the following love note for Quora completely unsolicited: I think it’s very significant that people of influence are starting to flock to Quora as the authoritative place to communicate with the world in long form. Billionaire entrepreneurs like Steve Case (AOL) and Reid Hastings (Netflix) have already left important answers on Quora. Twitter is the leading place for short form broadcasting and short form blogging. Influential people are busy and don’t have the time to manage blogging on a continual basis and manage that community. Quora is quickly becoming the defacto community for such people to broadcast longer forms communications with the world and have it spread fast. We love Quora too. It leads to information like this . More :  More On AOL's Disc Strategy: $1.19 Floppies, 50% Of All CDs Made, And Precision Bombing CrunchBase Information AOL Steve Case Information provided by CrunchBase
 
StyleHop's Hunt For Hot Fashion Comes To An End As It Heads To The DeadPool Top
Over two years ago I wrote about a startup called StyleHop that set out to identify hot fashion items through the use of casual games — instead of having to fill out a survey or poll, it would generate fashion recommendations based on how you played these games. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out (nor did the startup’s second business plan) and today the company is announcing that it will be shutting its doors early next month. Some of the company’s struggles stem from the financial meltdown of 2008 — founder David Reinke explains that after raising some seed money, StyleHop was planning to close a Series A in October 2008, which happened to be right when Sequoia’s RIP: Good Times was making the rounds. The funding round never happened, and the company quickly had to shift gears from its consumer-facing fashion games to something more directly related to generating revenue. This second model was to help retailers with their merchandise selection by assembling a consumer panel of women who had proven that they could pick winning items. To create this panel StyleHop asked prospective panelists to rate items that had already been released, and compared their predictions to historical data to see who had the keenest eye. StyleHop signed up two big-box retailers as pilot customers, who used the service to pick out which fashion items to feature in their stores the following season. And it apparently worked: Reinke says that StyleHop panelist predictions were seven times more accurate that the predictions of in-house ‘product pickers’ when comparing how each item sold versus how much inventory had been ordered. Unfortunately, despite these encouraging results, the service couldn’t land any larger-scale rollouts. Reinke attributes this in part to the company’s lack of funding, and also to the fact that many retailers weren’t ready to experiment with new merchandising techniques during the economic downturn. He also believes that StyleHop may have taken the wrong approach when dealing with these retailers — it was mostly negotiating with middle- to senior-level managers, some of whom could have their jobs potentially threatened if the system worked. Instead, Reinke thinks StyleHop should have tried to work more directly with CEOs and company boards. The failure of StyleHop is interesting in part because there are currently an increasing number of services looking to reinvent the way fashion is selected and presented to consumers. ModCloth has done extremely well turning this model on its head (see my interview with the founders right here ), and Moxsie is also looking to help crowdsource merchandise selection. However, both of these are targeting the indie fashion market — StyleHop was hoping to reinvent merchandising for mass-market stores. StyleHop has been added to the TechCrunch Deadpool . CrunchBase Information StyleHop Information provided by CrunchBase
 

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