The latest from TechCrunch
- #LessAmbitiousMovies Aims To Sort Of Take Over Part Of Your Twitter Stream
- Twitter And Foursquare Explain Their SXSW Explosions: Hustle, Buzz, And Maybe $11K
- Sales Are At A Trickle On Google's Chrome Web Store
- The Most Essential Technology Predictions For 2011, Ever [Video]
| #LessAmbitiousMovies Aims To Sort Of Take Over Part Of Your Twitter Stream | Top |
| Hey you know what’s happening right now? #LessAmbitiousMovies , the craziest Twitter hashtag meme I’ve ever seen, pacing at around 200 tweets per minute. The basic premise is to tweet out the titles of popular films but watered down and less ambitious, get it? What’s notable about the meme is a) for some inexplicable reason it is not trending and b) that since it started a couple of hours ago the hashtag has suddenly saturated my (and probably your ) entire Twitter stream with hilarious faux movie titles like “Being John Stamos,”Harry Potter and the Chamber of Nothing,” and “The Devil Wears Zara.” Maybe because it’s the first work week after the holidays and we all need to let off a little steam, but there something deeply satisfying about coming up with these. Go ahead try one. And yeah, someone really should make posters for all the movies. Update: It’s now trending — I’ve contacted Twitter for more information on how fast this is scaling as this as this seems to be the fastest growing hashtag in awhile. Some of my favorites, below: @gabrielsnyder Gabriel Snyder My Shared Public Idaho #lessambitiousmovies 22 minutes ago via Twitter for iPad Retweet Reply @fromedome Dan Frommer Apocalyse Whenever #lessambitiousmovies about 1 hour ago via TweetDeck Retweet Reply @peretti Jonah Peretti Schindler's Shopping List #lessambitiousmovies 18 minutes ago via web Retweet Reply @bradnelson brad nelson Actually, white men can jump. #lessambitiousmovies 55 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone Retweet Reply @rachelsklar Ok you win. RT @ ischafer : Sex And The City 2 #lessambitiousmovies about 1 hour ago via TweetDeck Retweet Reply @sacca Chris Sacca The Perfect Dorm #lessambitiousmovies 30 minutes ago via web Retweet Reply @cpen Carolyn Penner Dumb and dumb #lessambitiousmovies 57 minutes ago via Twitter for Android Retweet Reply @brooke Brooke Hammerling Love this one. RT @ moorehn The B-Team. #lessambitiousfilms 47 minutes ago via Twitter for BlackBerry® Retweet | |
| Twitter And Foursquare Explain Their SXSW Explosions: Hustle, Buzz, And Maybe $11K | Top |
| Now that it’s 2011 and we’re back in the swing of things, a lot of startups are already undoubtedly laying out their launch plans for the year. And while anytime seems like a good time around these parts, a lot of startups pencil in the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas as a good potential launching point. Why? Because it’s early in the year (early March), with a ton of people and hype, and a few of the most successful launches in recent years took place there. You can always tell the most successful launches because the press the following year will say, “who is going to be this year’s ______ of SXSW?” The two most obvious companies that fit that bill are Twitter and Foursquare. (Well technically Twitter didn’t launch at SXSW, but that was definitely their coming out party in 2007.) And coincidentally, two founders of those two companies have taken to Quora today to both answer the question: What is the process involved in launching a startup at SXSW ? Yes, I get to write about Twitter, Foursquare, and Quora in the same post. Twitter co-founder Evan Williams notes that Twitter launched prior to SXSW “to a whimper”. He says that the company made a decision to target SXSW for some publicity in 2007 simply because it seemed like a lot of the then “thousands” of Twitter early-adopters were heading there. He specifically credits two things they did there with helping the explosion of interest. First, they set up a tweet visualization screens and negotiated with the conference to put them in the main hallways in the Austin Convention Center. “ This is something they’d never done before, but we didn’t want a booth on the trade show floor, because we knew hallways is where the action was. We paid $11K for this and set up the TVs ourselves. (This was about the only money Twitter’s *ever* spent on marketing.) ,” Williams notes. The second thing they did was to create a SXSW-specific feature that allowed people to join Twitter simply by texting “join sxsw” to their 40404 SMS shortcode. When people did that, they would show up on the screens around the conference. And you’d be following the half-dozen Twitter “ambassadors” that were other users at the conference (consider that the first SUL). Williams notes, however, that it didn’t seem like a ton of people signed up for the service that way. “ I don’t know what was the most important factor, but networks are all about critical mass, so doubling down on the momentum seemed like a good idea. And something clicked ,” he concludes. Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley offers a different take. His big launch was two years later, at SXSW 2009, and the conference was already much larger at that point. His two main keys to a big SXSW launch are to “hustle” and to do everything in your power to get viral word-of-mouth buzz just before the conference. “ Start telling friends and stranger to try out your app, ” Crowley writes, saying that they spent $0 on marketing that year. As for hustling, Crowley says that “ we started in January and flipped the switch on 4SQ the Thursday before SXSW. Me & Naveen [his co-founder] were both coding in the airport, on the tarmac, on the runway .” Crowley also says that you should take advantage of Twitter early on for both feedback and support. “ Try to answer as many support + feature requests tweets you can . Get people to spread the love,” he writes. He also suggests using a service like GetSatisfaction to gather a collection of “superusers” to help out with troubleshooting and bugs. Finally, he says that it’s probably wise to have someone not at SXSW watching the ship during the actual conference. “ It’ll help while you’re doing your thing in Austin ,” he says. But Crowley’s most interesting tidbit comes in a comment below his answer: don’t focus on the press / media / bloggers. Focus on making something you think is awesome. Focus on making something you think other people will also think is awesome. The rest will prob just happen. In an answer below that, Kevin Marks leaves another crucial point: FIrst of all, be sure that your startup makes sense for SXSW – both Twitter and Foursquare (and indeed Dodgeball) were highly suitable for thousands of geeks crammed into a smallish downtown with intermittent net connectivity and a desire to co-ordinate with each other. If your startup is an Enterprise Sales tool, you might be better off launching somewhere else. Consider this the official countdown kickoff to the “who will be this year’s ______ at SXSW” stories. CrunchBase Information Twitter Foursquare Quora Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Sales Are At A Trickle On Google's Chrome Web Store | Top |
| In December, after months of anticipation and discussions with third-party developers, Google finally unveiled the Chrome Web Store — an online portal that lets users purchase and ‘install’ web applications like TweetDeck, MOG, and hundreds of others. It’s one of the first platforms that helps developers monetize web applications using a unified payment system (in this case, Google Checkout), and it’s going to be deeply integrated into Google’s Chrome browser. Unfortunately, as far as we can tell, nobody is really buying anything on it. The UI for the Chrome Web Store looks very similar to iTunes, and, just like iTunes, one of the most prominent sections is a list of ‘Top Paid’ applications. Sitting at the top of the list is Toddler Jukebox , a colorful little app selling for $1.99 that lets you play twelve children’s songs, like ‘Wheels on the Bus’. And, according to the Web Store stats, it’s been installed six times this week. Ouch. To be fair, Google isn’t sorting its ‘Top Paid’ list in order of purchases (though I’m not sure why) — a few of the other applications in the list are doing better, but even those are still showing lackluster sales. The paid application with the most recent activity is MathBoard , which has 65 weekly installs and sells for $2.99 (less Google’s fees , so it gets around $2.56 a pop). In other words, it’s earning around $165 a week. That’s not nothing, but given that every other app on the store is probably making less than that, it’s not good. Now, it’s possible that sales slowed a bit over the holidays, but the impact couldn’t have been that huge. There is, however, one more significant explanation for this: Google hasn’t done much to expose the Web Store to users. In fact, the current stable release of Chrome still doesn’t actually feature the Chrome Web Store anywhere — it only shows up if you go to the Web Store directly and install an application. That said, Google has placed banner ads for the Store on some sites (including TechCrunch), and the store got loads of publicity at launch, so it’s not like it’s a secret. There are some free applications that are getting far more attention, like Quick Note , which has 8,000 installs this week. Obviously it’s common for free applications to get more installations than premium apps, but the discrepancy — 65 paid installs versus 8,000 free — seems pretty steep. One thing is clear: Google has a long way to go with the Web Store. It’s still impossible to distinguish applications that are basically just bookmarks from those that are full-fledged web apps. And while the purchase flow itself is pretty simple (you can buy something in a couple clicks, assuming you already have a Google Checkout account), I think Google will have to put some work into educating people on what exactly they’re paying for. Thanks to Brian Kennish for the heads up. Kennish is the man behind Disconnect , a browser extension that lets you block services like Facebook Connect CrunchBase Information Google Chrome Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| The Most Essential Technology Predictions For 2011, Ever [Video] | Top |
| You might remember social media comedian Alex Blagg from “The Greatest Elevator Pitch You’ve Ever Seen.” Now he’s taken 2011 by the horns with “Important Internet & Tech Predictions That Will Definitely Happen In 2k11 (VIRAL VID),” making fun of the infinite series of prediction posts that come out this time of year. I’ve watched the above video three times this morning and I still can’t get over “There will be a ton of real huge deals, who are the players? It doesn’t matter” line, because it’s totally something I would say. Those of you who really want to read a more serious predictions post can do so here (some of them have come true four days in even ). Now if you’ll excuse me, I need get back to work on my new predictions book, What Experts Expect When They Are Expecting. See you in 2012! CrunchBase Information Alex Blagg Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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