Thursday, March 3, 2011

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Apple, Google, Amazon, And Microsoft Make Up 4 Of The Top 10 Most Admired Companies Top
Every year, Fortune magazine (where I started out as a reporter) comes out with its list of the Most Admired Companies in the world. In truth, it doesn’t really change much from year to year. Apple, once again for the fourth year in a row, is No. 1 , as it should be. The company single-handedly created an entirely new class of touch computing with the iPad last year, and is on it’s way to becoming the most valuable company in the world. Google is No. 2 (although, confusingly, it’s overall score of 8.22 is higher than Apple’s 8.16—it turns out that those are their industry scores not their separate Top 50 scores, a spokesperson explains, even though they are labeled “overall scores”). And Amazon comes in at No. 7. Microsoft hangs on at No. 9. So four of the top 10 companies are from the technology industry. And IBM is No. 12. After that, the list becomes a mixed bag, and even a little questionable. Cisco, Intel, Netflix, eBay, Sony, and Oracle also made the list. Netflix totally deserves to be there and maybe Cisco, but the others just seem to grandfathered in. Where’s Yahoo? Actually, before you put too much credence into this list, however, Goldman Sachs also made the list at No. 25. Yes, that Goldman Sachs, the one that turned out to be too big to jail for its culpability in the financial crisis and is spending $3.4 billion in legal fees just to defend itself this year alone. Here are the Top 10 Most Admired companies according to Fortune: 1 Apple 2 Google 3 Berkshire Hathaway 4 Southwest Airlines 5 Procter & Gamble 6 Coca-Cola 7 Amazon.com 8 FedEx 9 Microsoft 10 McDonald’s CrunchBase Information Apple Google Amazon Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Nielsen: Android Pulls Ahead Of RIM And iOS For U.S. Smartphone Share Top
Nielsen has just released new data on U.S. smartphone share. According to the report, smartphone powered by Android operating systems (29 percent) is pulling ahead of RIM’s Blackberry (27 percent) and Apple iOS (27 percent). But Nielsen says that because RIM and Apple create and sell their own smartphones with their operating systems, these companies are actually in a better position in the three-way race (in terms of device manfuacturers). Because Google licenses its OS to device manufacturers, the Android ecosystem is more fragmented. In terms of the break down of Android OS ,12 percent of Android smartphone owners having an HTC device, with Motorola following behind with ten percent share. Samsung comes in third with five percent. and 7 percent owning an HTC device running a Microsoft OS. Nielsen also says that a higher percentage Android users fall into a younger age group (8 percent) vs RIM (4 percent) and Apple (4 percent). Over the past few months, Nielsen has consistently reported Android’s growth as a smartphone operating system. And other research firms have released similar data as well. But as Nielsen says in this report, RIM, Apple and Android are still neck-in-neck, so it’s a close game where anyone can pull ahead. CrunchBase Information Nielsen Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Imation Acquires Encryption And Security Solutions Company ENCRYPTX Top
Imation , a global developer and marketer of branded products that enable people to store and protect digital information, has acquired ENCRYPTX Corporation , which provides encryption and security solutions for removable storage devices and storage media. Terms of the deal were not disclosed , but approximately 10 employees will transfer from ENCRYPTX to Imation.
 
Demand Media Buys Liveblogging Tool CoverItLive Top
On the heels of its entry to the public market , content farm Demand Media has just acquired CoverItLive, a liveblogging tool. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. CoverItLive provides an extensive tool one can use for liveblogging live events or other real-time stuff such as earnings calls, press conferences and more. In fact, this past weekend, CoverItLive powered liveblogs for the Oscar ceremonies on People, TMZ, Entertainment Weekly, Variety and the Daily Beast. Demand Media has originally made a strategic investment in CoveritLive back in 2009 , acquiring a minority interest in the startup. With today’s acquisition, CoverItLive will become a platform within Demand Media's portfolio of social “solutions.” Chairman and CEO of Demand Media Richard Rosenblatt said of the acquisition: "CoveritLive really reflects our mission as a company – publishing what the world wants to know and share. Consumers around the world are tuning in by the millions to participate in live events powered by CoveritLive, collectively spending over a billion minutes on the platform each month.” My colleagues over at Crunchgear have used CoverItLive for liveblogging purposes but aren’t the biggest fan of the service as it has failed them a number of times during events and currently favor competitive tool ScribbleLive for live coverage. Now that it is a public company, Demand Media just released its first earnings report, which showed an increase in revenue in its most recent financial quarter. But shares of the the company have been down, after Google announced changes to its search algorithm that could negatively impact the content farm. Demand Media is dependent on Google search traffic and a change in ranking could negatively effect the content farm's business. But Rosenblatt seems optimistic despite these changes, telling an audience at an advertising conference this week “Nothing changed materially for our business,” (as reported by Ad Week ). Demand also issued a public statement following Google’s announcement, "We cannot be commenting every time Google makes an algorithm change. It's just one component of our ecosystem. We're fine. We're just trying to create quality content." CrunchBase Information CoverItLive Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Big Pay Day For Big Data. Teradata Buys Aster Data For $263 Million Top
In the old days, big data used to be called data warehousing. But that was when corporations stored all their own data on their own servers. Today, it’s just called big data and it generally refers to the vast reaches of data in the cloud. Old big data is buying new big data today, as data warehousing powerhouse Teradata just announced it will be acquiring Aster Data Systems for $263 million. Teradat already owns an 11 percent stake in Aster Data, which it bought last September. The $263 million, which is “net of debt and other expenses,” will purchase the remaining 89 percent, giving Aster Data a final valuation of $295 million. ASter Data has raised $53 million from Sequoia, First Round Capital, and IVP. Ron Conway, David Cheriton, and Anand Rajaraman were angel investors. Just last September, the company raised $30 million . As we described back then: Aster Data makes products that help manage and analyze very large sets of data, solving problems that standard databases may not be able to cope with. One of Aster's core products is nCluster, which the company describes as a massively parallel (MPP) database with an analytics engine baked in. Aster Data's clients include comScore, LinkedIn, and MySpace Aster Data also specializes in analyzing data that is unstructured (i.e., it is not stored neatly in a database, but maybe is just out in the open Web). It’s revenues have been doubling every year. Big data is big business. CrunchBase Information Aster Data Systems Teradata Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Visibli Raises $500K To Give Brands And Companies A Way To Personalize Links Top
Visibli , a startup that gives brands and companies a way to personalize links, has raised $500,000 in seed funding from Extreme Venture Partners and undisclosed angel investors. Visibli solves a pain point for brands and companies that want to send outside links to fans and followers but want to personalize these links. Called the Engagement Bar, the StumbleUpon-like technology adds a bar on the top of any web page that allows brands to link to their own sites, videos, images and more. So when you link to a page, your customized Engagement Bar will appear at the top your linked page. Engagement Bars can incorporate a number of different types of content, including social widgets, online videos, links to Amazon, iTunes or Etsy stores. In the past year, Visibli has signed a number of high-profile clients to use the service, including John Legend, Quincy Jones and Interscope Records. The company says that trials with these clients received a 5.35 percent engagement rate (in terms of click through rates), which is fifty times what these brands were seeing on non-Visibli enabled websites. And Visibli has launched a specific product for the music industry, that includes integration with iTunes, SoundCloud, FanBridge, and other interactive music sites. CrunchBase Information Visibli Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Microsoft And Google Jointly Hit GeoTag With A Lawsuit To Invalidate Its Patent Top
Google and Microsoft , tech giants embroiled in a competitive battle that has spanned many years and will continue to rage for many years to come, have teamed up to take down a Texas-based patent troll’s geotagging patent that they claim has been used in lawsuits against more than 300 companies , many of which are their customers or partners. The news was first reported yesterday by The Times Of India as far as I can tell. The defendant in the case , geo-location technology provider GeoTag , is trying to make coin from its US Patent, No. 5,930,474 , entitled “Internet organizer for accessing geographically and topically based information”. The patent was originally applied for in 1996 and granted in 1999. Microsoft and Google, who fear for their respective online mapping services to get targeted as well, claim there was prior art at the time of filing that the USPTO did not care to take into account. GeoTag reportedly paid a whopping $119 million to obtain the patent. The patent has, however, “changed ownership at least five times,” with the current owner headed by one of the patent inventors, according to the complaint. GeoTag, meanwhile, is plotting an IPO and has filed documents with the SEC to sell shares at $6.25 each. Microsoft and Google seek to invalidate the applicable patent, prove that the technology is not used in Google Maps or Bing Maps, but also pleaded for a judge to order GeoTag to stop suing so many of its customers and partners over their store locator services. Let’s hope the patent troll loses, big time. Patents should be used to protect companies that produce actual, innovative products and services, not to make greedy people behind non-practicing entities enormously wealthy without them ever producing anything, let alone selling a product or service to anyone. CrunchBase Information Microsoft Google Information provided by CrunchBase
 
@CharlieSheen's Road To A Million Twitter Followers Top
As some of you may have noticed, former Two And A Half Men star Charlie Sheen joined Twitter yesterday afternoon, and today has a verified account and a million followers in a little over 24 hours. While its unclear whether @CharlieSheen is the fastest followed account in Twitter history ( @KanyeWest and @ConanOBrien are also contenders),  gaining such a huge audience so quickly is a formidable accomplishment. I spoke to Ad.ly founder Sean Rad this morning about Sheen’s path to Twitter celeb-dom and he told me that the story came about simply, as the result of a phone call. According to Rad, Sheen’s management, specifically Sheen’s digital manager Robert Marin, called Ad.ly early yesterday morning about getting Sheen on Twitter, because Ad.ly is known as the “go-to place” for social media in the Hollywood community. Rad then called Omid Ashtari, Twitter business development and Hollywood liaison, who then took the @CharlieSheen account back from a squatter. By 1pm the account was up, and Charlie Sheen tweeted out this image shortly after our post went up. His made up hashtag #tigerblood was trending shortly there-afterwards. @alexblagg Alex Blagg Seems like @ CharlieSheen is getting about Two and a Half Mentions per second on Twitter. about 18 hours ago via web Retweet Reply “His goal was to get on Twitter so he could reach out to his audience as fast as possible,” Rad said. Rad is unbelievably transparant about the whole process which involved giving advice on how to tweet, @reply and what a hashtag is. It seems like Sheen caught on pretty fast. And while Sheen is in the Ad.ly network, which means that Ad.ly is mining his follower data to present to advertisers for tweets, he as of yet has not become a publisher, ( “we have no plans right now” ) which means sending out a lucrative tweet endorsement. Ad.ly tweet endorsements run anywhere from $1000-$20,000 depending on the celebrity Rad told me. For the less famous members of the Ad.ly network, like our own Erick Schonfeld, those numbers are less underwhelming. While the idea of seeing an in a tweet stream is off putting for some (myself included), Rad sees more and more celebrity advertising, which he says makes up 30% of ads, coming online. He also sees himself as sort of a celebrity herder in the process, “What Twitter does and what Facebook does is allow celebrities to speak directly to their audience and bypass the layers of media, creates a distribution channel for a celebrity to talk directly to their audience.” For the past day, Sheen has been tweeting out images of brands, in a sense giving free advertising to Pepsi’s Naked Juice and Direct TV. When asked what he thought about Sheen specifically, Rad said, “I don’t really want to pass judgement on the guy, but I think it’s amazing how he’s using social media to get his message across.” As to what that message is, Rad did not exactly know, “He’s definitely stirred up a lot controversy.” Image: Charlie Sheen CrunchBase Information Twitter Ad.ly Information provided by CrunchBase
 

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