Monday, May 23, 2011

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Jive Buys Microsoft Office Collaboration Plugin OffiSync For Up To $30 Million Top
Social enterprise giant Jive is continuing its its shopping spree today, picking up OffiSync , an Israeli startup that adds a collaboration layer to Microsoft Office applications, we’ve confirmed. The deal was first reported in Israeli publication The Marker, which estimates the acquisition size to be around $25 to $30 million. OffiSync offers a a plugin for Microsoft Office that serves as a bridge between Office and Google Docs. When it first launched , the app’s primary feature was to save Office documents to your Google account. It’s since integrated Google Image Serach into Office, and added support for Google Sites. The application allows you to do Office-to-Office collaboration, and you can also have users editing the same document from Google Docs’ online interface. Changes aren’t synced as you type in each character, but rather each time you hit the ‘save’ button. Offisync is offered under a freemium model, but recently tweaked its pricing to offer more free features. Jive’s CEO Tony Zingale says says that this is a game changing acquisition for Jive, which combines computing with social collaboration to offer fully-featured social networks for businesses. Its suite of applications help businesses collaborate on a variety of tasks, including holding discussions, communication, sharing documents, blogging, running polls, and social networking features and more. "With OffiSync, Jive has the opportunity to become the most widely adopted Social Business platform for over 600 million Microsoft users, giving them the ability to bring social to the way they work. We continue to drive the agenda for Social Business leadership and set the standard for the market,” Zingale explains. Jive was already integrated with OffiSync but now will be launching a much deeper, richer connection with the collaboration plugin. Users will be able to share, annotate and collaborate on Microsoft Office documents from within Jive’s social platform. Additionally, Jive and OffiSync will allow users view and reply to discussions on the Jive platform from their Microsoft Outlook inbox. And of course, the integration will bring Jive’s social enterprise platform, including profiles and activities, to Microsoft Outlook. Clearly, this integration brings a much richer sand integrated social enterprise experience for The OffiSync team, most of whom are currently based in Tel Aviv, Israel, will join Jive's engineering organization, and Jive plans to launch a new R&D center in Tel Aviv. The team in Israel will be lead by Roy Antebi, OffiSync co-founder and CTO, who will join Jive as VP of Engineering. Oudi Antebi, OffiSync co-founder and CEO, will join Jive Senior Vice President of Enterprise Solutions. In his new role, Oudi will drive Jive's vision and strategy for integration with Microsoft and the broader enterprise stack. This is Jive’s second acquisition in the past two months—Jive just acquired social data startup Proximal Labs. CrunchBase Information Jive Software Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Square's Disruptive New iPad Payments Service Will Replace Cash Registers Top
Mobile payments startup Square is announcing big numbers today—500,000 Square card readers shipped, 1 million Square transactions in May, and the startup is now processing $3 million in mobile payments per day. Clearly the company is on a roll in terms of traction and usage . And CEO Jack Dorsey is also revealing the next generation of Square. And Square is about to get a whole lot more disruptive. Today, Dorsey is revealing Square Register, a high-powered point of sale replacement for cash registers and point of sale terminals. And the company is taking it one step further for consumers by launching the Square Card Case, a way for purchasers to access a local merchants’ goods, prices, location, loyalty card and more. For background, Square offers an iPhone, Android and  iPad app which allows merchants to process and manage credit card transactions with a handy little credit card swiping device that plugs into the headset/microphone jack. The device and service is the brainchild of Twitter co-founder and recently appointed product lead Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey. And Square recently raised $27.5 million in new funding, and announced a strategic investment from credit card company Visa. In Q1, Square did $66 million in payment volume (the company expected $40 million) and is now in track to process $1 billion in payment volume within a year. Square Register For The iPad Square’s COO Keith Rabois tells us that as the startup has created a payments product for small businesses, they’ve learned that many businesses have more needs than simply having a credit card processor. One of these needs is being able to not only accept cards, but also communicate with customers more efficiently. So today, Square is launching this brand new version of its iPad app, Square Register. Rabois says the iPad app makes these expensive and cumbersome terminals obsolete for merchants. Not only is the reader and app free (and beautifully designed), but the register is designed to help create and maintain meaningful relationships with customers. Historically, Square’s readers always stored every purchaser’s receipt for merchants and allowed merchant’s to send a copy of the receipt to the purchaser via SMS and email. It was fairly simple. Now, with the upgrade, merchants can send customers a link to download an app on their mobile phone called a Square Card Case. And this gives merchants a whole new level of engagement with their customers. And data is another big component of Square’s announcement—Dorsey says merchants will have Google Analytics style data that merchants can access, such as how many muffins were sold, and to which types of customers, and more. The Square Card Case For Consumers As you can see from the image, the Card Case looks like a wallet-like case you would store your loyalty cards or credit cards in. Here’s how it works: when you go to a merchant who is a participating Square users, the merchant will send you a link to download the app on your mobile phone. It’s important to note that the app is not available in the App Store publicly, and at launch will only support iPhones; Android support will be rolled out soon. Once you’ve downloaded your mobile Card Case, you can fill your case with ‘cards’ of all the merchants you visit and buy from who accept Square. When you click on an individual merchant’s card, you’ll be able to see a map of where the merchant is located, contact information, your own order and purchase history, and receipts with the merchant and a daily live menu of items or services from the merchant. You’ll also be able to see what other customers are buying at the store, and merchants can serve customized offers to specific customers based on their purchase history. So here’s where things get interesting. In a merchant’s card within the case, you can press a “use tab” button which allows the frequent customer to essentially put a purchase on their virtual tab with Square at the merchant. So once you press that button within two blocks of the merchant, you’ll be able to tell the cashier your name and your card will be charged on the merchant’s backend Square register. Because you are a repeat customer, Square already has your payment information. The purchaser will then receive a push notification when the merchant processes the payment. Another feature of the newly designed Square is the ability for the payments company to show other merchants nearby who also accept Square payments. As Rabois puts it, “it’s like a curated app store for local businesses.” At launch, Square’s new register and digital wallet service is being used by 50 merchants across the U.S., in San Francisco, Washington D.C., St. Louis, LA, and New York. In fact, there are merchants in the hall at TechCrunch Disrupt here in New York who will be showing attendees how to use the new version of the service. We’re told that the service will the “thoughtfully” rolled out to merchants in the coming weeks. Participating merchants range from coffee shops to bakeries to flower shops to restaurants to salons. Square believes that this next generation of the service will become the default way to run a business and a payments platform. Not only does Square give you analytics and insight into how well your business is doing, but it allows local businesses to connect to customers in a way they couldn’t with traditional point of sale systems and cash registers. In terms of financial terms, nothing has changed. Square will continue to charge the 2.75 percent per transaction fee (the startup dropped the $0.15 per transaction charge for businesses a few months ago). And interestingly, Square chose to refurbish its iPad app into the suped-up register, keeping its Android and iPhone apps as simple payment processors. Rabois tells us this decision was made after seeing the iPad’s succes as a device in retail environments. In the end, their strategy is based around how they take friction away from payments for local businesses, Rabois tells me. There’s no doubt that this new version of the service will be able to connect local merchants to customers in a way that no payments processer has been able to thus far. We know PayPal is trying to get into local, but Square just beat the payments giant to it with this offering. Not only does it offer personalization for each customer, but Square is now tapping into location, and there is still much more to come, Rabois notes. One piece of advice to PayPal, Visa, or any other payments giant who wants to be a part of the future of payments: buy Square. Like yesterday. CrunchBase Information Square Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Square By The Numbers: 500K Card Readers Shipped; 1 Million Transactions In May Top
It’s no secret that disruptive mobile payments startup Square is growing fast. And today, CEO Jack Dorsey revealed a few more milestones for the company—500,000 Square card readers shipped, 1 million Square transactions in May, and as we reported over the weekend the startup is now processing $3 million in mobile payments per day. Fresh off $27.5 million in new funding, and a strategic investment from credit card company Visa, Square is pushing the envelope when its comes to mobile and now local payments. And with the massive growth in merchants adopting Square, is now in track to process $1 billion in payment volume within a year. CrunchBase Information Square Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Quora Founder Cheever: We're Not Going To Sell The Company Top
Here at TechCrunch Disrupt Investor Chris Dixon interviewed Quora founder Charlie Cheever about the future of Quora and sundry other things namely how to avoiding becoming Yahoo answers. Said Cheever, “One of the goals we have for Quora is to have all types of people sharing all types of knowledge. I would image a world where I where I could come up with all the things I want to know and find them on Quora.”  Cheever related an anecdote about how wanted to know was whether Taxis were safter than regular cars, and Cheever looked at Quora, and indeed found out that they were. Despite the hype dying down somewhat, some notable things have happened to Quora in the past couple of months, first of all Forbes hired screenwriters Mark Hughes as an Entertainment Writer after observing his very skilled writing on posts on Quora. The site has experienced record traffic spikes, namely due to the “What’s the most epic photo thread ever taken?” Cheever also revealed that favorite Quora page was “What it felt like to be in the world trade center at the time of the 9-11.” When asked by Dixon if he would ever consider selling the Quora, Cheever said, “We’ve got a explicit non-goal of selling the company.” When I asked Cheever backstage if this was a standard bullshit answer he said “That would be a pretty a stupid thing to BS about.” “We want to build a sustainable business that we can reinvest in, making really good products that are really good.” Cheever said, so Quora it is for now. CrunchBase Information Quora Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Path Launches 'Stacks', A Visual Way To Browse Your Friends' Favorite Things Top
Today at TechCrunch Disrupt, Path founder and CEO Dave Morin unveiled the latest version of the privacy-focused photo sharing app. And it brings with it one key, new feature that could change how you use the service: Stacks. The feature is probably best described as a combination of Path’s core photo sharing experience and Facebook Places. Up until now it’s always been possible to tag your shared Path photos with people, places, and things. But there’s never been a way to actually browse through these. Now you’ll be able to browse through albums sorted by tag, each of which is called a Stack. When you browse to a friend’s profile, you’ll now see a series of thumbnails (actually, it’s more like a small stack of photos) that represent the people, places, and things they interact with most. Tap on one of these, and you’ll see of your friend’s photos that include this tag. The idea, Morin says, is to expose you to new places and things that you may be interested in. Because of the way the system works, the things your friends like most will bubble to the top, which could help you discover new venues, things to do, and friends.
 
Zecco Launches App To Let You Trade Stocks, View Realtime Stock Market Data On Facebook Top
When it comes to public interaction with the stock market, the ability to trade stocks online has completely changed the game. With abundant financial information on the Web, through a little research, more people than ever before have joined in on an activity once reserved for a relationship between the broker and a trader. If you trade online, you may have used ETRADE or TD Ameritrade, or a host of other sites, or you may use Google Finance or Yahoo Finance to do your research. But, of late, we’ve seen the social trend hitting online trading, as it has for so many other spaces — for better or for worse. Last year, rapidly-growing online brokerage company, Zecco , launched the first part in an effort to crank online trading into the next gear: Allowing online stock traders to trade anywhere on the Web, whenever they feel so inspired. This took the form of Zap Trade , which was released in conjunction with StockTwits , the growing social micro-blogging and trading service, as a widget on the StockTwits site and as a Firefox add-on. The Zap Trade widget allows users to place trades from StockTwits or directly from the browser. Today, live from TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, the trade-where-you-want-when-you-want parade continues, as Zecco launches the appropriately named “Wall Street”, which the company says is the “first and only” Facebook app to offer realtime stock quotes, charts, and community discussions on Facebook. And, my friends, not only that, but the Facebook app allows you to make stock trades directly from Facebook, using a compact trade ticket, without ever having to leave the friendly confines of Facebook. Besides allowing the access to realtime stock data and to make trades within the app, the Facebook integration gives both amateur and expert traders alike the ability to “Like” a stock and to thereby stay tuned on the stock’s latest developments, as well as to see which stocks your friends “Like”. So that you can then publicly ridicule them on their Facebook page, or covertly buy that stock as well. What’s more, the app allows you to comment on a stock, participate in discussions, and share investment ideas with specific Facebook friends. On stage today at Disrupt, Zecco CEO Michael Raneri allowed Erick Schonfeld to make what he says is the first-ever online stock trade on Facebook. ZOMG! The CEO showed off the Facebook app’s realtime quotes and charts, which you can see in the image to the left. Beyond trading specific stocks, say that you want to search for wider market trends, Zecco’s app allows you to not only get free quotes and charts on any number of stocks or ETFs, but also lists of the previous day’s most actively and widely-held stocks, so that you can see how risky or safe a stock is compared to others in the market. The app looks great and seems very easy to use. It may take some time for people to get used to the idea of making stock trades on Facebook, considering many people tend not to use the social networking site for financial services, but I think it’s pretty neat that stock trading and free market data has finally come to Facebook — now I can stalk ex-girlfriends and trade my ETFs in one fell swoop. Now, that is something worth writing home about. CrunchBase Information Zecco Information provided by CrunchBase
 
The Truth About Why Path Turned Down A $100 Million Acquisition Offer From Google Top
So this is interesting. At TechCrunch Disrupt, Path’s co-founder Dave Morin sat down with our own Jason Kincaid to discuss Path’s strategy and growth. During the conversation, Kincaid asked Morin about that $100 million acquisition offer from Google that we reported previously. As our report goes, in early December Path had a signed term sheet with Kleiner Perkins and Index for a $8.5 million raise . At that point Google made an acquisition offer for a whopping $100 million for the company plus an earnout of $25 million to be paid over four years. Google wanted Path because they loved the team, particularly the team's "design skills," and were very enthusiastic to get a prominent ex-Facebooker, Morin, at Google. But Path turned the offer down. And closed the deal with Kleiner and Index at a roughly $25 million pre-money valuation. Why? As Kincaid tells us, we heard that there was one term of the offer that was the breaking point—basically Google could fire Morin at any point. Either a month after a deal or a year. Also the search giant gave no guarantee as to what Morin’s title and position would be at Google. We also heard the deal involved $25 million upfront and some sort of $75 million plus earnout offer. As Morin tells Kincaid about the report, “I wish I could talk about it…clearly TechCrunch has great sources…no comment.” CrunchBase Information Path Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Livescribe Releases Connect, Puts Ink In The Cloud Top
Livescribe smartpens allow you to record and send the ink you draw or write on paper. They also record the surrounding audio so you can sync the audio with the drawings, something that’s great for students, reporters, and anyone who goes to meetings regularly. For a while, they had little apps that could run on the pen including a very cool piano app that allowed you to draw a piano and then play it on the page. Now, however, they’ve added an interesting new feature: Livescribe Connect, a system that allows you to send entire pages to multiple recipients including Twitter users, Facebook, Google Docs, and various other cloud services. We got a quick hands on and were able to talk to the company about future plans. Read more…
 
Ashton Kutcher Teams With UberMedia To Launch A.plus, His Own Custom Twitter App Top
Ashton Kutcher fans who can't get enough of the star on Twitter are about to get some very good news. And the rest of you — even if you aren't necessarily huge Ashton fans — will want to pay attention too. Mr. Kutcher, who will be interviewed by Charlie Rose at TechCrunch Disrupt tomorrow, is teaming with UberMedia to launch a customized, branded Twitter client called A.plus that runs using Adobe AIR and is available for both Mac and Windows. You can download the app right here . It's a big deal. Kutcher is the 7th most popular user on the entire service, with over 6.8 million followers. Using the new UberMedia client, he will now be able to directly monetize that following, and he'll also have much greater control over the way his tweets are presented. You see, despite the fact that Kutcher has a massive Twitter following, he also has a lot of competition — if you're following a few dozen active Twitter users, then his tweets might only show up on your screen for a minute or two, and unless you spend a lot of your day monitoring Twitter, you're probably going to miss a bunch of his updates entirely. As you can see in the screenshot above, A.plus looks a bit different from your standard Twitter client. There's the Twitter stream we've all become accustomed to, with a section for @replies, private messages, and so on. But to the left of that is another panel that's also filled with content. Unlike the regular Twitter stream, which UberMedia isn't allowed to insert ads into because of Twitter’s Terms of Service, these additional widgets can be customized with whatever Kutcher wants — photos, video clips, messages longer than 140 characters, or ads.  And they're persistent, so you can have his stream visible at all times. Right now, this area is used to showcase a handful of channels, which are essentially Twitter Lists that have been curated by Kutcher. Open the channel called A+ Arts, and you'll see tweets from Ustream, nowmov, BuzzFeed, and Art.sy among others. Head to the A+ Social channel and you've got LikeALittle, Dailybooth, and foursquare. As you might expect, some of the accounts that are featured happen to be companies that Kutcher has invested in. He's also featured some of the causes he supports, like his philanthropic DNA Foundation . In addition to these lists are a pair of banner ads, and an integrated deals platform (enter your zip code, and you can receive deals directly in A.plus). All of these can be used to generate revenue — UberMedia isn't getting into specifics, but Kutcher will be able to monetize some parts of the app, and UberMedia will monetize others. Okay, so A.plus lets Kutcher steer some of his fans towards his favorite Twitter accounts, and it's letting both him and UberMedia directly capitalize on his popularity. But why would anyone, aside from Ashton’s biggest fans, want to use A.plus in the first place? The biggest reason is a feature called LivePreview: as you read through your Twitter stream, the app will actually pre-cache links that have been shared by the people you follow. Click one, and the page will pop up in a custom browser within the application — you don't have to swap to another window. Hit the down arrow on your keyboard, and the minibrowser will show whatever the next piece of shared content is, be it a photo or a website. Because this content is precached, you can probably browse through these links more quickly than you would with a traditional Twitter client. It actually feels a bit like jumping through articles in an RSS reader. If that sounds appealing but you're not such a die-hard Kutcher fan, you'll be happy to know that you can minimize any of the panels you aren't interested in (including all of the Kutcher-centric content). In other words, you can prune this into a pretty standard Twitter app with a few clicks. I have been playing around with the app since last night. It's built using AIR, so there's the same UI wonkiness you get in other AIR apps (non-native widgets, scrolling can feel a little weird, etc.). But really, most of the people interested in A.plus because of its focus on Kutcher probably aren't going to sneer at non-native UI widgets. And AIR certainly didn’t hamper TweetDeck. UberMedia is thrilled that Ashton Kutcher wanted to be their launch partner on this — the actor has been ahead of the curve when it comes to leveraging social apps, and you can be sure he’s going to drive a lot of attention to it. But the company also has much bigger ambitious. UberMedia founder and serial entrepreneur Bill Gross says that the application is the first of many — we'll be seeing more celebrities and media properties launching branded apps of their own in the future. And there may eventually be a version of the app that isn't branded. For the time being, though, A.plus is the only application available that has these features. This is, of course, only the latest move in UberMedia's strategy to monetize Twitter (something that Twitter itself hasn’t been so great at thus far). The two companies have recently been at odds — UberMedia has been acquiring a slew of Twitter apps over the last several months, and Twitter temporarily shut them all down after claiming that UberMedia was violating its Terms of Service — a move that Gross said took UberMedia by surprise . Then came news that UberMedia was in the midst of acquiring hugely popular Twitter client TweetDeck, which would give it much more leverage against Twitter. Twitter itself is now reportedly gunning for the company to keep it out of Gross’s hands. Which brings us back to A.plus. UberMedia is now offering brands, celebrities, and media properties a way to directly monetize their audience. Granted, this is hardly the first branded Twitter app — we even saw a TechCrunch-skinned TweetDeck back in 2009. But this gives partners far more flexibility over the content they’re sharing, and how it’s presented. If it works well for Kutcher, don’t be surprised if we start seeing a slew of similar apps from UberMedia in the coming months.
 
David Lee and Ron Conway Bust Entrepreneur Myths on Stage at Disrupt Top
Entrepreneurs are inherently individuals, so rolling their experiences up into trends isn’t easy. That’s made worse because 95% of the returns come from 5% of the companies. So what everyone does, doesn’t really matter. It’s what that 5% does that really matters. David Lee and Ron Conway of SV Angel has done a deep dive into the top of the top of their portfolio and confirmed some basic wisdom and busts some of the bigger myths. The biggest thing we all knew was that cofounders tend to do better than single founders; more controversial will be the finding that younger founders do better. That’s a hotly debated idea at TechCrunch, and the key is looking at companies that either have had or are expected to have outsized results. When it comes to the macro-startup economy, that’s what keeps all of us in business. Although there was some debate over whether 25 is really the optimum age, as some Valley investors have said in the past. After all Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams were older than that, as was Groupon’s Andrew Mason. The slides don’t always provide easy answers. For instance: Repeat entrepreneurs do disproportionately better according to the data; but so do young entrepreneurs. When do they have time to get all those previous ventures under their belts? Do paper routes and lemonade stands count? Conway talked about Zoomr’s founder having his parents with him to sign the termsheet. If they invest off of this data, Conway and Lee may be meeting the parents a lot more in the future. The most interesting slides are embedded below. View this document on Scribd CrunchBase Information Ron Conway David Lee Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Dennis Crowley's Mom Actually Bought Him That Gap Ad Outfit Top
Local darling and Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt to talk to Mike Arrington about anything but acquisitions, partnerships, valuations or the reports of a possible Groupon partnership or anything that’s you know, breaking news. But what Dennis did talk about? “You’re a bit of a rockstar here,” said Mike Arrington. “I don’t really see it that way,” responded Crowley. In rejoinder Arrington brought up Crowley’s Gap ad from last winter. “Is modeling taking up a lot of your time? How much makeup do you have on in that picture?” Arrington bombarded him with the hard hitting questions. Crowley also revealed (SPOILER ALERT!) that he wasn’t holding co-founder Naveen’s hand in the ad, and that his mom actually bought him that entire GAP outfit for Christmas, which included a chunky cardigan and “crazy jeans” according to PR Rep Erin Gleason. Jokes aside about the rockstar thing, “I've always looked up to the people who went from being unemployed to doing interesting things with product,” said Crowley. Maybe that’s a more valuable kind of model, one that we could all look up to. CrunchBase Information Foursquare Information provided by CrunchBase
 

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