Monday, May 23, 2011

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Lonelygirl15 Creators File To Raise $3.5 Million For Web Series Company EQAL Top
Remember lonelygirl15 ? But of course you do (and if not, Wikipedia and YouTube search are your friends). Either way, it looks like some of the creators behind the interactive Web-based video series, which attracted worldwide attention, are raising $3.5 million in funding for their production and software company EQAL – at least according to this SEC filing . Based in Los Angeles, EQAL is both a production and technology company founded in 2008 by Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried , two of the creators of lonelygirl15 , sister series KateModern, LG15: The Resistance, Harper's Globe and more web TV series. Established in 2008, two years after lonelygirl15 hit the Web, EQAL is today a company that provides technology (see its Umbrella product pages for more information) and business services to power the online brands for celebrities, content owners and creators. The company manages communities for Paula Deen, Alicia Silverstone, Top Chef winner and runner-up Michael and Bryan Voltaggio, CSI creator Anthony Zuiker, and others. This isn’t the first time they company has raised capital – in fact, in 2008 they raised $5 million from investors like Spark Capital, Ron Conway, Marc Andreessen, Georges Harik, Scott Banister, Cyan Banister, Conrad Riggs and Michael Parekh. We’ve contacted EQAL for more information and will update when we learn more. CrunchBase Information EQAL Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Skylines Wants To Show You Photos You'll Love, And Help Search For Them Too Top
There has been a flurry of photo sharing apps released over the last year, with notables including Instagram, Picplz, and Path. These apps tend to focus on the photos that have been shared by your friends and people you know online — which aren't always snapshots of things you're actually interested in. But what would happen if you had a service that took the opposite approach, allowing you to see photos of things you are interested in, even if they weren't necessarily captured by people you know? Enter Skylin.es , a new startup that's launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt, that presents you with a personalized stream of photos that it thinks you'll like, regardless of who took them. To use the service, first you'll be asked to connect with your Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare accounts. The service will then scour Twitpic, Yfrog, and Instagram for photos it thinks you'll like, using things you've liked on Facebook, the people you follow on Twitter, your current geographical location, and the places you check into most frequently on Foursquare. In addition to offering a personalized photo stream, the service also offers real-time image search. Run a search for TCDisrupt, and you’ll see the images that were recently uploaded on the aforementioned image apps. So far the company has developed applications for iPhone and Android, as well as a web portal at Skylin.es The company plans to monetize by selling subscriptions (you'll be able to access more advanced statistics and premium features); a firehose data feed; and ads.  Publishers can also access widgets that canbe embedded on their site, displaying a photo stream of whatever interests they want. Bradley Horowitz: I think it’s really cool. Q: How are you going to make this into something that goes beyond just search, and more into an experience where you’re browsing? A: We currently offer explorer — what we think are interesting topics. We have something called PictureRank, based on relevance, based on interests we show you pictures. Q: I’m trying to think how this becomes big. Do you expect people start going to skylin.es? A: With release of widget, any publisher… Gary V could put our widget on his site and include ‘wine’ as the keyword, and will post photos of wine. Expecting to grow from publishers.
 
Weotta: Find Something To Do Tonight In Three Clicks Or Less Top
Looking for something to do this weekend without having to sift through your newspaper or scour the web for a fun event? Weotta , a new startup launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt, is looking to help (say the name out loud). The service offers a very easy 3-step process for making a plan: first, tell it what kind of outing you’re embarking on (Business, Dating, Family, Friends, or Solo). Next, pick the mood. Finally, hit the generate button, and you're good to go. Once you've  hit 'Generate', the service will present you with a handful of itineraries, each of which provides an at-a-glance overview of the event, with pins marking the venues and small icons depicting the atmosphere, time of day, and more (the icons are reminiscent of the ones you'd find in a hotel guide). You can also use filters to refine your suggestions, choosing the time of date, date range, geographic radius that the event can encompass, and more. Weotta also helps you quickly find events that are focused around current concerts and movies, and using your Facebook Likes and social graph to make recommendations. Once you've chosen an event, you can invite your friends using Facebook. You can also book reservations and/or purchase tickets using services including OpenTable. Q: How does it work? A: Hundreds of signals, scouring the web. It learns as you use it and as more people around you use it. Using Facebook profile at this point, but it’s going to get richer (not very much of it is used now). Q: Why a web app not a mobile app? A: Did interviews — found that most people do planning while they are at work. That’s why we launched this first. Q: I find this exciting.. a lot of traditional media falls short of being able to do this. Big question for most people, it’s date night, what am I going to do. Inevitably, if I’m single this is great. If I’m going on a date how does it know what my date is interested in? A: First layer: we’ll give you idea of what other people have done on dates. Could collaborate too. Haven’t released that yet. Q: Normally trying to figure out also who you can do things with. A: Here’s where we can tie into Facebook. FB Events has been relatively ignored to where it could be. Q: Is there a feedback system so you can go back and say this worked, didn’t work. A: There will be, we’re working on it. CrunchBase Information Weotta Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Rexly's Social Music Discovery App Is What Ping Should Have Been Top
Ah, the power of choice. Browse through your Facebook News Feed or Twitter stream and you’re going to be assaulted with an endless array of links, shared songs, videos, and products. Add a few more topic-specific services, like iTunes Ping to the mix, and you have even more recommended pieces of content to choose from. And then you get a headache. The latest startup to take the stage at TC Disrupt is Rexly , a service that’s looking to give you the power of content recommendations, minus the overwhelming amount of choice that makes many recommendation engines and social sites so confusing. The company’s founders say that when it comes to discovery, the problem isn’t with the algorithms — it’s with the data itself. The reality is that many people only trust a handful of their friends to make good music, book, or movie suggestions, but most services connect you with way more people than that, often via Facebook Connect. So Rexly takes a different tact: it actually forces you to choose six people whose taste you trust. Try to add a seventh, and you’ll get an error. The list of people you choose is never exposed, so you don’t have to worry about hurting anyone’s feelings, and the net effect is that you have way less noise to deal with. Every action you take in iTunes, like listening to a song, will create an item in your Rexly stream, and the actions taken by the people you follow will show up as well. The service uses a variety of signals from iTunes, including how many times you listen to albums, to help figure out what you’ll be interested in. But don’t worry, you don’t have to share all of your listening habits with everyone, as Rexly has a handful of privacy setups. First, if you want the experience to be private, you can share with only with the friends you designate (similar to the way Twitter’s private feeds work). Other people want everything to be broadcast to everyone, and you can do that too. You can also hide certain content from your feed. The service monetizes through affiliate links (it recommends a song, you buy the song on iTunes or Amazon, and Rexly gets a cut). The company says that down the line, it intends to expand far beyond music to include movies, books, TV, and more. The service is web-based now, but they’ll be coming to iOS soon with more platform support in the future. Q&A Q: I think the question is, if you can really solve this in a way that iTunes Genius/Ping hasn’t. Then you’ve done something extraordinary. But how are you going to get past, is this something users have to decide how it compares to what they are using elsewhere. A: You don’t have to stop using other media platforms. Easy to set up. We want to help netflix, we want to be the best iTunes affiliate. We can do something as a third party — cross platform data. Q: In event Apple launched something deeply integrated, would this stand up? A: I think they already did. We’re web based and cross platform. And we learned from their launch, looked at what people wanted. Q: When would I as a user use Rexly instead of Netflix etc? A:We could either be the place you go to when you have an hour to kill and want to see what to do. Or could be more personalized. CrunchBase Information Rexly Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Do@ Bridges The Divide Between Search And Mobile Apps Top
A couple years ago, Steve Jobs drew a line in the sand between mobile apps and search. “On a mobile device,” he declared, “search hasn’t happened. Search is not where it’s at. People aren’t searching on a mobile device like they do on the desktop. What is happening is they are spending all of their time in apps.” Up until now, the divide has remained. You can either search the mobile web or you can search inside narrow apps. But today with the launch of Do@ at Disrupt NYC, you can do both. Do@, which is an iPhone app available today, is a new kind of mobile search engine. It doesn’t search the web. It searches apps. Lots of them. Instead of search results presented as ten blue links, they are presented as fully-functioning, relevant screens from iPhone apps. So if you search for the movie The Godfather , Do@ will allow you to swipe through screens from Flixster, IMDB, Netflix, and Fandango, all showing their results for when somebody searches for that movie in those iPhone apps. A search for “sushi” will turn up results from Yelp, Foodspotting, and Foursquare. A shopping search might turn up Amazon, eBay, and Shopping.com. Instead of having to open up a thousand different apps depending on what you want to do, Do@ allows you to do a general search, and then brings up the appropriate app as the answer. What’s more, it can do this whether or not you have those apps already installed on your iPhone. Do@ is actually serving up HTML5 apps in a browser. You can think of it as a bunch of mobile vertical search engines all in one. It brings up different apps for shopping searches than it does for movie, music, or food searches. In this way, it also serves a sa great way to discover and experience new apps without downloading them first. Instead of crawling the Web to come up with the best answers for a search, it relies on app publishers to answer the questions as if someone were searching inside their apps. The order in which apps are presented can be rearranged base don your preference, and is also influenced by the apps your friends use in various social networks. Do@ is an Israeli-based startup founded by Rami Kasterstein, Ami Ben-David, and Joey Simhon. It’s raised $8.6 million, including a recent $7 million round by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Judges Q&A (notes) Barney Pell, Bing : I really like the user experience. I like that you are launching deep into the web pages and the scrolling is nice. It all comes down to search quality. How are you measuring your results? Ami Ben-David : Social radar is built into the results. If I put a mark on The Guardian app, that is quality for me. It is a social system that measures quality Barney : How are you objectively testing? Ami : We are trying to stay away from making these decisions. We think the best results are through competition. Hilary Mason, bit.ly : I have a smartphone, I never think what if I had a meta app to find other apps. How do you convince people to even start using it? Ami : You can share there is a share button. Second, we are very publisher friendly, it works with their existing business model. Third thing is the team, a great team with a lot of experience Bradley Horowitz, Google : One thing that is hard about a mobile interface is that it is hard to scan the results. You have to flip through, so the rich get richer. My question is are you going to have business model, or do you consider that passé Ami : This a search engine, there is a business model built into that. These are the same apps that give you the best results. Barney : So the real issue is that every single publisher thinks they have the best app, but I as a user don't necessarily agree. How do you decide who is right? That the one you are delivering to users is actually good? Ami : If you go to Google, you get a list of names, then you click and go back. On our system, you swipe. You actually see the result so you can make a conscious decision. It is the fastest way to results, not the fastest way to a link. Michael Wolf, ACTVATE : The user interface is so interesting, in the apps world it is very hard for apps discovery, but how do you get past the cynical user who feels like they you are directing me to an app I have not bought, that you are spamming me with apps? Ami : I think that the consequences for spamming will be quick. And you do not have to have the apps downloaded on your phone. This is one interface across al the apps that is HTML5 CrunchBase Information Doat Information provided by CrunchBase
 
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong: Paid Content Can Work Top
TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington took the stage today to interview AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. It was actually at TechCrunch Disrupt New York last year where Armstrong first approached Arrington about buying TechCrunch. We all know how that worked out. Armstrong and Arrington touched on a variety of subjects, including AOL’s agressive content strategy. While AOL’s content has remained free, Armstrong does seem to think that a paid content model can work. “It’s a matter of how you do it…but I’m a long term believer in paid content as a strategy.” As he cautions, AOL’s news content doesn’t have a price right now, and Armstrong didn’t reveal any future plans for a paywall but it’s certainly interesting to see that he isn’t totally against the strategy. Armstrong’s stance is certainly interesting considering other media companies’ recent moves towards adopting paywall, such as The New York Times. As for more acquisitions, Armstrong told Arrington that there were five to ten companies he interested in acquiring right now, but no acquisitions are imminent. And on AOL’s overall success as a company considering its new strategy, “it’s a come back,” Armstrong explains. “We’re clear on what we are doing and no competitor who is going to get in the way of us.” CrunchBase Information Tim Armstrong Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Intel, Time Warner And The9 Make $23M Strategic Investment In Social Gaming Company CrowdStar Top
Social gaming company CrowdStar has had an impressive run of competing with giants like Zynga, EA and Disney with only $100,000 in funding. The company is the fifth largest social gaming app developer on Facebook with 29 million monthly active users. But today, CrowdStar is gathering more financial resources to take on its competitors, raising a whopping $23 million in strategic funding led by Intel Capital , Time Warner Investments with participation from China’s The9 and media mogul Aviv Nevo’s NVInvestments. CrowdStar, which is best known for producing Facebook social games Happy Aquarium, It Girl, Happy Pets and Mighty Pirates, recently brought on Peter Relan , as its new CEO. Relan is actually the creator of incubator YouWeb (where CrowdStar first received funding), but stepped into the CEO role recently after a number of employees left the startup with its change in strategy. The company is also revealing that it had its largest quarter of revenue in Q1 2011. As Relan recently told us , CrowdStar is focusing on three main avenues to expand in the coming year—international availability of games, through mobile development and through talent acquisitions. The startup is currently seeing 50 percent of its traffic coming from international markets and Relan believes that this number will only continue to grow. In fact, an investment from Chinese gaming company The9 should help the company pursue an international strategy, especially in high growth areas for gaming such as China and Japan. Mobile is another area where CrowdStar plans to expand to with its new funding, with new social gaming products incorporating location into the gaming experience. CrowdStar’s mobile games will also have a lot more focus on push notifications and will also monetize in a slightly different way from the Facebook economy. Relan says that monetization will still be around virtual goods, but the economic designs are different on mobile apps. In the next few weeks, CrowdStar will launch a new game on iOS, that involves fashion and shopping. For now, Relan says CrowdStar will be focusing on development for iOS but will eventually expand to Android as well. In the second half of the year, CrowdStar plans to launch mobile games that involve location and avatars, but Relan declined to give further details on the launch. And some of the new funding will be used add about a hundred employees particularly game developers, server developers, artists, producers, business analysts and content managers. CrowdStar currently has 100 employees, and will double it’s staff. Relen says that he’s open to small talent acquisitions in mobile and social gaming studios as well. The company recently made a key hire — former Glu and Transpera executive, Alex Galvagni, as the Head of Studios. For CrowdStar, Intel, Time Warner and The9 are all interesting investors, considering the company’s future strategies listed above. Intel Capital actually invested in CrowdStar's sister-YouWeb incubation, OpenFeint, which was acquired by Japanese gaming company GREE for $108 million. Intel and CrowdStar plan to work together to expand social gaming onto mobile platforms. Intel Capital managing director Mike Buckley, said this of the investment, Social games are a fast growing category on connected computing devices and we believe CrowdStar is well positioned to continue to capitalize on this trend . Time Warner’s investment will brings a library of high quality, branded IP to partner with in the social games arena. Relan tells me there’s a slot of opportunity to partner with media and entertainment brands for in-game marketing deals (Zynga j ust did one with Lady Gaga ). For example, It Girl has hit TV Show ‘Gossip Girl’ integrated with its virtual goods store. Rachel Lam, SVP and Group Managing Director of Time Warner Investments, explains, Time Warner’s unique IP franchises and extensive media resources coupled with a social games leader like CrowdStar has the potential to truly impact the way consumers engage in social gaming. And Aviv Nevo, an early backer of The Weinstein Company and the largest individual shareholder in Time Warner, should be able to open his rolodex to CrowdStar for additional entertainment partnerships. And, a partnership with The9, which also invested in OpenFeint, will help CrowdStar to enter the Chinese marketplace, a major goal for the Company, as we mentioned above. As we’ve written in the past, 2011 will be a critical year for CrowdStar. Relan tells us that CrowdStar is making moves to move from a Facebook-dependent gaming company to becoming an independent social gaming platform. Competitor Zynga is rumored to be raising $500 million in funding in advance of an IPO. EA and Disney are also looking to dominate in the social gaming space with their respective acquisitions of Playfish and Playdom. But CrowdStar is wise to consider other platforms, branding opportunities and international markets as resources to propel growth. CrunchBase Information CrowdStar Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Jive Buys Microsoft Office Collaboration Plugin OffiSync For Up To $30 Million Top
Social enterprise giant Jive is continuing 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 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
 
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
 
Ron Conway and David Lee Hint at New Fund. By "Hint" I Mean Mike Breaks Their News For Them Top
Here’s the awful thing about having Mike Arrington as an investor in your fund. You don’t get to control over when you announce it. Arrington is on stage with Ron Conway and David Lee of SV Angels right now, and he’s being a bulldog in the best sense of the world. He asked about the firm’s new fund and Lee said “We aren’t supposed to comment on it, so no comment.” To which, Arrington said, “Well I’m an investor in the fund.” Guess it exists. The new fund will co-invest with Yuri Milner in backing every single Y Combinator company that will take their money. In the last class 43 of 44 took the deal . The one who didn’t was Likealittle , which had already raised money from several VCs including SV Angels. Thirteen of those have raised additional rounds. The new Y Combinator class is far bigger with more than sixty companies, so SV Angel isn’t so much doubling down on the strategy as it is nearly tripling down. “This is getting towards $9 million,” Arrington asked. “You guys still comfortable with that?” “In the short term we’re going to stay committed to it,” Lee said. “These are some of the best founders around.” CrunchBase Information Ron Conway David Lee Michael Arrington Information provided by CrunchBase
 

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