Sunday, November 27, 2011

Y! Alert: TechCrunch

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from TechCrunch

Apple Sucks At Social Top
Screen Shot 2011-11-27 at 7.45.26 PMDisplayed at the Dieter Rams exhibit at the SF MOMA is a hand-held Braun television. Yes, an old fashioned television with a handle on it that never saw the light of day because the Braun marketing team determined there wasn't a market for hand-held televisions. IN THE SIXTIES.
 
Now You're Just Messing With Us Wikipedia Top
Screen Shot 2011-11-27 at 4.47.41 PMThe good news is that Wikipedia has finally switched up that image of Jimmy Wales begging for money on its homepage. The bad news is that they've replaced it with another unfortunately left aligned image of some random guy (Wikipedia programmer Brandon Harris to be precise) who, according to my email inbox, looks like everything from Jesus, to Nickelback lead singer Chad Kroger to a member of the Hell's Angels.
 
Black Friday E-Commerce Spending Up 26 Percent To A Record $816M; Amazon Most Visited Retailer Top
Black FridayAs we heard on Saturday, IBM reported a 24 percent increase in online sales for Black Friday this year. ComScore is announcing even stronger results for e-commerce, with Black Friday seeing $816 million in online sales, making it the heaviest online spending day to date in 2011 and representing a 26 percent increase versus Black Friday 2010 ($648 million spent). That's an impressive jump considering the 2009 to 2010 increase in Black Friday spending was only 9 percent. Thanksgiving Day saw an 18 percent increase in online spending to $479 million. U.S. consumers have spent $12.7 billion already in the first 25 days of the November to December 2011 holiday season, up 15 percent from the corresponding days last year.
 
Return Visit-Aware: The Future Of Content Streams That Know What You've Consumed Top
Return Vist Aware Content StreamsWhen someone you haven't seen in a while asks you "What's up?" or "How are you?", you probably give them a high-level summary of the major life events from the months since you last spoke. When you speak to someone you see frequently, you probably respond to the same questions with close-up, specific descriptions of your activities over past few days. Humans are aware of when and what we last communicated with someone, and we dynamically alter what information we provide to avoid repetition. While most of the discussion about Facebook's latest changes has centered around the real-time Ticker, the switch to a news feed that displays different content depending on when you last visited will also profoundly change how we use the social network. Eventually, I think the "return visit-aware" concept will also change how we consume content across the web.
 
Going shopping Top
goingshoppingSomething about the juxtaposition of things reminds me of the politics of disruption, the emotional spring of the social generation. By themselves, interesting, intellectual perhaps, but not of the parallel land of hope and acceptance. I read an interview with Noel Gallagher, the supposedly sane one of the Oasis brothers. Something about Oasis being in the Top 10 of bands. He ducked the statement briefly, attributing it to alcohol and passing it off as Top 20 straight.
 
Kindle DX Gets Temporary Price Cut – But How Long Can This Jumbo E-Reader Last? Top
kindxxAmazon's extra-large Kindle DX is available this weekend (which is to say for the next few hours) for the low, low price of $259, down from its normal $379. It's telling that even the lowered price still seems ridiculously high, considering that smaller but more advanced models are selling for under $100. How long can this outlier live in a world dominated by cheap, pocketable, touchscreen e-readers? In its current form, the fact is it's likely on its way out. The Kindle Keyboard and indeed the graphite look in general are on their way out, to be replaced by the lighter, thinner, more touchable new generation. But there's a problem: the DX is one of the very few e-readers that doesn't use the same 6" E-Ink screen as everyone else. Amazon probably knows there's demand there, but perhaps the time is not yet right to strike.
 
"Promising Unlock" For The iPhone 4S Discovered Top
4s unlockMost folks spent their Thanksgiving weekend ensuring that every inch of their intestinal track was thoroughly covered in gravy. Others spent it trying to get just drunk enough that their relative's worst habits were bearable. Some, however, spent the weekend doing something pretty much only they can do: hacking the heck out of the iPhone. As a result, everyone waitin' and wishin' for an iPhone 4S carrier unlock has something to be thankful for.
 
Social Proof Is The New Marketing Top
velvet rope lineAs I've written about before, we're in an amazing period of the consumer Internet.  Despite a shaky economy, many web companies are in hypergrowth.  This is reminiscent of the five-year period over a decade ago when companies like Amazon, Netscape, eBay, Yahoo, Google and PayPal were built. One challenge, which isn't new, is the battle for consumer attention.  If you're looking to grow your user base, is there a best way to cost-effectively attract valuable users?  I'm increasingly convinced the best way is by harnessing a concept called social proof, a relatively untapped gold mine in the age of the social web. What is social proof?  Put simply, it's the positive influence created when someone finds out that others are doing something.  It's also known as informational social influence.
 
Zynga Builds Its CastleVille Walls, As Its Facebook Traffic Flattens And Falls Top
Screen Shot 2011-11-27 at 12.29.07 PMNew Facebook game CastleVille is one of Zynga's fastest-growing titles ever, as it announced a few days ago. That's good news for the company, but maybe not good enough when you consider its overall traffic trajectory on Facebook, and its plans for an initial public offering as soon as next week. After launching in the middle of November, the medieval role-playing simulation title has grown to 6.9 million daily active users today, currently the third-highest out of any Zynga game on Facebook. Overall, the developer has a total of 49.5 million daily actives on Facebook, according to Inside Network's AppData application tracking service. It's still by far the largest of any Facebook developer, but it has been falling from its peaks in previous months and years. Up until CastleVille launched, its games had been drifting down over the last 30 days from 48.2 million DAU. And bigger picture, the company's Facebook DAU had been 59 million in the second quarter, and had already fallen to 54 million in the third. In previous amendments to its filing, Zynga had said these changes were due "to a decline in players of our more mature games and a limited number of new game launches in the first nine months of 2011."
 
Why Instagram Is So Popular: Quality, Audience, & Constraints Top
Colerise desert shackI get asked a lot why Instagram is so popular. It might be because we just threw the first iPhone photography conference, 1197, or because I allegedly run a company that studies and designs interfaces. It could also be the world of photography is changing so fast that lots of us nerds are talking about how a tool like Instagram can pass 10 million users in 355 days. The interface implications are fascinating, the company and technology dynamics of serving content to 10 million users with less than ten employees are fascinating, the artistic content is fascinating, and the reasons why people like me are so addicted to the damn thing are fascinating. Here's a crack at why, since I think some other attempts haven't quite captured it.
 
"Will It End Very Badly?" Probably Not. Top
shutterstock_85522126Editor's Note: Guest contributor and early TechCrunch writer Steve Poland (@popo) currently is exploring raising a fund to join the "overcrowded" early stage investment market. His last contribution was The New Early-Adopter Addiction: Turntable. Last week at David Kirkpatrick's Techonomy conference, Sean Parker said "Little startups are ridiculously overfunded. The market is ridiculously overcrowded with early stage investors. This results in a talent drain, where the best talent gets diffused and work for their own startups." VC Jim Breyer added, "And it will end very badly."
 
Curisma Offers DIY Coolhunting Top
Like putting a donk on it, it seems like every new website needs to have a daily deal. Take Curisma, for example. On the surface it's sort of an Oink-like website dedicated to the curation of cool products. Underneath, like a the cowbell in Don't Fear The Reaper, is a daily deals site. Luckily, the curation of Curisma is far more interesting than the daily deal, which just might save this start-up.
 
(Founder Stories) Bump's David Lieb: "Stop Thinking & Just Go Build It" Top
Bump 3Bump co-founder, David Lieb launched an app that's secured roughly $20 million in funding and has been downloaded approximately 60-million times. In his final Founder Stories interview with host Chris Dixon, Lieb predicts the next hot sector, discusses hiring employees and dishes out advice for future founders. He's seen too many founders suffer from "analysis paralysis" and urges entrepreneurs to "stop thinking and just go build it." Recognizing that if his team had overanalyzed Bump, it never would have gotten off the ground.
 
Akamai Reportedly Buying Rival Cotendo For Up To $350 Million Top
cotendoClassify this as a rumor for now, but Israeli business press is reporting that Akamai is poised to take over one of its competitors, website and mobile acceleration technology vendor Cotendo, for $300 million to $350 million. Founded in 2008, Cotendo has raised over $36 million in funding from investors like Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital and Tenaya Capital. A few months ago, Cotendo raised $17 million in new funding from its previous backers, with Citrix Systems and Juniper Networks stepping in as strategic investors as well.
 
Josh Kopelman: "I Think 2012 Will Look More Like 2008 Than 2011″ Top
KopelmanRemember, R.I.P Good Times, the Sequoia slide deck  in 2008 warning its portfolio companies to batten down the hatches and "spend every dollar as if it were your last"? Things aren't yet quite as dire as the last time the economy tailspinned into recession, but a number of factors are making some startup investors wary. "I think 2012 will look more like 2008 than 2011," warns First Round Capital's Josh Kopelman. His pace of investing has not slowed down.  He's just being realistic. Speaking to other early-stage investors recently, I get the same sense that the froth (dare I say "bubble"?) of the past 18 months is coming to an end. Many VCs (and founders) have been feasting, and now it might be time to take  a breather. The number of seed-stage fundings is outpacing series A fundings. And whether you consider this a Series A Crunch or not, many more seed stage companies got funded over the past 18 months than previously and many more will subsequently not continue to get funded when it comes time for a series A.
 
Review: Super Mario 3D Land For The 3DS Top
01It's not hard to love Mario. He's had his ups and downs - what, for example, was the deal with Paper Mario? And Super Mario Strikers was pretty hard to love - but darn it if the little guy doesn't keep coming back for more and keeps you, at the very least, entertained. Super Mario 3D Land is the latest in the Mario saga. The story is fairly typical - something was stolen (a lot of leaves) and Bowser took Princess Peach. Your mission is to find the leaves (which are special and give you the Tanooki suit) and then find Peach. What you go through to find her, however, is where all of the fun comes in.
 
How to Make Your Startup Go Viral The Pinterest Way Top
pinterest.com_uv_1yOn Thanksgiving, Pinterest's co-founder Ben Silbermann sent an email to his entire user base saying thanks. It was fitting, as Pinterest was born two years ago on Thanksgiving day 2009.  Ben had been working on a website with a few friends, and his girlfriend came up with the name while they were watching TV. Pinterest officially launched to the world 4 months later. Some startups go crazy with hype and users right after launch. And some don't. I don't know the founders, but I thought I'd take apart Pinterest's story to discuss growth and virality in consumer web startups. Pinterest was not an overnight success. On the contrary, its growth was surprisingly modest after Turkey Day 2009. Take a look at Pinterest's one-year traffic on Compete from Oct 2010 to Oct 2011, which is the picture in this post, and shows Pinterest rising from 40,000 to 3.2 million monthly unique visitors. I took both ends of this chart and estimated monthly compounded growth over Pinterest's lifetime, then interpolated the curve using constant growth and put the results in this Google Spreadsheet.
 
(Founder Stories) Bump's David Lieb: "We Want To Build That New UI Layer For The Real World" Top
Bump IISeeking a way to reduce friction while exchanging contact information, David Lieb and his two co-founders launched Bump - a service that allows users to trade personal data (and an array of items spanning calendar events to music samples) by simply tapping their smartphones together. In part II of his Founder Stories interview, Lieb notes there is bigger picture at play than just swapping content. He tells host, Chris Dixon, "there is a lot of time spent figuring out how I interface with this [smartphone] to go access the virtual world, but nobody has really spent a lot of time thinking, well I am using this phone in the real world, what do I want to do in the real world, and how do I want to interact with other people and things in the real world, and that is the problem that we want to solve, we want to build that new UI layer for the real world."
 
Cyber Monday Piggybacks On Social Media To Become Top Online Shopping Day Top
Cyber Monday Facebook Users Graph Done 2When the term Cyber Monday was coined in 2005, the Monday after Thanksgiving was the 12th biggest online shopping day of the year. That year, Facebook had 5.5 million users and Twitter didn't exist. In 2010, Cyber Monday was the #1 biggest online shopping day of the year, with sales topping $1 billion. I believe the growth of social media and the importance of Cyber Monday are correlated because peer -to-peer sharing of deals and owned marketing channels like Facebook Pages and Twitter accounts are bringing promotions directly to where users spend their time online.
 
Thanksgiving + Black Friday Mobile Traffic Up 60% From 2010 Top
Mobile Ecommerce Traffic UpMobile is growing as a medium for ecommerce, with users sourcing deals from their phones and tablets before visiting physical stores according to a new study by Usablenet, The company which powers mobile sites for 100 top U.S. retailers including JCPenney, Aeropostale, and REI tracked 180 million page views and 1 million mobile users over Thanksgiving and Black Friday. It saw mobile traffic to its clients was up 60% from the same period last year, with Thanksgiving sending more traffic than the following day. Usablenet also found that iOS devices accounted for 42% of the traffic, trumping Android, and trouncing the tiny traffic from Windows and Nokia devices.
 

CREATE MORE ALERTS:

Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted

Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope

Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more

News - Only the news you want, delivered!

Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more

Weather - Get today's weather conditions




You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)