Thursday, April 26, 2012

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(Founder Stories) Send The Trend's Gugnani On Seizing An Idea, Surviving A Crash & Being Acquired By QVC Top
(Founder Stories) Send The Trend.mp4Divya Gugnani is the co-founder of Send the Trend, a New York based startup that was recently acquired by QVC, just a year-and-a half after launching in 2010. Gugnani, whose founding team includes Project Runway winner Christian Siriano, describes Send the Trend as "an online destination that offers curated and customized woman's fashion accessories and beauty." Items are priced at $29.95, and every month users have the option to purchase everything from earrings to bracelets specifically tailored to their taste.
 
The Decline Of Android Foretells The Rise Of A Total Apple Monopoly Top
apple-monopolyWe have always built and destroyed monopolies. Companies often start out good but slowly turn, for lack of a better word, evil. The twin dark stars of profit and market share bring even the kindest companies into a collision course with failure. I'd say Apple is headed down that road. The company announced its 2012 Q2 earnings earlier this week and as MG pointed out, they're nearly as impressive as the previous blockbuster quarter. A dive at wireless carrier's financials shows that the iPhone accounted for a whopping 59% of smartphone sales in the U.S. last quarter. The iPhone 4S downright crushed a league of new Android flagship handsets. Android is faltering at the hands of the iPhone. Apple is on pace per some analysts to be the first trillion dollar company in history and will do so on the back of a trivial amount of products and services.
 
Amazon's Q1 2012: Revenue Up 34 Percent To $13.2B, Net Income Down 35 Percent Top
amazonAmazon just reported earnings for the first quarter of 2012. Net sales increased 34% to $13.18 billion in the first quarter, compared with $9.86 billion in first quarter 2011. Net income decreased 35% to $130 million in the first quarter, or $0.28 per diluted share, compared with net income of $201 million, or $0.44 per diluted share, in first quarter 2011. Analysts expected a profit of $0.07 per share on revenue of $12.9 billion for the quarter. "I'm excited to announce that we now have more than 130,000 new, in-copyright books that are exclusive to the Kindle Store – you won't find them anywhere else. They include many of our top bestsellers – in fact, 16 of our top 100 bestselling titles are exclusive to our store," said CEO and founder Jeff Bezos.
 
Zynga Beats Estimates With Revenues Of $321 Million As Mobile Fuels Most Of Its Bookings Growth Top
zynga-logoZynga's revenues rose 32 percent to $321 million in the first quarter, beating analysts' estimates of $316.8 million in revenue and earnings of 5 cents a share excluding stock-based expenses. Bookings* came in at a record $329 million, up 15 percent over the year before, and up 7 percent compared to the previous quarter -- meaning Zynga didn't see that seasonal decline in revenues that Facebook did. The company also raised its annual guidance to $1.425 billion to $1.5 billion in bookings, up from $1.35 to $1.45 billion. Shares are down 1 percent in after-hours trading to $9.33. Excluding stock-based expenses of $133.9 million, Zynga posted earnings per share of 6 cents or $47 million, which would be down 38 percent from the year before. Including those expenses, Zynga had a net loss of $85.4 million.
 
A Rare Sale: Despite 30 Million Activations In The Last Year, Google Sends SketchUp To Trimble Top
Screen shot 2012-04-26 at 12.16.00 PMGoogle is prolific when it comes to its in-house production, churning out new ideas and products all the time, and the company isn't afraid to pull the plug if the idea doesn't pan out. In fact, CEO Larry Page said in his "Update From The CEO" earlier this year that Google has shuttered or combined 30 products since April 2011. But this morning found Google making a relatively unusual move, announcing not a closure, or a purchase, but a sale(!). The product, called SketchUp has become one of the most popular 3-D modeling tools in the world, with over 30 million activations of the program in 2011. And today, Google announced that the SketchUp team and technology will be leaving the Google campus to join Trimble Navigation, for an undisclosed sum.
 
ComScore: Amazon's Kindle Fire Now Has Over Half The U.S. Android Tablet Market (And All The Mindshare?) Top
Kindle Fire -1On the same day that Amazon will be releasing its quarterly earnings, some research from comScore underscores just how far the company has come since launching its Kindle Fire tablet in November 2011. The researchers say that as of February 2012, Amazon's Kindle Fire now accounts for 54.4 percent of all Android tablets in the U.S. Given how many different models of Android tablets there are out in the market at the moment, that gives it a strong lead over the rest of the field: the whole range of Samsung Galaxy Tab tablets, added together, only accounted for 15.4 percent of the market, with the Xoom following at seven percent, comScore said.
 
Wolfram Alpha Launches Its First Desktop App Top
wolfram_wa-logo-stacked1-medWolfram Alpha, the "computational knowledge engine," just launched a desktop app for Windows 7 PCs through Intel's AppUp store. After launching numerous iOS and Android apps (including for the B&N Nook and Amazon's Kindle Fire), this is the first time Wolfram Alpha is introducing a dedicated desktop app for its service. The application costs $2.99 and is only available through Intel's store.
 
Experience The Wonder Of Streaming Piracy With iOSLiveTV.com Top
photoThis is so illegal that we can probably expect to see it fold in a matter of hours, but if you're really hankering for some Russian or German TV right now - or some hott sexxxy Penthouse action - iOSLiveTV has you covered. The site is formatted for iOS and Android and features a number of live TV channels including some adult selections.
 
Pizza, After-Parties, And Start-Ups: The TC Mini Meet-Up In NYC Will Rock Your Socks! Top
skylinenycMay is going to be a busy month here in the city. Along with Disrupt and the continuation of our highly successful Office Hours sessions, we're also hosting an ironically massive "Mini" Meet-Up in NYC on May 8. Startups, investors, and general dreamers will have the opportunity to speak with each other, as well as parts of the TechCrunch editorial staff to network, pitch, and be merry. There will be a lot of beer. Along with over 600 of you fine geek-flavored humans, John Biggs, myself, Chris Velazco, Matt Burns, Eric Eldon, Peter Ha, Josh Zelman and possibly Alexia Tsotsis will all be in attendance.
 
Messaging Startup SendHub Raises $2M From Kapor, Menlo Ventures, 500 Startups, Angels & Others Top
sendhub-final-trimmedSendHub, the YC-backed messaging service which has been growing like crazy this year, has just scored $2 million in seed funding in a round led by Kapor Capital, and with participation from Menlo Ventures, 500 Startups, Howard Lindzon's Social Leverage fund, Bronze Investments, as well as angels Eric Ries, Jawed Karim, Paul Buchheit and a handful of private angel investors. Nope, not a bad lineup for a seed round. And the reason? SendHub is seeing both decent growth and revenue, it seems.
 
"In the Studio," MinoMonsters' Josh Buckley Chronicles His Quest to Constantly Create Top
Screen shot 2012-04-25 at 10.52.39 PM 1"In the Studio" marches on this week with yet another entrepreneur who on the surface seems too young to be a founder/CEO, until you peel back the layers and realize that he actually has a decade's worth of experience building web products, has built his own consulting services, has built sites that have been acquired for real sums of money, spent his nights in high school in a big city tech scene, invested his own earnings into startups (which mostly failed), and after immigrating to the U.S. to attend Y Combinator, is now leading a small team into the iPhone gaming market. I'll keep this post brief, mainly because I'd encourage everyone to really watch this video -- perhaps twice -- to really get a view into how an entrepreneur like Josh Buckley thinks. Buckley, who is currently 20 years old, began hacking on computers a decade ago, teaching himself basic programming languages, securing consulting gigs, and eventually going on to build products that were sold. At age 15, he made a larger sale, started traveling, and started investing in some of his friends ventures. Though he lost most of his invested money, he made one investment which gave him a view into Y Combinator.
 
The Profit Is In Another Castle: Nintendo Records First-Ever Annual Loss Top
nintendo-reports-loss-announces-wii-u-2012Citing poor sales of the Nintendo 3DS and "the stronger yen against the euro was also another reason," Nintendo posted its first-ever loss - $534.6 million on revenue of $8 billion. This is down from $12.6 billion in revenue last year with $960 million in profit. But, as they say, it's dangerous to invest alone. Here, take this: the company is predicting a profit of $429 million next year.
 
Twitter Updates iPhone and Android Apps: Improves Discover Tab, Search & Push Notifications Top
twitter_newbird_boxed_whiteonblueTwitter just announced the latest updates to its mobile apps for Android and iOS. With these updates, these apps get a number of much-needed new features, including an improved Discover tab, better support for search and support for push notifications for interactions. These new push notifications now let you know whenever somebody retweets you, favorites one of your tweets or when somebody new follows you. With this update, Twitter is apparently trying to address some of the criticism it faced when it launched its radically redesigned mobile apps last December.
 
OnSports Raises $2M Led By Floodgate To Be The Mobile Watercooler For Sports Fanatics Top
onsports-appleIn both sports and the tech industry, you win some and you lose some. Even though OnSports chief executive Aaron Krane got a nasty black eye this week in a pick-up basketball game, his company just closed a $2 million round led by Mike Maples' Floodgate fund. The company, also known as Hitpost, makes this mobile app OnSports which has live discussions, polls and news about sports. It's aiming to be the destination where sports fans can chatter or rage about their most-loved or hated teams and players. The app has more than 1 million downloads on Google Play and something less than that on iOS. While Krane didn't share stats on active usage, he did say that there are "tens of thousands" of discussions and votes per day. Krane, who used to work at the social gaming company that Google acquired called Slide, says there is an unexploited sweet spot in between freemium games like Zynga Poker and sports media. OnSports recently launched a better way for fans to create polls and stories about sports.
 
Look, See: Warby Parker Launches $150 Prescription Shades Top
Screen shot 2012-04-26 at 10.30.05 AMThere are plenty of places to turn if one is looking to buy prescription glasses, but the problem is that most of those options are expensive. So David Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal started Warby Parker last year to breathe some new life into the eyewear industry by selling designer, prescription glasses online -- for $95. The New York-based startup has since gone on to raise $13.5 million from a bunch of notable investors, and has been growing fast. While the startup has been offering both prescription glasses and sunglasses for sale online, they haven't offered eyewear for the visually-impaired who want to look hipster-cool while braving the sun. Today, Warby Parker has come to their aid, launching a line of prescription sunglasses with a reasonable price tag of $150.
 
Hub Ventures, Excelerate Labs & MuckerLab Announce New Startups Top
startupsignThe startup accelerator scene is booming, and that means there will be days like today, when a bunch of news from the various incubators around the country hits all at the same time. Today, we've got the details from several of the newer programs, some of which are announcing their new spring classes, others which are wrapping up with demo days. The result, in either case, is that there are now dozens upon dozens of new companies making their grand debut today, across a number of verticals that include everything social networking to health care. Below, we've rounded up the new launches and announcements from Hub VenturesExcelerate Labs, and MuckerLab. In addition, DreamIt Ventures is preparing to start its summer program in NYC next month, and is hosting a kick off party tomorrow night.
 
Jack Dorsey Talks Square, Twitter, And Instagram-Facebook With Charlie Rose Top
Charlie Rose - Jack DorseyTwitter co-founder, and Square CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey sat down with Charlie Rose yesterday (you can watch the full video clip here) to talk about the two companies he's developed as well as Facebook's $1 billion acquisition of Instagram and the "digital revolution." The entire interview is just under 18 minutes, and is worth a watch, but here are some of the highlights: As Square revealed yesterday, the payments company is now processing $5 billion in annual payments (or around $416 million in payments per month), which is up from $4 billion in annual payments in March. Dorsey says that Square is moving fast, and this year will be expanding internationally, both to local shops and larger merchants. "We want to be the point of sale for every merchant," he tells Rose.
 
Sincerely Ink Launches In-App "Giving" Program, Lets You Send Cards With Charitable Donations Top
Giving Stylized_3 Cards_v2_clearSincerely is on a roll. The startup behind a ton of photo-printing and greeting card mobile apps, including PostagramPopBoothSincerely Ink and Dotti, just launched the underpinnings its photo sharing network earlier this month with the debut of "Sincerely Magic," and today, the company is launching its first-ever partnership with non-profits in a program called "Sincerely Giving." If you're debating about which app you're going to use to send out your Mother's Day cards with this year (and c'mon, this is TechCrunch - I bet most of you out there have forgotten how to write legibly using a pen and paper), Sincerely is making the choice easier. With the new program, the majority of the profits from select cards in its Sincerely Ink app will be donated to various non-profits, including the National Breast Cancer FoundationbuildOn, and Thirst Relief International.
 
Track Your Facebook Abuse, Bullying, Spam Reports With Transparent New Support Dashboard Top
Facebook Community SupportFacebook wants you to know it's listening when you report bullying, hate speech, identity theft, and spam, so today it launched a new Support Dashboard for tracking these reports until they're resolved. Users can check to see if their report has been reviewed, be notified of whether the offensive content was removed or left up, and learn why the decision was made. The Support Dashboard is gradually rolling out to the Account Settings menu starting today with Facebook tracking Timeline and photo flags there, and monitoring for more content types will be added soon. Cyberbullying has emerged as huge problem across the Internet and especially on Facebook, where Consumer Reports says one million children were bullied from June 2010-2011. The Support Dashboard should make users feel more confident about spending time on Facebook because they know if they're abused and report it, their problems will actually be heard and responded to.
 
Mail.Ru Q1 Earnings: Revenues Up 45% To $160M Top
mai.ru plus mail sign-inMail.ru, the Internet giant -- and 2 percent owner of Facebook -- today reported Q1 revenues of $160 million, up 45 percent over last year and posted annual earnings with a full-year net profit $208.6 million -- a impressive rise of 158.2 percent as it launched a range of new products and continued its push into international territories using games as its main assault weapon. The company runs one of the country's biggest social networks and its biggest web mail service, both of which saw significant growth over last year. With Mail now numbering 32.7m Russian subscribers and Odnoklassniki ("OK") with 25.3m monthly active users as of March 2012.
 

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