Tuesday, September 1, 2009

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Alright, Who Broke The Internet? Dell.com Also Knocked Out. (Updated) Top
Of course Gmail being down is not good news for Google’s business (directly nor indirectly), but if you’re a giant computer manufacturer directly retailing products online across the globe, I’d wager you’re a bit worse off when your website is completely unavailable. At least for the past half hour (since 5 PM EST), Dell.com has been suffering from a serious outage. Just for your reference, the company saw sales of $12.76 billion last quarter, and that was down 22% from $16.43 billion a year ago. Rest assured every minute of downtime is costing the computer manufacturer serious money. Update: site is back up as from 5:40 PM EST Are the two events related and are we experiencing yet another massive DDoS attack, or is this merely coincidental? Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TheFind Acquires iStorez.com To Help Consumers Find Deals While Shopping Top
TheFind , a technology-heavy shopping search engine, has acquired the deal-driven shopping site iStorez.com. iStorez aggregates the latest coupons, sales and deals from retailers across a variety of categories. Terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed, but we are hearing it was less than $500,000. TheFind, which is a search engine geared more towards finding new products than locating a price for a particular item, will use its latest acquisition to attract consumers who are looking for promotions, deals and sales from online retailers. This is probably a wise move given the current economic climate. Everyone is looking for a deal and its helpful to have information about sales and promotions side by side in your shopping portal. TheFind is hoping to be a one-stop shopping destination for consumers where they can search for a varied list of items from multiple sources. The site currently indexes 50 million products from over 500,000 stores. Last year, TheFind launched an iPhone app that allows users to search for stores in a region that are selling a particular product. The app will also compare prices of products from stores in your location and even calculates the cost to drive from your location to a particular store. In 2007, TheFind acquired Glimpse, a womens' shopping destination. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
SkyFire Raises $5 Million More For Rich Mobile Browser Top
SkyFire is getting ready to roll with its rich mobile browser. Last May, the company (finally) released its Symbian program after a long beta trial and announced that a BlackBerry version was in the works. Earlier this Summer they hired former Travelocity executive Jeffrey Glueck to lead the company into the next phase. Now a regulatory filing reveals the startup has raised a Series C closed off its earlier Series B round of funding with an extra $5 million, reports peHUB . There were no new investors cited in the filing, so it’s safe to assume this was a follow-up round from SkyFire’s existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Matrix Partners and Trinity Ventures, who had previously invested $17.8 million in the mobile browser maker. The total amount of funding raised by the company now reaches a healthy $22.8 million . Skyfire is free and the only mobile browser that currently supports Flash, Silverlight, and a number of other technologies generally reserved for desktop browsers. The software runs on Windows Mobile (smartphones and PPC) and Nokia N and E Series (Symbian S60, 3rd Edition) phones. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Live From fbFund REV's Demo Day Top
I’m here at the demo day for fbFund REV, Facebook’s new incubator program that’s jointly put on by Accel Partners and Founders Fund. We’ve embedded a live stream of the event below, and I’ll be updating with notes on each company that presents. Also be sure to check out our post from last night, when we took a look at fbFund’s first session as an incubator (versus just a distributor of cash grants), as well as some of the talks given by fbFund’s mentors. Thread.com — Thread.com helps users on Facebook meet possible matches for dating using Facebook. Rather than revolving around meeting strangers, the site allows you to browse through singles who are friends with your friends. You can see our full introduction to the site here . Funji —  A community for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The company is targeting “Generation ME” age 13-21 with a virtual world that allows users to customize their own virtual room and avatars. Users can interact in a forum and check out their friends’ rooms. Everything looks very colorful and playful, which could help it catch on with the youth audience. Sociable says that retailers are not driving significant sales from social media (e.g. from Facebook and Twitter). The company says brands need to evolve from B2C communication, to word of mouth, C2C conversations. Sociable tries to optimze the retailer’s “viral loop” through a variety of ways, including syndicating events published to Facebook to other Facebook Connect-enabeld sites. The service is currently live on every concert page on LiveNation. The company plans to expand to other verticals. Projects to break even by the end of the year. Geckogo brings socially user generated content and brings them to traditional travel sites. The service can take content from services like Facebook and Twitter, and then bring them to sites like Travelocity or Expedia in embeddable widgets. FriendRadio brings an integrated music player to Facebook in a interesting way. Rather than just embed music players into the site, users can use FriendRadio to create a nifty music player that resides tucked on the side of the screen. The company is building a browser plugin to bring music to Facebook profile pages as well (you’ll see your friends’ music when you visit their profile). photosilove is a media sharing app that users use to send bite-sized media to show their friends that they care about each other — things like small images of teddy bears, or a frog holding a sign that says “I care”. The app didn’t originally plan to focus on this kind of friendly sharing, but it’s what their users tended to use it for. At this point the app hasn’t done much monetization, but the company points out how many large companies are successfully tapping into this market. Vittana.org is “Kiva for student loans”. One of two non-profits in this round of fbFund. Loans are 6-24 months in length, $500-1500 in total amounts. Bank teller is currently the top profession. The company says that until the student loan model is proven, other organizations are hesitant to do it. Says that for every 800 loan, the student will earn $20k more in incremental income over their lifetime. Workstir is “yellow pages, plus your social graph”. It helps connect you with service professionals (say, a painter) and see what your friends, or friends of friends think of them by tapping into your social graph. It uses a similar connection to model to what you’ll see on LinkedIn. To generate revenue, the company will allow service professionals to advertise on their key pages. It will also allow service professionals to join the site and answer questions posted by other users — the more questions the professionals answer, the higher their rank on Workstir. Backlight — Everything has a backstory, but where can you share that online? The company says that there’s an opportunity for “Inspirational content”. Points out success of brands like Chicken Soup for the Soul and Causes. Says Twitter is great for sharing, identity creation, but they don’t offer a platform for inspiration/meaning. Backlight allows you to upload any piece of media and provide a backstory, including ability to take photos on Facebook and add another layer of meaning to it. Working with Stanford, Cal, Santa Clara University to help showcase student work. NetworkedBlogs — Connect bloggers with readers who are on social networks. “On average, your blog sucks” — the bottom 98% of blogs have average of 3 page views a day. But when you build a blog, it’s what people find when they Google your name, so you need to make it look like someone is reading it. The service lets you syndicate your blog to Facebook, to embed social widgets into your blog, and more. The service already has 1.5 million installs, 650k monthly actives, and is the largest news community on Facebook. The site aggregates 100,000 blog posts a day. On Facebook, you can see which of your friends are following certain blogs, which of your friends are writing blogs, and so on. The company is profitable, grew revenue by 50% in the last two months. Today the company is announcing a partnership with Webs.com Wildfire is a powerful self-service platform that allows companies to create social marketing campaigns for Facebook, Twitter, and their company websites. The company left private beta last month, and is profitable. Clients have included 3M, Facebook, and Pepsi. The platform helps companies who are looking to engage social network users using proven campaign formats (the service offers wizards that companies can use to create their campaigns). Companies can get the campaign started though advertising, and they generally continue to grow through viral channels. Broadcasting Live with Ustream.TV Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Talk Of Gmail Being Down Is Trying Like Hell To Bring Down Twitter Top
So, as the entire web seems to be talking about at the moment, Gmail is down . But what’s amazing is the volume of people talking about it. When I first noticed it being down, I did a Twitter search and just minutes later there were over 10,000 new results. A couple minutes later, there were over 20,000. It took a few minutes for it to show up on Trending Topics, but now it’s there, but it was giving Twitter Search fits. For a while, if you clicked on “Gmail” in Trending Topics, you would have seen “No results for [blank]” returned. If you hit it again, it kept stacking the messages on top of one another (pictured below). It looks like Twitter has resolved the issue, and made a strong comeback, but the influx of tweets continues to be amazing. This could be a good test for Twitter to see if it can stay up and everyone bitches about one of the most popular web services on the planet being down. And remember, this test comes before that new datacenter is in operation. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Thread.com Raises $1.2 Million For Facebook-Powered Matchmaking Service Top
If you’ve ever tried an online dating site like Match.com , there’s a good chance that you found your first few interactions with other members to be unnatural — from the awkward initial messages to the fact that you probably don’t have a single friend in common, the whole process can feel a bit forced. Thread.com , a startup formerly known as Frintro that’s launching today out of fbFund REV’s incubator program, is looking to offer the ideal middle ground between these online dating sites and the social connections that helped spark relationships in the days before the web. In conjunction with today’s launch, Thread.com is also announcing that it has closed a $1.2 million funding round led by some of Silicon Valley’s most well known investors. Included in the round are First Round Capital, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, fbFund, and a number of independent investors, including Ron Conway, David Sacks, Auren Hoffman, Pedro Miguel Martins, Reid Hoffman, Joe Greenstein, Saran Chari, and Shervin Pishevar. So how exactly is Thread.com different from these other dating sites? The startup is heavily reliant on Facebook Connect, which is no surprise given the company’s participation in this summer’s round in fbFund. Here’s how it works: you log in to Thread.com using your Facebook credentials, at which point the site asks some basic additional information like your age and location. From there, it asks you what gender(s) you’re interested in searching through for possible matches, and also if you’d like to only see people who are single (home-wreckers can also choose to only browse users who are in relationships). Thread.com then uses Facebook Connect to look up some basic information about your friends and friends of your friends. It shows each match in a grid, much like what you’d see on most other dating sites. Depending on your connection to each match you’ll be able to see things like their current relationship status, their location, interests, profile photos, and even photo albums (though depending on each user’s privacy settings you may not be able to see all of these). Once you’ve found a match, it’s up to you how you want to initiate contact. Thread.com makes it easy to simply message a member through Facebook, but CEO Brian Phillips says that the best way to spark a relationship — and this is what makes Thread.com unique — is that you can ask your friends to introduce you. Because everyone you see on Thread.com is connected to you through a friend, you have the option of asking this shared connection to set you up, or to coordinate a party or event where both you and your potential match are invited. It’s a great idea, and the site’s extremely solid roster of investors seems like a testament that. Also worth noting: Phillips has actually been dating a woman he recently met through Thread.com. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Gmail Now Really Down - Can I Get My Email Back Please (Update: Its Back) Top
We wrote this morning about Gmail suffering some turbulence, but it appears now that it has completely crashed and disappeared. Both Apps For Domain and the usual consumer Gmail service are down completely. Google seem to be going backwards on fixing the problem, this morning they sent out an alert saying: September 1, 2009 8:18:00 AM PDT Google Mail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change. I use Apps For Domain for everything - my contacts, my email, my todo list, my chat, my documents and more recently, my phone. As soon as it went down, I noticed in less than a second. I am now completely stuck, after a few months of being impressed by how I was able to run my entire life on Google. It is not just the frontend that is down, but also the backend IMAP and POP servers ( Update : they are up, but slow). This is a huge fail for Google, considering how admired they are for all the technology they have built internally to scale out their applications. Update : The Google App Status dashboard says that there is currently a ’service disruption’ with email. Update : The outage immediately became a trending topic on Twitter , with thousands of tweets from users noticing and complaining about the outage. The outage that we reported this morning was not as widespread, but could point to a potential originating cause. Update : Still down. I wonder if the paid Apps for Domain users, who have an SLA, are also down? Update : New status message: September 1, 2009 12:53:00 PM PDT We're aware of a problem with Google Mail affecting a majority of users. The affected users are unable to access Google Mail. We will provide an update by September 1, 2009 1:53:00 PM PDT detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change. They will be back in an hour (the engineers must have been out at lunch). Update : Apparently IMAP/POP are up for some. Setting up IMAP … Update : New message from the Google Twitter account: We’re aware that people are having trouble accessing Gmail. We’re working on fixing it. Apologies for the inconvenience Update : For those of you who use the web interface who want to also grab their email with IMAP or POP, instructions courtesy or Rajeev . Only works if you had IMAP/POP enabled before this downtime. SMTP: smtp.google.com (TLS, port 557, enable authentication) IMAP: imap.gmail.com (Enable SSL, port 993) login: user@domain.com Update: Downloading my mail now with IMAP. Slow, but sorta working. Update (2:06PM PST): New update message. Still down, and now no ETA on being back up: September 1, 2009 1:02:00 PM PDT We are continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by September 1, 2009 2:16:00 PM PDT detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Update : Google has posted to their blog: We know many of you are having trouble accessing Gmail right now — we are too, and we definitely feel your pain. We don’t usually post about minor issues here (the Apps status dashboard and the Gmail Help Center are usually where this kind of information goes). Because this is impacting so many of you, we wanted to let you know we’re currently looking into the issue and hope to have more info to share here shortly. If you have IMAP or POP set up already, you should be able to access your mail that way in the meantime. We’re terribly sorry for the inconvenience and will get Gmail back up and running as soon as possible. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
See Which Conferences Your Friends Are Attending With EventVue's 'Discover' Widget Top
EventVue , a company that builds online communities for conferences in order to improve conference networking amongst individuals, has launched a new product called Discover designed to help conference attendees find friends who are attending the same event. The goal of Discover is to work with different companies’ APIs, including LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Contacts, and Yahoo! Contacts, to help identify matches. Discover is a simple widget that conference organizers can install on their sites to showcase an event’s speakers, sponsors, and attendees. It’s currently in private beta testing, and only selected conferences are using the widget on their sites, according to a company blog post . It’s interesting to note that LinkedIn’s API is a private API that only a handful of companies get access to, and EventVue was one of the companies given access to the API. EventVue Co-Founder Josh Fraser says that the product can actually help get more attendees to visit conferences, explaining: “Over the past 2 years, we’ve heard from conference organizers that their biggest challenge is getting people to register for their conference. These conversations have had increased urgency in the past year as the economy has brought a lot of cuts to conference travel. We heard this enough times that we finally decided to do something about it. EventVue Discover helps conference organizers market their events and get more butts in seats. We learned from talking with organizers that the most effective way to market an event is to get attendees to encourage their friends to attend. Discover lets attendees see who they know is attending a conference from their social networks and makes it easy to invite their friends.” EventVue was part of the inaugural batch of startups under the TechStars incubator program, and offers direct integration with some of the largest online ticketing services Eventbrite , RegOnline and Acteva . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
The Mobile Payments Rivalry Heats Up Top
Mobile payments for micro-transactions on the web are catching wind and there are several players in the space vying for the top spot in the field. Today, Boku, a recently launched mobile payments conglomorate of sorts, is announcing a slew of new customer acquisitions as well as details of its international expansion. Boku, which acquired competitors Paymo and Mobillcash and raised $13 million in Series A funding back in June, doesn't require users to have a credit card or bank account to make a micropayment. Users enter their cell phone number on the site, reply to a text message and then all virtual charges are automatically charged to the user's monthly cell phone bill. As we’ve said in the past, it’s ridiculously easy. Because of its acquisition of Paymo and Mobillcash, systems that had significant international reach, BOKU gained a strong base of users around the world. Today’s announcement adds availability of the payment service in Finland, Indonesia, Slovenia and Taiwan, bringing the company's global reach to 56 countries. Boku’s marketing chief Ron Hirson tell us that they are seeing a strong foothold in Southeast Asia and will be expanding to the Phillipines within a few weeks. Boku has also added a number of online gaming sites, social network applications and the social networks themselves over the past few months, including Playfish, HitGrab and Gambit. Boku says that currently they have over 1000 customers that use its mobile payments platform. So far, Boku has powered 6.5 million online mobile transactions. But competition is stiff in this field and one competitor in particular, Zong, has also witnessed strong growth over the past few months. Most recently, Zong was chosen to test a pilot program for mobile payments for Facebook’s virtual currency, Credits. While Zong may not have had the organic international base that Boku has (Zong is available in 19 countries), this partnership is sure to help Zong’s global reach thanks to Facebook’s ever growing presence and popularity around the world. Zong also reached a big milestone a few weeks after processing mobile payments for 10 million unique users in 2009. However, the potential obstacle to Boku, Zong and other mobile payments platforms are the high fees that mobile carriers charge to the payment systems (which are then passed on to the consumer). Boku told us on June that different cell phone carriers charge varying fees that range between 10% to 50% of the purchase price, which is a hefty amount in transaction fees. But if mobile carriers lower their fees, mobile payments have the potential to be the go-to way to pay for microtransactions. David Marcus, CEO of Zong, says that many U.S. and European carriers that Zong works with are contemplating reducing these fees by building large-scale models to process payments that would in turn lessen the pressure on startups like Zong and Boku as well as the applications and social networks using the systems. Marcus feels confident that if this does happen, the sky is the limit with mobile payments. Regardless, as shown by growth witnessed by both Boku and Zong, mobile payments are catching on and attracting the attention of some of technology’s giants, like Facebook. And of course the rivalry and ensuing competition between the two companies could continue to spur further innovation and growth. It will certainly be fascinating to see which startup comes out ahead. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 

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