Tuesday, February 2, 2010

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Gameloft Made $25 Million From The App Store Last Year Top
French game developer Gameloft , listed on Euronext Paris, this afternoon shared its 2009 financial results with the world. The video game publisher achieved consolidated sales of €122.0 million – roughly $170 million – for 2009, up 11% compared to 2008. The company also specified ‘iPhone revenue’, which presumably means its income from distribution of its games on both the iPhone and iPod Touch: in 2009, that number jumped 231% YOY to reach €17.6 million (approximately $25 million). Gameloft withdrew from boxed games in January 2009, and says mobile games accounted for 94% of the company’s sales for the whole year. The remaining 6% are related to consoles game sales. Full-year revenues from the mobile game segment grew by 12%, self-reportedly due to the success of the games the company distributes through Apple’s App Store. To demonstrate this growing importance for the company, you need only look at its revenue figures for the fourth quarter of 2009: iPhone revenues for the company reached €7 million ($9.75 million), while initial expectations were €4.4 million. Total Q4 2009 sales reached €31.8 million ($44.5 million), which means revenues from the App Store are currently about 22% of the company’s total revenue. Last week, Gameloft CEO Michel Guillemot was quoted as saying that he regards the iPad as massive new opportunity for game developers, and to ’stay tuned’ for upcoming announcements on iPad-specific video games. Gameloft was founded by the Guillemot brothers, founders and owners of video games leader Ubisoft , and has partnership agreements with carriers, handset manufacturers, specialized distributors in over 100 countries. The company employs some 3,500 developers around the world. For a comprehensive list of games developed by Gameloft, head on over to their Wikipedia profile .
 
Social Marketing: Glue Guru Giveaways Target Online Influencers Top
Brand marketers trying to figure out how to tap into social influencers online might want to pay attention to an experiment going on at AdaptiveBlue’s GetGlue . Glue is a social browsing assistant that shows ratings and recommendations of movies, books, restaurants, stocks, and other things as you surf the Web (via a browser plug-in). Members who rate and comment the most in any given category are named Gurus . These are the most active, opinionated people on the service. Glue is going to be rewarding its Gurus with free giveaways for movies and book from promotional partners including Universal, Random House, Hachette, Harcourt, Farrar, Wiley, and Harper Collins. Some of the initial giveaways include free tickets to the movie The Wolfman or free copies of books such as Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not A Gadget and Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It! (as if that needed any more social-media promotion). The media companies get their movies and books seen by known influencers, who are likely to rate, comment, and talk about the products. And Glue gets a way to reward and encourage active users with free books and movie tickets. Targeting giveaways to online influencers is smart. Typically, these giveaways involve 10 books or tickets. The unanswered question is how many downstream purchases will these gurus influence. Glue is still a small service with a few hundred thousand active users, but tens of thousands of those are Gurus of one sort or another. Using semantic technology, Glue can show related products and media across categories. So if you are a Guru in Horror, that might be because you rated the movie “The Ring” or the last Stephen King novel. In the same way, Glue can broaden the pool of Gurus eligible for a giveaway by including related categories. This way the brands still get to target people who influence the types of products they are pushing, but can expand that to related areas. For instance, someone who rates a lot of Stephen King novels would be a good person to give a Wolfman ticket, even if that person hasn’t rated any horror movies yet. Targeting influencers is a well-worn strategy in brand marketing, but with online services like Glue it is becoming easier to figure out who are those influencers. The key, of course, is to make sure the giveaways are desirable enough to act as an incentive, not just the books and movies that need an extra push.
 
Twitter Responds To Phishing Attack Top
This morning, Twitter started locking out a subset of users of their accounts, sending them e-mails asking them to change their passwords in order to regain access to the service. The e-mail said those measures were taken due to concerns that their accounts may have been compromised in a phishing attack , and hinted at a third-party service being at fault. We asked Twitter for more information about the attack, and this is the response that they just gave us: As part of Twitter’s ongoing security efforts, we reset passwords for a small number of accounts that we believe may have been compromised offsite. In one case, a number of accounts posted updates indicative of given (sic) their username and password to untrusted third parties. While we’re still investigating and ensuring that the appropriate parties are notified, we do believe that the steps we’ve taken should ensure user safety. Asked how many users were affected, Twitter declined to share details but said the number is ‘very small’. Twitter also said its response is for issues seen from last Wednesday on. Twitter promises to continue to provide updates and encourages users to read the help pages on what to do if their account is compromised . Note that Twitter has yet to communicate the whole ordeal on its company blog and/or status website , although the account @safety acknowledges the attack and refers to its security measures as a ‘precautionary step’. We’ll keep you posted as we try and obtain more information about these attacks.
 
Marc Flores Joins The MobileCrunch Team Top
If you’ve been reading MobileCrunch lately (as you most certainly should be), you might have noticed a new name floating around the bylines. I thought we’d give him a day or two to get his feet wet before we made it official – but with that out of the way, we’re really proud to announce that Marc Flores has joined the TechCrunch family. I’ll let Marc take it from here, but be sure to drop a comment and bombard his inbox with warm welcomes. – Greg I begged and pleaded with Greg, editor of MobileCrunch , not to make me write this, but it looks like I’m stuck introducing myself to you all. So in my best Troy McClure voice let me say: Hi, my name is Marc Flores. You might remember me from such popular sites as Boy Genius Report or True/Slant. Read the rest of this entry >>
 
Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch Defends Flash, Warns HTML5 Will Throw The Web "Back To The Dark Ages Of Video" Top
Adobe’s Flash technology has been taking a beating lately. Apple still won’t support it on its upcoming iPad or its iPhone. Steve Jobs calls it buggy and crash-prone and dismisses Adobe as being lazy. Adobe is trying to fight the negative vibes emanating from Cupertino and elsewhere. It has already pointed out that it will be easy to convert Flash apps into iPad apps , and now CTO Kevin Lynch is weighing in to defend Flash. In a blog post today, Lynch addresses the two major threats to Flash: Apple’s refusal to support it on mobile touchscreen devices and the rise of HTML5 as a new, open standard which may one day replace Flash. On Apple, Lynch says Adobe is ready and able to put Flash on the iPhone, the iPad or anything else Apple can throw its way. But, as has been the case for more than a year , the ball is in Apple’s court: We are ready to enable Flash in the browser on these devices if and when Apple chooses to allow that for its users, but to date we have not had the required cooperation from Apple to make this happen. Lynch points out that the next version of Flash for smartphones, 10.1, is about to become available and that practically all other smartphones will support it, including Android, Blackberry, Nokia, and Palm Pre. If they can handle it, why can’t an iPhone? But the bigger long-term threat to Flash is HTML5, especially for rendering video. Lynch says that 75 percent of video on the Web currently is shown in a Flash player. That number could decline if HTML5 video starts to take off. Google (via YouTube, Chrome, and other products) and others are pushing HTML5 hard. Lynch tries to pretend that HTML5 is not a threat, saying in the same breadth that Adobe supports HTML5, but its incompatibilities across browsers spells doom for the Web. He writes: Adobe supports HTML and its evolution and we look forward to adding more capabilities to our software around HTML as it evolves. If HTML could reliably do everything Flash does that would certainly save us a lot of effort, but that does not appear to be coming to pass. Even in the case of video, where Flash is enabling over 75% of video on the Web today, the coming HTML video implementations cannot agree on a common format across browsers, so users and content creators would be thrown back to the dark ages of video on the Web with incompatibility issues. HTML5 is still a young technology, and those incompatibility issues can be solved over time. Flash is still a more capable technology when it comes to rendering video, but HTML5 is advancing faster and as a native Web standard it has many other advantages which may help it win over time. Adobe is in a battle for developers, who buy its Creative Suite software to make Flash apps. As long as Flash is the de facto standard for video and animation on the Web, those sales will not be threatened. But if Flash developers migrate to other technologies to build better apps for the Web and mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad, Adobe’s competitive position will be weakened. It will defend Flash to the death. Photo credit: Flickr/ Bill Tyne .
 
TheFunded Ranks The Most Loved VCs Of 2009 Top
Some VCs are getting an early Valentine’s Day gift from TheFunded , the site where CEOs rate venture capitalists and their firms. Below you will find the top-ranked individual VCs, as determined by their ratings in 2009. What makes this ranking particularly useful to entrepreneurs is that it is ratings by other CEOs, often CEOs who have had direct dealings with the VCs they are rating. While this is still a popularity contest of sorts (for instance, the rankings are not based on individual investment returns), presumably CEOs are smart enough to take investment performance into account. But they also take into account their own personal experiences with the individual VCs.  These are the VCs who CEOs love the most, and not just because they are nice but because they help CEOs do their jobs, which is to build great businesses.  Topping the list is  Terry McGuire , co-Founder of Polaris Ventures and a big life sciences investor.  Mark Suster of GRP Partners is No. 2.   David Sze of Greylock comes in at No. 7.   Brook H. Byers of  Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers is No. 10.  Kleiner’s star investor John Doerr is No.11   Michael Moritz from Sequoia is No. 32.. Anyone who is on this list is well-liked and respected by CEOs.   A total of 84 individual VCs (and some angel investors) made the cut out of 17,834 investment pros listed in TheFunded’s directory. To get on the list, each VC had to have at least an average rating of 4 out of 5 and have at least five separate reviews from CEO members of the Funded. (There are 13,480 CEO members). No more than one of the five ratings can be negative (a score of 3 or less).  Other VC that made the list include Howard Morgan (No. 28) and Josh Kopelman (No. 39) of First Round Capital, Bill Tai (No. 29) and George Zachary (no. 64) of Charles River Ventures, Roelof Botha of Sequoia (No. 50),  Fred Wilson (No. 60) of Union Square Ventures, and angels Mike Maples, Jr . (No. 43)  and Ron Conway (No. 61). You can compare this list to the most active VC firms of 2009 to get a sense of the overlap between these rankings and which firms are doing the most deals.  Some other insights that TheFunded shared with us: there was a lot of turnover in VC firms in 2009.  When TheFunded sent emails to all the investment pros in its directory, 38 percent either bounced back or replied with an automated message saying they’ve left their firms.  None of those people are on this list.  And about one or two firms a week became inactive, or 9 percent of the 4,005 firms listed in its directory. TheFunded.com is offering two free tickets to the Future of Funding event on February 18th in San Mateo, where many of the top-ranked venture capitalists will be attending an awards ceremony. The tickets will go to the two best comments about the state of venture capital (as determined by us or TheFunded’s Adeo Ressi). Top-Ranked VCs by TheFunded Terrance G. McGuire, Managing General Partner at Polaris Venture Partners, rated 5 by 5 CEOs Mark Suster, Partner at GRP Partners, rated 4.8571 by 7 CEOs Andy Fillat, Managing Member at Leapfrog Ventures, rated 4.8333 by 6 CEOs Dan Rua, Managing Partner at Inflexion Partners, rated 4.8 by 5 CEOs Paul H. Klingenstein, Managing Partner at Aberdare Ventures, rated 4.6667 by 9 CEOs Stuart Ellman, Managing Partner at RRE Ventures, rated 4.6667 by 6 CEOs David Sze, Partner at Greylock Partners, rated 4.6429 by 14 CEOs Ross A. Jaffe, Managing Director at Versant Ventures, rated 4.6364 by 11 CEOs Steven D. Arnold, Managing General Partner at Polaris Venture Partners, rated 4.625 by 8 CEOs Brook H. Byers, Partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, rated 4.6 by 10 CEOs John Doerr, Partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, rated 4.5714 by 14 CEOs Philip Gianos, General Partner at InterWest Partners, rated 4.5714 by 7 CEOs James D. Robinson III, General Partner at RRE Ventures, rated 4.5556 by 9 CEOs Richard W. Levandov, General Partner at Masthead Venture Partners, rated 4.5455 by 11 CEOs Phil Black, General Partner at True Ventures, rated 4.5 by 12 CEOs Andreas Stavropoulos, Managing Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, rated 4.5 by 6 CEOs Jed Katz, Managing Director at Javelin Venture Partners, rated 4.4737 by 19 CEOs William J. Link, Managing Director at Versant Ventures, rated 4.4444 by 9 CEOs Jon Callaghan, General Partner at True Ventures, rated 4.4167 by 12 CEOs Joerg Ueberla, General Partner at Wellington Partners, rated 4.4 by 5 CEOs Tom Bogan, Partner at Greylock Partners, rated 4.4 by 5 CEOs Maria Cirino, Managing Director at 406 Ventures, rated 4.4 by 5 CEOs Mark S. Menell, Partner at Rustic Canyon Ventures, rated 4.3333 by 12 CEOs Doug Pepper, General Partner at InterWest Partners, rated 4.3333 by 9 CEOs Michael T. Fitzgerald, General Partner at Commonwealth Capital Ventures, rated 4.3333 by 9 CEOs Bijan Salehizadeh, M.D., General Partner at Highland Capital Partners, rated 4.3333 by 9 CEOs Nicolas El Baze, Partner at Partech International, rated 4.3333 by 6 CEOs Howard Morgan, Partner at First Round Capital, rated 4.3077 by 13 CEOs Bill Tai, Partner at Charles River Ventures, rated 4.2857 by 14 CEOs David Ladd, Managing Director at Mayfield Fund, rated 4.2857 by 7 CEOs Frank Boehnke, General Partner at Wellington Partners, rated 4.2857 by 7 CEOs Michael Moritz, Partner at Sequoia Capital, rated 4.2778 by 18 CEOs Peter Sinclair, Managing Member at Leapfrog Ventures, rated 4.2727 by 11 CEOs Donald B. Milder, Managing Director at Versant Ventures, rated 4.25 by 8 CEOs John Burke, General Partner at True Ventures, rated 4.25 by 8 CEOs Bill Kaiser, Partner at Greylock Partners, rated 4.25 by 8 CEOs Bill Elmore, General Partner at Foundation Capital, rated 4.25 by 8 CEOs Mark Hatfield, Partner at Fairhaven Capital, rated 4.2222 by 9 CEOs Joshua Kopelman, Managing Partner at First Round Capital, rated 4.2 by 30 CEOs Lon H.H. Chow, General Partner at Apex Venture Partners, rated 4.2 by 5 CEOs Dave Fachetti, Managing Director at Globespan Capital Partners, rated 4.2 by 5 CEOs Edward L. Cahill, Partner at HLM Venture Partners, rated 4.2 by 5 CEOs Mike Maples Jr., General Partner at Maples Investments, rated 4.1818 by 22 CEOs David Stern, Venture Partner at Clearstone Venture Partners, rated 4.1818 by 11 CEOs Curtis Feeny, Managing Director at Voyager Capital, rated 4.1667 by 12 CEOs John W. Jarve, Managing Director at Menlo Ventures, rated 4.1667 by 6 CEOs Shawn T. Carolan, Managing Director at Menlo Ventures, rated 4.1667 by 6 CEOs Bob Spinner, Managing Director at Sigma Partners, rated 4.1667 by 6 CEOs Stuart MacFarlane, Managing Director at Momentum Venture Management, rated 4.1667 by 6 CEOs Roelof Botha, Partner at Sequoia Capital, rated 4.1538 by 26 CEOs Anthony P. Lee, General Partner at Altos Ventures, rated 4.1538 by 13 CEOs William D. Porteous, General Partner at RRE Ventures, rated 4.1538 by 13 CEOs Michael Kim, Partner at Rustic Canyon Ventures, rated 4.1538 by 13 CEOs Brent Ahrens, General Partner at Canaan Partners, rated 4.1429 by 7 CEOs Eric Wiesen, Principal at RRE Ventures, rated 4.1429 by 7 CEOs Alex Mendez, General Partner at Storm Ventures, Inc., rated 4.125 by 8 CEOs Richard A. D’Amore, General Partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, rated 4.125 by 8 CEOs Jonathan Ebinger, Partner at BlueRun Ventures, rated 4.1111 by 9 CEOs Gus Tai, General Partner at Trinity Ventures, rated 4.1 by 10 CEOs Fred Wilson, Partner at Union Square Ventures, rated 4.0952 by 21 CEOs Ron Conway, General Partner at SV Angel, rated 4.0909 by 11 CEOs Hodong Nam, General Partner at Altos Ventures, rated 4.0833 by 12 CEOs Gilman Louie, Partner at Alsop Louie Partners, rated 4.0769 by 13 CEOs George Zachary, Partner at Charles River Ventures, rated 4 by 16 CEOs Paul Maeder, General Partner at Highland Capital Partners, rated 4 by 9 CEOs Warren J. Packard, Managing Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, rated 4 by 9 CEOs Bryan Schreier, Partner at Sequoia Capital, rated 4 by 9 CEOs Brian Pokomy, Associate at SV Angel, rated 4 by 8 CEOs Byron Deeter, Venture Principal at Bessemer Venture Partners, rated 4 by 8 CEOs Kevin Spain, Principal at Emergence Capital Partners, rated 4 by 7 CEOs Thatcher Bell, Principle at Draper Fisher Jurvetson Gotham Ventures, rated 4 by 7 CEOs Kirk Holland, General Partner at Vista Ventures, rated 4 by 7 CEOs Jonathan Seelig, Managing Director at Globespan Capital Partners, rated 4 by 7 CEOs Andrew L. Zalasin, General Partner/CFO at RRE Ventures, rated 4 by 7 CEOs Bruce K. Taragin, Partner at Blumberg Capital, rated 4 by 7 CEOs Frederick J. Dotzler, Managing Director at De Novo Ventures, rated 4 by 6 CEOs Max Niederhofer, Associate at Atlas Venture, rated 4 by 6 CEOs Gil Dibner, Principal at Genesis Partners, rated 4 by 6 CEOs Ryan Ziegler, Investment Manager at Edison Venture Fund, rated 4 by 6 CEOs Bob Pavey, General Partner at Morgenthaler Ventures, rated 4 by 6 CEOs Philippe Herbert, Partner at Banexi Ventures Partners, rated 4 by 5 CEOs Eric Hjerpe, Partner at Atlas Venture, rated 4 by 5 CEOs Angelo J. Santinelli, General Partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, rated 4 by 5 CEOs David Min, Principal at Steamboat Ventures, rated 4 by 5 CEOs Photo credit: Flickr/ le vent le cri CrunchBase Information The Funded Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Ustream's Massive Round: $20 Million Now, $55 Million More Later. And Maybe More. Top
Streaming video site Ustream has just pulled in a massive new round of funding: $75 million. This second round was led by SoftBank , a Japanese telecom giant. Previously, the site had raised just below $13 million in funding, which came from its Series A in 2008 and its angel round in late 2007. Update : While Ustream noted the $75 million number, SoftBank has clarified that they’re investing $20 million now for a 13.7% stake in the company with an option to invest up to $55 million more by 2011 — which would make them Ustream’s largest shareholder with over 30% of the outstanding shares. Perhaps even crazier is that the service is saying that additional funding commitments are pending from other investors in the U.S. and Asia, so the round could actually be larger than the $75 million when all is said and done. We’re hearing reports that there was quite a bit of competition to be involved in the round, and apparently all the dust hasn’t settled yet. So why on Earth does Ustream need $75 million+? CEO John Ham says in the release that the money will be used to expand on the other side of the world, particularly Japan (obvious, given the SoftBank involvement), China, Korea, and India. Mobile video is particularly hot in some of the Asian countries where their faster wireless networks allow for more functionality than the comparatively slow ones in the U.S. Ustream will open offices and hire staff in all those countries, apparently. Alongside this new round, we’re also hearing that the founders of the company, Ham, Brad Hunstable, and Gyula Feher were able to sell some shares as a reward. Just a few days ago, Ustream launched a new desktop client to help video producers give their work a more professional feel. Prior to that, in December, Ustream made headlines by being the first big video streaming site to offer that (recording) functionality on the iPhone . Ustream says that its iPhone apps has been downloaded over 1.5 million times to date (it has had other apps before the live streaming one was available too) and notes that 3.8 million people tuned into the service to watch the inauguration of President Obama in January of last year. Update : SoftBank’s investment appears to put Ustream’s value right now around $150 million. However, if they exercise their options, their full investment in Ustream would push its value to around $230 million. CrunchBase Information Ustream Information provided by CrunchBase
 

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