Thursday, February 25, 2010

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MySpace DMCAs The Leaked Product Document We Posted Top
On Tuesday we posted an internal MySpace product document presenting detailed recommendations on rebuilding the MySpace developer/apps platform . Included in that post was an embed of the document hosted on Scribd. MySpace has chosen to send a DMCA notice to Scribd to have that document removed, and Scribd complied. MySpace didn’t copy us on the notice, or send any other notice to us about the content. So we’re putting it on our own servers. You can download it in all its glory here . If you want to fight this, MySpace, you have to come through our lawyers. Now I’m all riled up. CrunchBase Information MySpace Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Google News Tries Sharing With Facebook, But Where's The Buzz Button? Top
Google News is testing out a new design, as I reported earlier this month . It includes trending topics on the left and new personalization options. But today someone in the bucket test noticed something different. The sharing options changed. Each story can be shared via email, Google Reader, or Facebook. Most people won’t see this. It is just in a limited test. But it does suggest that Google is starting to seriously think about ways to drive more sharing of content across the Web. But why push content to Facebook and not to Twitter? And for that matter where is the Google Buzz button? Of course, sharing to Google Reader is the same as sharing to Buzz (that’s how sharing works on Buzz), but Google should push the Buzz brand here if this feature ever becomes widespread. Google Reader itself has long had many sharing options , including the ability to send posts to Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, Blogger, and StumbleUpon. It’s about time Google News got better sharing options as well. Currently, the only sharing option is via email. The fact that Google is testing with Facebook is also interesting, and shows a growing embrace of its social rival. Some Facebook updates are now appearing in Google’s realtime search results. In which Google product will Facebook turn up next? (Hat tip to @JoeHobot ). CrunchBase Information Google News Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase
 
I Will Honor The Embargo Top
Our constant rants on the PR Industry do not go unnoticed. In return our tips box is filled with humorous anecdotes, articles and now, a video. Here are two we’ve received in the last week. Which we’re posting in honor of Yahoo breaking its own embargo , and the AP sending the launch of CODE advisors completely sideways by breaking an embargo by nearly 24 hours. Outcast PR was on both stories. First, the job description. Even a decade ago everyone thought PR was just about the worst job around. Forbes did a roundup called “Five Crappiest Tech Jobs,” and “PR account executive for a dot com startup” was on the list. Other winners included “porn sifter for filtering company” and “packer for dogdoo.com” (a site that actually sold dog excrement online): PR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE FOR A DOT-COM STARTUP—Here’s the perfect job for people who want the worst of all worlds. For starters, everyone hates flacks. Journalists hate them because they think they’re incompetent whores. Businesspeople hate them because they think they’re incompetent whores. And flacks hate themselves because deep down inside they suspect that they might be incompetent whores. But what’s particularly bad about doing publicity for Internet startups is that everyone in the media has already heard every story with every angle about every product and every service a thousand times and never wants to hear from another PR firm as long as they live. But flacks can’t explain this problem to their nitwit 23-year-old CEO clients because the CEOs have all persuaded themselves that their generic success story is the stuff of legend. Flacks get personally abused by clients, insulted by journalists, stiffed out of their fees by customers, ridiculed by colleagues, and humiliated by their superiors. One flack for a major software company says her boss got so upset that he ordered her to attend charm school. Another had to go shopping for underwear for a skivvy-less journalist. How uncouth. All in all, being a dot-com flack is exactly like being a whore, except the hours are worse. Second, this video (in fact created by TechCrunch Europe Contributing Editor Steve O’Hear ) which recreates a conversation between a PR professional and a blogger or journalists. We have this same conversation oh, five or more times per day: Transcript: PR Pro: Hi I'm just checking you got the email I sent. Blogger: When did you send it? PR Pro: Five minutes ago. Blogger: Oh. I get a lot of email. PR Pro: Shall I send it again? Blogger: No. What did it say? PR Pro: I'd love to tell you, but you'll have to agree to the embargo first. Blogger: Ok whatever, I agree, now tell me more. PR Pro: Can you email back first saying you agree to the embargo? Blogger: I get a lot of email. PR Pro: Please. Blogger: Look, I honor the fucking embargo. Now tell me more. PR Pro: A Silicon Valley based startup is going to announce a new revolutionary software as a service for social media companies targeting B2B. It will change the way social media marketing is done forever. Are you interested in a briefing with the company's CEO. Blogger: No, I don't cover B2B. PR Pro: But I thought you wrote about social media. Blogger: I do, but not B2B. PR Pro: But it is revolutionary. Blogger: So are all the others. PR Pro: Really? Blogger: Yes. Look, when every new social media service is revolutionary it is no longer news. PR Pro: I didn't know that, but we are working on an API. Blogger: I'm not interested. PR Pro: Oh. Blogger: Sorry. PR Pro: Can I still email you the details? Blogger: If you must. PR Pro: And you'll honor the embargo? Blogger: Yes, I'll honor the embargo. In fact I'll make you a better offer. PR Pro: Oh. Blogger: I will honor the embargo for the rest of my working life. As I have no intention of writing about your new revolutionary software as a service for social media companies that will change the way social media marketing is done forever. So, yes, I'll honor the fucking embargo. PR Pro: I can't thank you enough. Blogger: It's nothing. Really. Our past rants: The PR Roadblock On The Road To Blissful Blogging One PR Firm’s Lack Of Ethics: Reverb Caught Astroturfing The App Store The Reality Of PR: Smile, Dial, Name Drop, Pray. Meet Lois Whitman, The Poster Child For Everything Wrong With PR Death To The Embargo The Last Has Fallen. The Embargo Is Dead.
 
Memo to CEOs And Founders: Share The Love Top
Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman is an occasional contributor to TechCrunch. And when he does take the time to write a guest column, they are certainly worth reading. In this post he laments cheapskate founders who trickle tiny amounts of equity down to early employees, and presumably he’s taken his own advice with the now-profitable Redfin . See his earlier posts Entrepreneur 2.0 and Good Question! The Eight Best Questions We Got While Raising Venture Capital . When we split the atom, Einstein remarked that everything changed but our way of thinking. You could make the same argument about acquisitions and option pools. As Mark Suster recently noted , employees will never see a big payday at most startups unless the company shoots for the moon. This is probably why investors' case for a company to sell early focuses exclusively on the founder : in most early-stage acquisitions, the liquidation preferences and deal-sweeteners only work for investors and founders. Back when some companies sold at $50 million and others went public at $250 million, we could all agree that this was just how the cookie crumbled. But now that we live in a world where early-stage acquisitions are the only outcome to which most startups aspire, we have to re-allocate this smaller cookie. The elephant in the room is that that founders and CEOs take almost all of it for themselves. I've looked at three or four deals recently as an adviser; in every case, the founder or CEO was taking more than half the company for himself, and leaving 10% for everyone else. Why aren't we surprised when three months later that company can't hire enough engineers? Even when the company succeeds, the big-shot with the big payday may regret it. The difference between $10 million and $20 million in practical terms — whom you can date, where you can go, what you drive — is zero. But if you give an extra $10 million to the folks who fought shoulder to shoulder with you, everyone will feel better about what you accomplished together. You want your startup to end like Trading Places, with Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd and their butler sipping drinks on the beach. This has always been true, but now that more startups are being bought, it has become less common. Consider the proceeds of a $50-million acquisition for a 100-person company that has raised $14 million with a typical liquidation preference: Because of the liquidation preference, the investors get $14 million right off the top. The remaining $36 million is divided according to equity ownership. Investors own 50%, and get $18 million, split between two firms The two founders own 33%, and split $12 million The 3-person executive team, including a CEO if one was hired, owns 10%, and splits $3.6 million. The team gets another $3 million as a severance payment or an earn-out, to sweeten the acquisition offer. The remaining 95 employees split 7%, each earning $27,000. Unlike the founders, the employees have to wait until their grants vest, working at a company no longer of their choosing for two years. Now consider what would happen if the same company raises another $10 million, expands the employee option pool to hire more executives and to support 300 people. It is worth $250 million at the time of a public offering. There is no liquidation preference, severance payment or earn out. Everyone is paid according to the number of shares he owns. Investors by now own 60%, or $167 million, split between three firms The two founders own 20%, and split $50 million The executive team still gets 10%, but now splits it among 5 people. Each executive gets $5 million. The remaining 290 employees own 10%, with the first 100 employees hired getting the lion’s share, of say $200,000 each. The point is not that this is a better outcome for all. Any fool would take the higher price if he knew he could get it, but you don't know when or whether you ever will. The point is that employees at least stand a chance at a nice gain when a company is built to last, whereas founders benefit disproportionately from a quick flip. So in a world of more quick flips, we need to increase the size of options pools, eliminate liquidation preferences – which just get picked up in subsequent rounds of financing by new investors, who screw the old ones — and provide better acceleration for everyone. Otherwise, nobody will want to work for a startup. But the reverse is happening. VCs want their pound of flesh, and entrepreneurs do too. In fact, the 20% of company ownership that was once considered the standard allocation for executives and other employees is now more likely to be at 10%. If we're all a little less greedy now, we'll build bigger companies later and everyone will make more money, and feel better about it too.
 
Gmail Acting Up? It's Not Just You Top
If your Gmail account is down or consistently throwing random errors your way, like my account is right now, note that it isn’t just you . According to the Apps Status Dashboard , a “significant subset of users” started running into trouble at around 9:45 AM Pacific Time. Update: supposed to be all fine now , no further explanation given. At 11:34 PM, Google posted an update, saying that Google Mail service had been restored for some users, and that it expected a resolution for all users “within the next 4 hours” (estimate). This is the first status update that was posted: We’re aware of a problem with Google Mail affecting a significant subset of users. The affected users are able to access Google Mail, but are seeing error messages and/or other unexpected behavior. We will provide an update by February 25, 2010 8:44:00 PM UTC+1 detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change. Affected users are experiencing difficulties or delays receiving mail fetched via POP from external mail providers to Gmail. These messages are not lost and should still be stored at the users’ external POP service. And the second: Google Mail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users within the next 4 hours. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change. It’s rare that Google speaks of a significant number of users when problems arise – usually they say a ’small subset’ – but a Twitter search actually shows a surprisingly low number of tweets about any issues people are having with their Gmail accounts. We should note this isn’t the first time Google has had issues with Gmail, and just yesterday Google App Engine went down for an extended period of time. Are you noticing anything out of the ordinary with the popular cloud service? CrunchBase Information Gmail Information provided by CrunchBase
 

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