The latest from TechCrunch
- Google: Flickr Can Keep Using Picnik. Yahoo: We Have No Comment.
- Mobclix Acquires iPhone App Sales Analytics Software Heartbeat
- Twitter Turns On The Firehose For Realtime Search Startups
- Facebook f8 Tickets Go Up A Bit Early. Not All That Much Cheaper Than Twitter Chirp.
- Facebook Details How It Tests Code, But Won't Say How It Misdelivered Private Messages
| Google: Flickr Can Keep Using Picnik. Yahoo: We Have No Comment. | Top |
| Earlier today, in writing about Google buying the photo-editing service Picnik , we noted that the most interesting thing about the buy may be that Picnik is currently Flickr’s default photo editor. Upon hearing the news, we reached out to both Google and Yahoo (which owns Flickr) to see what it means for the future of the partnership. The responses were interesting. Google, for its part, says that it will allow third-party sites (including Flickr) to continue to integrate with it. Here’s the statement they sent us: We believe that openness is always the best approach and will allow third-party sites to continue to integrate with Picnik. People should be able to pull photos from other photo sharing sites, make edits with Picnik and save to whatever site they choose. That sounds good, right? Well, it doesn’t sound like anyone bothered to tell Yahoo. Here’s their statement (from OutCast Communications, which does Yahoo’s PR): Thanks for getting in touch. At this point we don't have a comment on the acquisition, but will let you know when and if we have information to share. If Yahoo was going to continue the Picnik relationship, don’t you think they’d come out and say so. Or at least say something like, “at this time, we see the relationship continuing.” Instead, it looks like they may be weighing their options. Or maybe they just don’t really know how the acquisition will affect things yet. The problem is that Picnik is currently the only way to do that majority of edits on Flickr. Without it, the product as a whole becomes less valuable. So will Yahoo have to build its own photo-editor (which they obviously were against before, or they would have done it rather than partner with Picnik)? Or will they partner with someone else — maybe Aviary ? Regardless, Google has a history of acquiring companies and then letting their products wither (Dodgeball, Jaiku, etc). Let’s hope that’s not the case here, and that Picnik is at the very least integrated into Picasa (Google’s online photo service), because it’s a solid service. | |
| Mobclix Acquires iPhone App Sales Analytics Software Heartbeat | Top |
| Mobile ad network Mobclix has made its first acquisition. The startup is buying up Heartbeat, a cloud-based SaaS that helps iPhone app developers manage and access sales data, crash reporting, ongoing hourly usage stats, reviews and rankings. The acquisition price was not disclosed. Mobclix bought Heartbeat from app developer Enormego, which launched the software in January 2009. So far Heartbeat has tracked $25 million in paid application downloads with over 3,500 applications using the platform (55 percent of which are paid apps). Heartbeat’s offerings will be folded into Mobclix’s platform to offer Heartbeat’s software to both Android and iPhone app developers. Heartbeat’s sales analytics will be integrated with Mobclix ad revenue data to allows developers to have a visualization of all aspects of an application's revenue including ad monetization, in-app purchase and paid models. While Heartbeat’s current service only caters to the iPhone app market, its technology will be adapted to serve Android apps as well. The acquisition makes sense for Mobclix to boost its exchange’s offerings. Mobclix allows app developers to sign up with their ad inventory and ad networks bid for the spots based on age, gender, location, and other factors. The ads being served change automatically, based on which ad network is bidding the highest to reach the users of that particular app. It also lets advertisers buy across a variety of apps based on demographic, geo-targeting, and behavioral characteristics. The startup recently announced a deal to offer Nielsen's ad targeting data into its ad exchange to enhance ad targeting. With the acquisitions of AdMob by Google and Quattro Wireless by Apple , ad exchanges and networks like Mobclix, Greystripe and others are working hard to boost the appeal and strength of their products. But according to Gartner, the mobile advertising market will generate $13 billion in revenues by 2013, leaving plenty of possible revenue to go around. CrunchBase Information Mobclix Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Twitter Turns On The Firehose For Realtime Search Startups | Top |
| When it comes to getting access to all the data that flows through Twitter, there are the 50,000 apps that drink from Twitter’s Streaming API, which is subject to various limits. And then there are the chosen few who get the full unlimited firehose of data, the more than 50 million Tweets a day coursing through Twitter. In the past, only select partners, particularly big search engines such as Google or Bing, got the full firehose . Search engines need it more than others to be able to index and serve up results in realtime. Today, smaller search startups are also getting the firehose . These include Ellerdale , Collecta , Kosmix , Scoopler , twazzup , CrowdEye , and Chainn Search (which has not yet launched). In December at Le Web, Twitter indicated that the firehose would open up to more and more developers. This is a step in that direction. And while Twitter makes deep-pocketed partners like Google and Bing pay for the firehose, it treats startups differently with more favorable (even free) terms, or at least it used to. These aren’t the first startups to get the firehose, and they won’t be the last. Once they get to a certain size though, they’ll pay if they don’t already. Apparently it works on a sliding scale. Photo credit: Flickr/ ZeroOne CrunchBase Information Collecta Ellerdale Crowdeye Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Facebook f8 Tickets Go Up A Bit Early. Not All That Much Cheaper Than Twitter Chirp. | Top |
| Back in December at Le Web, Twitter announced that it would hold its first-ever conference, Chirp , in San Francisco, in 2010. About a month later, they gave out the details , including that it would be taking place exactly a week before Facebook’s big conference, f8. Seeing as both are geared towards developers, it’s pretty clear they’re gunning for one another. But it seemed that f8 would have one large advantage: ticket price. But now it appears that may not be such an advantage. The ticket page for f8 was briefly online earlier today at this URL . It appears that Facebook has since put it under password protection. But guess who was able to grab a screenshot? This guy. Notably, it appears that regular f8 tickets will be $325 this year. While that’s still about $140 cheaper (140, get it?) than Chirp, it’s not drastically cheaper, as many had been thinking. In the past, Facebook has sold tickets for $250, or even $150 if you signed up early. But, f8 still has one major price point advantage: tickets for students are only $50. When asked why tickets were so expensive to Chirp, conference organizers noted that unlike f8, Chirp wasn’t accepting outside sponsors, which f8 has used in previous years to keep costs down. It’s not clear if Facebook is doing that again this year, but judging from the ticketing page, at least Eventbrite is a partner. f8 will take place this year on April 21 and 22 at the San Francisco Design Center (same as previous years). Again, this is exactly one week after the two-day Chirp conference. We’ve reached out to Facebook about the event, and ticket prices, and will update when we hear back. Update : Here’s Facebook’s statement to me: We are preparing a Facebook Connect-enabled registration page with EventBrite in anticipation for f8, and will open it in the coming weeks. Watch the f8 Page for the latest details (www.facebook.com/f8). In the past, tickets have been $150 for early bird; $50 for student; $250 for regular. So basically, it sounds like that was indeed the page, and it just went up a bit early. And yes, prices appear to be going up. CrunchBase Information Facebook Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase [thanks John ] | |
| Facebook Details How It Tests Code, But Won't Say How It Misdelivered Private Messages | Top |
| Last week, Facebook was affected by a glitch that sent what appear to be thousands of private messages to the wrong people — a very alarming security breach given the amount of data 400 million users have entrusted to the service. News of the bug hit the press, Facebook issued a typically vague statement saying very few people were affected and that an investigation was looking into the matter, and that was that. Most people probably just shrugged their shoulders at the news, but it’s yet another blemish against the company’s security record. This isn’t the first time Facebook has run into security issues , and I’ve grown increasingly concerned that the company might be playing fast and loose with its quality assurance policies because it doesn’t want to sacrifice the rapid iteration it’s famous for. With this in mind, I reached out to Facebook late last week to ask about their protocol for deploying code and how the bug made it through in the first place. The company responded to some of my questions, and refused to answer others. At least, Facebook eventually answered some of my questions. At first, the company sent me a vague statement reiterating that they were investigating the issue, and that they “maintain industry-leading quality assurance and security systems, and the reliability of Facebook is our top priority.” In response, I reminded the Facebook spokesperson that it had just sent thousands of messages to people who weren’t meant to receive them, which would seem to indicate that it is not, in fact, on the bleeding edge of online security. I restated my questions and the company got back to me with this more detailed overview of its QA and code deployment policies, found below. Note that it begins with a general statement Facebook provided, along with more direct answers to my questions (which are in bold). Facebook hires the most qualified and highly-skilled engineers we can find – most from industry or from top universities. Upon joining the company, every engineer and engineering manager participates in a six-week intensive 'boot camp' training. Our code review process is rigorous, and we phase out changes and test them before they go live for real users to detect any potential issues. During code pushes, our engineering, user support, and operations teams work cross-functionally to monitor the state of the push and to identify any problems early. We also have the capability to quickly push code updates to all of our datacenters worldwide, and to enable or disable critical features of the site if there is a problem. All of these checks worked together on Wednesday, as designed, to limit the impact of the error and stopped it within minutes. We were able to swiftly disable access to the users who received messages and remove those messages from Facebook, although we were unable to prevent email notifications from being sent to affected users. It is important to recognize that no system is perfect and no company avoids mistakes all of the time. However, we would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologize to all affected users and ensure them that we are committed to investigating Wednesday's issue and to learning from it. What are your protocols for pushing code? We have staged rollout changes that go through multiple phases before going to end users, so we can proactively detect any problems. As the changes get rolled out to users, a set of support, engineering, and operation leaders are actively engaged to monitor the state of the push. As soon as any issue is identified, we have multiple tools to quickly disable critical features. The combination of these mechanisms dramatically limited the exposure related to Wednesday's issue. Are there multiple people reviewing all code that gets pushed? Yes, we have a rigorous code review process and no code goes live on the site unless it has been reviewed and approved by a skilled engineer. What changes are you making to ensure that this does not happen again? We cannot discuss specific improvements, but we take privacy and security very seriously and are continually improving our code standards, processes, and systems to help us build high quality products quickly. When do you expect to conclude your investigation, because I will certainly be following up for the details about it? As a general practice, we do not comment on investigations like this. While interesting, none of this is particularly surprising. And because Facebook isn’t commenting on the outcome of the investigation, we’ll probably never find out what caused the bug (or if company protocol was even followed in this case). But hey, at least they say they’re doing the right things. It’s worth pointing out that Facebook is by no means the only company affected by such issues. Last year, I wrote a post called the Sorry State of Online Privacy , where I detailed some of the security lapses that had hit Facebook, Twitter, and Google (and of course there’s the recent Google Buzz fiasco ). All of these companies would likely claim to have state of the art testing and security measures, yet such problems seem to pop up every few months. I’m aware that it’s impossible to have a fully secure system, but that doesn’t mean engineering teams should be treating these problems as inevitabilities. To reiterate what I wrote last year, the word 'private' should not mean "this will remain hidden until we accidentally break something". CrunchBase Information Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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. |
No comments:
Post a Comment