Friday, July 30, 2010

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Half Of All Facebook Users Play Social Games — It's 40% Of Total Usage Time Top
Perhaps you’ve heard: social games maker Playdom was acquired by Disney a few days ago for a deal potentially worth north of $750 million . Playdom CEO John Pleasants took the stage today at our Social Currency CrunchUp in Palo Alto, to talk a bit about the deal and the future. Pleasants says that he’s not exactly sure what his title at Disney will be yet, but he thinks he’ll be the General Manager of Playdom. He’s also not sure if Tapulous (another gaming company just acquired by Disney ) will be under his department, but he doesn’t think so. And he made sure to clarify that the deal was for $563.2 million plus an earn-out of up to $200 million — so he’s not super super super rich, he’s just super super rich. But the most interesting thing Pleasants noted was that he recently heard (from his own source, apparently) that half of all users on Facebook now play social games. More impressively, 40% of total usage time on the service is spent on these games. That’s meaningful, of course, because “ a huge amount the Internet is on Facebook ,” Pleasants stated. When moderator Michael Arrington asked about changes Facebook has made recently to slow the viral spread of these types of games, Pleasants acknowledged they’ve all taken a hit. But he says they’re working with Facbeook on new ways to drive growth. But he made sure to say they had to do it without spamming. When talking about what’s next, Pleasants notes that they’ve released two new games in the past week alone. When Mike suggested that most of the games are just a combination of blindly pushing buttons, Pleasants noted that things were evolving, and that games were about to get more social. The biggest issue going forward though? “ The lack of credit cards with children ,” Pleasants half-joked.
 
Soladigm Smart Window Maker Emerges From Stealth, Announces Plan To Build Plant In Mississippi Top
Smart window startup Soladigm announced today its plans to build a factory in Olive Branch, Mississippi. The Khosla Ventures and Sigma Partners backed company makes dynamic glass windows that can be tinted on demand to block excess light and heat. Founded in 2007, Soladigm had been operating in “stealth mode.” The company employs about 50 people in its Milpitas, California headquarters, and plans to hire about 300 employees over the next few years for the Mississippi plant. A $40 million loan and another $4 million in incentives from the state influenced Soladigm’s decision to locate operations in Mississippi. Soladigm pledged to invest $130 million by 2016 in its business there in order to receive the state’s full incentive package. The new Soladigm plant’s proximity to Memphis transportation connections will also help the company quickly ship its glass panels. According to the company, its tinted windows can eliminate the need for blinds and reduce building heating and cooling costs by up to 25%. CrunchBase Information Soladigm Khosla Ventures Sigma Partners Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Blind Item: Which Editor of Valleywag Needs to Resign? Right Now. Top
Criticising Valleywag in 2010 is something of a pointless exercise, like offering diplomatic counsel to the Ottoman Empire ten years after the Treaty of Lausanne . More pointless still, attacking the site's titular editor Ryan Tate is like appealing to the guy responsible for writing parking tickets in Constantinople. I mean, I get that. And yet despite the irrelevance of Gawker's saddest sub-domain and the tragic impotence of its editor, the influence of its parent means that when a Valleywag story oozes its way on to the front page of Gawker.com, it's important to take notice. And to mop it up so that no-one slips. Here goes then. Background: Some time on Tuesday afternoon, Ryan Tate woke up and padded over to his laptop to check his email. Amidst the tips from disgruntled Friendster employees and pep-talk advice mails from Owen Thomas , there was an email from Nick Stern, a photographer who had spent a few days stalking Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. They images were so entirely un-newsworthy – photos of Zuckerberg's modest house, photos of his "unremarkable" tennis shoes, photos of Zuckerberg's entirely unfamous girlfriend – that no other news organisation wanted them. Could Gawker spare any change? Pausing just long enough to wipe the resulting sticky goo from his keyboard, Tate hit reply. "Oh God, YES! We'd love them. It'll be a Gawker exclusive!" Of course, much of the above is bullshit speculation , but the result is the same: on Wednesday, under a "Gawker Exclusive" banner, and the headline, " Mark Zuckerberg's Age of Privacy Is Over " Tate published twenty candid photos, clearly identifying Zuckerberg's home, his girlfriend, his friends and his regular haunts. In "justification", Tate wrote… "If it feels a little naughty to take such a close look into Zuckerberg’s life, remember that this is the executive who pushed the private information of Facebook’s hundreds of millions of users progressively further into the public sphere." Hmmm, Ryan. No, not "hmmm". That other thing. GO FUCK YOURSELF. I mean, seriously, Ryan, how did you even write those words without slitting your wrists and bleeding out pure shame onto your copy of Pageviews For Dummies? Even if you accept that Facebook's handling of user privacy was a misstep (which I don’t entirely ), to argue that it's analogous to following someone around with a camera all week and publicising his home address on the Internet just defies belief. Especially when that person is a billionaire who is more of a target than most for the assorted freaks and lunatics who slosh about online. But of course Tate had no choice but to cling to his "tit for tat" public interest justification. After all, the photos had no inherent news value ("the most interesting thing about Zuckerberg’s life may well be how ordinary it is," says Tate in his post) and nor is there an obvious "public figure" justification. Facebook is a private company, Zuckerberg (especially compared to other billionaire CEOs) doesn't court personal publicity outside of the business press – and his girlfriend certainly doesn't. All the publication of these pictures achieves is a hundred thousand or so page views, at a cost that includes the personal safety of a 26 year old who, despite his modest home and shoes, is worth, let's not forget, some $4 billion. If I were his girlfriend, or anyone else close to him, I'd be terrified right now. What Happened Next: After reading the story, I tweeted to Tate… More than anything, I wanted to know if he was proud of his work; whether reading it back he thought to himself "yes, I have done a good thing today." But at worst I wanted him to defend it. In fact he did neither, instead he replied … Then, as if to underline his point – that the justification for posting the photos was that he'd done it before – he emailed me the links, with the heading "BREAKING! Valleywag runs unauthorized pictures of people’s homes and girlfriends!!!11!" After some back and forth over the irrelevant question of whether Tate commissioned the photos himself or whether they landed on his desk as a fait accompli , I got back to the point… From: Paul Carr To: Ryan Tate You’re neatly dodging the question though: do you stand by the posting of the photos as news? Are you suggesting a public interest justification for publicizing where a billionaire lives? “We’ve done it before” is not a justification; as any serial killer will tell you. His answer? An email containing nothing but the contact details of Editor-in-Chief Remy Stern and Founder Nick Denton. The subtext: “I can't justify my own work; you'll have to talk to My Two Dads." And so I did. I particularly wanted to understand Denton's take on the misadventures of his underling. For a start, it's generally accepted that there is only one period in Valleywag's history that the site was any good, and that was when Denton was running it himself. Also, for all of Valleywag's prying into the lives of Silicon Valley "celebrities", Denton held on to at least one basic principle: decreeing that the lives of their non-famous girlfriends, boyfriends, wives and husbands – "civillians" as he called them – should remain off-limits. So what gives? Has Denton changed his policy or, like in so many other situations, did Tate simply not get the memo? His reply deserves to be published in full (with his permission, for which I'm grateful). Hey, Paul – Thanks for your note. Facebook is anything but a private company; it has 500m stakeholders. And as Silicon Valley has grown in importance, tech executives have become celebrities. Mark Zuckerberg generates more interest among our readers than most Hollywood stars. Now you can argue that he doesn’t trade on his celebrity in the same way. But that’s not entirely true. He poses for photos for magazine covers and shows up at conferences. It’s not like he’s a complete recluse. As for the address… Well, first of all, no, we didn’t publish it. But you can deduce it. And? With online databases such as Nexis Public Records, most people’s addresses are now easily available. You can find all mine there, for instance. Or here . I think you’re trapped in a previous era — one in which journalists had special access to information and dispensed it sparingly and “responsibly.” Now there’s much less distinction to the profession: everybody has access to formerly privileged information and anybody can publish it. We’d all better adjust. Your final point: that even if Zuckerberg was fair game, the girlfriend wasn’t. I have most sympathy for this. But, again, apply the Hollywood model. If an unknown was having an affair with Angelina Jolie, they would no longer be an unknown. Zuckerberg is the Angelina Jolie of the internet. The media interest in him is undeniable. His lovers, friends and acquaintances — like those of any other celebrity — are caught up in the vortex. He has to make a choice; and they have to make a choice. And none of the choices — retreat from the public eye, abandonment of friendship — are palatable. Feel free to publish any of this reply. Regards Nick Conclusion: Reading that note, two things screamed out from the page. One: how conflicted Denton sounds in writing it – speaking of his "sympathy" for my point about Zuckerberg's girlfriend and acknowledging that the choices that his kind of reporting forces those close to tech "celebrities" to make are "unpalatable". It can't be easy to know your editors are doing bad things, but that those bad things are the only way they’ll ever attract page views. And two: the fact that it was only Denton, and not Tate, who had the wit and intelligence to attempt to justify Gawker’s decision to publish. (In fact, while Denton was accounting for the behaviour of his boy, Tate was publishing a follow up story containing photos of Zuckerberg at an employee’s wedding in India, despertely arguing that his interest in them "underlines Zuckerberg’s growing global celebrity". Just stop digging, Ryan.) And it's for that second reason – his inability to stand by his grubby work – that Ryan Tate, if he has an ounce of pride left in his body, needs to resign. And if he won't do that – which he won't, because he hasn't, and because he knows that the position of village idiot has already been filled – then it’s for that reason that Denton needs to fire him and either go back to running Valleywag himself, or close it down once and for all. In the meantime, to anyone with a cameraphone or a Flipcam who spots Ryan Tate out and about in the Bay Area: you know what to do. Follow him. Follow him everywhere. Take hundreds of photos. Bug the living shit out of him. Make him understand how unpleasant it is to be followed to your front door by a stranger with a camera. And once you're done stalking? Again: you know what to do. Delete the footage. Don't even think about uploading it anywhere. Yes, there'd be a delicious irony in "Ending Ryan Tate's Age Of Privacy" because he's done it to someone else. But, as much as he'd love to feel that his life passes a public interest test, it doesn't. And just because Ryan Tate has done something hideous and unjustified to someone else, doesn't mean you should do it to him. You’re better than that. CrunchBase Information Gawker Media Information provided by CrunchBase CrunchBase Information Mark Zuckerberg Information provided by CrunchBase
 
gWallet Looks To Attract New App Publishers With $20,000 Guarantee Top
Online monetization platform gWallet , which offers social gaming developers a variety of ways to monetize their apps and boost engagement, is looking to put its money where its mouth is: the company is launching a $20,000 cash guarantee to any social gaming publishers that don’t generate more revenue when they switch from their current monetization platform to gWallet. To participate, publishers are being asked to implement a simultaneous, head-to-head test over the span of thirty days (you can sign up starting today, with the 30 day window beginning August 1). At the end of that time period, if your revenues from gWallet aren’t higher than they are on you original implementation, then the service will pay out the guarantee. But you’ll have to be a pretty sizable game to participate: to qualify, gWallet says that publishers need to be new to the platform, and need to have at least 250,000 daily active users. That said, it sounds like the the company is willing to discuss a guarantee to apps with a smaller user base if you email their partner@gwallet.com address. gWallet launched late last year, positioning itself as a more trusted alternative to other ‘Offers’ companies in the wake of Scamville.  One of the company’s more popular products is the video offer, which can reward an app user virtual currency in return for watching a video ad (they also have more traditional offers). This is a highly competitive and tough space; major Offers company OfferPal recently had to  downsize in the wake of Facebook deciding that TrialPay would be its preferred Offers provider.  Still, there’s plenty of room to innovate (and give developers a bigger slice of the revenue) — if gWallet can prove that it earns devs more money than its competitors, it will likely do just fine regardless. CrunchBase Information gWallet Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Drunken Tweets To Plummet Tomorrow Night As Twitter Will Be Down Top
Tomorrow night, July 31, Twitter has announced they are having some planned downtime. Beginning at 11 PM PT, Twitter will likely be down on and off for up to 5 hours, Twitter warns. The reason for the downtime? NTT America, Twitter’s hosting provider is upgrading a part of the internal network. This is interesting because Twitter is in the process of opening their own data center in Utah later this year. Despite the new tweet digs, they’ve said they’ll keep working with NTT America, so this maintenance is clearly necessary. If you see the picture above tomorrow night, you’ll know what’s up. There will be a link on it to the Status Blog where you can get status updates on the work. CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Rule Your Work Productivity With RULE.fm Top
It's takes a certain type of person to get excited about a work productivity tool. Mark Nielsen and Patrick Carmitchel , unsatisfied with 37Signals ‘ Basecamp, have decided to disrupt the productivity software industry (see their incredibly twee video above). Says Nielsen "We decided we'd rather not see the light of day for awhile than have to live with knowing that with just a little bit of creative, a pinch of logic and a dash of sexy, we could revive the productivity software world with a tool that would even make Apple cry." Previously unknown to the blogosphere, Nielsen and Carmitchel emailed us at 2am last night and emphasized that they were out for 37Signals’ blood (we’ll get more into why we actually listened in a later post). When reminded that the formidable former Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz was also in the collaboration tool space, joining the likes of Salesforce , Zoho, and Atlassian with his stealth startup Asana , they replied "We'd like to see how [Dustin Moskovitz's] deep pockets stand up against moxie and energy." The RULE.fm product itself looks like what would happen if Apple got serious about productivity software, with much emphasis on design aesthetics.  Right now its basic function is a ramped up contact list manager with real time updates from your contacts pushed to you, a Yammer -like discussion area, a place for tasks, and a communal file sharing functionality. Nielsen describes it as  “a place to know and understand everything that’s going on with in your organization” and hopes the company will eventually expand into wikis, customer retention management and accounting tools. For those curious, the tour is live on the RULE.fm site right now, and the platform itself will go live on Tuesday August 3rd, making the productivity software industry just a little bit more badass. CrunchBase Information RULE.fm Information provided by CrunchBase
 
InMobi Wants The World With Its Mobile Ads, Not Just The U.S. Top
Today at our Social Currency CrunchUp in Palo Alto, CA, James Lamberti, VP of Global Research and Marketing for InMobi , sat down with our Michael Arrington to tell us a bit about mobile advertising. InMobi is the largest independent mobile ad network in the world. Overall, they’re number two behind Google’s AdMob. That earned them an $8 million investment from Kleiner Perkins and Sherpalo Ventures a couple weeks ago. But what’s particularly interesting about InMobi is how well they’re doing outside the U.S. Out of inMobi’s 16.9 billion mobile ad impressions globally, 2.6 billion are in Africa, more than the US’s 2 billion. 10 billion are in Asia, no surprise considering inMobi was founded in India and had more time to develop reach, while Europe follows Africa with 1.6 billion and the Middle East .5 billion. InMobi’s mobile eCPM development is highest in Europe at 29%, with North American coming in a close second at 24%. When inMobi’s development rankings, are stack ranked by country, Australia comes in first due to its high adoption of the iPhone and Malaysia performs at number two. Not surprisingly the iPhone platform dominates inMobi’s marketshare the US, being responsible for 38.2% of all mobile ad impressions. Globally Nokia trumps other platforms serving inMobi ads, at 22.2% of the market. Lamberti says that InMobi’s biggest growth markets are in the US, Japan, and South America and the US, partially because of the benefits from Google Ad Mob changes on the iPhone. While 60% of all mobile iPhone impressions are still in the US, inMobi is now poised to to monetize the 40% that aren’t. Slides from their presentation below.
 
Google: There Have To Be Yelps In The World, But… Top
Today during our Social Currency CrunchUp , Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and John Hanke, a Google VP of Product Management, took the stage. Given that the two companies seem to be at odds with one another recently (following a failed acquisition ), it was a little tense. Specifically, Google’s strong moves into local with their new Places push seem to be going right at Yelp’s core . Sure’s it’s potentially about more than just local venue reviews, but that’s a huge part of it. And that’s what Yelp is all about. Moreover, Google is using Yelp data to bulk up their Places offering . Yelp can’t like that too much. In fact, we’ve heard they’re particularly unhappy because they used to have a deal with Google for this data, but they pulled out of that deal a couple years ago. But Google decided to use Yelp’s data anyway simply by crawling it. Yelp can’t stop them from doing that unless they want to delist themselves from Google — a move which could kill them. On stage, Stoppelman acknowledged that Yelp used to have such a deal with Google. When moderator Erick Schonfeld asked if Google was now getting that data by crawling the pages, Hanke responded with “ Look… ” This drew some laughs from the audience. But Hanke continued by saying that “ there have to be Yelps in the world. ” What he means is that Google needs these type of services to be able to point users to them. Of course, Stoppelman argues that while Google used to point users to services like his, they’re moving towards showing that data on their own pages. He believes that Google no longer likes sending large amounts of data to huge sites. Hanke said that statement wasn’t fair. “ We look at what people want ,” he said. Google is trying to understand Places better — if Yelp has the best content, we’ll show that, he said. He asked if Google knows what information a user is trying to get at, shouldn’t they show it? “ Should we pretend we don’t know what they’re really looking for? “ Stoppelman’s said he understands that argument but believes that if Yelp does have the best content, Google should give people a way to get there as fast as possible. Basically, agree to disagree. When Schonfeld asked about the failed acquisition, Stoppelman coyly noted “I t’s complicated. ” The audience liked that. He caught himself though, “ …whatever may have happened. “ Hanke acknowledged the tension between the two companies. But again, he said it’s all about doing what’s best for the users. Yeah, expect that tension to continue. CrunchBase Information Yelp Google Information provided by CrunchBase
 

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