The latest from TechCrunch
- HighStranger Is Chatroulette, For Stoners
- Twitter Reverts Its Facebook App As Facebook Continues Friend Blockade
- Keen on … Net Neutrality: Is America Losing its Edge? (TCTV)
- SkyFire for iPhone To Be Submitted To Apple Next Week?
- GroupMe, Born At TechCrunch Disrupt, Secures Funding And Launches
- Facebook Places Designer: Any Foursquare Logo Similarities Were Not Intentional
| HighStranger Is Chatroulette, For Stoners | Top |
| So I’ve been waiting for the new Chatroulette to go up for three days now with no dice. In the meantime I’ve been getting a slew of emails and tweets from people trying to get me to switch over to their to their random “chat with strangers” services (Hi Omegle! ). However none have been particularly compelling, UNTIL NOW. We’ve been running in stealth for the past few months, as we’ve negotiated deals and developed software (that’s done), but it seems you’ve broken the seal on the jar of kind bud, so we’re announcing on TechCrunch: http://HighStranger.com “Chatroulette for High People!” Peace, Dude PS: We’re in LA and we’re looking for our head of marketing, PR, and social media. Maybe a hot designer, too :) The above comment is from (where else?) last night’s “Dude I Am So High Right Now” post, the venue where “Dude,” who I am assuming is the HighStranger founder, has chosen to announce their “Chatroulette For High People!.” But wait, isn’t Chatroulette a “Chatroulette for high people” ? I’ve emailed Dude for further information, and have not yet received a response, which is not surprising. A quick trip to their homepage reveals that HighStranger is currently in beta (if not a complete practical joke) will be launching officially on November 2nd. And they’re hiring! While Chatroulette spinoffs are a dime a dozen , this one seems noteworthy if only for the inevitable cheesy pot jokes that will ensue in the comments. Like, “This might be the first employer to require that you fail a drug test,” or whatever. I’m sure you guys can come up with something better. They basically write themselves. CrunchBase Information HighStranger Chatroulette! Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Twitter Reverts Its Facebook App As Facebook Continues Friend Blockade | Top |
| Remember back in June when we wrote about Twitter’s update to their Facebook app that allowed you to see which of your Facebook friends were also using Twitter? Remember when Facebook blocked that functionality about five minutes later? At the time, both sides noted that they were working to resolve the “issue.” Well, two months later, you can forget about that resolution as Twitter has just updated their app once again, removing that functionality. To be clear, the Twitter app on Facebook still works — it just works basically as it did before. That is, allowing you to post tweets to your Facebook Wall (for both your profiles and pages) and to sync your profile photo. For the five minutes the friend look-up feature was alive, it was actually a very useful way to find Facebook friends also on Twitter and follow them with one click (though they had to have the Twitter app installed for you to be able to find them). And my understanding is that Twitter was using the Facebook API the same way that any other third-party app might. So the only conclusion I can draw is that Facebook didn’t like Twitter building their social graph on top of their own. Facebook has yet to respond to my inquiry into this. Meanwhile, Twitter has this to say: Several weeks ago, Twitter released an update to its Facebook application: The ability to see which of their Facebook friends have attached their Twitter and Facebook accounts and choose which of those friends to follow on Twitter. Facebook blocked the ability to access a user’s list of friends within the application. As we’ve not yet been able to come to terms on a solution, we have removed references to the update in the application to avoid user confusion. Come to terms on a solution? Again, ridiculous. The solution is to let users do this as long as it’s not in violation of the API. This seems reminiscent of the whole Facebook/Google Friend Connect debacle of 2008. In that situation, Facebook began blocking Friend Connect from accessing their data due to it redistributing the information without a users’ knowledge. Or something. It couldn’t have been because Facebook had just launched the similar Facebook Connect. No. Obviously, Facebook and Twitter have a somewhat tumultuous history. Ever since Facebook tried and failed to acquire the messaging startup in 2008, relations have been strained. In a recent interview, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that he “ paid too much attention ” to Twitter for several months as Facebook evolved its core product to be more about sharing. It’s also a bit ridiculous that while you can push tweets into Facebook, you can’t pull status updates out to use as tweets. While you can do this from Facebook Pages, you can’t from your actual profile. Facebook has been thinking about enabling this for sometime — and was even testing it — but ultimately decided against turning it on. While Twitter and Facebook are obviously two different services, they’ve both been making moves in recent months to become more like each other. Why? Both want to be the center of sharing on the web. They are two large rivals on a collision course . I, for one, think Facebook has to become even more like Twitter with the ability to have “followers” alongside your friends . It would just be nice if the two could get along for the sake of the users of both. [photo: flickr/ monkeypuzzle ] CrunchBase Information Twitter Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Keen on … Net Neutrality: Is America Losing its Edge? (TCTV) | Top |
| Is America losing its edge? This was the rather depressing subject of this year's Aspen Forum , the annual event put on by the DC-based Technology Policy Institute. Attracting speakers as illustrious as former HP CEO Carly Fiorina , Intel CEO Paul Otellini, Verizon EVP of Public Policy Tom Tauke, Intuit CEO Brad Smith, the author the National Broadband Plan Blair Levin and Linkedin co-founder Reid Hoffman, the event focused on the public policy side of technology, addressing the political challenges of making American technology companies more competitive in the 21st century global economy. It's perhaps appropriate that the event was held at Aspen's St Regis hotel up in the breathlessly high altitude of the Rockies. For all the broad public policy challenges facing the technology industry, the persistent issue in many of the discussions here – what Verizon's Tom Tauke described as the "elephant in the room" – is the unresolved Network Neutrality issue. As Tom Sugrue of TMobile remarked, the network neutrality issue is "sucking the energy out of all the other issues. Sugrue is correct. This issue – defined by the often byzantine and seemingly endless public debate between the carriers, the FCC, Congress, technology companies and the pro network neutrality lobby – is threatening to derail the longer term challenges to American edge in the global technology marketplace. At Aspen, I interviewed a number of leading policy makers, entrepreneurs and senior figures in the telecom industry to discuss technology policy, American competitiveness, broadband policy, and, of course, network neutrality. Most of these conversations were frank and, at times, depressing. If America is indeed losing its edge, it's clear that policy makers aren't exactly sure how to reestablish this competitiveness in a 21st century global economic environment entirely foreign to that of the 20th century. Blair Levin, the author of the National Broadband Plan, on the future of broadband in the US. Scott Wallsten, Senior Fellow at the Technology Policy Institute, on why we can get Network Neutrality sorted out. Reid Hoffman, Partner at Greylock, on how Silicon Valley can help DC resolve the Network Neutrality wars. Tom Tauke, EVP of Public Policy at Verizon on the background of the Google-Verizon agreement. This video was recorded in a location with a loud background noise. We apologize for the poor audio quality, but believe the content is worth watching. Blair Levin, Senior Fellow at the Aspen Institute, on how Woody Allen has the best explanation for the Network Neutrality impasse CrunchBase Information Thomas Tauke Reid Hoffman Blair Levin Scott Wallsten Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| SkyFire for iPhone To Be Submitted To Apple Next Week? | Top |
| SkyFire. Heard of it? It’s the smartphone browser that was chewing through Flash video and other rich media long before any of the built-in browsers were supporting such things — and on a number of platforms, it’s still the only option. We’ve known that SkyFire Labs was crackin’ away at an iPhone port for some time now — the company confirmed it after Opera got a surprise App Store thumbs up. But when would it be done? More importantly, when would it be submitted for that oh-so-important stamp of approval? Soon, say our sources. Read the rest at MobileCrunch >> | |
| GroupMe, Born At TechCrunch Disrupt, Secures Funding And Launches | Top |
| On May 22 this year 300 hackers converged in New York at TechCrunch Disrupt for a day and half long hack day before the conference itself started. At least one of the projects created at the hack day has now become an actual business, and has raised an angel round of funding from top tier investors. GroupMe launches today. What is it? It’s a dead simple way to create a private SMS group with your friends. Just go to the site and type in your mobile number (U.S. phones only at this point). You’ll then get a text message from a unique phone number assigned to your new group that says “You just created a new group on GroupMe! Now add some friends by replying #add with your friends’ names and numbers.” To add another person just add them via text message and they’re part of the group. Any text messages any member send go to all other members. And there are a variety of commands to mute groups, change topics, list other members, etc. And the fun doesn’t stop there. Members can also initiate a group conference call to all members at any time. Just call the group number and everyone’s phone will ring. GroupMe is working with Twilio , who was a sponsor of the hack day, to power the SMS and calling. And they are also working with Location Labs to integrate location/presence features in the future. The company was founded by Jared Hecht (previously Tumblr ) and Steve Martocci (previously Gilt Groupe ). GroupMe is pretty interesting from the start, but the founders have plans for a lot more. Says Hecht: “We think we’ve got a great direction for GroupMe as a group communication platform. We’re pursuing some very interesting data in/data out plays (eg, think about what happens when you invite Madison Square Garden into your group with a #MSG command). We plan on taking our hack day demo of contextual group advertising to help drive decision making and building it out, too. There are also some neat app-to-app and group buying plays.” Hecht and Martocci caught the eyes of investors fairly quickly. They’ve closed an $850,000 round of financing from Betaworks, SV Angel, First Round Capital, Lerer Ventures and a number of prominent angels. We’ve got a guest post coming up from the founders talking about their experience at Hack Day. CrunchBase Information GroupMe Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Facebook Places Designer: Any Foursquare Logo Similarities Were Not Intentional | Top |
| In response on to a question on Quora yesterday afternoon about why the Facebook Places logo looks like it contains a “four” in a “square,” Facebook Design Strategy lead Aaron Sittig confirms our belief that any similarities between the two logos were accidental. “We sure got a laugh from the news stories, but could only wish we’d been so clever.” You know what’s cool? That I seriously do post these things to get people to laugh (and think). Rumor has it that a link to TechCrunch’s “Facesquare” post has made the rounds of at least one Facebook Product Designer’s wall, along with the note “Wish we could actually say this was intentional.” Hmmm … Wonder what that means for the folks over at Foursquare . Update: SearchEngineLand’s Danny Sullivan and others have pointed out the logo also seems like it borrows from the Google Places pin as well. No word yet from Sittig on whether that particular appropriation was on purpose. CrunchBase Information Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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