Friday, December 31, 2010

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How Space Jam's Website Went Viral. Space Jam's 1996 Website, That Is. Top
A couple of days ago Reddit user Jeff Ubelhor was talking to his friends about something or other and Space Jam , the movie starring Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan, came up (he swears they weren’t stoned). They checked on the website and realized that it hadn’t been touched since 1996. “From there I decided to post it on Reddit,” says Ubelhor “Because I thought it was hilarious, not only the design, but just how different Internet marketing was 14 years ago.” The rest is Internet meme history. On December 29th, artist, professor and FAT Labs member Steve Lambert was given a link to the site by a student in his Hacking 101 class, posted it to the FAT Labs email list and tweeted it out as  “The original Warner Brothers “Space Jam” movie website has been left untouched since 1996, “ his one time student, Buzzfeed founder and most viral human alive Jonah Peretti retweeted it, without giving him credit. Both tweets were retweeted hundreds of times and the next thing you know Lambert was receiving emails like this: From: “XXXXX” Date: December 29, 2010 4:23:21 PM EST To: Subject: CBC News: SpaceJam tweet Hi Steve, I’m a reporter/anchor with CBC TV news in Toronto. Your SpaceJam tweet was trending locally for a couple of hours in Toronto, and was spread widely through our office. We’re going to a bit about it on our local supperhour newscast tonight. Just wondering, do I credit you (through one of your students) as the originator of the tweet? Any comments on how many retweets you’ve generated? Thanks, XXXXX And it wasn’t only Canadian TV stations that showed an interest. Since the Reddit post the site has been picked up by Buzzfeed (obviously), Huffington Post, Boing Boing, Geekosystem, Yahoo Sports, Slashfilm and countless others. Sister blog Urlesque, taking the phenomenon as evidence of a resurgence in interest in old movie sites, just published a post called  “Old Official Movie Sites – Titanic, Air Bud, Event Horizon and More.” Sigh. The original Reddit thread has over 2015 votes and 686 comments , including such meta and self-aware gems as “I wonder if we’re DDOSing a weakling 1996 server in an abandoned building somewhere right now” and “Browsing this on my droid x while moving 70mph. 1996 just shit their pants.” Since Peretti and Lambert’s tweets, the bit.ly link has received over 57K total clicks , over 40K in one day. And that is just clicks on the link Peretti tweeted out which are nowhere near the traffic the site probably got all in all.  Peretti estimates that the Space Jam site could easily have garnered around 500K views since hitting the front page of Reddit shortly after midnight on Wednesday morning, and gleaning from my web editorial experience I’m pretty sure that number is in the right ballpark. I’ve reached out to Warner Bros for the exact traffic stats. A lot changes in 14 years and some things don’t. While the site’s original designer Jen Braun is “still working on the web,” Assistant to the Designer Andrew Strachler is now VP of Interactive Marketing at Warner Bros. In 2010, computers are faster, monitors are thinner, social networking has exploded and we are now browsing the web on our mobile phones, among other things. But we’re all still staring at this silly looking website from 1996. You could just chalk up this week’s explosion of the Space Jam site to an extremely slow holiday news cycle, but it’s much more than that. We’re now in the very last hours of the most fast-paced decade ever technology-wise, and that is a little scary. In this era of Word Lens and Self-Driving Cars, perhaps some of us are more than a little nostalgic for simpler times when “ having a website, no matter how bad, was an achievement in itself.” CrunchBase Information Reddit Warner Bros. Jonah Peretti Information provided by CrunchBase
 
My 23-Year-Old Self Was Wrong About Salon.com. Like, Really Wrong. Top
A few hours to go until 2011, and I'm busy drawing up my list of New Year's resolutions. A major one: to stop writing about TechCrunch commenters. After all, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, it's like wrestling with a pig: you both get dirty and the pig enjoys it. Still, that leave me just enough time – eight hours, and counting – to sneak in one last journey over to the dark side. And perhaps it's fitting that the final salvo in my war against trolls has a happy ending. A Christmas miracle, even. It began this past Christmas day when I wrote a short post wishing TechCrunch readers a merry Christmas. Sure enough, within a few hours, the usual rag-tag band of trolls, freaks and illiterates who skulk around in the TechCrunch commentsphere arrived. One responder jumped i n to call me "A TOTAL f c k i n g RIGHT WING N U T C A S E" (caps theirs), adding "the twat doesn’t know shat about tech and worse doesn’t care for ‘PEOPLE’". Another (now deleted for reasons that will become clear in a moment) stood out for a couple of reasons: firstly, for addressing me as "bro" and secondly for his wish that I would "die a non-journalist". Wishing someone to die – journalist or not – struck me as a particularly un-Christmassy wish; so un-Chrismassy infact, that I felt driven to reply, pointing out the various misspellings in his comment and offer seasons' greetings to TechCrunch's "illiterate college student readership." And that would normally be that. Generally speaking, anonymous trolls, like cockroaches, tend to scurry away the moment you shine a light on their idiocy. But this is where the Christmas miracle kicked in. An few hours later I received an email – via the contact form on my personal website – from the commenter in question. I'm not going to tell you exactly what he wrote, suffice it to say that he wanted to say sorry. No, really. Moreover, he wrote to say that, prompted by my sarcastic reply, he'd been driven to read some of the things I'd written in the past about trollishness and Internet anonymity and, more generally, my struggles with drinking and trying not to be a complete and total bastard . The result of his this reading had been a complete change of heart: the one-time troll felt like crap for being mean on the Internet, much like I feel bad for all the people I hurt while I was drinking. I read the email at least half a dozen times before I could even start to think how to reply. Somehow our relationship had flipped on its head: now it was me who felt bad for being so quick to swat down his trollish comment. After all, even the most unpleasant little anonymous troll comment could have been written by a fundamentally good person who is having a bad day. I sent my new friend a preview PDF of my new (to be published in 2011) book , partly as a way to say "apology accepted" but also to reassure him that, no matter how much of a shit he feels for wishing me dead on TechCrunch, he still has a long way to go before he can compete with me on the dickish behaviour front. As I say, a Christmas miracle. And a reminder for everyone involved that the people we write about online are actually real people. All of which got me thinking about my own trollish past, and reminded me that I still owe a correction – an apology even – for something I wrote almost eight years ago, back in 2003, during my very first stint writing for the Guardian. At the time I was 23 years old and so, of course, I knew everything there was to know, not just about media and technology but about the Whole Entire World. And it was with that authority that I wrote an 800 word column about how Salon.com – then a mere eight years old – was struggling to attract enough paid readers to break even. They'd spent an impressive $81 million dollars to attract a relatively modest 60,000 subscribers – $1,300 per ($30 a year) subscriber as I cockily pointed out. How many Salon.com editors does it take to change a lightbulb? Ten. One to change the bulb and the other nine to piss $81m (£50m) up a wall. Not funny, but true. And my mocking didn't stop there. I went on to suggest that it was time for Salon to accept reality – that they've failed to prove that people want to pay for their particular brand of unremarkable journalism, and so should get out of the way and let other online publications have a chance to shine. Other online publications like the one, back in 2003, I just happened to be in the process of launching. Even by my own 23-year-old standards, the column was screamingly disingenuous and mean spirited; spurred far more by my competitive instincts than by any honest appraisal of their prospects or standards of journalism. “If you listen carefully you can almost hear the sound of money gurgling away. Advertisers’ money, investors’ money, subscribers’ money. Glug, glug, glug. It’s fair to say that had [Managing Editor, Scott] Rosenberg been the star of Brewster’s Millions, the film would have ended after about eight minutes.” And so it's appropriate then that over the next seven years, Salon enjoyed a near-constant succession of last laughs. Despite various false starts with paywalls and part-paywalls and "please help save independent journalism" pledge drives, they had their first profitable quarter in early 2005 and have kept their heads above water ever since. Not only that, but their journalism – both the quirky lifestyle stuff and their harder news reporting – has got better and stronger with every passing day. The publication reached another high point two weeks when Glenn Greenwald wrote a searing critique of the treatment of PFC Bradley Manning in Quantico. A  week later , the United Nations announced an investigation into Manning's treatment. Along with Gmail, Arts and Letters Daily , the BBC and – oh, please - TechCrunch, it’s one of the five sites that I check every single day without fail. With 2011 looking sure to be the year of the iPad and ebook reader, it's easy to see Salon.com becoming even more popular – and profitable – in the coming months. So, yes, prompted by the Damascene conversion of one of my own former critics, I figured it's about time I made amends for the trollish behaviour of my early-20s self. Sorry Salon, you were right and I was dramatically wrong and the landscape of online journalism is all the better for that fact. Ok? Ok. Happy New Year everyone.
 
OMG/JK: Shiny Hats And Crystal Balls Top
It’s time for a special New Years-themed edition of OMG/JK , and we’ve really gone all out with our costumes. From shiny hats to incredibly cheap kazoos, we’re ready to ring in 2011 with a bang. Oh, and we’ve got some technology to talk about. Because there hasn’t been much major news in the tech world this week, we decided to spend most of the show discussing some of the big trends that are inevitably going to make headlines throughout 2011. From Apple’s likely push to the cloud to the consumer launch of ChromeOS and Android’s arrival on tablets we’ve got a lot to look forward to — and we’re not afraid to make some predictions. Subscribe to us on iTunes!
 
A Look At Some Of The Biggest Tech Stories Of 2010 Top
It’s New Year’s Eve, and there’s nothing that compliments a glass of celebratory champagne better than reflecting on the past year in technology news (really, it’s a blast). One of the best roundups just went up over on Techmeme , which has posted its annual “quasi-objective” list of the top 50 stories based how many links and citations each post received. The top five stories shouldn’t come as a surprise, but they’re a good reminder of what’s gone on this year (apparently people like to write about Google and Apple): 1. Gizmodo’s huge iPhone 4 scoop 2. Steve Jobs bashing Flash 3. Google’s decision to stop censoring Google.cn after detecting hacking attempts 4. Google’s decision to mostly abandon its Nexus One experiment, which could have proven very disruptive to carrier/device lock-in. 5. And the Consumer Reports announcement that it could not recommend the iPhone 4, which elevated ‘ antennagate ‘ to a new level (and prompted Apple to hold an event to discuss the device’s reported signal issues). Google has also posted a roundup of its own, recapping the 454 posts it published on the Official Google Blog this year. Google says that 24,768,052 unique vistors visited the blog — an increase of 70% over last year, though most of this stemmed from Google’s April Fools joke, where it claimed it was renaming the company to Topeka. I like our April Fools jokes better. Ignoring the April Fools Joke, which had over ten times more views than any of the company’s actual news (a mildly depressing data point), Google’s top story was the ‘new approach to China’ referenced above. The second biggest story was Google’s post announcing ChromeOS — which was actually published in 2009 but has continued to draw attention, and finally had its big launch earlier this month. Rounding out the top five were Google’s announcement that it would install a fiber network in a still-undisclosed city, its decision to kill off Google Wave , and the launch of Google Places . Image by Brian Solis
 
How To Avoid Getting Fired From Your Own Company Top
Editor’s note : Guest author Chris Yeh is an independent angel investor and VP of Marketing for PBworks , one of his investments. He has been involved with Internet startups since 1995. His Twitter handle is @chrisyeh . If you start a company, it will probably happen to you someday. Maybe it will be your VC or a board member. Maybe it will be your co-founder. Sooner or later, they’ll try to fire you. I’m an investor in or advisor to dozens of startups, and at least once a quarter, I get the call: “Chris, they’re trying to fire me.” (The other urgent call I get is when they’re negotiating a financing round, merger, or sale. I much prefer those calls!) Most entrepreneurs are surprised the first time their investors or co-founders try to fire them. They can’t imagine being banished from the company that they created. Maybe they were the only employee of the company for years. Maybe they recruited and courted the very person who comes to carry out the execution. The sad fact is, founder firings are the rule, not the exception. Many of Silicon Valley’s most storied companies involve palace coups and forgotten founders. How many people remember Apple’s third founder? At least Eduardo Saverin of Facebook has a movie to commemorate his role in the company’s start. And don’t forget how Apple fired Steve Jobs himself–who is only the most successful Silicon Valley CEO of all time. If Steve Jobs can be forced out, anyone can, including you. But that doesn’t mean you need to take it laying down. If it happens to you—and it will—here’s are the eight steps you can take to maximize your chances of survival: 1) Don’t get caught by surprise . Coup attempts can happen anytime: when the business is going badly (“we need new blood”) or when the business is going well (“we don’t need him anymore”). Often, the conspirators will count on shock and surprise to panic you into a bad decision. If you’ve anticipated the betrayal in advance, you’ll be better prepared. 2) Start planning your defenses early . By the time the attack comes, it will be too late—if the plotters are any good. Lay your foundations up front in terms of board composition and corporate governance. Make sure you know just what someone would have to do to remove you, and minimize your vulnerabilities. 3) Get everything in writing . Promises aren’t worth a bucket of warm spit. I’ve told many an entrepreneur that once millions of dollars are involved, they’ll see the ugly side of human nature. People are capable of rationalizing almost any action if it enriches them. I’ve seen family members sell each other out and lifelong friends come to blows over this. I personally have two close friends who lost millions over broken promises because they trusted their partner’s word rather than insisting on a contract. 4) Constantly work the key players. If you don’t develop a personal relationship with every board member and key shareholder, you deserve what you get. Monitor their words and actions closely. Many people are bad liars and will tip you off with their mannerisms and reactions. Developing those relationships will also make it more likely that they’ll believe you, rather than the plotters. 5) Realize that you are dispensable . One mistake many entrepreneurs make is to assume that they’re essential to the company because of all they’ve done in the past. To investors, what you’ve done is meaningless. All that matters is what you can do for the company (and the value of their shares) in the future. The instant you stop adding value, your days are numbered. A friend of mine keeps chickens to provide him with fresh eggs. Recently, I asked how they were doing. “I killed them all,” he said. “They stopped being productive egg layers. I ordered three dozen new chicks by mail. They arrive next week.” Make sure you continue to be perceived as productive. 6) The best defense is a good offense. If you think someone is plotting against you, don’t just sit back and wait for him to make a move—start collecting ammunition and allies for the inevitable battle. If you believe action is imminent, be prepared to unleash a first strike, and have plans in place for both victory and defeat. 7) Don’t sign anything during the coup attempt. If your enemies do strike first, don’t panic and whatever you do, don’t sign anything. Most coups depend on the power of the bluff. The plotters may think that you, as a first time entrepreneur, may make a mistake if pressed. One of my friends, a Harvard Business School classmate, was pressured into resigning from the company he founded by his more experienced investor. Had he simply said, “I need a day to think it over,” he could have checked the facts and rallied allies. As it was, all I could do was express my sympathy. 8) Counterattack . The best way to counterattack is to get a majority of board members and investors on your side. The next best way is to be indispensable to the company. The third best way after that is to get the lead investor on your side. If you can’t do any of the above, there is always the nuclear option: a lawsuit. Before you go nuclear, though, understand a few lawsuit basics: You probably won’t win, and even if you do, you probably won’t get anything worthwhile. You don’t need to win a lawsuit. The whole point is that everyone loses (except the lawyers). That gives you leverage, especially if the other side has more to lose. For example, no VC will ever fund a company that is fighting a lawsuit, and no corporate buyer will buy from a vendor that is so embroiled. A lawsuit can’t restore you to power. Best case, you’ll be able to walk away with a decent settlement. That’s why it’s better to head off a coup before it has a chance to succeed. Even if you follow all of my steps, you might still get fired. The only way to be totally fireproof is to own a controlling stake in your company and have no need for outside capital, which is why I encourage founders to bootstrap as much as they can. You should also bear in mind that sometimes, the coup plotters are right. It might be hard to accept, but sometimes your company (and your wallet) will end up doing better if you bow out. The legendary Don Valentine of Sequoia Capital had to fire Sandy Lerner and Len Bosack from the company they created, Cisco Systems. At the time, the company was worth less than $1 billion. Today, it’s worth $112 billion. Would anyone have been able to fire Sandy and Len if they hadn’t raised money? No. Would they have made as much money if they hadn’t accepted Sequoia’s funding? Probably not. Bootstrapping is not a universal answer. (Note: I don’t have any personal knowledge of what went down at Cisco; for all I know, the firing was completely unjustified. But it’s hard to argue with the results.) If you do decide to take money from professional investors, at least you now know how to maximize your chances of sticking around. And if you do get fired, remember that revenge is a dish best served cold. Be professional, avoid burning bridges, and bide your time. Maybe you’ll be like Steve Jobs and make a triumphant return. CrunchBase Information Chris Yeh Information provided by CrunchBase
 
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be Top
My advice for the new year: go East and South, young man and woman … and investor. America, Europe, and Japan are stagnant and ponderous. More and more, in the coming years, the real moving and shaking will happen elsewhere. “2011 will be the year Android explodes!” cried a recent headline , citing a new Broadcom chipset that will reportedly make sub-$100 unsubsidized smartphones ubiquitous. Maybe so, but I second MG’s skepticism : North American carriers will fight this tooth and nail, and even when they lose, we’ll still have to wait for the three-year contracts that are status quo here to finally die. If that chipset is real, though, the headline’s not wrong; Android will explode … in the developing world, where virtually all phone service is pre-paid. (As, ahem, I predicted 20 months ago .) There’s a larger trend here. Mobile phones and 3G service became ubiquitous in Africa so rapidly in part because they never had to compete with landlines. Kenyans flocked to mobile-phone money transfer services, because they had no consumer banks: now M-Pesa, the largest, handles money equal to a mindboggling 10% of Kenya’s GDP every year. (The US equivalent would be $1.4 trillion /year. By contrast, PayPal handles less than $100 billion/year worldwide, of which mobile-phone payments are but a small fraction.) Now much of Kenya is quickly adopting distributed, flexible, resilient solar power , largely because their monolithic, sclerotic, vulnerable grid doesn’t reach much of the country. As the poor world grows richer, we can expect more of the same: unencumbered by entrenched customs, regulations, special interests and legacy infrastructure, they’ll make the most of new technologies far faster than us laggards in the West. Why does cable TV still exist, in this BitTorrent era? Because the cable companies are like tapeworms in our economies’ guts, sucking life from their hosts as they die with agonizing slowness. Why are universal electronic health records so hard to implement? Because the multi-trillion-dollar health industry is set firmly in its antediluvian ways and has no incentive to change. But these parasites and foot-draggers are far less established in the developing world, and that’s why the future will increasingly happen there, not here. This doesn’t mean they’ll be better off – we’ll be vastly wealthier for some decades yet – but they’re using their blank-slate advantage to evolve far faster. if you want to see the world’s real hothouse of change, or build a business that can change the lives of (or make money from) many tens of millions in the space of a few years, get ahead of the curve and aim at the 70% of humanity who live in Asia, where they already get new smartphones first , or Africa, which despite its Dark Continent reputation is rapidly growing wealthier . “May you live in interesting times,” says the alleged ancient Chinese curse. If only. Here in the First World we’re increasingly trapped in yesterday’s tedium. In the 21st century, it’s the rest of the world who will live on the bleeding edge of the future.
 
OpenFeint Sees 187% Spike In Downloads Of iOS Games Over Christmas Holiday Top
The holiday season traditionally sees a spike in mobile app downloads as users receive new devices and have more free time to interact with their phones. Today mobile social gaming platform OpenFeint is reporting that it added over 450,000 new users on Christmas day, which is a 184% spike over its daily average and the largest single day in its history in terms of new users. And the network added nearly 1.4 million new users in the four days around the holiday, including Christmas. OpenFeint users downloaded more than 5 million OpenFeint enabled games during the 4-day stretch, with Android downloads growing by 73% and iOS downloads up by 187%. And it appears that activity is up from the same period last year; the network added 88% more users than a year ago. So what contributed to this growth? OpenFeint’s cross-platform approach to its social gaming platform, first launching on the iPhone and iPad and more recently adding Android game developers to its rapidly growing community, definitely is helping set the gaming platform apart. The company recently took a $8 million investment from Intel Capital and Chinese gaming company The9, as OpenFeint looks to expand beyond the iOS and Android platforms. CrunchBase Information OpenFeint Information provided by CrunchBase
 
The Year In Virtual Goods By The Numbers Top
Editor’s note : Guest author Ted Sorom is the CEO of Rixty , a virtual currency platform. The global virtual goods industry put up some very impressive numbers this year. From special Easter eggs to virtual ad campaigns , virtual goods sales have grabbed their share of headlines over the past twelve months. Now with social gaming on the rise and everyone from your teenage nephew to your grandma to your old rugby teammate buying a "little something" to sweeten their online game, here is a look a back at the year in virtual goods sales. $7,300,000,000 : expected global revenue generated by the virtual goods industry in 2010. This is huge, considering the $60 billion generated in 2009 by the video game industry as a whole, and clearly shows that browser-based gaming is making great strides. $2,100,000,000: The projected size of the US virtual goods market in 2011. 80,000,000 : the all-time high number of Farmville players . The ubiquitous title for social gaming the world over, FarmVille surpassed its 2009 high mark of 50 million monthly active users, hitting this new peak in early 2010. You can now stop pretending you're not addicted to your precious online farm. It's ok… you're among friends. Oh, and now CityVille is larger than FarmVille and approaching FarmVille’s all-time high with 75 million monthly active users. 20 : percentage of Electronic Art's overall revenue generated by digital sales . These aren't just avatar items and XP boosts; the figure also refers to full-game downloads and downloadable content (DLC) to enhance console games. EA's CFO Eric Brown notes that their "digital sales usually start with the sale of a physical disc, especially on the current generation of consoles." But the upcoming Star Wars MMO is guaranteed to boost DLC consumption; want a blue double-ended light saber? It can be yours, if the price is right. 90,000,000 : number of Pet Society virtual goods sold every single day. According to developer EA/Playfish, their most popular title has 20 million users, double that of World of Warcraft. It's no wonder that EA was willing to pay $400 million to acquire the hot social developer in 2009. $635,000: New world record for the single largest purchase in an online game, in this case a virtual intergalactic resort in Planet Calypso . A few years ago the same seller, Jon 'Neverdie' Jacobs, sold $335,000 worth of virtual real estate in Entropia Universe. While the majority of microtransactions cost just a few dollars, there are rare occasions where individuals spend serious money on virtual goods. Clearly, the virtual "Club Neverdie superdome" was a sound investment for Jacobs; the new owner (Yan Panasjuk) anticipates that the property will continue to grow in value. He is now dedicating 40 to 60 hours a week to the game, and has been playing MMOs for over a decade. Both parties are serious about their virtual worlds. Mr. Jacobs, also a career gamer, has already made over half a million dollars in online real estate. 4,000,000 : total number of items in IMVU's virtual goods catalog, making it the world's largest. Based in Silicon Valley, the company runs a hybrid chat, gaming and avatar site. There are over 5,000 new items added every day, primarily created and uploaded by IMVU's own user community. 10% (and growing) : percentage of overall item sales in OurWorld generated by the resale market. The multiplayer gaming destination aggregates hundreds of third-party games into a virtual world with over 16,000 virtual items. OurWorld's CEO, Derrick Morton, states, "In the last half year, we've seen our resale market explode. We think that a healthy secondary market is key to running a good virtual economy. If the players can’t trade amongst themselves, the virtual goods really have no value." Think of it as virtual Craigslist. 220,000 : number of " Summertime avatar baseball caps sold in Roblox , a blocky MMO playground. These hats were available for tickets, a free currency that all players get for logging in and which can be traded for Robux or vice versa. Rest, Relaxation and Roblox: gotta keep those virtual "rays" out of your eyes! 15,000,000: number of virtual hot dogs eaten by non-playable characters in LOLapps' Ravenwood Fair (nom nom). The Facebook game saw huge growth last year to over 100 million monthly active users (MAU), and recently released an interesting info-graphic detailing their rise. For instance, 2 billion quizzes have been taken and 8 billion gifts have been sent! Two : the factors that drive players to buy upper-tier items in online games, as opposed to just spending $0.99 here and there. The first is Value : Net Dragon's value packs deliver the same bulk discount that players might find in a real-world big box store. The other big factor is Rarity ; limited supply drives up demand. This often comes in the form of a "box" (such as the VIP Box in GameCampus' Shot Online golf ) which contains a wide range of items plus a chance to uncover the game's rarest and most valuable equipment. And with that, we wish everyone a Happy New Year. By this time next year, these numbers will look small. CrunchBase Information Ted Sorom Zynga Playfish IMVU Information provided by CrunchBase
 
What 20 Minutes On Facebook Looks Like: 1M Shared Links, 2.7M Photos Uploaded, 10.2M Comments Top
Democracy UK, a UK-focused political campaigning initiative by Facebook, has just released a number of mind-blowing stats on the massive usage of the network by its 500-plus million members in 2010. Over the course of the year, Facebook reports that 43,869,800 members changed their status to single, 3,025,791 changed their status to “it’s complicated”, 28,460,516 changed their status to in a relationship, 5,974,574 changed their status to engaged and 36,774,801 changes their status to married. While these numbers are impressive, Facebook’s stats on “what 20 minutes on Facebook looks like,” are even more staggering. According to Facebook, 1 million links are shared every 20 minutes on the network. Here are a few other stats listed: Tagged photos : 1.3 million Event invites sent out : 1.5 million Wall Posts : 1.6 million Status updates : 1.8 million Friend requests accepted : 1.97 million Photos uploaded : 2.7 million Comments : 10.2 million Messages : 4.6 million The most “liked” celebrities in 2010 were Lady Gaga (24,712,169 likes), Eminem (23,729,700 likes), Megan Fox (19,575,080 likes), Vin Diesel (19,425,325 likes), Rihanna (18,903,844 likes), Barack Obama (17,229,885 likes). Photo Credit/ Flickr/fbouly CrunchBase Information Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Eleven 3D Printing Predictions For the Year 2011 Top
This is a guest post by Joris Peels , the Community Manager of i.materialise , a 3D printing service for designers, inventors and consumers. They are part of Materialise, a company with over 20 years experience in 3D printing and the market leader in 3D printing services and software. Making predictions is a sure fire path towards getting ridiculed. But, I'll be brave and go right ahead and make 11 predictions for 3D printing in 2011. Makerbot will sell more than 10,000 3D printers in 2011. To put that in perspective, there are approximately 30,000 3D printers in the world today. Makerbot would have to scale to meet this kind of production but given their strong brand and loyal following it should, together with some prime time TV coverage, be possible. Bre Pettis will appear on the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek magazine in 2011. Bre Pettis is the congenial Maker in Chief of Makerbot . Possibly he will be holding a Makerbot. And for all you Kevin Rose watchers out there, this will not be the beginning of the end. A designer will have revenues of over one million US dollars with a single 3D printed product in 2011. An injection molded product does not count, even if it was prototyped using 3D printing. The revenue must come from the sales of the 3D printed products themselves. A label that designs many products will also not count since this has happened before. Several designers have revenues of hundreds of thousands of dollars selling 3D printed items ranging from chairs to jewelry currently. As many designers get more knowledgeable with the 3D printing process and media coverage increases a million dollar hit is only one good design away. Both Stratasys and Objet will release $5000 desktop 3D printers at Euromold 2011. $5,000 is the new $20,000. Most entry level desktop 3D printers by companies such as Stratasys & Objet cost around $20,000 now. The Makerbot and Bits From Bytes 3D printers are available for around $1000 in kits and $3000 assembled. 3D printing services are also expanding and disrupting the market for 3D printers. I'm guessing people will read The Innovators Dilemma and reluctantly rush towards offering 3D printers around the $5000 mark. The $5,000 price point is well established by the now defunct Desktop Factory and so would be an illogical but obvious price point for 3D printer manufacturers to work towards. Both Stratasys and Objet's technology could be stripped down to make a $5000 3D printer. Zcorp & EOS will be the only major 3D printer manufacturers not to offer a desktop 3D printer in 2011. In two blog posts Zcorp's Vice President of R&D expresses strong skepticism about the need for and usefulness of consumer 3D printing. This to me points to Zcorp focusing more on improving its existing technologies and in expanding its technology base by using the Envisontec Ultra technology and improving the materials and process of the Ultra machine. A likely path for Zcorp is making recyclable and biodegradable materials and in then later positioning themselves as the "green 3D printing" player. EOS on the other hand has made no move whatsoever towards the desktop market. It seems content to make further advances in direct digital manufacturing and its product portfolio and advances indicate this. It would be difficult to make an affordable Selective Laser Sintering system at the moment and even though it could (with some advances and a huge reduction in the cost of lasers) be possible EOS would seem to have huge opportunities in capturing market share in the direct digital production market for medical and industrial manufacturing right now. 3D Systems will launch a 3D printing service for consumers in 2011. 3D Systems has been playing the M&A game quite seriously over the past year acquiring Bits From Bytes and a string of 3D printing services worldwide. Their Marketing Manager is Cathy Lewis who used to be the CEO of consumer facing Desktop Factory. The combination of these assets shows a strong urge to become big in the consumer 3D printing market, and a 3D printing service aimed at consumers would make sense in that light. At least five 3D printing startups aimed at consumers will launch during 2011. With all the media & VC attention given to 3D printing many MBA-types will be pining over how they will make their fortune in the 3D printing business. Their thoughts are always towards barriers to entry, scalable etc. Also, web services are something they think they understand so they will come up with "3D printing on Facebook", "its like i.materialise but for..", 3D printing for the iPhone, etc. Adobe will buy Autodesk in 2011. Adobe understands the network effect and with its Reader software makes (somehow) millions by letting people publish and read documents. With more and more information being held in 3D formats "going 3D" would seem to be a logical step for Adobe. Reading, opening and editing 3D formats is a mess and ripe for consolidation. Autodesk's stock performance recently has improved but still not reached the highs of the mid-2000's. Executives have left and the company has experienced a lot of weakness due to its exposure to the AEC (architecture, engineering & construction) market. The company's are giants in their respective markets and the tie up also somehow feels right. Microsoft buys Dassault Systemes in 2011. Dassault Systemes also seems to understand the network effect and its 3DVia software suite is a clear play to become the "Reader of 3D. " The company is very strong in B2B engineering and 3D modeling software with Solidworks and Catia. It is also a giant in PLM. And product lifecycle management software would seem to be the way in which companies can manage the creation of intellectual property. It's an illogical but prestigious asset to its defense contractor shareholders and its stock price has surged over the past years due to canny take overs and growth. This would not come cheap, but Microsoft with all its "SAP money" could make the acquisition and become a giant in 3D creation and engineering. Dassault would be a much more logical fit for Microsoft than the Google inspired acquisitions it has made over these past years. French protectionism and complex shareholdings would complicate matters however. 3D modeling software vendors will start to offer "light 3D printing" versions of their products Both Solidworks and Rhino have experienced immense market growth due to inexpensive Student versions of their software driving demand for later adoption by companies and freelancers. Blender has become a huge by being a vibrant community and free. SketchUp has obtained many paid users because of its free to use versions. But, full versions of many 3D modeling packages cost anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars. There is a huge gap between the free alternatives and the fully paid versions while the "seeding strategy" seems to work well for the industry. An expected influx into 3D modeling by enthusiasts and broader adoption of 3D modeling software should drive growth. However these people are likely to turn to free or inexpensive versions of easy to learn packages first. And despite the industry's best efforts, no package is easy at the moment. A possible solution would be to offer stripped down inexpensive 3D printing specific light versions of popular 3D modeling applications. These would be easier to master and cheaper to buy. 3D printed products will win at least two Red Dot Design Awards in 2011 Design label .MGX has been winning a host of awards for its 3D printed work lately. Furthermore its works have been added to the permanent collection of the MOMA and the Smithsonian National Design Museum. Objet won a Red Dot for its Connex 3D printer in 2008 and designer Janne Kyttanen won a Red Dot back in 2005 for his LILY.MGX lamp. With many new designers active in the field producing attractive and groundbreaking work two Red Dots might be achievable. CrunchBase Information MakerBot Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Wikipedia Still $1M Short Of Fundraising Goal For 2010 (And Why I Donated) Top
It’s the last day of the year, according to the Gregorian calendar at least, which prompted me to do some research on how well Wikipedia’s fundraising efforts for 2010 were going. As you may have heard, the Wikimedia Foundation is trying to scrape together $16 million from user and supporter donations to fund its strategic plans for 2011 (PDF). The contribution campaign, starring Wikipedia founder Jimmy ‘Jimbo’ Wales in a prominent role , was kicked off around November 13, 2010, and has so far brought in $15 million according to the banner that appears on top of Wikipedia articles these days. Or has it? Wikimedia Foundation , the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia (and other free knowledge projects), is keeping a nice public Fundraiser Statistics page, which shows the cumulative total raised to date is actually just north of $13 million. We’re not sure where the discrepancy lies, but according to the Wikipedia Twitter account there was $2 million left to raise on December 29, so we suspect the stats tool provides an inaccurate estimate. (click image for larger version) Either way, Wikimedia’s fundraising goal hasn’t been reached yet, although we should note that this is by far the most money the organization has ever raised from contributors – they netted just over $6 million in 2009 (according to Wikipedia, ha). We should also note that the goal wasn’t necessarily to bring in $16 million by the end of the year, but to raise that amount in two months, which means there’s still two weeks left. So why did I donate? Quite simply because I love Wikipedia, and frequent the site regularly, both on my desktop computer and from my mobile phone. I realize that I’m hardly the only one visiting Wikipedia and appreciating it for being both exhaustive and free, but what prompted me to donate to keep it gratis is also because I actually enjoy Wikipedia. It’s not only a source of knowledge for me, but also a form of entertainment of some sorts. I’ve spent countless hours on the site this year clicking from one article to the next, and I genuinely love getting lost in there. My latest revelation: actor Josh James Brolin (No Country For Old Men, American Gangster, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps) was actually the guy who played the older brother character in the 80′s-classic flick The Goonies (whoa – I had no idea). Is Wikipedia perfect? By all means, no, but that’s not the point. I couldn’t imagine a world without it, and having an answer to the majority of my questions a mere click away. All that – and, I confess, Wales’ begging eyes – is what made me donate to Wikimedia, and why you should at the very least consider doing it too. CrunchBase Information Wikimedia Foundation Wikipedia Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Addoway Is Like eBay With A Social Streak Top
If you’ve ever gone shopping on eBay, you know how important seller ratings can be — take a stab with someone who has less than a 90-something approval rating, and you’re testing your luck. And even when you’ve found someone with a satisfactory rating, the descriptions left by other buyers tend to be mostly useless ( A++++ , anyone?), which makes the whole thing feel a little risky regardless. Oh, and sellers can always get scammed by buyers, which makes it even more fun. Addoway is an e-commerce site that looks to help reduce these feelings of anxiety by using Facebook Connect to help you find sellers that your friends have had good experiences dealing with in the past. The site launched eight months ago, and is currently drawing 90,000 uniques a month. The premise is simple: when you run a search on Addoway for whatever it is you’re looking to buy (say, an Xbox), the site will let you sort listings by your social connections. If you know someone who has interacted with a certain seller before, then they’ll show up at the top — and you can talk to your friends about their experience with that seller if you’re still hesitant. Of course, in order for these social connections to be of any use you need to actually know people who are using the site to either buy or sell things. And right now it’s pretty unlikely — even if you have a few hundred friends, the odds that one of them is using Addoway to sell the item you’re looking for is very low. CEO Fredrick Nijm agrees that it’s unlikely that the social connections will be much help at this point, but he believes that if the site grows in popularity, it will become much more useful. For the nearer-term, Addoway has a back-up plan in place to help make shoppers more comfortable: very transparent seller listings. The site invites sellers to link up their blogs, Amazon accounts, eBay seller profiles, and YouTube videos, allowing visitors to quickly get a snapshot of who they are. Granted, reading someone’s blog or watching their videos doesn’t necessarily help you determine if they’re a reputable seller, but this kind of transparency can still potentially help instill a greater sense of trust. Maybe. So far the site has over 400,000 listings, most of which have been sucked in from eBay (Addoway lets sellers connect with their eBay, Etsy, and Bonanza accounts). Nijm declined to say how many active sellers the site has, but says that most of them (including those who have linked their eBay accounts) are still active. The site makes money by offering a premium account to sellers for $8.95 per month that gives them prominent placement in search results and Addoway’s social media presences. In the future the site will also add transaction fees, though existing users will have a window where they won’t have to pay them. This is a very difficult market to crack into, especially given how much traction Addoway will need for its social connections to become useful, and Nijm knows it. Still, he says that this is the only service that uses Facebook Connect to help buyers pick out reputable sellers (as opposed to using it for product recommendations, the way Amazon does), and he says that Addoway has seen significant growth over the last several months, going from 60,000 uniques a couple of months ago to 90,000 today. CrunchBase Information Addoway Information provided by CrunchBase
 
OpenInvo: A Marketplace For Innovation Top
Have a great idea, but don’t have the time or money to actually bring it to market? A new startup called OpenInvo wants to help you turn it into a nice chunk of change by selling it to existing businesses that are looking for an extra dose of innovation. Now, there are other platforms for sharing business ideas — you may be familiar with Kickstarter , which has gotten attention for projects like the iPod Wristwatch . But Kickstarter is for people who want to bring their ideas to fruition and just need funding — OpenInvo is for people who have an idea and are willing to put the time in to flesh it out on paper, but don’t want to have to deal with actually starting a company. For most users, the setup is pretty simple: you log into the site, agree to a fairly lengthy legal document, and then outline your ideas using diagrams and other supplementary material as necessary. Established businesses eager for some outside inspiration can then come along and browse through OpenInvo’s directory of ideas (after paying for access, of course). At this point the tools for browsing this directory are still fairly nascent, but founder Emily Lutzker says that the company plans to build it out once it raises additional capital. So how much can you expect to make should a business decide it likes one of your ideas? This varies a lot — Lutzker says that the service gauges a variety of factors, like the potential market size, how much work you’ve put into fleshing out your idea, and whether or not there’s an existing relevant patent in order to establish a fair price. But she says the range could be anywhere from $5,000 to $100,000. There’s also an option for the idea creator to collect a percentage of revenues generated by the idea, though the purchasing business would obviously have to agree to those terms. There are a lot of IP issues involved here, and Lutzker says that the site has been vetted by lawyers to make sure that things are up to snuff. New idea submitters have to agree to an online contract indicating that they accept OpenInvo’s terms, and companies that wish to browse the ideas have to sign a contract of their own. To help prevent abuse (for example, companies simply taking ideas without paying their creators), OpenInvo tracks each page that a business visits. OpenInvo is still in a very early state. Lutzker says that the service has some large companies who are eager to browse through the site’s directory, but that the service is waiting for the marketplace to fill out with more submissions before it opens the floodgates to these ‘Idea Seekers’. If those submissions don’t come then the service is obviously in trouble, so it’s doing what it can to get the word out. In the future, OpenInvo will also flesh out its collaboration tools, and it will eventually offer real-time brainstorming sessions that businesses can use as online focus tests. There are plenty of other online platforms for sharing ideas, including Kickstarter and Quirky . The latter has its community vote on submitted ideas, and it brings them to market with the original creator getting a cut of the proceeds. There’s also Innocentive , which sets out to solve ‘problems that really matter’. CrunchBase Information OpenInvo Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Centro Media Rakes In $22.5 Million Top
According to an SEC filing today, the Chicago based Centro has just raised a whopping $22.5 million (rounded up) in equity only funding. Listed on the SEC form are Centro CEO Shawn Riegsecker and FTV Capita l Partner Eric Byunn as Director. Centro is a digital media and technology services company founded in 2001, serving over 350 ad agencies world wide . The company’s recently launched platform Transis automates and centralizes the media buying and selling process so agencies can save time and money. This looks to be the first major funding round for Centro; The company had also raised a much smaller $276,247 round back when it was called Intégrent, Inc. . CrunchBase Information Centro Information provided by CrunchBase
 
See What Went Popular And When With Rrrewind Top
Developer Roberto Martinez wanted an easy way to see what was popular on any given social content site on any given day so he built Rrrewind , which lets you see what was hot on Delicious, Digg, Hacker News, Reddit, Hulu, Yahoo Videos, YouTube, Dribbble, Flickr, Amazon and Yahoo Buzz for any day in 2010 and some in 2009. Like a snapshot in virality or a Popurls with a history focus, Rrrewind allows you to go back in time and see an archive of the most viewed items on the Internet. Says Martinez, “It is NOT a social, local, deal related, disruptive app, just a damn useful site that let you go back in time and see what was popular on some sites. I built it because I hate to miss hot stuff on Delicious (snif), Hacker News, etc.” Martinez has been collecting information for the site since 2009 but finally got around to building it over this holiday season. My favorite part is the sites that include visuals, like what went popular on the design community Dribbble and Flickr. It seems to be harder to aggregate the video content and the Hulu option seems to be particularly iffy. Martinez plans on adding a calendar option (right now you can use the archives link) and more music services like iTunes and Last.fm as well as Google and Twitter search trends. As one Hacker News commenter pointed out , the theme of  “This day in history” has appeared in print, then radio, then on birthday cards, then television, and now on the Internet, “If you look, you’ll find what you seek pretty much everywhere.” CrunchBase Information Rrrewind Information provided by CrunchBase
 

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