The latest from TechCrunch
- Disrupt Backstage Pass: So What, Exactly, Is Social Music? (TCTV)
- Minno Rebrands As BuySimple, Partners With SoundCloud, Raises $700K For Micropayments
- AdGrok Team Joins Twitter To Help With Revenue — Except Founder/CEO Who Goes To Facebook
- Yammer Adds Badges And In-Line Videos To Enterprise Communications App
- Disrupt Backstage Pass: Google's Marissa Mayer Talks Serendipity (And Dodges The Apple Question)
- Airbnb Has Arrived: Raising Mega-Round at a $1 Billion+ Valuation
| Disrupt Backstage Pass: So What, Exactly, Is Social Music? (TCTV) | Top |
| Welcome to the Jang and Ljung show. Steve Jang, who is the founder of Soundtracking and Alexander Ljung who is the founder of Sound Cloud. Guys you just did a panel about social music. I'm still a bit confused about what it is. What is social music? Well, for me, we think a lot about social sounds in general. For us that's basically 3 different parts. One is music, which is basically just how big artists that we know, how they share music and how they allow people to interact with that music. But it's also a big part about anybody out there being able to now create music and share that with their friends. But it's also, outside of music, I think it's also about audio so everything like PodCasts, news organizations, any kind of audio out there, and this emerging field of social sounds as well where people can be walking down the street capturing a sound or a thought they have and share that around the web. So I think for us, like, social sound is about anything where people are sharing sounds and creating experiences with other people with, sort of, that sound as a spark. Steve, it all sounds a bit like Napster. What's different between what you're doing and Napster? Well, ours is...our app actually has nothing similar to Napster. Our app is an iPhone app, which allows you to geotag music as you experience it in the real world. So, wherever you are, you can take out your iPhone, or your iPod Touch, or your iPad, and if there's a song playing on the speaker system at a restaurant or a cafe or in the car on the radio, or you're at a show, or you're just walking in a park with your headphones on, you can tag that music to a specific geolocation and then you can add a photo as well - of the scenery or the surroundings - and then add a comment. And so, all of this is in one sort of musical postcard that you can send from your iPhone, and you can post it to Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare. It allows you to essentially check in, but also check in a song, but also express yourself. There 's a community, a sound tracking community that's behind this mobile first application. So we're really all about self expression, as opposed to any type of consumption model, around. So you're aggregating data which connects music and location. Music, location, taste, you can like, love, and comment, to other people's sound tracks as well, as they happen in real time. So we have an activity feed where you can see people around the world and people you're following in your own neighborhood and city. And be able give feedback to people. I think social is kind of a misnomer at this point, actuallyimplies that there's other online music product that is not social. I think even the most traditional legacy music products that are online have added social features. Well, a lot of people listen to music on their own, right? I mean, Alexander Sound Cloud is a bit further ahead than Steve's Startup. Where are you at and what are you doing? So, we're really about trying to make sound a key part of the web in the same way that we think about how text, photos and videos are key parts of the web. We have all this massive amount of awesome photos and videos and stuff that a lot of us together have created them that make up large parts of the web. We feel that sound hasn't been as common on the web and it's just about to happen now as people learn to express things, a lot of different things through music, through other types of sound, and for us, the web in general. Some of the really exciting things that have happened has been around how it's become simpler to create stuff, no matter if it's a Tweet, taking a photo, or whatever. And then you can call it social or whatever you want to call it. But plugging people into that. So you make it simple to create and then you plug in people so that you have to share it, you got some feedback on whatwhat it is you have created and then through that you have a great experience of sharing and then getting feedback. | |
| Minno Rebrands As BuySimple, Partners With SoundCloud, Raises $700K For Micropayments | Top |
| Online payment methods are old and in the way. Sure, whether or not the world will have a generally-agreed-upon payment system is up for debate, but it seems that a new era of micropayments is here — hopefully to stay. With the political and regulatory inertia around bank and credit card-related payment tools, there is room for a third party without these hangups to bring a new perspective to micropayments. Minno, a startup that offers a simple, embeddable payment solution, is today announcing that it has changed its name to “BuySimple” . Its new name is appropriate given its objective, and gets rid of the small-fish-big-pond connotations that came with the name “Minno”. What’s more, BuySimple has partnered with SoundCloud and raised $700K. Not bad for a day’s work. Why? Minno, now BuySimple , is in the process of creating a tool that will be as simple and easy to use as cash-money-flow currency. In order to accomplish this, the startup has to remove those pesky obstacles that exist between the buyer and the seller. BuySimple uses Facebook Connect to do so (other OpenID providers are on their way), and thankfully doesn’t require a bank or credit card to be tied to the account. What’s more, the payment widget is just a button. A simple line of JavaScript. The tool isn’t targeting for real-world scenarios or point-of-service, like NFC, and there are no minimum fees or 30 percent transfer fees. BuySimple was founded by two ex-Googlers, Calvin Young and Noah Ready-Campbell, who left the search giant to pursue a micropayment solution 2.0. They’ve built BuySimple mainly to target the purchasing of online works like subscriptions, single articles, media and books. And with the nature of the startup’s payment tool, it finds itself in a different market than NFC and credit and debit payments, so there isn’t the need for it to be heavy on the infrastructure. That being said, any payment system floats based on security. Security is the key. Ready-Campbell has said that security is BuySimple’s top concern, and all sensitive financial data actually is transferred on BuySimple’s website. And the button/widget uses iFrames and other measures to protect against XSS, CSRF and other attacks. The BuySimple team is betting that, just because there is a public perception that micropayment methods have stumbled in the past, there has still been a rise in mobile apps and particularly, in-app payments, and social games, and so the world may well be ready for a general micropayments solution. As far as I know, W3C tried and failed at this game years ago — as has IBM — but there’s no doubt that the landscape has changed. What else helps? Users don’t have to create accounts with BuySimple, and they’re given $2 in credit to make the first few payments for free to test it out. If the user likes what he or she sees, they can fund future payments with a credit card. Integration with merchant sites is similarly straightforward, and the service is completely free to qualifying partners while BuySimple is in beta. BuySimple is actively seeking partnerships, and the company says it has received over 100 applications from sites already. It is also announcing its largest partnership to date, with SoundCloud , the social music sharing service. Young and Ready-Campbell created a mashup of BuySimple and SoundCloud to help musicians sell tracks across the Web. SoundCloud joins Hacker Monthly and FutureMe as BuySimple partners. In addition, BuySimple announced today that it has raised $700K in seed funding from investors including GRP , founder of Shopzilla and Gripe, Farhad Mohit , and Milo founder Jack Abraham . As my colleague Devin Coldewey pointed out in a post on Minno last month , banks, credit card companies, PayPal, and many more, have plenty of incentive to be spending big money on creating a new micropayment system, so BuySimple’s funding is great news for the “little guy”. At the time of Devin’s post, BuySimple was not yet funded, nor had it yet forged any significant partnerships. Obviously, even though BuySimple is offering a far simpler user experience than any micropayment system in recent memory, it’s tough to hold a candle to the big players (when they get their act together) without funding and strategic, biz-developing partnerships. On that front, BuySimple appears to be making headway. And it’s got more mainstream appeal than Bitcoin. Sorry, my techie friends, but it’s true. CrunchBase Information BuySimple Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| AdGrok Team Joins Twitter To Help With Revenue — Except Founder/CEO Who Goes To Facebook | Top |
| Yesterday, we reported that Twitter was close to acquiring AdGrok , the Y Combinator-backed keyword bidding platform. Today, the company has confirmed the move with a blog post, “ @AdGrok Is Going To @JoinTheFlock “. But as we noted in an update to our post yesterday, things are a little bit more complicated than they appear. You see, one of AdGrok’s founders and its CEO, Antonio Garcia-Martinez, is not joining Twitter and has instead taken a job at rival Facebook. Both Garcia-Martinez’s Facebook and LinkedIn confirm that he has accepted a role as a product manager at Facebook this month (though we’re hearing he may have accepted the position in April). There, he’ll be working on the Facebook Ads team. In other words, yes, he’ll be competing (at least in some regard) with his former colleagues. We’re hearing this split hasn’t exactly left both sides all warm and cuddly. The two other AdGrok founders, Matthew McEachen and Argyris Zymnis, will be joining Twitter. We’ve reached out to Twitter about the oddity and will update if we hear back. Garcia-Martinez posted our link yesterday to his own Facebook wall and when someone asked him what the deal was, he responded with “It’s complicated”. Well played. As for the rest of the AdGrok team, the post notes: When Twitter approached us and asked if we'd be interested in working on their monetization platform, we realized that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we just couldn't pass up. The fact that the Twitter team is both smart and user-focused only made our decision easier. Meanwhile, AdGrok, the product, is shutting down. They will no longer be accepting new customers and will cease charging existing customers immediately. All services will be shut down June 30. Data can continue to be accessed through Google AdWords and Analytics. Update : I just spoke with Garcia-Martinez. “We did the deal that maximized value for all concerned,” he said. And he was sure to note that all the founders are still on good terms. CrunchBase Information AdGrok Facebook Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Yammer Adds Badges And In-Line Videos To Enterprise Communications App | Top |
| Enterprise social networking platform Yammer is adding two new features to its platform today that are worth noting. The company is supporting in-line videos within news feeds, and is also allowing users to recognize colleagues with badges. Now you can attach videos to Yammer messages (just as you would with a Word document or PowerPoint presentation), and then users can play the videos directly in the feed, comment, and like videos. Users can also browse all uploaded videos that have been added to a company’s stream and search for videos by keyword. Yammer says that the video player is HTML5 compatible and works in the web browser on the iPhone and iPad. Yammer is also releasing Praise, a new application that allows users to reward colleagues with badges. Users will be able to see all the badges they and other co-workers have earned over time via a recognition tab on their profile pages. While badges and in-line videos are relatively small additions to the collaboration app, the addition of both features show that Yammer is steadily becoming a full-fledged social network for the enterprise. And we know that the company has ambitions of being the Facebook for the Enterprise. Now if only Yammer could make its AIR and mobile apps less buggy… CrunchBase Information Yammer Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Disrupt Backstage Pass: Google's Marissa Mayer Talks Serendipity (And Dodges The Apple Question) | Top |
| Hey, this is Jason K. with TechCrunch TV. And I am here with Marissa Mayer. Again, I actually just got a chance to interview her earlier this month. But now I have another chance to ask more questions about all the cool local and other products that you guys are working on. And once again, thank you for coming here to TechCrunch Disrupt. No problem. I love TechCrunch Disrupt. It's just a really great opportunity for entrepreneurs, and it's just also amazing to see all these launches. I just love that there's this launch vehicle that really helps get companies going. It's definitely it's exciting. So, here's a question that Mike didn't really touch on at all, and I'm not sure how much you're totally going to get into this, but there's been speculation that Apple is going to do some stuff around maps. There is a lot of controversy as far as location and WiFi data recently, and as part of that, Apple responded indicating that they were doing something related to traffic mapping. And I'm wondering what's going to change, if anything, for Google's strategy if one day a significant segment of the mobile market, in other words all the iPhones out there and iPod Touches, stopped using Google Maps powered product, and transitions over to something that's controlled by Apple? Is there any game plan there, I'm sure there is? Well iIthink I'm not going to speculate as to some of our competitors, but I will say that one thing that we're really learning is that maps is a huge part of the mobile ecosystem. Today we announced we have 200 million active users of Google maps for mobile. And we actually now are seeing crossover on the weekends. What I mean by that is that we see more traffic from mobile than desktop maps on the weekends. In June we think that is going to crossover permanently . We know that's a really big part of it. That said, we're really proud of some of the innovations that we've been able to roll out. Things like latitude, but also things like Vector maps. It's not just about tiled maps anymore. Which aren't actually on the iPhone as far as I know. That's right. And so... The iPhone map is not as good. No, the vector maps, they're beautiful, they're fast, there're one one hunderd of the data. And the other nice thing, that in addition to being able to really quickly drag and drop and move around, because were transmitting mass data we can do interesting things like cashing the map around you, so if your connection suddenly fails, you're not lost sitting there looking at the blue dot in the middle of an area that isn't filled in, and so there's just a lot of potential. So here's another question that's actually been especially important to me out here in New York. I noticed that identifying exactly where I am is not working so well in New York City. I've got my wifi enabled and I know Google has a very powerful data base as far as associating were you are using the wifi hotspots that are available. Is there some other technology that I'm not aware of? Or something that is coming down the line that will be able to improve on these wifi hotspots? Is this sort of something that is going to improve overtime as you get more hotspots in your database? I think that the hotspots are something that will help. New York city's particularly challenging because of the tall buildings and the signal and the surround is also hard to get a signal into a really tall building and it can drain the battery. things like that, and do they really understand where a person is when they say find me and show me on the map? That's actually reasonably hard to do. Right. But one of the things here is really about inputs, and so, you know, we really hope that the users check in. We have loyalty offers in order to promote more people doing that. The other value in check-ins is it actually causes person to say. I'm here Actually, I'm here, and we understand them, what that signal looks like. So then later when someone else is there, we have a better chance of getting it right. And so there really is like a lot of times in these types of systems where they need to learn. | |
| Airbnb Has Arrived: Raising Mega-Round at a $1 Billion+ Valuation | Top |
| According to several sources Airbnb is in the process of closing a whopper of a funding round: $100 million or more at a $1 billion-plus valuation. The round is being lead by Andreessen Horowitz , and includes participation from DST , say our sources. That’s a big increase from the company’s last funding round of $7.2 million , which included Sequoia Capital, Greylock, SV Angel, Ashton Kutcher and Youniversity Ventures (Kutcher broke the news that he’s an investor in AirBnB at TechCrunch Disrupt last week). The company, which launched via Y Combinator, has raised just $7.8 million to date. No surprise, it was a hotly contested deal. The service has exploded, growing more than 800% last year and booking 1.6 million night stays in other people’s homes to date. On any given night in New York there are more people staying in homes via Airbnb than there are rooms in the biggest hotel in Manhattan. Airbnb has become the sleeper hit of the startup world. It’s one of those companies plenty of well-heeled investors passed on in the early days, because they thought no one would want to open his or her home to strangers. Out of twenty angels he pitched in 2008, founder Brian Chesky said half didn’t return his emails and most of the others told him it was an awful idea. Even Paul Graham hated it, but he liked Chesky and backed him hoping he’d change the company. TechCrunch’s own hotel expert Paul Carr was a cynic too. Now, the fear of missing another Airbnb is palpable in the Valley, and one of the reasons GetAround became the darling, audience choice and winner of our Disrupt conference this week. Earlier in the week, I sat down with Airbnb founder Brian Chesky to talk about this reversal in fortune and how the business is going, although at the time we hadn’t heard the details of the deal he was busy negotiating. Check it out below. Hi, I'm back stage with Brian Chesky, the founder of Airbnb. You guys have kind of been a sleeper hit. I mean you certainly didn't have the color fanfare when you launched. Nope. Or anything like that. Mike was just back here. He said he thought you were stupid. Paul wrote something nasty about you. There's Ron Konway waving. That they were stupid? Are you live? You are live. Alright, so no one really thought you guys were going to be as big as you have. Absolutely not. And I can tell you, the last couple of days, you guys have been the sort of example everyone keeps bringing up. One of the companies thats in the finals get around. Chris Saka said, "Oh this the Airbnb I could get. I passed on Airbnb. I thought it was stupid. I can't believe I passed on it". I mean the fact that people passed on you is dictating investment decision. It's ridiculous. Because it's seen as such a mistake. That's ridiculous. When I first told my parents. They thought I was insane about this idea. Paul Graham, when we first met him in January 2009, he admitted he thought the idea was terrible. Hm-mm. And Paul Graham only invested in us, when he heard about the Obama O's story. And he figured, well these guys are like really creative, smart entrepreneurs; they'll probably change their idea. That's the only reason he invested in us, is he thought we were going to change ou idea; he hated it. And we met in the Fall of 2008, probably 15 or 20 Angels, and well, probably half of them didn't return my emails and the ones that did, no one wanted to invest in us. Right. It was just something that seemed like obviously a bad idea until one day it seemed like obviously a good idea. And I don't know when that tipped, I think it was just enough people doing it. So what was the insight that you had that other people missed? The insight we had was that we actually did it. The way this started is that I moved,--Joe, my co-founder, was living in San Francisco, and I was living in Los Angeles. I came up to San Francisco. We had to figure out a way to make rent. This international design conference is coming to San Francisco, all the hotels are sold out. We were trying to figure out, how are we going to make rent? And Joe had some air beds in his closet. We pulled the air beds, and we decided we're going to create an "airbed and breakfast" one weekend, and it was only meant to make our rent. We ended up hosting three people. We made a bunch of money, and so I think the insight we gained was, we by accident, I guess you could say, did it ourselves, had an amazing experience. And by then we realized, this is awesome, one day people all over the world are going to do this. I don't think we had the vision that people were going to be renting all the spaces and renting? We originally envisioned, like, kind of air beds, and like kind of budget. I was a little different vision. Right. Well, it's fascinating because it tips so quickly, and usually when someone has this kind of story it takes a long time. It's also interesting because, you know, especially in the 90s when I first moved into Silicon Valley, founders would say exactly what you said. They have this story of, like, "Oh, you know, I did this, and then I saw these keys, and I realized | |
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