The latest from TechCrunch
- Signs Of Twimg, Twitter's Photo Hosting, In The Wild
- Eric Schmidt's Gang Of Four: Google, Apple, Amazon, And Facebook
- Google's Eric Schmidt: We Just Renewed Maps Partnership With Apple
- Social Loyalty Platform PunchTab Raises $850K
| Signs Of Twimg, Twitter's Photo Hosting, In The Wild | Top |
| More details have emerged since we originally reported on Twitter’s photo-sharing service, namely that Apple's new iOS 5 will probably come with a baked in Twitter image sharing feature. A tipster informs us that one trigger happy Apple iOS designer has already released a test link into the wild (which we’ve seen but are not replicating here). The tipster clued us into a http://a0.twimg.com/status_photos/ URL that appeared in his timeline, and then quickly disappeared. While Twitter has hosted individual profile images on http://a1.twimg.com/profile_images/ for quite some time, the /status_photos/ appendage is new, or relatively so. A little Googling finds three more signs of this: A test account posting photos on March 30th, a Google cache of the protected Twitter office account posting the above photo on March 31st, this bizarre account posting photos yesterday and a Tweetmeme cache of Twitter designer Coleen Baik posting this photo from her account, with the original tweet nowhere to be found. If what we’re hearing is correct and the service is just a simple uploader to S3, then the above /status_photos/ links seem to make sense. However we’re expecting that these will eventually get reformatted to something cleaner, like Twimg.com/3dkd for example. Image: TheTwoffice CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Eric Schmidt's Gang Of Four: Google, Apple, Amazon, And Facebook | Top |
| Every technology era has its four horsemen driving growth and innovation. In the 1990s it was Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, and Dell. Today, there is anew “gang of four,” as Google chairman Eric Schmidt puts it. They are Google (of course), Apple, Amazon and Facebook, and they are behind the consumer revolution on the Internet today. Not only are all four companies “growing at incredible rates.” Schmidt notes that all four are together worth about half a trillion dollars, they are all platforms in their own right, and they are all basically spreading their power where before there was only one company who had such influence: namely, Microsoft. But “Microsoft is not driving the consumer revolution,” Schmidt notes (although they still do well in the enterprise). The Gang of Four compete and cooperate in various ways, but each has its own strengths: search (Google), social (Facebook), commerce (Amazon), and devices (Apple). Although relations with Apple are not as cozy as when he sat on its board, he notes that Google just renewed it maps and search partnership with Apple. As far as Facebook is concerned, Schmidt says “Facebook has done a number of things that I admire. For years I've said we've missed something, which is identity.” Facebook is the first generally available identity system that works across much of the Web. Schmidt argues that “the industry would benefit from having an alternative.” Obviously, he wants Google to be that alternative. Also he tries to position Google’s upcoming social features as ways “to make our own products better” rather than trying to go straight up against Facebook. Schmidt made his remarks at the D9 conference. CrunchBase Information Google Apple Amazon Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Google's Eric Schmidt: We Just Renewed Maps Partnership With Apple | Top |
| Today during a keynote interview at AllThingsD’s D9 , Google Executive Chairman (and former longtime CEO) made a key announcement: Google has recently renewed its partnership with Apple over mapping and search. In other words, don’t look for a new version of Maps on iOS at next month’s WWDC. So, why is this important? Apple has long shipped every iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad with a Maps application powered by Google. It’s great (though arguably not as good as its Android counterpart). But Apple and Google are competing fiercely in the mobile market, and every time someone runs a search using Maps from an iOS device, Apple is handing Google a little more data that could be used to further improve their local products. Apple is rumored to be working on its own map service — it’s even admitted publicly that’s it’s building an improved traffic database — but it sounds like we won’t be seeing that yet. This is in line with a report from 9to5mac last week. | |
| Social Loyalty Platform PunchTab Raises $850K | Top |
| PunchTab , a startup that offers a social loyalty platform for consumers and publishers, has raised $850,000 in seed funding from Mohr Davidow Ventures, Embarcadero Ventures, and angels Venky Harinarayan, Anand Rajaraman, and Nick Sturiale. PunchTab is the brainchild of YouSendIt founder Ranjith Kumaran. PunchTab allows publishers to give reward points to users who check in to a site or blog every day. Visitors, which authenticate via Facebook Connect, can earn points for Facebook comments, WordPress comments and Facebook likes. Once a publisher rewards a user, the visitor can redeem the reward through the PunchTab rewards catalog. The startup says the integration is simple, only requiring a publisher to add a few lines of code. So far over 350 websites have integrated PunchTab into their sites. Philip Seyfi, owner of Japanese language instructional site, NihongoUp.com, says his 40,000 members have responded well to his business’ new loyalty program created with PunchTab. The company reported a 15% increase in Facebook fan page Likes in the first few days of implementation. CrunchBase Information PunchTab Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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