The latest from TechCrunch
- WikiLeaks Intends To Sue Visa And MasterCard For Blocking Payment
- The US Group Buying Universe [Infographic]
- Why Is Zynga Rushing Towards Its IPO?
- LinkedIn Cuts Off API Access To BranchOut, Monster's BeKnown And Others For TOS Violations
| WikiLeaks Intends To Sue Visa And MasterCard For Blocking Payment | Top |
| WikiLeaks and its credit card processing partner Datacell have just announced their intent to file suit in the EU against credit card companies Visa and Mastercard for blocking donations to the service last year. In early December the two payments companies cut off all payments to the relatively quiet as of late organization, with Mastercard citing that its "rules prohibit customers from directly or indirectly engaging in or facilitating any action that is illegal." The legality of WikiLeaks itself is still a matter of debate . However, Visa and Mastercard were not alone in withdrawing their support, as both PayPal and Amazon also pulled their services from WikiLeaks, which facilitates anonymous leaks of sensitive information including hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables. WikiLeaks does not mention Amazon or PayPal in the suit. WikiLeaks is holding that the PayPal and Visa blocks count as “anti-competitive” and violate Article 101 (1) and 102 of the EU competition laws, seeking to file a complaint in the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court. As of yet, according to the release, that complaint has not been filed. CrunchBase Information WikiLeaks Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| The US Group Buying Universe [Infographic] | Top |
| While the debate as to whether group buying as whole is a viable business model rages on post-Groupon S- 1, there’s no doubt that these social deal things keep sprouting up — Yesterday someone introduced themselves to me as the CEO of a Groupon for moms (and yes I thought it was a good idea). We’ve got Groupons for techies , a Groupon for Jews , what will there be a Groupon for next!? Wait, please don’t answer that. Still it makes sense that people would want a piece of the action, as the size of the market in the US is estimated at $2.7 billion in 2012 (up from $1.1 billion last year). And to give you a sense of some of the players and their relative size, the folks at Flowtown have revised their original infographic to reflect the social buying boom. What can we tell from the above? Well first of all that space is nascent and so are its physics; First movers aren’t necessarily rewarded. Woot, which was founded in 2004, currently has over 1.4 million unique monthly visits versus dominant player Groupon’s (which was founded in 2008 and pivoted to the model) 29.1 million. Mercata, which isn’t even on the graph, was shut down in 2001. Current second runner up LivingSocial is around half the size of Groupon, at 14.3 million unique monthly visits, with 301 US cities to Groupon’s 182. Yeah that’s about 5% of the US population visiting the site monthly; Enjoy your teeth whitening guys! CrunchBase Information Groupon LivingSocial Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Why Is Zynga Rushing Towards Its IPO? | Top |
| The IPO window is now wide open, with everyone from Zynga to Groupon rushing towards it. Nobody knows how long that window will stay open (rule of thumb is 18 months), so better go public while you can. But today’s IPO filing from Zynga came particularly fast. According to one source, the actual writing of the 150+ page S-1 document was one of the fastest documentation processes for an IPO of this size, only taking two to three weeks. CEO Mark Pincus abruptly cancelled a planned appearance at the D9 conference at the beginning of June, adding to speculation that was when Zynga decided internally to go ahead with the IPO. The three-week period referenced above was the time between what is known as the first “org meeting” with bankers and the final document filed today. Zynga’s financials are strong , so they could really get the IPO process anytime they want. But there is definitely a sense that the urgency level picked up all of a sudden. One theory—and it is only a theory at this point—is that Facebook may be moving up its own internal IPO schedule. It just added Reed Hastings to its board, and there is speculation that it may have already kicked off its internal process to get ready for an IPO. This would still be very early stages, but it would include getting its financial reporting in order if it hasn’t done so already and starting the board process to get it to sign off on looking for investment bankers. If Zynga caught whiff that Facebook was starting to take actual steps towards an IPO, it might want to get out ahead for several reasons. One is that it has a good chance at becoming the most sought-after new Internet stock. (It’s financials are much cleaner than Groupon’s). But that position will be short-lived and will last only until Facebook itself IPOs. In the interim, Zynga’s stock will suck up a lot of the demand for publicly-traded Internet growth stories. Another reason is that if the Facebook IPO is as well-received as everyone thinks it will be, Zynga could benefit from an expansion of its PE multiple (and stock price) just as a halo effect. All Internet stocks could do well when Facebook goes public, but you have to be public in order to benefit from that. Or maybe Facebook has nothing to do with it, and CEO Mark Pincus just wanted to get the filing out before the 4th of July holiday. What do you think? Photo credit: Flickr/ Garry CrunchBase Information Zynga Facebook Groupon Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| LinkedIn Cuts Off API Access To BranchOut, Monster's BeKnown And Others For TOS Violations | Top |
| Exclusive: Professional social network LinkedIn has shut down API access to a number of developers for terms of service violations, according to the company. The six developers whose access to LinkedIn’s API include Facebook-focused professional network BranchOut, Monster’s social recruiting app Beknown , brand management app Visible.me , resume service Daxtra , professional reputation manager Mixtent and CRM-Gadget . The shut down of access for BranchOut and Monster’s similar (and recently launched ) app BeKnown are particularly surprising. According to LinkedIn, BranchOut, which has been compared to a LinkedIn for Facebook, violated the network’s API TOS with its plans for a premium enterprise recruiting search tool. Charging fees for access to LinkedIn’s content, is a no-no, says the network. LinkedIn says that it cut off access to its API for BeKnown because the app was using the LinkedIn APIs to send messages to promote BeKnown (and thus profit from the API). LinkedIn is also concerned that BeKnown will be charging for enterprise services related to the API, similar to BranchOut. Mixtent and Visible.me were also shut down for the same reasons. And CRM-Gadget and Daxtra were both shut down for storing LinkedIn member data. In the case of BranchOut and BeKnown, it’s hard not to think of the whole Twitter-UberMedia debacle, in which Twitter shut down API access to UberMedia for TOS violations , including trademarks, privacy and monetization violations. UberMedia is a direct competitor to Twitter, with it army of third-party clients. Likewise, BranchOut (and now BeKnown) are competitors to LinkedIn in some ways. BranchOut, which is backed by Accel, Norwest, Floodgate, and Redpoint, allows you to network and find jobs through your friends on Facebook. The company also allows you to import skills, education, and job history from LinkedIn as well. And the company is allowing brands and organizations to post jobs to users. The startup has been growing in a territory that LinkedIn has not yet invaded—Facebook. LinkedIn, which has 20,000 developers using its APIs, has been on fairly good terms with its developers minus a few stumbles. In January, LinkedIn shut down access to CubeDuel, a service that mixes the best (or worst) of Hot or Not with the professional social network. Apparently CubeDuel exceeded LinkedIn's API limits, but it was actually the startup’s fault. LinkedIn says it is open to reinstating its APIs to these developers and startups if they comply with the network’s TOS. LinkedIn has partnership deals with some developers where startups pay fees for the API (which they can monetize off of). But LinkedIn could probably learn a thing or two from Twitter’s tenuous situation with its developers, and should definitely navigate these waters very carefully. Update: BranchOut issued this statement in response to LinkedIn’s move: At BranchOut we consider the next generation platform for professional networking to be Facebook. Changes to the LinkedIn API have little impact on the BranchOut experience, as it was only being used by a small fraction of our users. That said, we believe user data should be owned by the user, and that people should be allowed to share their data with the new services and contexts that provide the most utility. We’ve analyzed our statistics, and it has led to a pretty exciting discovery for us—namely that we are causing a groundswell within a much larger audience than that addressed by the prior generation of career services. BranchOut users encompass not only the professional networker, but also the far larger base of 700 million Facebook users worldwide who would like to use their social graph to help them in business, recruiting, sales, and job search. For example, in addition to white collar professionals, our users are college students, workers in retail, manufacturing, hospitality, military, government, and others who have yet to find a professional voice within a social network. We are excited to be the first to give this larger global audience a relevant professional networking solution. And here’s Monster’s response: We are surprised and disappointed by LinkedIn's decision, which we believe not only goes against the interests of LinkedIn users, but also contradicts what LinkedIn claims to stand for – openness and connectivity. Professional networkers are social in nature and LinkedIn has just limited their ability to connect when and where they want. They've taken away users' rights to control how and when they can share their own profile data and personal contacts. We also note that it was within days of Monster's launch of BeKnown that LinkedIn decided to block the API when there have been other networking-oriented apps using the API for months.While this move by LinkedIn creates an inconvenience for their users, BeKnown members will continue to build their networks from all the largest online sites including Facebook, Yahoo, Google and Monster. CrunchBase Information LinkedIn Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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