Thursday, March 1, 2012

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Gogobot's First Big iPhone Upgrade Gives Users A Mobile, Friendsourced Trip Planner Top
trips_plansWith the social travel space booming, it behooves the players in the space not to do too much smelling of the roses. Social travel planning startup Gogobot has found some early adoption and buzz, winning a Crunchie for Best Design and was named one of the best 50 websites of 2011 by Time. The site launched as a place people could go to share reviews on their favorite destinations -- like Yelp for travel -- but quickly began adding features, including Facebook and Twitter signup and integration, game mechanics and rewards (badges and leaderboards), launched a good-looking iOS app, within a few months last year, leading to a $15 million series A raise in November.
 
Twitter Has (At Least) Three New VPs Top
elad gilIt looks like Twitter has promoted three of its directors. A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment for this story, but the promotions aren't exactly a secret. Both Elad Gil (pictured) and Joel Lunenfeld have updated their LinkedIn profiles to reflect their new titles — vice president of corporate strategy and vice president of global sales strategy, respectively. Gil joined Twitter after the company acquired his location data startup Mixer Labs, while Lunenfeld's profile says he spent nearly a decade as the CEO of marketing agency Moxie Interactive.
 
Yelp IPO Wants To Raise $107.25M At A $898.1 Million Valuation Top
Screen Shot 2012-03-01 at 5.55.58 PMTomorrow morning comes the moment  Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman's been waiting for seven years.  According to the NYT, Yelp will drop on the NYSE under the YELP ticker tomorrow morning. Yelp will be offering 7.15 million shares at $15 dollars a share, wanting to raise about $107.25 million in its IPO. The deal is said to be heavily over subscribed, and I've heard that some Yelpers were disappointed by the low price -- despite the fact that the company is still not profitable, despite trading at a valuation of more than ten times its earnings.
 
DARPA Launches QR-Locating Game As Test Of Distributed Resource Gathering Top
the_road08Say the Mayans are right, and a meteor or some other catastrophe strikes the Earth sometime later this year. Assuming we're not all wiped out by the impact, emergency services worldwide are going to need to do some serious canvassing to assess damage, resources, and form a picture of the disaster. DARPA is running a little game, called CLIQRQuest, to look into how such a network of people might do such a task. But instead of asking people to snap pictures of reservoirs and hospitals, they're giving cash prizes for finding QR codes.
 
Unified Opens An Online University For Social Media Marketers Top
unified logoThere are few terms more overused these days than "social media expert." Now Unified wants to actually certify those experts, through a new program called Unified University. Unified calls itself "the first social operating platform" — it offers tools for planning, purchasing, and analyzing social media advertising campaigns. Even though CEO Sheldon Owen says he wants to build a big enterprise technology company, Unified sometimes finds itself working as a social media consultant, of sorts for the agencies and brands that it works with, helping to train them in the best practices of social advertising. With Unified University, the startup can get its customers up-to-speed more efficiently.
 
Boxee's Newest Adult Resident: Pornhub, the 'YouTube Of Porn' Top
box-heroBoxee has slowly but surely been building out the adult content offered through its streaming service, and now there is one more in the mix: Pornhub (NSFW link) -- which informally calls itself the YouTube for porn, offering a mix of user-generated and more professional content -- is now also coming to the service. But although adult material has long been one of the dead-certs in the world of paid content, it's still a competitive business and therefore ripe for disruption. So unlike other recent adult additions to Boxee like Fyre, Pornhub is making its debut ad-free and free to watch. It claims that it is the first, official free adult app on Boxee to do so.
 
Disrupt Alum Vocre Makes Its Voice-Translation App Free Top
desc_v1screensVocre was one of the more popular battlefield companies at Disrupt SF 2011; the automagical quality of the app and their excellent on-stage presentation made them one of the frontrunners. They haven't been idle since then, though, and they've taken the advice of some critics who suggested their pay-per-use model was going to turn off users. They're releasing a new version of the app today with a few significant improvements, most notably that the app is now free.
 
Record Exec Says Google Music Is Losing Users. But Is It Worth Saving? Top
Google Music SadUsers are tuning out of Google Music, the search engine's foray into music cloud storage, streaming and sales. A high-ranking digital music executive told The Music Void that Google Music is losing users week after week, despite its preferred access to over 200 million Android installs,. Seems its lack of marketing, the missing Warner deal, and competition from iTunes Match and Spotify are taking their toll. If Google needs music to win mobile, it should put its weight behind this product. Otherwise, it's time to unplug.
 
Investors Push Zynga Stock Up 10% — Now It Can Make Money On Ads And Publishing Top
Screen Shot 2012-03-01 at 3.03.55 PMZynga is now officially launching its own web site for social games, and the move has got investors buying its stock. Shares are up nearly 10 percent as of market closing today towards $15 -- or 50 percent of the $10 price it went public at back in December. Why? The obvious reason is that this is a way for Zynga to lessen its reliance on Facebook. But Zynga is still using Facebook exclusively as its identity service and payments system, so it's not quite true to say that it's lessening its reliance on Facebook. That is, except for two things: publisher payments and ads.
 
There's Something About Bango: The Billing Company Behind Facebook, BlackBerry And Soon Amazon Top
andersonThere are a number of companies that offer carrier billing for companies in the mobile space -- that is, services that let people buy content on their devices and charge it right to their carrier -- but there is only one that has secured deals with Facebook, Amazon and RIM to do it: an unassuming, Cambridgeshire, U.K.-based billing and analytics company by the name of Bango. And while you may not know who they are, chances are that the folks at Bango probably know you.
 
Leetchi Secures $5.5 Million To Launch In The UK And Germany Top
82630v2-max-250x250France-based Leetchi, a group payment application along the lines of US-based WePay, has raised a series B funding round of $5.5 million led by Idinvest. The round also includes Leetchi's previous investors, 360 Capital Partners. The French company now aims to open in the UK and Germany and launch a new B2C service. Along with France, Leetchi will then be aiming at a combined Internet population of over 160 million users. Not quite as large as WePay's North American market but getting there...
 
Rewards Network Kiip Goes Self-Serve, Announces $100K Developer Fund Top
kiip logoKiip is making a big effort to recruit independent game developers today — it's launching the self-serve version of its advertising platform, and it has also created a $100,000 fund to help developers build and market their Kiip-integrated games. The startup has always pitched its rewards (such as free Pop Chips or Amazon Gift Cards) as a smart alternative to traditional mobile advertising, and going self-serve is a natural step for any advertising network trying to reach a larger number of publishers. Kiip CEO Brian Wong tells me that until now, the company only worked with a "hand-picked" developers because it had to make sure that the growth in developers didn't outpace the growth in advertisers.
 
Tumblr On Its Self-Harm Blog Ban: Support Is OK, Glorification Is Not Top
angelina-jolie-skinny-oscarsTumblr is clarifying its sticky position regarding the new policy to ban certain blogs from its network. You may remember last week, when the company took the bold stance that blogs promoting self-harm, including anorexia, bulimia, self-mutilation and suicide, would no longer be allowed on its network. Today, the company is following up on the policy change to explain that it's not banning blogs that are engaged in "discussion, support, encouragement, and documenting the experiences of those dealing with difficult conditions," only those that are meant to trigger self-harm. But how will Tumblr know which is which?
 
Shutterfly To Buy Kodak's Online Photo Sharing Platform For $23.8M Top
shutterflyAfter filing for bankruptcy, Kodak is announcing that it will be selling off parts of its online photo services business Kodak Gallery for $23.8 million. The buyer? Online photo sharing platform Shutterfly. Basically, the terms of the agreement include the transfer of all Gallery customer accounts and images in the U.S. and Canada to Shutterfly. Kodak Gallery allowed users to upload photos and create public or private albums that can be shared, as well as printed. According to the company, Kodak Gallery currently has 75 million users. Kodak says that it will give customers who do not want their photos transferred to Shutterfly the opportunity to opt out of the transition process.
 
Ahead Of Launching Its First Title, Idle Games Poaches Zynga's Lead CityVille Designer Top
Screen shot 2012-03-01 at 10.51.11 AMIn September, social game developer Idle Games launched on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, declaring that they were on a mission to become "the Pixar of casual games." The startup's first title, Idle Worship, is a throw-back to Peter Molyneux and EA's Black & White, except, instead of finding it on a PC, Idle Worship will make its home on that social network everyone's talking about. Like Black & White, gamers get to play the role of a god, lording over villagers on an island in whatever way you choose -- you can be a vengeful god, or a forgiving one. Both in its first title, and in the games it plans in the future, Idle Games is looking to provide a better alternative to the stale social games already out there produced by the bigs like Zynga.
 
Wonder What Games Might Look Like On The New iPad? Check This Out Top
compareHDThe new iPad, if rumors are to be believed, has an extremely high-resolution screen — better than most monitors and packed into a quarter of the display space. The result? iPhone 4-like Retina goodness. But it's actually kind of hard to visualize this, since most pixel-dense displays are small, and we're used to a certain level of aliasing on our bigger displays. Game developer Pixels on Toast has done the work of preparing their upcoming game Food Run to the expected 2048x1536 resolution. The results may help you get into your head just how many pixels we're talking about here.
 
Graphicly Opens Publishing Platform To Everyone, Looks Beyond Comics Top
graphicly analyticsAfter a month long trial period, startup Graphicly is throwing the doors open to its digital publishing platform. Since incubating at TechStars in 2009, Graphicly has shifted strategy. Co-founder and CEO Micah Baldwin says the company was first conceived as an "iTunes for comics" — the place where existing comics publishers could sell the digital versions of their titles. However, Baldin says he found that the marketplace strategy was too limiting. (It probably didn't help that competitor ComiXology scored early deals with the two biggest publishers, DC and Marvel.)
 
How The Cult Of Zuck Will Survive Sheryl's IPO Top
Facebook F fmc printA tug of war between innovation and monetization as Facebook grows could dilute The Hacker Way, says a paywalled piece from CNN Fortune. But a plan hatched since it filed its S-1 to IPO. Rather than sacrifice the user experience for revenue or vice versa, Facebook is merging the two. Content is being transformed into ads, and those ads are being blended into blank spaces and feeds where they're less obtrusive. Scaling a company from 200 20-somethings to 3,000 30-year olds is no cakewalk. If the plan works, though, Facebook could bridge the gap between engineering and advertising, make the company feel a whole lot smaller, and let The Hacker Way live on.
 
Microsoft: Windows 8 Consumer Preview Downloaded 1 Million Times In One Day Top
milMicrosoft's official Win8 Twitter feed has confirmed the inevitable: Win8's Consumer Preview, a beta version of the new operating system, was downloaded 1 million times since launch. To put this into perspective, Microsoft sold seven copies of the software a second in 2010, and, yesterday, gave away 11 copies a second.
 
TCTV: In the Studio, Morgan Missen Says Technical Recruiting Is Often Too Transactional Top
Screen shot 2012-02-29 at 9.48.14 PMEditor's note: TechCrunch contributor Semil Shah currently works at Votizen and is based in Palo Alto; you can follow him on twitter @semil "In the Studio" rolls on this week with a guest who studied computer programming, went on to be a technical documentation writer, and was the first person in her family to attend to college, after which she moved to Silicon Valley and went to handle technical recruiting for some of the biggest consumer technology companies in the world.
 

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