The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- The Spoils Go To The Smartest. Apple And RIM Take Majority Of Cell Phone Industry Profits
- Cliqset Debuts Second Iteration Of Social Identity Platform, Raises $1.5 Million
- TRV$DJAM Charges Nothing But A Tweet For New Mixtape
- Apparently Bing Is Something Of A Hit
- Seatwave Scores $17 Million In Fourth Funding Round
- Edocr Aims To Be A DocStoc For Corporates - Is That Enough?
- Badda-Bing Indeed.
- MashLogic Launches, Adds High Powered Angels To Investor List
- Go Bing Yourself, Right Now
- Real-Time Twitter Search, Hold The “Real-Time”
- Video: Inside The Google Holodeck
- Last.fm Brags About Uptime, Overheats, Goes Offline
- Republican PR Director Calls Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg “totally full of sh*t”
| The Spoils Go To The Smartest. Apple And RIM Take Majority Of Cell Phone Industry Profits Posted: 01 Jun 2009 07:59 AM PDT
When you look at sales of the iPhone or Blackberry as a percentage of total cell phone sales, they are still a tiny smidgen of the one billion phones estimated to be sold this year. But when you look at what really matters—their share of revenues or operating profits—the picture looks a lot different. Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff calculated the share of operating profits going to each major mobile handset manufacturer and came up with the eye-opening chart above. It shows Apple (pink) and RIM (turquoise) increasingly taking a disproportionate share of industry profits, mostly at the expense of Nokia’s diminishing handset operating profits (blue). In a note, Modoff writes: “Increasingly, the smartphone vendors are claiming more of the industry’s profit dollars even as the pool of profitability stabilizes or shrinks.” Thanks to the success of the highly-profitable iPhone, Apple’s share of industry operating profits went from 3 percent in 2007 to 20 percent in 2008 and will grow again to an estimated 31 percent in 2009. RIM, maker of the Blackberry, is doing even better, increasing its estimated share of industry profits from 8 percent (2007) to 19 percent (2008) to 35 percent (2009). So adding those two together, Apple and RIM are expected to account for an incredible 66 percent of industry profits this year. Meanwhile, once-dominant Nokia is seeing its estimated share of industry profits drop from 64 percent (2007) to 57 percent (2008) to 32 percent (2009). The only other major manufacturer to grow its profit share is Samsung, from 14 prcent last year to an estimated 19 percent this year. (A note on methodology: These numbers take into account operating losses at companies such as Motorola and Palm, and the total adds up to 100 only when you subtract their losses, which are expressed as negative percentages). Such a massive shift in control of industry profits is unprecedented and speaks to the growing value of software in the cell phone industry. It also speaks to the missteps of the traditional handset manufacturers (only Samsung seems to have its act together) and the end of unbridled growth for the industry. Modoff expects total unit sales to decline slightly this year back down to one billion, while industry revenues will continue to come down from their 2007 peak. Nevertheless, Apple and RIM, will continue to take share in both units and revenues as the rest of the industry struggles (see charts below).
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| Cliqset Debuts Second Iteration Of Social Identity Platform, Raises $1.5 Million Posted: 01 Jun 2009 05:02 AM PDT
Cliqset is not exactly an easy concept to explain, but here goes. Essentially, the platform aims to stitch together the social web by allowing users and developers build, organize and share social information across a wide variety of services. As an end user, Cliqset can help you merge and share the social information (your status updates, location, photos, etc) currently scattered around the web with the people, applications and devices you already use and trust. Developers on the other hand get access to an extensive set of read/write social APIs they can use as an alternative to building and managing support for their own. The second beta, launching today, comes with a new Location Services API that allows developers to build apps for web and mobile by using location info from users. With the API, developers can fetch and use address information using the latitude and longitude coordinates provided by mobile devices. The gathered location information can be tied to user activities but also be used to store more generic location information that’s relevant to the applications they build on top of the Cliqset platform. A related new element is the integration of Cliqset location services with third-party services like BrightKite, FireEagle and Twitter, basically simplifying how a user can keep their social and location information in sync across the Web. Also new is a fresh push/pull architecture for social information that travels to and from Cliqset, Cliqset-enabled applications and the supported third-party services. A mix of push/pull functionality is now possible with over 30 third-party services, including Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, identica, laconica, Linkedin, FireEagle, and FriendFeed. It’s like the latter on steroids, actually. Cliqset has recently closed its second seed round, $1.5 million coming from angel investor Derek Mercer, founder and former chairman and CEO of Vurv Technology, a provider of talent management software that was acquired in 2008 by Taleo for about $128.8 million. This comes in addition to an earlier early-stage capital injection of $500,000 by the man, bringing the total invested in the startup to $2 million.
Cliqset - Merge, Organize and Share Social Information from cliqset on Vimeo. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| TRV$DJAM Charges Nothing But A Tweet For New Mixtape Posted: 01 Jun 2009 04:31 AM PDT
Here’s a cool way for music artists to reward their biggest fans and get some Viral Marketing® in return: drummer Travis Barker and turntablist DJ-AM (aka Adam Goldstein) are offering their just-released second mixtape, “Fix Your Face Vol. 2 - Coachella ‘09″, up for free download in exchange for a mere Twitter message. The duo, conventiently made up of two heavy Twitter users (@trvsbrkr and @DJ_AM), aims to score some extra buzz on the social networking service and is giving away the co-produced mixtape (under the name TRV$DJAM) to anyone who sends out a tweet that reads “Download the new #trvsdjam mixtape “Fix Your Face Vol. 2 - Coachella 09″ in exchange for one tweet!”. Note that you need to go to this website and grant access to an application using OAuth before you send that message. Oh, by the way, that mixtape rocks.
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| Apparently Bing Is Something Of A Hit Posted: 01 Jun 2009 03:36 AM PDT
Last week everyone got to see the demo video and a few of us were actually able to access Bing for our reviews. Most everyone, though, just had to wait to actually try the service. Initial reader comments tended towards the negative on announcement day. Microsoft got heat for having nothing but a landing page up (and not even that for a while after the announcement). The “Bing stands for But It’s Not Google” comment appeared a number of times, as did sarcastic comments like “Looks like Live search again. Good to see Microsoft trying new things.” There were also a few variations of “MS is a bloated sinking ship…bing is nothing but a desperate attempt by an obsolete company.” You get the picture. Today, though, they can actually try it. And the overwhelming number of user comments on our launch post Sunday evening are extremely positive. People like Bing. A few of them: So long Google … I'm a Binger now lol i agree. all the search results i get are very good and i really like this interface. Bing looks interesting and very promising, It gives perfect results for couple of my favourate searches [aah my name It is fast, accurate, visually pleasing - and as Sam said above - Holly crap, it doesn't suck. I really like the way the images are done - click on an image in the gallery and then the results go along the left hand side - that is a sweet feature. The news search falls a bit short - but hey. The results are actually good. i did a search for "extend a dd-wrt network with airport express" and was impressed by the qlty of the results. also the results look clean. and the left hand guided search assistant is great. good results and feels really responsive and fast. Will use. I kinda like it….will have to play with it for a week or so. Wow! Did Microsoft finally nail search? Had to know they would get it right at some point… Also quite impressed. Even though there are heavy graphics, it still feels light and responsive. I actually think it makes Google feel a little stale. wow…… bing is good……..surprise coming from Microsoft… I expected the worst and was pleasantly surprised. The images search was better (more relevant) that what I was getting at Google. I also tried some searches that I normally use Google for and most of the same results came up, in roughly the same order (meaning I could use this thing for real after all). The only problem I see is breaking the habit of using Google. That Bing is actually competent and useful for search is really surprising. MS nailed it. Even if it's not "as good as" Google, it's pretty damn close. My thoughts on Bing: I like it. And I’d consider using it as my search engine. But like many people I’m used to Google and I know how to find the things I’m looking for. Bing returns very different results for a lot of queries, which is great. But it also means spending time learning how to use Bing to get what you need out of it. I’ll spend that time because it’s my job. But for most people, they’ll stick to what they know, and that’s Google. If Microsoft takes search share with Bing, it will likely be from Yahoo. If I were Yahoo and I was thinking of doing a search deal, I’d pull that trigger sooner rather than later. Yahoo wants a “boatload” of money to do a search deal or sell the company outright. Microsoft offered a boatload last year for either deal and couldn’t get it done. If Bing is a hit, there’s little reason for them to offer more. Google’s blocked from working with Yahoo, so they aren’t going anywhere. I’ll sum up with this - whether Microsoft ultimately succeeds or not in “winning” the search war, the competition is very good for the rest of the Internet. Google needs to be pushed to try innovating new things (not this). And search marketing competition will ensure that Google doesn’t get too greedy. We don’t need Microsoft to win, but we do need to avoid a world with just one search engine that matters. Maybe Microsoft can win that lesser war, at least. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Seatwave Scores $17 Million In Fourth Funding Round Posted: 01 Jun 2009 03:35 AM PDT
Recently named Europe’s fastest growing digital media company by investment bank GP Bullhound, Seatwave allows fans to trade theatre, sport and music tickets online and thus competes (hard) with TicketMaster (IAC), StubHub (eBay) and that other well-funded startup in the ticket reselling space, Viagogo, which raised over $65 million to date including an investment from tennis legends Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf. The primary reason it was selected is because the company reportedly saw its revenue rise 2203 per cent in the past two years, with user numbers having increased to 1.9m monthly users today and exchange operations in five countries. The company was founded in 2006 by Joe Cohen, formerly with Ticketmaster and Match.com, and Atlas Venture, which remains the largest shareholder. Seatwave has now raised a whopping total of $53 million including this round. The startup raised seed and $3 million in Series A funds from Atlas Venture in 2006, $8 million from Mangrove CP and Atlas in 2007, and raised a large $25 million round back in February 2008. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Edocr Aims To Be A DocStoc For Corporates - Is That Enough? Posted: 01 Jun 2009 03:30 AM PDT
Eschewing the publisher focus of Issuu, or the broad business focus of DocStoc, the boot-strapped Edocr focuses on corporates and organisations. So for instance, companies can upload all their public-facing documents, whether they be company reports, press releases, guidance documents, you name it. Admittedly the slightly dull-but-necessary focus is not going to set the world alight, but with plenty of enterprises still getting their heads around the basics of blogging, RSS and even social networks like Twitter, edocr is a simple way for companies to share their PDFs without being lumped alongside a pirated copy of a Harry Potter novel. New features include an improved design, bulk uploading of documents, an API, document categories, better search and the ability to auto-tweet to a Twitter account when new documents get uploaded. The question is, will that be enough to set it apart from the many players in this field? Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Posted: 01 Jun 2009 12:21 AM PDT This is just too good. One of the features of Microsoft’s just launched Bing search engine is that it auto-plays videos in results when you hover over them. Naturally, the first thing a number of people, like Loic Le Meur, did was search for “sex” or “porn.” The results are majestic — if you’re a teenager looking for a way around porn filters on your computer. And this isn’t artful porn or something like it, it’s straight-up, hardcore pornography. Now, to be fair, to see these results, you do have to manually override the adult filter on the video search, but that’s a whole 2 clicks and doesn’t require that you actually verify your age or anything. The Bing team on Twitter is already warning users about this following Loic and other’s tweets about the issue. But the results literally speak for themselves. If you’re so inclined, go ahead and try, it’s one hell of a way to browse porn. Straight porn, gay porn, you name it. It’s all there, ready to auto-play. I had one hell of a time just finding a result that would be easy enough for me to edit with you still being able to tell what it is. Obviously, this stuff is not safe for work — unless perhaps you work on the Bing team.
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| MashLogic Launches, Adds High Powered Angels To Investor List Posted: 01 Jun 2009 12:08 AM PDT
Bessemer Venture Partners is incubating the startup and put in most of the original $900,000 in seed money. The company has raised a total of $1.4 million to date and works out of the Bessemer offices. We first wrote about MashLogic in October 2008 when it went into private beta:
The site has evolved since October. It’s now available for Internet Explorer in addition to Firefox. Also, any topic trending up on Twitter is highlighted and linked (at the user option), with additional information on who’s tweeting about that topic. And if a Twitter username appears in the text of a web page (as they do in our comments), clicking on it brings up a box with that Twitter users information. Users can also post to their Twitter accounts. Here’s how it looks:
MashLogic works with publishers to create slightly customized versions of the product that pull information from that publisher first. Users can customize away from those changes, but most don’t. We’ve been distributing a version of MashLogic since last October and it drives a fair amount of traffic to us from people seeing TechCrunch and CrunchBase content “linked” from around the web. It’s one of the few products I’ve tried that I’ve stuck with over these last months. It definitely makes browsing and research easier. Try it, I think you’ll like it. Here’s an interview I did today with founder/VP Ranjit Padmanabhan. After I butcher his name we see how it all works: Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Posted: 31 May 2009 10:55 PM PDT
It doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as go Google yourself, but now you can go Bing yourself. (Then again, Google took a few years to become a verb.). Bing, Microsoft’s latest effort to compete in search, is now live on a “preview” site. The key thing to pay attention to is the guided search assistance on the left and the different experiences for the travel, images, video, maps, news, and shopping tabs. A few things to try:
Check it out. Try a few searches and then tell us in comments if you will ever go back. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Real-Time Twitter Search, Hold The “Real-Time” Posted: 31 May 2009 10:35 PM PDT Many believe the greatest potential of Twitter lies in its ability to perform real-time searches of various keywords. So when that functionality is delayed by some 3 hours, as it is right now, and has been throughout much of the night, with no explanation, you can imagine that users are going to get a little annoyed. Go ahead, search for anything right now — a good example is for the word “the,” as it’s used in a ton of tweets. The most recent results you’ll find are from 3 hours ago. [Update below, it's back with a huge gaping hole.] Not only does this badly impact my vanity searches, but there are companies who now rely on Twitter Search to run services such as brand management. Imagine the horror Comcast must be feeling right now not being able to see my tweets constantly bitching about their crap service in real-time. Likewise, Trending Topics is not working as it also relies on Twitter Search. So we’re being tricked into thinking people actually care about the MTV Movie Awards. We’ve gotten tipped this a number of times throughout the day, but I’ve largely been ignoring it, trying to give Twitter the benefit of the doubt to at least update us on what is going on. But this is ridiculous. Fix your damn search functionality Twitter, you’re not much use without it.
Update: And it’s back up — with a nice little 4 hour gaping hole of tweets not indexed. Go ahead and try this query and if you go back far enough, you’ll see that it all of a sudden jumps back 4 hours at one point. All those tweets, apparently, lost. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Video: Inside The Google Holodeck Posted: 31 May 2009 03:20 PM PDT
Unfortunately, Google only allows it to show the area at and around the actual Google campus in Mountain View, as I’m sure it doesn’t want any legal complaint from those caught sunbathing in their backyards. Also, while it does zoom past the area where the Google Goats were kept, it unfortunately failed to catch any of them on tape. Luckily, I did that for you a few weeks ago. Google’s Holodeck isn’t quite as cool as the Star Trek Holodeck, but give them a few years, I’m sure they’ll figure out how to do that as well. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Last.fm Brags About Uptime, Overheats, Goes Offline Posted: 31 May 2009 02:32 PM PDT
Music service Last.fm, which was bragging about server uptime a week and a half ago, shuts its doors for the afternoon, claiming “datacenter temperature issues beyond our control” required them to go offline. The outage began around 12:30 pm PST, so we’re at two hours and counting. Updates are on their Twitter account. The twitter from May 20:
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| Republican PR Director Calls Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg “totally full of sh*t” Posted: 31 May 2009 12:48 PM PDT One thing I love about Facebook spokesperson Randi Zuckerberg - she says exactly what she thinks, and she isn’t afraid to use the power of Facebook to back up her opinions. Mean bar bouncers can lose their Facebook pages (this was later retracted but remains funny). Meanwhile, Holocaust deniers are given a pass. Now she’s taking on the Republican party, and the Republican party is fighting back. At a Startup2Startup event last week Zuckerberg talked about her experiences at the Republican and Democratic presidential conventions last year. The relevant clip (care of Ustream) is above. “At the Democratic national convention we were like rock stars,” Zuckerberg said. “At the Republican national convention I sat in my hotel room by myself for three days, no one would meet with us, I was like begging people to meet with us.” Randi also recounts a conversation on a plane where a Berkeley professor calls Zuckerberg “you’re like the most powerful person in the world.” The Republicans aren’t amused. Matt Burns, the Director of Communications for the 2008 Republican National Convention left a long comment, calling Zuckerber “full of sh*t”:
Whenever Randi speaks, point a camera at her. There’s almost certainly a story in there somewhere. All I hope is that Facebook never muzzles her. As the most powerful person in the world, we need to hear more from her, not less. I’ve emailed Burns for confirmation that he left the comment, but the language is definitely his style. Update: Burns has responded:
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