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- Nokia Takes Apple To Court. If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Sue ‘Em.
- As The NYT Shrinks, The Internet Now Brings Nearly A Quarter Of Its Advertising Revenues
- Care For Some Custom Nike Sneakers? There’s A Very Cool App For That
- The New Windows 7 Commercials: Now We’re Tawkin’
- Box.net Launches Integration With Salesforce
- More Twitter Love From Microsoft As It Sets Up @MicrosoftHelps
- Microsoft’s Online Store Gets A Revamp, Now Sells Windows 7 PCs Too
- DailyMotion Bags €17 million, This Time With The French Government
- Even Star Investors Can’t Save DotBlu From The DeadPool
- More Details On Loopt’s Acquisition Of GraffitiGeo And Its Plans For The Future
- Get Ready For The Firehose. Search Is About To Get Realtime, Real Fast.
- AppsFire Launches App Star Awards To Find The Next Great iPhone App
- HeyZap Helps Flash Games Go Viral With New API, Launches Analytics Too
- Web 2.0 Summit: V For Van Natta: The Socialization Of Content
- Web 2.0 Summit: Marissa Mayer Shows Off Social Search, Results From Your Social Networks
- MySpace Adds Full Music Video Archives, Deep Artist Analytics
- Facebook’s Gift Shop Sings A New Tune
- Skype Hits 521 Million Users And $185 Million In Quarterly Revenue
- Flickr Adds People Tagging. And It’s Better Than Facebook’s.
- AOL Rebrands Sphere As Surphace
- Web 2.0 Summit: A Conversation With Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg
- Twitter: You Say Transparency, I Say Vulnerability
- That Didn’t Take Long: Twitter Search Is Coming To Google
- Pew Study Reports That Internet Users Are Becoming More Status Update-Friendly
- What’s Inside This Mystery Box?
| Nokia Takes Apple To Court. If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Sue ‘Em. Posted: 22 Oct 2009 09:01 AM PDT  Nokia has filed a compaint against Apple for infringing on its GSM, UMTS, and WiFi "standards," which is as absolutely vague as it sounds. While Nokia states that forty vendors have licensed its patents in these areas there is no mention of the specific instances of infringement and, given that GSM, UMTS, and WiFi are the defacto standards for GSM-based phones across the board it's hard to tell what Nokia's real problem is here.   |
| As The NYT Shrinks, The Internet Now Brings Nearly A Quarter Of Its Advertising Revenues Posted: 22 Oct 2009 08:01 AM PDT
It was another bleak quarter for the New York Times, which keeps on shrinking. The New York Times announced third quarter earnings this morning. Total revenues were down 17 percent to $571 million. Of that advertising revenues decreased 27 percent to $291 million, and the online advertising portion was down 8.2 percent to $68 million. The earnings report follows yet more newsroom cuts of 100 people announced last week. There is a ray of hope, though, that the worst may be behind the storied newspaper company. Last quarter, advertising revenues declined an even steeper 32 percent, and online advertising was down 15.5 percent. So maybe this is the first step on its way back to positive territory. Here are the year-over-year declines in online advertising revenues for each of the past four quarters. Annual Decline In Internet Advertising Revenues 4Q08: -3.5% Another interesting data point is that because its print advertising revenues are shrinking at a faster rate than its Internet advertising revenues, the Internet portion is actually a bigger percentage (23.5%) of the New York Times’ total advertising revenues than it was year ago (when it was 18.6%). So nearly a quarter of the New York Times’ total advertising dollars now come from online. Depending on which type of advertising recovers faster, that percentage may continue to grow. (Remember, the New York Times also has circulation revenues, so Internet advertising is still a smaller percentage of total revenues). Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Care For Some Custom Nike Sneakers? There’s A Very Cool App For That Posted: 22 Oct 2009 07:57 AM PDT  Sportswear giant Nike has a nifty application in the App Store that allows you to create custom sneakers and order them straight away, with just a couple of taps. The app is in fact a mobile extension of NIKEiD, a program that allows customer to order personalized Nike shoes straight from the manufacturer. And an excellent extension it is. The free app (iTunes link) has been available on the App Store since the beginning of this month, but surprisingly there hasn't been a lot of coverage about it. Even despite this excellent video about it (embedded below). |
| The New Windows 7 Commercials: Now We’re Tawkin’ Posted: 22 Oct 2009 07:45 AM PDT  Windows 7 is your idea, friends. That's what this new spot - along with some 7 second demos after the jump - is trying to say. It's basically pointing out that Windows 7 is a nice, clean update. Yes, I would agree it's a Vista Service Pack and, in a way, it's kind of like Snow Leopard in that it changes little in the UI but improves quite a bit under the hood. But Windows 7 is Microsoft's big product for 2010 so let's let them have their day in the sun. You can also watch the Win7 launch live right here. |
| Box.net Launches Integration With Salesforce Posted: 22 Oct 2009 06:00 AM PDT
To get started, businesses need to sign up for Box.net’s enterprise plan, which includes free access to the Salesforce app. As an added bonus, any businesses using the new Salesforce integration will be eligible for unlimited storage on Box.net — something that the service’s normal enterprise customers don’t have. Box.net will also offer access to the Salesforce app to customers using the ‘Business’ level account (which is for smaller companies), though it won’t come with unlimited storage. CEO Aaron Levie says that this is the first step in Box.net’s plan to give businesses a secure way to share their files across multiple services on the web. He says that many of the cloud services geared toward the enterprise don’t work well together — oftentimes you’ll have to reupload the same content to multiple sites to share or edit it. Box.net wants to help unify these services by serving as the central hub for your uploaded files, which you can then access from these other web-based services. Levie hints that we’ll be seeing more integrations with other services in the near future. For more details, check out the demo video below: Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| More Twitter Love From Microsoft As It Sets Up @MicrosoftHelps Posted: 22 Oct 2009 05:38 AM PDT
The account has been around for a week or so but hasn’t been met with much attention so far. That’s a shame, because I honestly think it’s really interesting to see Microsoft set up a customer service channel on Twitter, much like Best Buy recently amazed me with its @Twelpforce endeavors. According to Perez, the company even talked to Best Buy to learn more about what it could do on Twitter. The new Twitter account is English only and will initially focus solely on trying to support Twitter users who have questions about or issues with Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows 7, which is being debuted all around the world today. It might be expanding it to include more Microsoft products later on. Microsoft reportedly also said that it doesn’t expect to be able to answer all queries at all times, but that’s only logical. Judging from the background image on the account, there are four people managing the account at this point. Rumor has it Apple is considering setting up a similar channel on Twitter to assist people. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Microsoft’s Online Store Gets A Revamp, Now Sells Windows 7 PCs Too Posted: 22 Oct 2009 03:29 AM PDT
The news comes from Trevin Chow, Senior Lead Program Manager for Microsoft Store. Big surprise: the revamped online storefront features some new categories (including ‘Computers’!), so you can now go there to buy Windows 7 PCs as well as accessories and even third-party software like Adobe Photoshop and Nero 9. So far, the new look and fresh categories are only reserved for the U.S. online store, though I reckon other countries will follow suit soon. Another surprise: the Microsoft Store team has a Posterous blog.
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| DailyMotion Bags €17 million, This Time With The French Government Posted: 22 Oct 2009 01:59 AM PDT
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| Even Star Investors Can’t Save DotBlu From The DeadPool Posted: 21 Oct 2009 09:32 PM PDT
Investors in an early angel round included Jawed Karim (Co-Founder of YouTube), Kevin Hartz (Co-Founder of Xoom and Eventbrite), Joe Greenstein (Co-Founder and CEO of Flixster) and Keith Rabois (Former PayPal & LinkedIn Executive and Current Slide Executive). A later $2 million round was funded by Maples Investments and DE Shaw. The company first launched as an online betting service and then changed its name and focus to social gaming. But on October 16 the company shut everything down with a brief note to users: “Dear dotblu members: dotblu.com is down indefinitely. A big thanks to each of you for being part of our community for the past two and a half years.” The note also asks users to stay in touch via their Facebook fan page. Most startups die, so this isn’t any particular slam on the founders or investors. They tried and they failed, and that’s the way of Silicon Valley. And as a goodbye salute to dotblu, I remind readers of The Man In The Arena speech by Theodore Roosevelt in 1910. Adapt or die, they say. And if you die, put another quarter in the machine and start the game over. Thanks for the tip, Tinycomb. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| More Details On Loopt’s Acquisition Of GraffitiGeo And Its Plans For The Future Posted: 21 Oct 2009 08:56 PM PDT
GraffitiGeo launched in August, when I described it as a ‘Foursquare meets Yelp, with a dash of augmented reality’. The service invites users to review local restaurants and other venues in a manner that’s similar to Yelp, but encourages them to leave very brief descriptions (or just thumbs up/thumbs down) instead of the longer reviews you’ll find on other sites. Alongside these reviews there’s also a gaming element similar to foursquare that rewards players with points whenever they leave a comment. There’s also a system that lets you earn more points if you team up with your friends. Loopt CEO Sam Altman says that he came across GraffitiGeo while the product will still early on in the Y Combinator program (Loopt is a YC alum), and that he took notice of the app’s feature set which paralleled some of the areas Loopt is interested in as well. In particular, he says Loopt has been exploring location-based social gaming, local reviews, and augmented reality (which is another area GraffitiGeo has experimented in), so the company seemed like a good fit. He says he was also impressed with the team, which he describes as “super smart” — founders Nikhil Pandit, Teng Siong Ong, and Jared Tame are all joining Loopt as part of the deal. Altman wouldn’t comment on it, but there’s one final GraffitiGeo feature that Loopt is likely very interested in: a platform for local business advertising. Altman wouldn’t get into specifics as far as how GraffitiGeo’s features will be integrated with Loopt, but he says we’ll be seeing some changes very soon. He says he’s excited to see what happens with GraffitiGeo, which has around 20,000 total users, when parts of it are built into Loopt, which adds 20,000 in a single day. Coincidentally, GraffitiGeo released a much improved new iPhone application today on the App Store. You can grab it here. At this point it isn’t clear if Loopt will keep GraffitiGeo as a separate application indefinitely, or if it will be rolled into Loopt, but there are no immediate plans to combine the services. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Get Ready For The Firehose. Search Is About To Get Realtime, Real Fast. Posted: 21 Oct 2009 07:31 PM PDT
After months of negotiations and holding both off at bay, Twitter now has agreements with both Bing and Google to give them access to its full feed of public Tweets. Both search engines have been yearning to drink directly from Twitter’s the realtime firehose of micro-messages and all that they carry. A rudimentary version of Bing’s Twitter search is already live, and it will soon add public Facebook updates to its search results as well. While financial terms of the deals were not disclosed, full access to Twitter’s data stream is very valuable to both search engines. Depending on how much Twitter was able squeeze out of Google and Bing for these licensing deals, they are likely to provide its first major source of revenue. (Imagine, if they have to pay by the Tweet). Tweets and other realtime data streams are valuable to Google and Bing because for many types of searches (news, events, sports, stocks, shopping, etc.), the most recent information is often the most relevant. And it’s hard to beat millions of people Tweetng out their thoughts—the “pulse of the planet,” if you will—for realtime information about every subject imaginable. Google and Bing need access to this stream of data if they want to keep their results fresh and relevant. Up until now, they had to try to index Twitter’s site selectively by concentrating on high-profile Twitterers like celebrities. Twitter wouldn’t let their robots gobble up and index every Tweet because its servers wouldn’t be able to take that kind of pounding. But Twitter didn’t just want to hand over the feed of all of its public Tweets (the firehose) to the search engines without getting paid for it either. Now that Google and Bing are getting the firehose, it could have a big impact on search results. For the search engines, the firehose is much more valuable than any single Tweet. They can index it and sift it, looking for patterns and spikes in keywords and shared links to get a better sense of what people across the Web are paying attention to at any given moment. This data can then be folded back into regular search results, even if the top result isn’t a Tweet. For example, if a link to a post about healthcare reform on an obscure blog suddenly gains currency and is retweeted hundreds of times, that is a signal to perhaps rank that link higher in searches about “healthcare reform.” If people stop Tweeting about it, then maybe it goes down in the ranking. But Google and Bing can use the firehose as a rich source of signals to mine and then blend back into regular search results. Of course, Tweets and other micro-messages will become part of results. And how the search engines display them and rank them will also determine how relevant their results are. Here is where it gets interesting because realtime search is a hard problem that has not yet been solved. Do you show the most recent, random Tweets first, or the ones with the most authority? And how do you rank a Tweet? We already have PageRank, but what we now need is StreamRank. Many startups are tackling this problem, as is Twitter itself. And now Google and Bing can try their hand at finding the most important bits of data in the firehose. The results should be a more relevant, faster feedback loop between data appearing on the Internet and the search engines finding it. Photo credit: Flickr/ZeroOne Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| AppsFire Launches App Star Awards To Find The Next Great iPhone App Posted: 21 Oct 2009 07:00 PM PDT
Appsfire, the service for sharing iPhone Apps with anyone, has announced that they are doing a contest called App Star Awards, in partnership with SFR/AppliStore and LeWeb. The idea is very simple. Anyone that has a legit iPhone application that doesn’t require jailbreaking, can submit a 30 second video to the contest, even if the app is not totally finished. 30 clips will be preselected, 10 in each category — games, entertainment, utility and other. Those clips will be reviewed and rated by a jury (full list below). Three winners, one in each category, will get a check of $1,500 and a free ad campaign with participating partners. The results will be announced on stage at LeWeb in Paris on December 9th. TechCrunch Europe is organizing the startup competition in partnership with LeWeb. AppsFire is currently taking pre-registrations on the site, but submissions will open on November 23. The full list of jury members: Michael Arrington (TechCrunch) Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| HeyZap Helps Flash Games Go Viral With New API, Launches Analytics Too Posted: 21 Oct 2009 04:34 PM PDT
Co-founder Jude Gomila says that up until now, developers have had to figure out how to implement these syndication features on their own — now they’ll be able to do it quickly using HeyZap’s APIs. To put the API to the test, HeyZap built a game called Balloon Boy Game (in honor of last week’s horror story-turned-scandal), which allows users to share the game with their friends via Facebook and Twitter. Over the course of a few days, the game saw 4 million game plays and 5,000 tweets. This was no doubt helped by the timeliness of the game, but it’s likely that the viral loop played a significant role.  Alongside the new viral API, HeyZap is rolling out a new Analytics feature that will allow developers to track how many times their games have been played, as well as how many times links to their games have been tweeted or shared on Facebook. Developers can do this with some other services like Mochi Media, but Gomila says that HeyZap is unique in allowing developers to see exactly how long gamers are spending during a game session. He also says that the company is working on expanding the feature to allow developers to see exactly when gamers tend to quit the games (say, at the end of a certain level), which could help them tweak the gameplay. HeyZap is also seeing growing support from publishers, who like to use the service because it allows them to monetize Flash games that they used to host for free — whenever a developer integrates HeyZap payments into their game and someone purchases something, the publisher hosting the game gets a cut. Recent additions to HeyZap’s client roster include College Humor and ebaum’s world. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Web 2.0 Summit: V For Van Natta: The Socialization Of Content Posted: 21 Oct 2009 04:23 PM PDT
Van Natta clearly had a strategy for this Q&A: To say “the socialization of content” as much as possible. That’s the direction he wants to lead the social network in as it attempts to prove it can exist in a world where Facebook has passed it as the dominant social network. So what does the catchphrase mean? Van Natta thinks MySpace has a unique position on the web because of its music deals with all the major labels and the independent ones. And because it’s a much more open network than Facebook, he believes this will work to MySpace’s advantage in helping people find content. And that’s why Van Natta had not one, but two announcements today surrounding MySpace Music. The first is a dashboard that artists can use to see analytics about who is visiting their page and listening to their music on the network. The second is a single hub for all music video content. (We covered both more in-depth here) Again, this is possible because of MySpace’s unique music deals with the labels, Van Natta stressed. Van Natta wouldn’t comment on the talk that Google is unhappy with the major ad deal the signed in 2006 and is set to expire next year. He did say that MySpace has always been great at monetizing its site and losing any one deal would not be a major blow. Earlier today, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s keyword was “sharing.” That’s essentially what Van Natta is saying too, but he’s betting that his more open network and strong media ties will differentiate it. Find the full Q&A below (paraphrased): JB: So, did you do a deal with Twitter (laughs)? What are you doing with MySpace? OV: What we’re doing with MySpace is what me and Rupert first talked about it. We think it can be the next generation of digital distribution of content on the web. It’s happening through people and not through portals. It’s the “socialization of content.” JB: To the crowd: How many people have a MySpace page (maybe 20%), how many have a Facebook Page? (everyone). So how is MySpace different, why use it? OV: We think we’re different from Facebook because you don’t have to have a real connection to use it. Maybe you use it to discover music. Music tastes get influenced by your friends. Also movies. These are touchstones in relationships. You shouldn’t have to know them in the socialization of content. JB: MySpace Music is a very big deal. How is music playing into this strategy? Does that box competition out? OV: Music is a great example of our socialization of content. Everyone loves music across all demographics. Our music label relationships are unique and that gives us content that other networks don’t have. MySpace is the only place you can go today to stream all the music you want. And every band out there today has a presence on MySpace. And today we’re launching an Artist Dashboard (more on that here). This is our first example of our integration with iLike, the deal we recently closed. You can see all kinds of data. Geographic breakdowns, etc. There was a huge demand for things like this from artists. And they can use this data beyond the web – like when they think about tour dates. This will be available to all artists. And we can extend this across other entertainment models. JB: Will you charge for it? OV: I think we’ll find other ways to monetize. One more product announcement is that we’re launching the full catalog of music videos from all the labels (big and independant) in one place for the first time. This is a byproduct of our relatioships with the labels. We know that we can make the site a lot easier to use, and we’re working on that. This is one thing. This is a cleaner design than a lot of areas of the site. This will launch as I step off the stage. This will surface videos in a social way. JB: Didn’t Google just announce that? OV: But ours is pretty. (laughs) JB: But seriously what do you have to say about what Google just announced? OV: No deal news, but we have a lot of cool partner announcements. Google has been a great partner for a long time. Stay tuned. JB: Let’s talk about Google more. They have a huge deal with MySpace, that expires next year. It’s big to have that money, but it may not have worked out that well for Google. Does your business hurt if that goes away? OV: We’re really pleased with where are business is and where it’s going. We’ve always been good at monetizing our business. This is integrated marketing that no one else on the web does. And we’ve just scratched the surface. A key going forward is how you measure success. Our business doesn’t hinge on any one deal. News Corp believes that too. JB: Jon Miller is your boss, and they’re building a business of their own: FIM, and MySpace is a part of it. OV: Jon will talk more about it, but FIM is a big part of our monetization today. JB: If Google goes away can that replace it? OV: Again, we’re really good at monetization. There’s a lot of opportunity. JB: Owen was an early member of Facebook. What does success eventually look like for MySpace now? OV: We think we have all the building blocks, we just need to execute. If we do that we will realize the vision of content being socialized. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Web 2.0 Summit: Marissa Mayer Shows Off Social Search, Results From Your Social Networks Posted: 21 Oct 2009 04:13 PM PDT
At the Web 2.0 Summit today in San Francisco, Google’s Marissa Mayer unexpectedly came on stage to unveil a new product. She first announced that Google has also reached a deal with Twitter, which she wrote a blog post about earlier in the day, following the announcement that Bing and Twitter had done the same thing. But Mayer had more to share. There’s a new Google product called “Social Search” that is launching soon in Google Labs. This is a new feature that allows you to see results for queries from people in your social network. This works by using your Google Profile. If you fill it out with the other social networks you’re a member of, such as FriendFeed, Google will scan who you are connected to and give your results from those people. Keys to this type of search will be local information as well as image searches, as Mayer and another Googler showed off today on stage. Mayer didn’t say it, but it’s probably safe to assume that this will only work for networks where the data is open. That means that you’re unlikely to be able to use your Facebook social graph for these web search results. This will launch in the next few weeks. This experiment will be opt-in for now, Mayer says. John Battelle asked Mayer how Twitter would work with Google. Mayer said that it will be integrated into regular results. A key to this functionality will be when articles and blog posts haven’t been written yet about breaking items. When pressed, Mayer would not disclose the details of the Twitter deal, but she did say the keyword, “financial terms,” as in, money changed hands. This is in contrast to the deal Facebook struck with Bing, in which no money changed hands, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said earlier today. “We're not trying to make money on data,” she said. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| MySpace Adds Full Music Video Archives, Deep Artist Analytics Posted: 21 Oct 2009 04:00 PM PDT MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta will make a number of announcements on stage at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this afternoon. Among them are two major changes to MySpace Music. The service will now have a full historical archive of music videos from the major labels and independents. And they are also launching an artist dashboard to give musicians deep analytics into profile views, music streams, and friend information. Both new products will launch later this evening. Music Videos:
Users will have the ability to view videos and purchase the audio song and ringtones for the song from either Amazon or iTunes. MySpace is including pre-roll, post-roll and overlay ads on the videos. Videos will also now be included in the music player widget on all artist pages, if they have music videos available. And users can track videos from artists they are watching, as well as videos their friends are viewing. Artist Dashboard: Until now, artists with a presence on MySpace could only view aggregate numbers for profile views, friends, total song plays and songs played today. Tonight, though, they’ll launch an artist dashboard with significantly more analytics data. Artists can view their fans by age and location demographics, and see total plays, friends and profile views over time. The dashboard is available in 17 languages. And it also includes similar information for the artist from iLike, which MySpace acquired earlier this year.
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| Facebook’s Gift Shop Sings A New Tune Posted: 21 Oct 2009 03:46 PM PDT  Following Google’s announcement of its music product this morning, Facebook is officially enhancing its Gift Shop with a redesign and new categories of gifts and additional gifts for charity, music and sports from developers. The changes will be rolled out to users in the coming weeks On Facebook’s Gift Shop, you need to purchase credits on the site (via credit card), that cost 10 cents in U.S. currency are are available in 15 different countries. With the enhanced version of the gift shop, you will be able to purchase songs as gifts for your friends. Powered by Lala.com, the gift shop will offer over 8 million songs from a vast variety of artists ranging from Mozart to Beyonce. Web songs cost 1 credit (or 10 cents) each, while full, downloadable, and digital rights management-free (DRM) MP3s are 9 credits each. Some of this money goes to Facebook but Lala takes a cut of every transaction. But you don’t have to have a Lala account to play or receive a song. So how do Facebook users play their songs form the social network? You can play songs from your news feed or from Lala.com’s platform, which they can connect to via Facebook Connect. If you buy an MP3, you can also download the songs you can play the tracks on iTunes or other music players. Facebook users who can see the music gift on other friend’s feeds can play the song in full once, after which they will be able to play a 30-second clip. Facebook is also getting a little more sports-friendly by adding branded virtual gifts from professional and college teams. Officially licensed gifts from the U.S. National Basketball Association and U.S. Major League Soccer are now available in the Gift Shop, as well as school-themed gifts from a number of major U.S. colleges ranging from Oklahoma State to Stanford University. While you can currently purchase gifts from non-profits, like Kiva, Project Red, TOMS Shoes, Charity Water and the World Wildlife Fund, Facebook is now also including gifts via the Causes application. So you can make donations to a cause as a gift for your friends for pretty much any cause supported through the app. The concept of Facebook as an e-commerce platform seems to be lifting off. PayPal is partnering with Payvment to help any Facebook user set up a retail storefront. Not to mention the immense popularity of virtual gifts on the platform. And with this new announcement, it seems that not only if Facebook opening up a revenue stream, but the network is creating a totally new way for users to socially engage with the platform: through music. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Skype Hits 521 Million Users And $185 Million In Quarterly Revenue Posted: 21 Oct 2009 03:29 PM PDT
Even though it is embroiled in a nasty legal battle with its founders over its future, Skype continues to rack up impressive numbers. In today’s third quarter earnings from eBay (which still owns Skype, but is preparing to unload it), the company breaks out Skype’s performance (see slide above). Skype’s registered users grew 41 percent to 521 million people. That’s a stunning 40 million new registered users in the past three months. Revenues grew 29 percent to $185 million. Free Skype-to-Skype minutes grew 74 percent to 27.7 billion minutes, whereas SkypeOut minutes (which is what members pay for) grew 44 percent to 3.1 billion minutes. All of those SkypeOut calls translated to a healthy $185 million in revenues, up 29 percent from a year ago. If it keeps up at this pace, it should easily be able to exceed its $1 billion annual revenue goal by 2011. Skype was one of the few bright spots in eBay’s earnings, along with Paypal, which brought in $688 million in revenues (up 15 percent). eBay’s bread-and-butter marketplaces business was down 1 percent to $1.365 billion. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Flickr Adds People Tagging. And It’s Better Than Facebook’s. Posted: 21 Oct 2009 03:00 PM PDT
Its new “People In Photos” feature is long overdue. With it, you’ll be able to select a picture and start typing a person’s name, which will then scan your Flickr contacts to see who it should add as a tag to the picture. And like Facebook, you’ll be able to draw an outline around someone’s face to show exactly who they are in the picture. But the reason this feature is even better than Facebook’s functionality is the opt-out and opt-in options. While most users love the people tagging for photos in Facebook, just about everyone wishes there were more options that allow you to opt-out of being tagged in certain photos. You can untag yourself, or block people from tagging you, but there isn’t a good case-by-case method of doing this. Flickr is offering that by allowing you to opt-out of being tagged in individual photos. And once you opt-out, unlike Facebook, no one can put you back into that photo. You can also set who is able to tag you in photos. And you can set who is able to tag people in photos that you shared. The stength Facebook has over Flickr is that you probably have many more contacts, or at the very least, actual friends on Facebook. Because Flickr relies on your Flickr contact list, it probably won’t be as useful as Facebook’s, at least at first. But this is a great incentive to get you adding more contacts on Flickr, and encouraging your friends to sign up. Users have long been working around Flickr’s lag of people photo tagging by doing it manually in the tag section of pictures. Now it’s getting a whole lot better. Undoubtedly, some users will hate this feature, but they can opt-out entirely from being tagged. When you’re tagged in a photo, it will show up in your recent activity stream. And Flickr has revamped users’ profiles to show pictures you’re tagged in. [photo: flickr/spuz]
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| AOL Rebrands Sphere As Surphace Posted: 21 Oct 2009 02:58 PM PDT
Blog content engine Sphere, which was acquired by AOL in 2008, is rebranding itself as Surphace. According to a blog post on the site, Surphace’s name is a better fit with next year’s product roadmap for the content platform. The post explains that Surphace will include the beta version of its self-serve platform S4 (it’s currently in alpha); SurphBoard, which is an updated editorial user interface for larger partners; a URL shortener; real-time conversation threads or “surphing;” and a few more stealth features. Founded by entrepreneur and True Ventures VC Tony Conrad, Sphere, which launched in private beta in 2005 and to the general public in 2006, developed a technology that automatically finds blog posts related to whatever a user is looking at currently. The fairly successful product, which uses contextually matching technology, is currently integrated into over 50,000 websites, including Time, CNN, WSJ, and more; and is live on over 2 billion monthly article pages across the web. In the blog post, Sphere’s Josh Guttman wrote, “our business today is centered around bringing content to the surface and so, Surphace is a name that, not only defines our business, but one we've grown to love.” Sphere originally landed in Bill Wilson's organization, the former EVP of Programming at AOL. His division, which is now known as MediaGlow (which he’s the president of), controls AOL's content properties (Entertainment, Finance, Weblogs, etc.). Wilson and new AOL CEO Tim Armstrong have been firming up their solid content strategy, which includes Sphere. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Web 2.0 Summit: A Conversation With Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg Posted: 21 Oct 2009 02:27 PM PDT
Sandberg’s key point through all the questions was clear: Facebook is all about sharing. But it’s different from a competitor like Twitter because you can use Facebook to easily share with one person, just your high school friends, or the world. Sandberg also noted that Facebook sees a shift going on from an information economy to a social economy. This can be thought of a move from everyone just using Google to get information, to using social services like Facebook and Twitter. She spoke at length about the importance of Facebook’s development community, both the Platform and Facebook Connect. She expanded on some data Facebook VP of Engineering, Mike Schroepfer, gave earlier, noting that Facebook now has over a million developers working on its platform. And 250 applications now have a least a million users each. Sandberg alsp spoke a bit more about the new Bing deal, which Microsoft only mentioned briefly while announcing the Twitter deal. She made it clear that the data Facebook will share with Bing is only the data that users opt to make public. She also noted that no money changed hand in the deal. “We’re not trying to make money on data,” she said. While Microsoft would not comment on the deal with Twitter, Microsoft’s Qi Lu did imply it was a deal that involved money changing hands. Here’s a chart from Mary Meeker’s talk yesterday at Web 2.0 Summit that shows how time spent on sutes like Facebook is going up.
Below find my live notes (paraphrased): JB: So earlier we saw the Bing announcement, but we SS: We’re announcing today that we’re working with Microsoft to give them a feed of our updates that are open to the public. In the Bing search results you’ll see all data that users make public. JB: So when will that be in Google? SS: Oh you almost got me. Nothing to announce at this time. JB: So Facebook is profitable now. That’s something you must be proud of. How did you do it? SS: Yeah we knew that was going to happen. We think the numbers are finally showing the promise of advertising on the web. It’s no longer a one-way communication that you blast to people. Facebook is where you are your authentic self of the web, and marketers love that. We’re not only profitable but cash flow positive as well. JB: What’s the date of the IPO? SS: Oh, we’re announcing that later (laughs). Nothing to announce now. JB: How important have online ads been to scale the business? SS: Really important, we’re international now with it. We sell directly and we have a platform, both are really important for it. JB: It seems like the referral system is shifting. It’s not just about Google searches anymore, it’s Facebook and Twitter now. Did you notice that when you were still at Google? Is that why you shifted to Facebook? Should Google be worried? SS: What we see at Facebook is that there’s a shift going on from information economy to the social web. Google will continue to be important, the search for sites, but we believe in the wisdom of friends. That’s how I learned not to take my kids to see Where The Wild Things Are. JB: What about Aardvark which using IM and other things to answer questions? How do you manage the tension between the things you do in house between what the development community creates? Like Aardvark. SS: The developer community is very important to us. We don’t try to build everything our users want to use. We do the core technology. We have over a million developers. 250 applications now have at least a million users each. We don’t care how people share using Facebook, it just matters that we’re the technology to connect. JB: What is Facebook’s unique proposition versus Google or Microsoft in competing for the social graph? SS: No cake is ever baked on the Internet – we have to be vigilant. Facebook is about where you are on the web. You put up your most personal information. We’re the only place that you can share with one person, just your high school friends, or the world. And we can scale, as Mike talked about earlier. JB: Let’s talk about Facebook Connect. Give a quick overview. Is it now better than it was when it launched? SS: It’s an extension of our platform. So if you’re on a third party site, you can log in there with your FB credentials, and share back information to Facebook. I used to have meetings with people who want communities on their sites, but every site can do that. We make it easy to add your friends which you already have on Facebook. JB: How much more will you be able to do? Not everyone is my Facebook friend. Will the core Facebook funcitonality come outside of Facebook too? SS: Our goal is to help you share the most you can both on Facebook and off. JB: Facebook Connect looks like a potential Trojan Horse for a monetization service, like an AdSense like product. Is that in the plan? SS: Not now. We’re asked that all the time, and it’s a good question, but we’re not focused on that right now. Right now we want Connect to be easier to use, an work with partners for deep integrations. JB: Are developers asking for monetization through Connect? How do you keep developers happy? SS: There are different types of developers and sites that use us. Some are big like Huffington Post or ABC News. ABC News used Facebook Connect when Michael Jackson died – users talked through Connect. It’s good for us and them. But it’s not about monetization, it’s more about making it easier to interact. On the Platform side, Mark Pincus/Zygna is a great exmple. JB: Glad you brought up Zynga, they make their money through PayPal. Will you do your own payment system? SS: There’s a lot of speculation about that, but I won’t speak to that. But we do have payments already on the site for buying ads, for example. We’re also allowing people to buy virtual goods with Facebook Credits. We’re doing testing with a few developers to take payments in their apps. That’s all I’ll say. JB: When Ev Williams of Twitter was here, I asked if he was flattered that FB is more like Twitter now. Was that planned? SS: Change is in the DNA of Facebook. That existed long before Twitter. We think Twitter is impressive – they’ve built something important. The world is shifting towards realtime sharing. When we launched status updates, no one got it. Now people are realizing Twitter is important. That’s a global movement. Like Evan said, there’s room for more than one player in that. JB: The scale is really different too, right? SS: We do 45 million status updates a day, from 30 million individuals. That’s a lot. JB: Has the vision behind Facbeook shifted? SS: I don’t think it has. It’s always been about helping people connect. Certainly we build new things that change the service. We’re evolving. JB: So you were in the Treasury during the Clinton administration. How do you think the Valley is doing at having a conversation with D.C.? SS: Silicon Valley is an amazing force for our country. We’re changing the world. I think our impact on policy is not as profound. Other industries are better at that. Globalization, immigration policies for us to hire, we as an industry have more to do for those things. They’re important for all of us – free capital and labor. We can do better. Audience Q&A Session Q: Aren’t you moving more in the direction of strangers with your changes? SS: Privacy has always been at the center of what we do. Facebook allows you to differentiate who you want to share with. A lot of people, or just a few. And now you can share with the public. It’s all about user choices. They need to be more granular. Should this status update be for everyone, or just for my friends? We’re still working on it. JB: Yahoo, AOL, and MySpace are all moving towards content. Facebook isn’t doing that now. Will that change? SS: No, that’s not going to change. We’re about sharing, our content comes from users. We’re an important referer of content. We will not hire an editorial staff and do our own. Q: Any advice for marketers who want to use Facebook? SS: Do it quick and iterate. Facebook is much more iterative, it’s two way marketing. Make a Page and update it. Q: Can you imagine a future where Google and Facebook work together? SS: I can imagine a lot of things, but still nothing to announce. More broadly, are we working with lots of partners for sharing information? Yes. We have an open platform, we want to work with a lot of people. JB: That was not a “no.” (laughs) Q: Does Google have to have an agreement to access your APIs? What’s with the Bing deal? SS: The Bing agreement is giving them a feed of our “everyone” data. No money exchanged hands. We’re not trying to make money on data. Q: What about older people now using Facebook? SS: We want everyone to use Facebook. It started in college, but we’ve grown quickly. The fastest growing group is over 35 now in the U.S. The great thing is that Facebook is personal for everyone. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Twitter: You Say Transparency, I Say Vulnerability Posted: 21 Oct 2009 02:21 PM PDT
We received a number of tips early this morning that the majority of web servers at Twitter was exposing server and load-balancer status information to the public. The status page, which are an (often default) option in the open source Apache web server dump an output of all connections and state information for a particular server. The information is used by administrators to monitor servers, and the pages are often either removed entirely or locked down to prevent the information from being used for nefarious purposes. At some point in the past 24 hours (I would more accurately guess 22 hours 28 minutes and 4 seconds ago, based on the status page itself), the Twitter web servers introduced a misconfiguration to expose this information to the public. The page includes overall server statistics along with every HTTP requests currently being handled by that server, with the full request URL. The server status page is usually accessed by requesting News of the pages being open spread quickly through Twitter, with some calling it “great transparency” while others recognizing it for what it is – a little too much transparency, and unintentional. Twitter were very quick to respond and blocked all access to the page, and the vast majority of the information found is purely informational and can be deduced through other means. Your Twitter account is probably safe again, but that doesn’t mean we can’t geek out while we get a sneak peak at what Twitter looks like behind the curtain. Screenshot of one such page below with some of the information cut out.
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| That Didn’t Take Long: Twitter Search Is Coming To Google Posted: 21 Oct 2009 02:17 PM PDT
It’s worth noting that while Bing’s Twitter search is live today, it sounds like Google will be working Twitter’s data into its search results over the next few months. The next question is whether or not Google will get access to Facebook’s stream of real-time updates (Microsoft announced deals with both Twitter and Facebook at today’s Web 2.0 Summit). Neither of Microsoft’s deals with Twitter and Facebook are exclusive, which leaves the door open for Google to pair up with Facebook as well. But Google and Facebook have butted heads in the past. And Microsoft has a long history with Facebook: the company supplements Facebook’s search with Bing results, and it controls a small stake in the company after investing$240 million at a sky-high $15 billion valuation back in late 2007. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Pew Study Reports That Internet Users Are Becoming More Status Update-Friendly Posted: 21 Oct 2009 01:00 PM PDT
A new Pew Internet And American Life Project study is being released today which reports that internet users on a whole are becoming more likely to update their statuses online (on social media networks). The report says that 19% of internet users say they use Twitter or another service to share updates Updating status online is a learned behavior for most internet users. It’s not something users tend to do naturally but these statistics shows that people are increasingly looking to Twitter, Facebook and other sites to update their status, which is definitely noteworthy. The full report is embedded below. While the survey seems to revolve around Twitter, it’s unclear if respondents were referring to Twitter or Facebook because of the way the question was framed. The exact survey question was "Do you ever use Twitter or another service to share updates about yourself or to see updates about others?" Facebook has an incredibly large user base that posts status updates and a larger userbase than Twitter. In fact, Facebook was one of the first networks to coin the “status update.” I’m really curious what percentage of the “another service” category Facebook makes up. A representative for Pew said the question was open ended because they wanted capture the the general gist of “status updates” vs. seeing what the breakdown was of the origin of the updates. Twitter was chosen as the lead in the question because the currently, the “moment is ripe for Twitter as the exemplar of status updates.” This discounts of course that Facebook has more users and traffic than Twitter, but ok. UPDATE: Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg reported today that Facebook gets 45 million status updates per day. The study also reveals some not-so-surprising stats. For example, the report claims that wireless access is an key factor in predicting whether someone uses Twitter or another status update service, with users who own and use a wireless internet device makes an internet more likely to Tweet or update their status. Or, that users with more internet-connected devices (computers, phones) are more likely to update their status or Tweet. Well, duh. Under the heading, “younger internet users,” Pew’s document inconclusively addresses the whole age issue over Twitter users by reporting that users between the ages of 18 to 44 report rapid uptake of Twitter over the last nine months, whereas internet users ages 45 and older report slower adoption rates. For example, 37% of internet users age 18-24 use Twitter or “another service,” up from 19% in December 2008. Let’s be real here, the 18-44 demographic doesn’t adequately define “younger internet users.” The report also indicated that Facebook users may be graying a bit. The median age of a Twitter user is 31, whereas the media age for Facebook, now 33, up from 26 in May 2008. What the study did not highlight is that increase in status updates (across all social networks, not just Twitter) is also attributed to the fact that these networks are steadily making it easier for users to post updates to multiple networks at once. MySpace recently launched a publish to Twitter feature, and Facebook launched a limited version and may be launching the full monty soon. And of course, web and mobile-based Twitter and Facebook clients like Tweetdeck, Tweetie and Seesmic also make it simpler for users to post status updates. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| What’s Inside This Mystery Box? Posted: 21 Oct 2009 12:46 PM PDT  This just mysteriously appeared on our doorstep. The return address on the label leads to Verizon's PR company, Weber Shandwick. We're going to do a video unboxing in just a second - in the mean time, any guesses as to whats inside? Update: We've unwrapped the mystery box - check out the video here. |
Coinciding with the worldwide debut of Windows 7 and the launch of 
The French-born version of YouTube, 
Last night we 
MySpace CEO 
MySpace Videos attracts 11 million or so worldwide visitors per month (Comscore, August 2009), but has lacked comprehensive music video licensing rights. Tonight the service will launch a deep archive of music videos from all the major labels and independents. You can see the video homepage at 
My mother always yells at me when she looks at my pictures on 
Today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, 
Mere hours after today’s 
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