The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Video: Kevin Spacey Tries to Explain Twitter to David Letterman
- On the Apparent Apple Suicide
- Cautiously Optimistic: CrunchBase Q2 Report Shows Upticks In VC Funding and Exits
- Why Did Google Let Yahoo Run Off With Xoopit?
- Raptr’s New Chat Client Helps Friends Get Their Game On
- Apple’s Mesmerizing Window Display, Featuring An Infinite Flurry Of iPhone Apps
- MySpace Music Appears To Be A Hit, Increases Traffic Tenfold Year-Over-Year
- Facebook Video: Now Serving 1 Billion Views A Month, Including This Amazing Zuck Impression
- XING Launches OpenSocial App Assault On LinkedIn
- Tech Investor News Delivers Exactly What You Assume It Would
- LocalBunny Gives Businesses Custom Twitter Bots, But It Longs For Old @Replies System
- MindTouch Upgrades Collaborative Platform With Video And Developer-Friendly Tools
- TechCrunch Europe Events And Initiatives Moving On
- Another Mainstream Media Castoff Joins TechCrunch: Welcome Paul Carr
- As Ning’s U.S. Audience Flattens, It Raises Another $15 Million.
- Buddy Media Unveils The Ultimate Twitter Client For Brand Management
- Rumor: Apple to Launch Tablet With Verizon
- BrightRoll: Q2 Pre-Roll Video Ad Rates Are Down, But Total Revenues Are Up
- The iPod, As We Know It, Is Dying
- Probably Not The Palm Pre Chart Roger McNamee Wants To See
- Test-driving the Barnes & Noble eBook Store
- Update: Pushfix for Jailbroken iPhones Caused Push Broadcast Problems
- Y Combinator’s Picurio Crowdsources Photo Sharing
- How Much Is That Apple Tablet Going To Cost? Not $399 Or $499.
- First Rule Of Apple Earnings Calls: You Do Not Talk About The $99 iPhone
| Video: Kevin Spacey Tries to Explain Twitter to David Letterman Posted: 22 Jul 2009 08:56 AM PDT  This is a video featuring Kevin Spacey. He's a man who gets paid millions of dollars to pretend to be other men, for entertainment. And here he is on the "Late Show With David Letterman" trying to explain Twitter, the pulse of the planet, to Mr. Letterman. Key points to remember: Twitter is free; you type with your thumbs; it's "a waste of time." Mr. Spacey: "And now, I'll get, in about an hour, lots and lots of people saying 'hi' back." Mr. Letterman: "That really is a miracle."
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| Posted: 22 Jul 2009 06:24 AM PDT  Every once in a while you get a story so strange and horrible that it takes a while to sink in. I'm talking about the suicide of a Foxconn employee who was caught doing something with an "iPhone prototype" and jumped out of the window. Matt wrote: So the story goes that a 25-year-old man at Foxconn - where iPhones are born - was to send 16 iPhone prototypes to Apple from the Chinese factory, but one was lost somewhere. The Foxconn security department then proceeded to illegally search the man's apartment and interrogated him. But that was too much for the man that might be responsible for leaking a prototype of the next iPhone. A few days ago on July 16, he jumped from a 12-story building because of the incident. It's probably not out of the realm of possibilities that he not only was roughed up, but also lost his job even though that's not mentioned in the report.This means two things: that there is an iPhone prototype floating around (a highly dubious proposition considering that they would not have "mailed" any prototypes to Foxconn nor does Foxconn particularly need prototypes from Cupertino - they only need plans and someone from Apple to supervise the manufacture) and that the CE industry is built on false promises and exploitation. It's financial exploitation, physical exploitation, and psychological exploitation and we're all part of it.
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| Cautiously Optimistic: CrunchBase Q2 Report Shows Upticks In VC Funding and Exits Posted: 22 Jul 2009 06:24 AM PDT Is the worst behind us? The broad worldwide recession hit the venture capital and startup communities hard last year. Memories of the NASDAQ meltdown and venture capital "nuclear winter" earlier this decade sent everyone into a tizzy as they feared a repeat performance—venture dollars froze and hundreds of thousands of tech workers were laid off. But it appears that the worst is over for now. Or at least, the broad indicators suggest that venture and entrepreneurial activity has stabilized and may in some cases be trending up. In Q2 2009 we tracked via CrunchBase a total of 400 estimated new startups founded, $6.4 billion in new venture capital financings and $15.8 billion in merger and acquisition activity. (Download the full report here for $195) And we only tracked 20,000 new layoffs, just 10% of the 200,000 we saw let go in Q1 2009. Of course this could just be the calm in the eye of the storm, with significant additional turbulence up ahead. Venture capital returns continue to flatline—there are simply too many venture firms investing too much money, and the IPO market for startups remains effectively shuttered. We either need a path towards liquidity for startups or a much smaller venture capital market. But the Q2 CrunchBase numbers make us cautiously optimistic. For one thing, we estimate a rebound in the number of start-ups being founded (always a good sign). There were already 191 companies in CrunchBase founded in Q2 2009 (at the time we did our final data run) . We expect that number to reach more than 400 as a result of a normal lag in self-reporting. Venture investments are also coming back. They increased 19% from $5.4 billion in Q1 to $6.4 billion in Q2 2009. This compares to $5.3 billion in Q2 deals counted by Dow Jones VentureSource and only $3.7 billion by Thomson Reuters in the MoneyTree Report which came out last night. (Each report is based on its own set of data and different methodologies). Although the trend is up from last quarter, our Q2 2009 data is 24% lower than Q2 2008. The number of deals we tracked in the quarter was 516, a bit lower than the 560 in Q1, but the average deal size went up. Also, we saw a greater appetite for early stage investing, with the money going into Series A investments increasing 83 percent to $900 million. Series B investments still dominated with 104 deals totaling $1 billion. The average deal size was $12.4 million, with the median deal size at $5.5 million. The M&A action is also starting to pick up. CrunchBase counted 214 exits totaling $15.8 billion for Q2 2009. Aggregate M&A volume is 50% higher than the Q1 total of $10.3 billion, though still down 40% from $25.8 billion a year ago. About half of that total, however, comes from a single transaction: Oracle’s $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems (announced during the quarter, but still pending). Other large M&A deals included Glaxo SmithKline buying Stiefel for $3.8 billion, Intel acquiring Wind River for $884 million, OpenText snatching Vignette for $310 million and Intuit buying PayCycle for $175 million. The full 35-page second-quarter report (including 29 interactive exhibits in excel and 33 PDF graphics) is available for $195 as a download here. This quarter, we added all our raw data and tables into excel files so readers can easily cut-and-paste charts into their own reports and slice-and-dice the data for their own use. We’ve also included a number of graphics that readers can use for third party publishing, linking is appreciated. Of course, you're also welcome to grab the data free of charge through our CrunchBase open API. See the report table of contents and a list of exhibits here. BUY the Q2 2009 Report BUY the Annual Subscription (2008 Year In Review, Q1 2009 Report, Q2 2009 Report plus the Q3 and Q4 Reports sent to you as soon as they are issued) Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| Why Did Google Let Yahoo Run Off With Xoopit? Posted: 22 Jul 2009 06:24 AM PDT
Xoopit essentially offers an easy way to organize and manage e-mail, having invented an indexing architecture similar to web search engines that helps users retrieve content from their archived e-mail, including attachments. The startup raised a total of $6.5 million to date, securing seed funding amounting up to $1.5 million back in December 2006 and raising $5 million more from Accel Partners and Foundation Capital in April 2008. Ever since its public launch, the startup has been focusing a lot on ‘upgrading’ Gmail, bringing an enhanced media search feature and direct Facebook connections to Google’s free webmail service. In fact, their focus was so clearly set on Gmail that the startup’s ‘About’ page currently speaks of nothing but the webmail service and how it improves its users’ experience in terms of e-mail management. Sure enough, Xoopit was also a featured app on the Yahoo Mail applications platform since the latter debuted last December, but I can’t help but thinking it should have been Mountain View pulling in Xoopit instead of Sunnyvale. Think about it: Gmail and by extension Google Apps are core products for Google, which is in essence a search engine company. Xoopit enhances the search functionality of their web-based e-mail service. You’d think it’s a no-brainer for Google to go after the startup if they knew its management and investors were open to a sale. And if the selling price was really only $20 million, it’s not the money that would make Google think twice. With a bottom line like Google’s, an acquisition of this size is basically pocket change for the company, and yet they’d be picking up an agile startup creating a product that’s highly relevant to their core service offering. Furthermore, it’d make for a great talent buy, if only for the startup’s founders Bijan Marashi (ex-Telecom Italia, Inktomi and Microsoft) and Jonathan Katzman (former exec at TellMe Networks and also an ex-Softie). Kudos to Yahoo for snapping up Xoopit - I realize it makes sense for them too - but why didn’t Google make this move? Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| Raptr’s New Chat Client Helps Friends Get Their Game On Posted: 22 Jul 2009 06:23 AM PDT
The new client is based on AIR (which means it will run on Mac and PC) and integrates support for all major chat protocols, allowing gamers to keep in touch with their friends from a single app. Raptr isn’t anywhere near the first desktop multi-protocol chat client — I’ve been using Adium for Mac for years, and Windows has programs like Trillian available, both which support protocols like AIM, MSN, and Yahoo Messenger. But what Raptr can do that the others can’t is monitor whatever game you’re currently playing, be it a full-fledged PC game like StarCraft or one of the many casual games found on Facebook and MySpace. Overall, the service can recognize over 32,000 different games, including stand-alone Flash games that you’ll find embedded on countless sites across the web. Raptr’s client also includes support for some game-specific protocols, like Xbox Live. This information is broadcast to your friends as your current away message/status (something like “Jason is playing Counter-Strike”), which is visible to anyone using a standard IM chat client. But the service is even more powerful if your friends are also using the Raptr client, as you’ll have the ability to automatically join whatever game they’re playing with one click, with the application handling all the relevant server settings. Interestingly, the new application means that Raptr is competing to some degree against Xfire, the company that Raptr founder Dennis Fong co-founded and later sold to Viacom. Xfire also offers a chat service for gamers, but Fong says that Xfire is geared more towards hardcore gamers, and doesn’t offer support for other IM protocols or the ability to detect browser based games, like those that might be played on Facebook. Alongside the new chat client, Raptr is launching a ‘Game Manager’, which brings much of the service’s social network functionality to the desktop. Using the manager, you’ll be able to access your Raptr profile, view the achievements of other players, and see which games have been recommended to you based on your past preferences. There’s also a listing of all of the games installed on your desktop (you can update them directly from the Game Manager), and a library of popular Flash games that Raptr has included with the software bundle. Raptr can expect the new products to be adopted quickly, primarily because the service is now being heavily promoted in many popular PC games. Raptr has scored some major deals with game publishers, including Activision/Blizzard, THQ, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), NHN USA, Gamescampus, and Gala-Net. These publishers are behind some of the world’s most popular video games (Blizzard is behind a little game called World of Warcraft, along with a slew of other very highly regarded titles, and SOE made the reknowned EverQuest series). So why are publishers so eager to integrate the service? Raptr adds a viral channel to gaming that has not previously existed before — when I go to play World of Warcraft, all of my friends know that I’m playing, which may prompt them to start playing as well. And in an age when paying for and installing a PC game can be done without leaving your desk through services like Steam, the ability for a game to go viral becomes even more powerful. It’s a symbiotic relationship, and it puts Raptr in a very good position. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| Apple’s Mesmerizing Window Display, Featuring An Infinite Flurry Of iPhone Apps Posted: 22 Jul 2009 06:23 AM PDT Earlier this evening I was walking down the streets of Palo Alto near TechCrunch HQ, when I stumbled across what is likely the coolest window display I’ve ever seen, unsurprisingly housed at the Apple Store. The display features a giant wall of apps flying by, accompanied by a massive iPhone that briefly displays a handful of featured apps for a few seconds apiece. As far as I know this is new, though it’s possible that it has appeared in front of other stores before now. In any case, it’s damn cool, and reminds me of the incredible App Wall that Apple featured at this year’s WWDC. Check out the video above. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| MySpace Music Appears To Be A Hit, Increases Traffic Tenfold Year-Over-Year Posted: 22 Jul 2009 04:31 AM PDT
According to Nielsen data (PDF) for June 2009, traffic to MySpace's music subdomain has grown 190% since its launch in September 2008 and year-over-year traffic to the URL has increased a staggering 1,017%. This traffic includes at least one visit by our own MG Siegler, who was happy to learn Pearl Jam’s new single premiered exclusively on the service. New MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta may be convinced users are not sure if the service is a destination for music or not, but if these numbers are correct it would make sense for him and the recently announced executive team for MySpace Music (which is a joint-venture with some major music labels and thus an independent entity) to dedicate a good deal of attention to it. Not that they’re haven’t been doing that up until now - in fact we mentioned earlier that the service has much improved since its unveiling and according to a recent Telegraph article the service is slated for a September launch in the UK. Going back to the Nielsen report, the estimated 190 percent increase in traffic since the service’s debut translates to growth from 4.2 million unique visitors to 12.1 million in June 2009, with traffic to the subdomain having increased 1,017 percent year-over-year. When comparing unique visitors for MySpace Music to other sites within the music category, it ranked third only behind AOL Music and Yahoo! Music but ahead of other popular music sites like MTV Networks Music, MSN Music and Pandora. According to Nielsen, people between the ages of 12 and 17 were 2.4 times more likely than the average active Internet user to visit MySpace Music on the subdomain. Visitors between 18 and 24 were 2.2 more likely than the average Internet user to visit the site in June. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| Facebook Video: Now Serving 1 Billion Views A Month, Including This Amazing Zuck Impression Posted: 22 Jul 2009 03:07 AM PDT
Of course, the best part of the video comes from a Facebook engineer named Putnam as he describes Mark Zuckerberg’s initial reaction to the Video idea. Just watch the clip below. Also be sure to check out the full video, though beware of the ridiculously sappy piano music playing throughout. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| XING Launches OpenSocial App Assault On LinkedIn Posted: 22 Jul 2009 02:34 AM PDT
Some XING apps will be be familiar to LinkedIn users: they will both have SlideShare and online workspaces from Huddle. But XING has has sourced heavily from European sources with apps from Doodle, Dopplr, Deutsche Welle, MindMeister, spreed, travelload, Tungle, sueddeutsche.de, Wallstreet:Online, WELT ONLINE and ZCOPE. The applications spread from news and project management through to travel planning and data sharing. As data protection and security are much more of a consideration in the EU, this is the world's largest completely SSL-encrypted https installation of OpenSocial. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Tech Investor News Delivers Exactly What You Assume It Would Posted: 22 Jul 2009 02:11 AM PDT
Apart from those, I consider an RSS reader to be such a vital tool for me as well, both on a private as a professional level. As I wrote before, I quickly fell in love with Streamy for that particular aspect of sifting through mountains of information on a daily basis, partly because it allows me to both track blogs and news sites I subscribe to and keep track of what Twitter and the people I follow on there as well as on Facebook and FriendFeed are buzzing about. Add to that Techmeme, which has an algorithm in place designed to weed out the best and/or most talked about news stories related to the tech industry out there, and you can tell I have a pretty solid set of tools readily available that enable me to keep tabs on what I want and need to be tracking closely. Techfuga was another one, but it recently ground to a halt. New to the arsenal of tools at my disposal free of charge is Tech Investor News, which despite its not-so-sexy name is exactly what it sounds like: a news site that investors in tech companies - plus industry pundits and reporters - should be made aware of. Glad to be of service. TIN complements the websites and services described above perfectly, and competes with neither one of them. If anything, it saves me a lot of time and rids me of the pain of going to Google News / Blogsearch all the time to learn what the most recent stories in tech or centered around a company in particular are. What I like about it? The big fat stock quote in the upper corner, the fact that you can filter down to 20 of the most discussed tech companies (note the Google Investor News screenshot below), the decent search function and the speed with which it updates news feeds (every 5 minutes or so, with some human editing involved). But what I also like is the fact that you can narrow your news consumption down to a specific set of categories which makes it very easy to find specific information (for instance, you can opt to display only stories about ‘Steve Jobs’ or ‘Rumors’ when browsing for news on Apple). TIN is a project bootstrapped by a self-described ‘media nut’ / investor called Frank Cioffi, who spent decades working in such media as radio and television and turned to the internet after many years of consulting and trading stocks. Cioffi got the idea for Tech Investor News to scratch his own itch, and that’s always a good way to start something that other people - like me - could also find interesting. Bookmarked! Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| LocalBunny Gives Businesses Custom Twitter Bots, But It Longs For Old @Replies System Posted: 22 Jul 2009 01:14 AM PDT
The problem LocalBunny solves is fairly straightforward: small businesses with relatively modest followings can usually respond to all of their fans without too much trouble, but as Twitter continues to grow, this is is going prove more difficult. Celebrities have long dealt with the same issue, but it’s hardly a big deal if someone like @johncmayer fails to respond to my tweets. The same can’t be said about businesses, where a missed response could well lead to a lost customer. So LocalBunny automates these responses. To get set up on the service, businesses create a Twitter account they’d like to use to represent their business (as an example, I’ll use @SFwidget). They then make a list of keywords that users will be able to send, along with the auto-respones that LocalBunny should send back. For example, I could set it so that if a user tweeted “@SFwidget hours“, they’d get a response listing off my business’s hours of operations. Likewise, restaurants could include keywords that would send out their daily specials, and bars could send out ’secret’ passwords that could entitle you to a drink special. If you’d like to try it out for yourself, try tweeting “@crunchbasedemo company apple”, which will query CrunchBase for information on Apple Inc. It’s a good idea, but unfortunately it’s going to have a much harder time going viral than it would have a few months ago, before Twitter severely handicapped the way @replies worked. There used to be an option that allowed users to see all @replies sent out by the people they were following — an option that was popular for ‘power users’, as it served as a great way to discover interesting people, and also helped them stumble upon neat new services like this one. Unfortunately, Twitter killed off that option in May, making it so that you can only see @replies when you are following the person to whom the message is directed (yes, it’s confusing). In effect, nobody is going to be seeing your queries to the local businesses unless they’re already following that business on Twitter, which isn’t likely. There’s also one other problem that the startup has at launch: there’s no quick way to check which keywords a given business is supporting. Founder Kevin Cawley says that you’ll soon be able to simply include the word ‘help’ in your outgoing message to get a directory of available terms, but that isn’t live yet. For the time being, the service includes a number of suggestions when you initiate contact with it. One other potential knock against the company: LocalBunny is charging $99 per month to operate on a single Twitter account with 25 supported response keywords, with a ‘deluxe’ package available with unlimited responses (you have to call in to get the price). That seems a bit steep for a service that is still pretty foreign to most people, but as Twitter to continues to pick up steam there’s a chance it will prove to be well worth it. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| MindTouch Upgrades Collaborative Platform With Video And Developer-Friendly Tools Posted: 22 Jul 2009 12:46 AM PDT Opensource wiki developer Mindtouch today has launched several new features in its opensource, wiki-like collaboration platform for enterprises. This includes the ability to add video to MindTouch wikis, package applications built in MindTouch for distribution, and stage content on wikis. MindTouch's platform connects teams, enterprise systems, web services and Web 2.0 applications with IT governance enabling users to access, publish and organize data and systems. Customers include Mozilla, Microsoft, Intel, Intuit, The Washington Post, US Army, EMC, Harvard, Timberland, and The United Nations. MindTouch has partnered with open source video platform Kaltura, to let MindTouch users collaborate, edit, publish and syndicate video within a MindTouch wiki. End users can record video and have multiple parties edit within a MindTouch page. The company's new application packaging feature allows developers to create a compressed file for import into other MindTouch instances, letting enterprise users install add-on applications easily. This addition represents MindTouch’s ambitions to become an application platform where installing applications are as easy as adding Firefox addon. MindTouch is clearly trying to make it as simple as possible for developers to build applications on top of the MindTouch platform. MindTouch has steadily been adding features to its platform aimed towards developers, including the ability to build rich applications off of Mindtouch’s platform. MindTouch’s wiki-like platform is appealing to businesses both big and small, and the open source ideation seems to provide for an innovative product that simplifies complex interactions, especially for developers. Competitors to MindTouch include Socialtext and pbworks. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| TechCrunch Europe Events And Initiatives Moving On Posted: 22 Jul 2009 12:45 AM PDT
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| Another Mainstream Media Castoff Joins TechCrunch: Welcome Paul Carr Posted: 21 Jul 2009 11:30 PM PDT
Most recently Carr wrote a weekly column for The Guardian called Not Safe For Work. He’s known for his bitingly sarcastic enthusiasm for tech companies. A classic post was this summary of last year’s Le Web conference in Paris (he and organizer Loic Le Meur are somehow now good friends). Carr has also written numerous books. His most recent, Bringing Nothing To The Party: True Confessions Of A New Media Whore, is a bizarre story of his not-entirely-successful attempt to become a famous Internet billionaire. He is also working on his next book, which he says “is about the year I spent living virtually as a digital nomad. Think Down And Out In Paris And London meets Fear And Loathing In, well, everywhere.” Carr will write a weekly column for TechCrunch and TechCrunch Europe each Saturday morning. Look for his first post at the end of this week. You may also see his name pop up from time to time on other posts as well. Welcome, Paul. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| As Ning’s U.S. Audience Flattens, It Raises Another $15 Million. Posted: 21 Jul 2009 09:22 PM PDT Do-it-yourself social network Ning has added another $15 million to its coffers from LightSpeed Venture Partners, the company has confirmed to us. This brings the total capital raised to $119 million. Its other investors include Allen & Co., Legg Mason, chairman and co-founder Marc Andreessen, and Reid Hoffman. Ning offers a counterpoint to the uniformity of Facebook, allowing anyone to create their own social network customized to their particular interest or social group. Earlier this year, Ning passed one million social networks created (it is now up to 1.3 million), but the key is how many of those are active and how many people they attract. In the U.S., unique visitors actually declined 10 percent from May, 2009 to June, 2009, according to comScore. Ning had 5.1 million visitors in the U.S. in June (its worldwide audience is about three times as large). The company attributes the decline to “some downtime in June as we expand and optimize our infrastructure to support the growth that we are expecting in the next 12 months.” Ning says it is adding 4,000 new Ning Networks every day and one million registered users every 15 days. One month hardly makes a trend, but Ning’s fragmented approach to social networks has yet to catch on in the way that Facebook’s monolithic strategy has in terms of activity or pure audience reach across the network. Back in April 2008, Ning had a half-billion dollar valuation, and now it’s supposedly $750 million. That is getting close to the inflated level Bebo was able to sell itself for, which we now know was too high. And Bebo still has more people using its product. (Even in the U.S., it had 8.7 million unique visitors in June). Ning has been getting its act together, though. Back in December, it expelled adult networks from Ning because they aren’t advertiser-friendly. And that worked out well for them. More recently, Ning has been working hard to make its social networks compatible with OpenSocial apps. That effort is going much slower than expected. A public launch was delayed last month because of performance issues with the Ning Apps platform, says one developer who is part of the program. Maybe the new cash will help speed things along. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| Buddy Media Unveils The Ultimate Twitter Client For Brand Management Posted: 21 Jul 2009 09:00 PM PDT As Twitter becomes a valuable marketing tools for companies, there has been a proliferation of sites and startups that help manage a brand’s presence on the microblogging site. Buddy Media, a startup that develops of applications for social networks, including Facebook and MySpace, is throwing its hat in the ring by launching a Twitter Management System for brand advertisers to manage marketing efforts and analytics on Twitter. Buddy Media’s Twitter Management System will let marketers measure and identify Twitter trending topics around a particular brand, related topics and competitors. You can also track performance and trends for a brand and entire industry across Twitter with easy to view data on followers, mentions, and re-Tweets. Similar to URL shortening sites like Bit.ly, the tool will let you track volume and frequency of click-through rates in Twitter as well as monitor and analyze the sentiment of Tweets about a particular brand compared to competitors. Within the system you can create various profiles to manage several brands and different Twitter account and schedule Tweets to be published in advance of campaigns. And the system acts as a Twitter client itself, so you can have a centralized place to both Tweet and monitor and graph brands. The system reminds me of PeopleBrowsr, which also offers a comprehensive and useful Twitter management system for brands and companies, except that Buddy Media’s application is web-based which in my opinion, has its advantages over Adobe AIR powered clients. And like PeopleBrowsr, Buddy Media’s system offers real-time search capability, which can be especially useful to companies wanting to gain insight into the conversations about their businesses taking place on the social graph. Buddy Media is fast becoming a digital branding powerhouse. In addition to its Twitter Management tool, the startup also has a Social Page Management System that to help brands engage their audiences by managing their Facebook pages.   Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Rumor: Apple to Launch Tablet With Verizon Posted: 21 Jul 2009 09:00 PM PDT  Here's something to mull over while you get ready for bed. The Street is reporting that Apple will launch the highly anticipated (and rumored) tablet with Verizon. Now, we've heard rumors that Verizon could be getting a CDMA variant of the iPhone at some point in the near future, but no one in China has leaked such a thing. According to Scott Moritz's sources, Apple and Verizon "won't be as tightly integrated" as Apple and AT&T and the rumored tablet has been ready for roughly a year. The kicker here is that, Verizon would subsidize the cost of the tablet without giving potential customers sticker shock.
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| BrightRoll: Q2 Pre-Roll Video Ad Rates Are Down, But Total Revenues Are Up Posted: 21 Jul 2009 07:44 PM PDT Video ads are the great hope of brand marketers on the Web. They are easy to understand (it’s just like on TV, kinda) and easy to create. That’s why pre-roll video ads will never die. Brand marketers love ‘em. As the rates for pre-roll video ads on the Web go down, it looks like total video ad revenues keep going up. At least that is what is happening across BrightRoll’s video ad network. BrightRoll is one of the largest video ad networks, according to comScore VideoMetrix, with a reach of 51 million unique viewers in May, 2009, which is more than Yahoo’s video sites or Hulu. (But it doesn’t serve as many video streams as either one). BrightRoll reports that in the second quarter:
So the CPM rate (cost per thousand views) for video pre-rolls is flat with last quarter at roughly $20. But it is down from last year by 10 percent, and they need to go down further to push video Web ads beyond novelty status. Even with CPMs keeping steady, BrightRoll saw network ad revenues double from last quarter:
That is quite a jump. And brand advertisers are increasing their the amount of their Web video ad budgets they are spending on pre-roll ads as opposed to other types of clickable units which appeal more to performance-oriented marketers. As more and more professional content makes its way onto the Web, the more “safe” inventory there will be for those brand advertisers. Even YouTube is close to making money. CPMs still need to be cut in half, though. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| The iPod, As We Know It, Is Dying Posted: 21 Jul 2009 06:40 PM PDT
Of the three pocket products, two saw huge year-over-year growth this quarter, one did not. While iPhone sales grew a massive 626% year-over-year, iPod touch sales actually grew just about 130% too. And while Apple may consider the iPod touch outside of the iPod line, for financial purposes, it’s still counted with them. So when you hear that overall the iPod family saw a 7% decline year over year, you know that the actual iPod numbers minus the iPod touch, must not be very good at all. And while Apple wouldn’t specifically give those numbers, Oppenheimer did note that the iPhone and iPod touch are very much “cannibalizing” the stand-alone MP3 iPod market. Apple still has over 70% of the MP3 player market, but it’s probably safe to assume that the overall pie which Apple has 70% of, is going to start shrinking soon (if it hasn’t already), at least in the U.S. The way Oppenheimer spoke today about what he calls the “traditional mp3 players” was almost like a eulogy. And for good reason. I’d be fairly surprised if Apple updates its hard-drive based iPod classic ever again. It will likely continue to sell it for a while, and may even do something with the price. But the thought of Apple devoting any time to reworking this dinosaur at this point, seems pointless. The iPod nano, which Apple did a huge revamp of last year, still likely have some life in it — especially if it gets a camera. But the key thing for it going forward is price. If Apple can reduce it even further (to say, $99) and still make money off of it, people will still buy them. Likewise the the Shuffle. If Apple can get it down to about $50 (it’s currently $79), that should continue to sell short-term. But again, any tweaks and price reductions will simply be bandages on the iPod’s wounded body. Eventually, the “touch” will be the iPod. And yes, we’ll likely see a smaller version of it (and the iPhone) eventually as well. It will also need to come down a bit in price, before the traditional iPods can fully go away. But at $229, the low-end iPod touch is already much cheaper than many of the original iPods were the first several years after its release. MP3s players were great, just as CD players and tape players were great before them. But ultimately, technology and expectations evolve. Soon, carrying around a device that just plays music will seem pointless. Everyone’s phone will do that. And if someone doesn’t want to (or can’t) carry around a phone for whatever reason, iPod touch-like devices that not only play music, but play movies, take pictures, run applications, and, most importantly, access the web, will be everywhere. And while the click wheel was great in its day, every time I pick up an older iPod now, I immediately try to touch the screen to control it. Apple is training us that touch and multi-touch will be the preferred method of device manipulation in the future. (Certainly until it makes its shoddy voice controls in the new iPhone 3GS work better.) And so Apple’s three “pocket products” will eventually be whittled down to two. And it’s likely to happen sooner than you think. Apple doesn’t stick with products that aren’t selling for too long. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| Probably Not The Palm Pre Chart Roger McNamee Wants To See Posted: 21 Jul 2009 05:54 PM PDT
A week from tomorrow is the big day for McNamee’s prediction. How’s it looking? Not so hot. Okay, awful. Yes, it’s still early in the Palm Pre’s life. And yes, there is plenty of room in the rapidly expanding mobile universe for more than one device. But it was McNamee who specifically threw down this gauntlet against the iPhone. And that makes charts like the one below, that much more amusing. Now, it has to be noted that the research company providing this data, JNK Wireless Consultant iGR, is said to be fairly new. But that doesn’t mean that they did a poor job in obtaining the numbers that they did. This chart comes after they completed a series of checks last week across 50 Sprint stores nationwide in top markets. Further, they have a lot more details of what they found in their checks. Here are the Pre “highlights”:
To make sure it got a clearer pictures, iGR also went to Apple stores around the country to check the iPhone 3GS numbers. It ran checks with 52 stores. The story is quite a bit different:
Now again, this data all comes from a sampling of Sprint and Apple stores. But at the very least, the trends seem pretty clear. The iPhone 3GS is selling very, very well (as was further evidenced today during Apple’s 3Q earnings call), the Palm Pre? Still pretty ho-hum. And things still seem to be slowing down. "Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later." Yeah. We’ll revisit that again in 8 days. But the graph up top does have a nice “L” shape. “L” in this case, doesn’t appear to stand for “Love”. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Test-driving the Barnes & Noble eBook Store Posted: 21 Jul 2009 05:25 PM PDT  So I just bought House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street, by William D. Cohen, from the just-launched Barnes and Noble e-book store. Long story short, it works pretty well, but there sure as heck isn't a hint of polish on this thing. So here's how it worked. I went to barnesandnoble.com, typed in the name "William Cohen," then clicked "Read Now," indicating that I wanted to buy the e-book version. It downloaded to my Desktop (well, Downloads folder). Then I had to download and install the reader software.
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| Update: Pushfix for Jailbroken iPhones Caused Push Broadcast Problems Posted: 21 Jul 2009 04:46 PM PDT  We have an update on the AIM push problem we wrote about this morning. The problem only affects jailbroken iPhones 2 and 3G running the homebrew app Pushfix. If you are in this sad number please restore to the original firmware or risk seeing your IMs spread far and wide. Pushfix is a homebrew app that "repairs" push functionality on Jailbroken apps. The iPhone Dev Team, the same folks who unlocked the iPhone in the first place, created it to help us lowly users but they left a fatal flaw in the program. It seems they used a single UDID - Unique Device ID - for the fix. This in turn creates a sort of broadcast network of multiple jailbroken phones running Pushfix that report back to the push servers with the same UDID. The result? When you push to one, you push to all.
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| Y Combinator’s Picurio Crowdsources Photo Sharing Posted: 21 Jul 2009 04:19 PM PDT Picurio, a Y Combinator startup from its Winter ‘09 session that makes photo sharing between large groups incredibly easy, has taken the beta label off. While there are an innumerable amount of photo sharing sites and applications out there, Picurio is focused on making photo sharing simple and user-friendly between groups of people. Picurio’s site has a similar user interface to Apple’s iPhoto, except Picurio is on the web and cloud-based. The idea behind Picurio is that you upload photos to a “room” (which has around 2 GB of storage) where you can then create subfolders of different groups of photos and then invite as many people as you want to see the photos. In order to allow others to see the site, you send them a link, (that can be password-protected for privacy) and then they can upload photos of their own to the “room.” As a user, you can share some collections of photos with certain friends and share other rooms with a different set of friends. Picurio also lets you publish and download photos directly to and from Facebook. Ad you can download any pictures from a room into a zip file while you are viewing the page. Picurio is free if you keep adding friends to your rooms. For every friend who joins a room, Picurio will add another two weeks on to the lifetime of a room. There is no limit on the number of albums you can create, or the number of people who can use the room. You can also pay for rooms to be extended; $4.95 adds 30 days to the lifetime of a room. In essence, Picurio is a subset of photo sharing sites like Divvyshot, Photobucket, Flickr etc. which all let you share a basic album. Picurio rooms allows for multiple albums within one room and selective sharing of rooms. Of course, Picurio also features the ability to drag and drop photos, create slideshows and more. It seems that Picurio would ideal for large events where many attendees are taking pictures and need a central, and potentially private online space to store and share photos.   Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| How Much Is That Apple Tablet Going To Cost? Not $399 Or $499. Posted: 21 Jul 2009 03:32 PM PDT
As usual, a question came up about Apple entering the “low-end” laptop market, which is a fancy way of saying “netbook” market. Once again, Apple COO Tim Cook reiterated Apple’s stance that “Our goal is not to build the most computers. It’s to build the best.” What he means by this is that Apple has no interest in playing in the low-end market, which is of course also a low-margin market, which would mean Apple’s pretty margins taking a hit. But wording is everything, and Cook once again didn’t exactly eliminate the possibility of Apple making a new type of portable computing device. He said that no matter what the price point is, that if Apple feels it can build a product worthy of its brand, it will do so. But he also specifically called out two price points that he thought are producing junky products, and implied that such price points will continue to produce junky products: $399 and $499. And so if Apple is working on a tablet computer (or a larger screen iPod touch) of some kind, it will likely be priced above $500. To Apple watchers, that is obvious, but it’s still important to hear Cook more or less say it. A follow-up question later on about netbooks, asked if Apple specifically saw a future for a new mobile device with a larger screen? Cook joked that while he never wanted to rule out anything in the future, he also never intends to answer questions about new products. He went on to say that he believes most customers buying portable computers want a full-featured notebook. And many netbooks are slow and run old operating systems. Naturally, he didn’t mention Chrome OS. And that just seems to be more proof that whatever big touchscreen device Apple makes, it won’t be so much of a netbook, but rather a product that Apple hopes will once again kickstart a new type of market. Whether that will work, who knows. Let’s see the thing first. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| First Rule Of Apple Earnings Calls: You Do Not Talk About The $99 iPhone Posted: 21 Jul 2009 03:09 PM PDT
Multiple questions were asked of Apple COO Tim Cook about how the $99 iPhone, specifically, was selling. His response? The vague note that the entire iPhone line has seen a “big acceleration in total unit sales.” Cook said Apple will not offer a breakdown of how the different versions are selling because it’s competitive data. But wait, they’ve broken them up in the past. Just three days after the iPhone 3GS launch, Apple announced that iPhone 3GS-specific sales had hit a million. Obviously, there’s a reason to do that; it’s an impressive number. But along those lines, you can’t help but wonder if Apple is being coy simply because the $99 sales aren’t very good? Certainly, it seems like a great deal, but in reality, the monthly bills of the iPhone 3G and 3GS are the same, so it’s basically the difference between $100 to $200 in upfront costs. As the call went on today, more questions came in trying to penetrate the $99 iPhone sales topic. Someone asked if the lower price-point iPhone was helping to get people into store and accelerating sales of the new iPhone 3GS? Again, Cook would only say that they’re focused on total iPhone numbers. “It’s too early to tell what the ultimate mix of what the products will be,” he noted. He went on to say that the breakdowns are a big foggy since the 3GS supply is currently constrained, and it’s only in 18 of the nearly 80 countries the iPhone is in. That would seem to suggest that the $99 iPhone should be selling really well — if customers can’t get an iPhone 3GS. But Cook, nor anyone else would say that. Odd. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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