The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Sneak Peek At Facebook for iPhone 3.0
- Not A Myth To Bust: Discovery Channel Hits The App Store
- Another MVNO Bites The Dust: Qwest Discontinues Wireless Service
- Social Gaming Startup Scoreloop Closes $2.8 Million Round
- You Won’t Find Putin On Russia’s Gogul
- The Perfect Birthday Gift For A Man Running For Attorney General? $39 And Britney Spears.
- Layar Shows Augmented Reality Revolution Is Going Global
- Six Apart Equips TypePad For Microblogging, Posterous-Style
- Invites: Fotoglif Opens A Revenue-Sharing API For Ad-Supported Images
- Jambool Raises $5 Million For Its Social Gold Micropayments Platform
- The Best And Worst Cities To Look For A Job
- New Privacy Lawsuit Throws The Kitchen Sink At Facebook
- Apple Event: September 9, No Tablet Indicated
- And Google Said, Let There Be Chrome Bookmark Sync
- Facebook Share Buyback Oversubscribed, Ex-Employees Take The Hit
- Before There Was Twitter, There Was Blogger. And It’s Turning 10.
- Bing’s Marketshare Continued To Creep Upwards In July
- The G1 Burned Out Long Before The Android Ever Did
- iLike Deal Puts Facebook In Lose/Lose Situation
- Why I Don’t Use Twitter
- Tr.im Can’t/Won’t Sell, Goes Open Source, Blames Everyone
- Ustream Sued By Boxing Promoter Over Pirated Broadcast
- Jeff Jarvis Tries To Save Local News (With Spreadsheets!)
- Steve Jobs: The Stonking Big Profile
- MSNBC Picks Up Hyperlocal News Aggregator EveryBlock
| Sneak Peek At Facebook for iPhone 3.0 Posted: 18 Aug 2009 08:51 AM PDT
Check out their review for more details, but here’s the gist: - A new home screen (see first screenshot above) which will offer the ability to customize i.e. add boxes to the default start screen - A better ‘News feed’: much more complete overview of status updates from your friends, but still lacking the ability to hide/unhide them from inside the app - Videos (as expected): uploading video supposedly works like a charm, but you still can’t watch Facebook videos unless they’re actually hosted on YouTube (and likely other video hosting platforms as well) and simply played from inside the app - Events (as expected): includes the ability to RSVP, but you can’t visit the complete event wall, which is unfortunate - Pages: you can search for, view and interact with pages using Facebook for iPhone 3.0 - Photos: you can create new photo albums, upload photos to any album, zoom into photos and change your profile picture - Communication: you can quickly or call people straight from the Friends page - Improved ‘liking’ feature - Notes, including the ability to edit them - Notifications: much better, link directly to comments which you can respond to - Messages you are typing will be restored if you quit the app or are interrupted by a phone call Here’s to hoping for a quick green light from Apple. (Via @Appadvice) Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| Not A Myth To Bust: Discovery Channel Hits The App Store Posted: 18 Aug 2009 08:18 AM PDT
Discovery Communications has released a Discovery Channel application on the iTunes App Store, bringing heaps of video content produced by the popular non-fiction media company to the iPhone and iPod Touch. In addition to video clips, the app also boasts a collection of quizzes, photo galleries, programming schedules and updates from Discovery News. Furthermore, you can use the app to share content via e-mail and save to favorites for your re-watching pleasure. Evidently, full episodes for Discovery’s top programming (Shark Week, Man vs. Wild, MythBusters, etc.) are not available through the free yet ad-supported application, but it does come with links to the iTunes Store where the media company offers a selection of full episodes for purchase. The Discovery Channel app was built by Rhythm NewMedia, which has already built apps for many media companies, including AMC, E! Online, Entertainment Tonight, Family Guy, HGTV, TMZ and more. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Another MVNO Bites The Dust: Qwest Discontinues Wireless Service Posted: 18 Aug 2009 06:52 AM PDT
Qwest has this morning announced that it will be shutting down its Wireless service on Oct. 31, 2009. Formerly in bed with Sprint, Qwest started offering the wireless service in collaboration with Verizon just over a year ago. Under the agreement, Verizon Wireless phones and services were offered to Qwest’s residential and business customers. Qwest customers who switch to a new service provider within the 60-day period will be able to transfer their wireless phone numbers to their new provider of choice, and there is no early termination fee when disconnecting from Qwest Wireless. According to the fact sheet (PDF), Qwest started transitioning Qwest Wireless customers to Verizon More information is available here. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| Social Gaming Startup Scoreloop Closes $2.8 Million Round Posted: 18 Aug 2009 04:00 AM PDT
The funds will be used to fuel the growth of the company and to establish (or solidify) its position, especially in the realm of the iPhone. Since launching its technology in May 2009, Scoreloop has over 500 registered game developers that have published more than 40 Scoreloop enabled games in the iPhone App Store. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| You Won’t Find Putin On Russia’s Gogul Posted: 18 Aug 2009 02:53 AM PDT
The new online service, consisting of a search engine and Internet Explorer add-on, allows parents to control their kid’s internet access - in other words it’s a kind of Net Nanny. But parents aren’t fully in control here. The “approved content” consists of over 7,000 Russian web sites which are filtered by a slightly shadowy team. Plus, Gogul has already provoked a lot of - largely negative - feedback on Russian forums over it’s name (er, Google anyone?) and ideological connection with an infamous government project called School Portal. For instance, you can’t even search on the word ‘Putin’. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| The Perfect Birthday Gift For A Man Running For Attorney General? $39 And Britney Spears. Posted: 18 Aug 2009 02:21 AM PDT Facebook’s (now former) Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly doesn’t have to worry about frivolous privacy lawsuits any more. That’s because he’s moving on to run for Attorney General of California in the 2010 election. His Facebook campaign page is here. Today, apparently, is Kelly’s 39th birthday. I know this because I was forwarded an email from his wife Jennifer asking recipients to donate to Kelly’s campaign. I don’t agree with some of Kelly’s positions (he was on the wrong side of Facebook’s Holocaust denial debacle, in my opinion), but I’m contemplating endorsing him for the position pending his agreement to go on camera with us and answer some key questions we and our readers have. Generally though Kelly is a libertarian-leaning Democrat, which is kind of Democrat I tend to like. If you want to donate to his campaign, here’s the link. And if you’re feeling generous, you can get Chris something else for his birthday, too. Like this special edition Britney Spears “Womanizer” virtual gift on Facebook, which costs just $3. Happy Birthday, Mr. Attorney General (I bet he loves the sound of that). And please don’t forget us when you make it big time. If you become president someday, I wanna be on the Supreme Court. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Layar Shows Augmented Reality Revolution Is Going Global Posted: 18 Aug 2009 02:10 AM PDT
A ‘layar’ is information overlaid on the camera view of your mobile phone, e.g. the asking price of an apartment for sale in the building your camera is pointed at. Layar will be pre-installed on the new Samsung Galaxy Android phone about to be released in the Netherlands and the Android version of the browser is available for download in the Android app store. The iPhone version will be available as soon as Apple updates its API to allow access to the iPhone camera. The Layar event was opened by science fiction writer and Wired editor Bruce Sterling who has been blogging recently about the augmented reality scene, appropriately enough. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Six Apart Equips TypePad For Microblogging, Posterous-Style Posted: 18 Aug 2009 01:14 AM PDT
If you’re a TypePad user, you can now post by e-mailing in an article or using your iPhone to publish whatever short posts, links, videos and pictures you want to put up on the web easily and rapidly. And you can just as easily push the content back out to other services such as Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed while you’re at it, which is entirely in line with what Posterous has been all about since its inception. To complement the new feature, Six Apart is also adding some new custom themes to TypePad, starting with the Pico template the company introduced yesterday. The only difference with Posterous that I can see is the support and training Six Apart provides with its TypePad service and the fact that you can add advertising units to your new mini-blog, although I can’t imagine this will convince many individuals to actually pay for a microblogging service when there are so many free alternatives. Or will it? Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| Invites: Fotoglif Opens A Revenue-Sharing API For Ad-Supported Images Posted: 17 Aug 2009 10:41 PM PDT Stock photography sites are moving towards free, with either free samples (Photoxpress) or ad-supported images (Fotoglif, GumGum, PicApp). In an effort to encourage a broader distribution of its ad-carrying photos, Fotoglif is opening up a revenue-sharing API for developers. The first 500 people to sign up using the promotion code “Techcrunch” will get into the beta program. The API gives developers access to millions of photos and related data, which they can mashup into widgets and other apps. The developers get to keep 20 percent of any resulting AdSense dollars generated by the images. Fotoglif pays the photographers 50 percent, and publishing sites another 20 percent, which doesn’t leave much for the startup. The ads are little contextual text ads at the bottom of the image. They are not horrible, but they aren’t beautiful either. Attaching ads to stock photos is a good idea, but these companies still need to work on presentation. Maybe that is where a developer using the API can help. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Jambool Raises $5 Million For Its Social Gold Micropayments Platform Posted: 17 Aug 2009 09:40 PM PDT
Jambool initially started off as a developer for games on social networks — a lucrative but very crowded space that includes players like Zynga and Playfish. In fall 2008, the company decided to switch its focus from game building to providing a platform that other developers can use to quickly integrate microtransactions. That suite of products, collectively referred to as Social Gold, now includes an an in-game payment system that includes support for credits cards, mobile payments, and online transaction systems like PayPal and Google Checkout; a virtual currency system; and a set of analytics tools for developers to track their in-game economy and performance. Going forward the site plans to offer a subscription product in the new future, as well as more self-serve options for developers. There are a number of other startups looking to help monetize the social web with micropayments, which include Gambit and OfferPal. These companies also have to worry about social networks launching their own payment platforms (Facebook has one that has been in testing for a few months), though companies like Jambool have the advantage of being able to offer a ‘universal currency’ that works across multiple social networks. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| The Best And Worst Cities To Look For A Job Posted: 17 Aug 2009 09:18 PM PDT The unemployment rate in the U.S. was still 9.4 percent in July, but some cities are better than others to look for a job. Of the top 50 metro areas, Washington, D.C., is the easiest for unemployed workers to find a job, while Detroit is the hardest, according to a new Job Market Competition index put together by job search engine Indeed. The index ranks cities based on how many unemployed people there are compared to job listings. For every one unemployed person in Washington, D.C., for example, there are six job postings. Whereas in Detroit, there is only one job posting for every 18 unemployed people. The higher the ratio of job postings to unemployed, the more chances there are of landing a job. The top ten cities in the index for finding jobs (and their corresponding ratios of job postings to unemployed) are:
The worst ten cities for job searches are:
42. Orlando, FL (1:6) 43. Sacramento, CA (1:6) 44. Rochester, NY (1:6) 45. Chicago, IL (1:7) 46. Portland, OR (1:7) 47. Los Angeles, CA (1:8) 48. Riverside, CA (1:9) 49. Miami, FL (1:10) 50. Detroit, MI (1:18) Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| New Privacy Lawsuit Throws The Kitchen Sink At Facebook Posted: 17 Aug 2009 07:34 PM PDT
Plaintiffs in the case appear to have engaged in run of the mill socializing on Facebook: sharing photos, writing status updates and similar things. They’re then complaining that privacy, copyright and other rights are violated as people look at the photos, read the updates, etc. It’s sort of like jumping into a pool and then complaining that you’re wet. The lawsuit complains about or at least insidiously describes pretty much every single part of Facebook, from the nefarious “wall” to a potentially incriminating “Data Analyst” job listing the company posted in 2007. Oh, and the best part? The AP and WSJ just reported the case straight, without the slightest suggestion that the Plaintiffs might be a little off. We’ve embedded the full, 40 page suit below. So what are the Plantiffs accusing Facebook of? The suit alleges that that Facebook is at its core a “data mining company.. [that] seeks to open and/or disseminate private information to third parties for commercial purposes and economic benefit” and that “Facebook has created a business model and apparatus designed to harvest as much personal and private information as possible in easiest, quickest, and most innocuous-looking manner possible.” Cue the ominous music. It gets better. The complaints from the individual Plaintiffs involve everything from swine flu to “accomplished actresses”. We’ve excerpted a couple of them below.
Another Plantiff is apparently objecting to the fact that Facebook has changed over the years from a college-only social network to a much broader one, and is unhappy with the way the site’s Terms of Service were modified over the years. Except it’s quite common for sites to change their ToS without giving notice. There goes that idea. In short, the Plantiffs are complaining about many of the very mechanisms that make Facebook a social network. They’re also complaining about issues that have been addressed before — some of the concerns over content ownership issues are pretty explicitly spelled out in the site’s Terms, which state “You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how we share your content through your privacy and application settings.” There may be some nuggets of validity hidden in here, but you’re going to have to look hard to find them. Facebook has given us the following brief response regarding the suit:
Image by Goleta on Flickr. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| Apple Event: September 9, No Tablet Indicated Posted: 17 Aug 2009 06:30 PM PDT  As much as we'd like the Tapplet, or iPad, to make its debut next month, it's looking like that won't be the case — as we've heard. "Sources close to the company" say that the event will be on September 9th and will most assuredly not be Tablet-related. Instead, like last year's September announcement, it'll be new iPods and possibly that fancy new iTunes we've been hearing about. While the inclusion of yet more services into Apple's increasingly bloated all-purpose media player may be seen as excessive, you can always count on Apple to at least sell it.
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| And Google Said, Let There Be Chrome Bookmark Sync Posted: 17 Aug 2009 06:03 PM PDT
Syncing has been a standard feature of Apple’s Safari browser for some months now, but you need to have MobileMe for it to work. And Firefox users could download add-ons like Xmarks (previously called Foxmarks) to get the functionality, but with Chrome it will be built-in, and most importantly, unlike MobileMe, free. Google notes that the bookmarks are stored on users’ Google account alongside Google Docs and sync via XMPP. To get the feature working, you apparently have to launch the dev version of Chrome with the “–enable-sync command-line flag”. If you understand what that means, you’re good to go. If not, you’ll probably want to wait for the feature to hit the regular release channel, something that will probably happen relatively soon. Bookmark management appears to have been temporarily disabled on the latest versions of Chromium for Mac, after they were first turned on last week. When they come back, hopefully this syncing will work for Macs as well. To stay up-to-date on the latest versions of Chromium for Mac, check out our updater tool. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| Facebook Share Buyback Oversubscribed, Ex-Employees Take The Hit Posted: 17 Aug 2009 05:29 PM PDT
The program was announced on July 13. Up to $100 million in employee common stock was to be purchased by Russian investment group Digital Sky Technologies, which also funded a separate $200 million venture investment in May 2009. Employees, ex-employees and other common stockholders could participate, and had to indicate their intention to sell by early August. People were limited to selling up to the lesser of 25% of their total holdings or $1 million. Shares are being purchased based on a $6.5 billion valuation. Employees were given first dibs on stock sales, we’ve confirmed. Ex-employees were notified up front that they’d be able to sell only after current employees. And it turns out it made a difference - the ex-employees were cut back to “a small fraction” of the original amount requested. Some executives and larger shareholders may be able to sell additional stock via a separate arrangement, says our source. Facebook declined to comment on this post. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| Before There Was Twitter, There Was Blogger. And It’s Turning 10. Posted: 17 Aug 2009 05:17 PM PDT
Yes, on Sunday, Blogger turns 10 years old. And to celebrate, the Blogger team (which is now a part of Google following a 2003 acquisition) is promising a bunch of gifts to users in the form of new features. Without naming anything specifically, Blogger points to this list as a good reference point for some of what they’ll be rolling out over the next few weeks. Of note on that list are a better commenting system and WordPress-style pages (About page, etc). It’s worth noting that Blogger’s roots are deeply tied to the new hot web platform of choice: Twitter. Pyra Labs was co-founded by Evan Williams, who is now the CEO (and co-founder) of Twitter. Also a part of Pyra Labs were Jason Goldman who now runs product development for Twitter, and Jason Shellen who now runs Thing Labs, the makers of Brizzly, a much buzzed-about new Twitter client. Biz Stone, another Twitter co-founder, joined the Blogger team at Google before leaving with Williams in 2004 to start Obvious Corp. which would eventually birth and turn into Twitter. (An interesting side note is that Williams’ Pyra co-founder Meg Hourihan, eventually married Jason Kottke, who is best known as being one of the web’s most popular bloggers.) These days, while the web is abuzz over Twitter, no one really talks much about Blogger despite millions of people using it everyday. The fact is that as a platform, it has fallen behind the more nimble blogging platforms like WordPress and Tumblr in recent years. Still, in terms of straight up simplicity in setting up a blog, it’s easy to see why Blogger is still popular among users (and, unfortunately, spammers). Update: As as Faridur notes in the comments, current Twitter Creative Director Douglas Bowman also worked on the Blogger team back in the day. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Bing’s Marketshare Continued To Creep Upwards In July Posted: 17 Aug 2009 04:38 PM PDT
Bing launched to the public on May 31, when Microsoft held 8.0% search marketshare. Over the course of June and July, the site has gained nearly a full percentage point — it’s up to 8.9%, and growth was actually higher for July than for June, when the site was getting all of its launch attention. Of course, Bing’s marketshare still pales in comparison to Google’s dominant 64.7%, but at least Microsoft is heading in the right direction. Once again, it looks like Bing’s gain comes at Yahoo’s expense, at least to some extent. Since May, Yahoo has dropped from 20.1% to 19.3%. Google has dropped a more modest .3%, from 65% to 64.7%. We saw a similar pattern last month, when we pointed out that Yahoo was losing marketshare both from below (Bing) and above (Google). Since then though, the landscape has changed dramatically: Yahoo search will soon be powered by Bing. When the Yahoo/Microsoft search deal was announced Yahoo EVP Hillary Schneider discounted the impact of this market share erosion, stating, “seeing Bing as a live experience was a nice assurance but did not change our rationale or timing.” But it’s hard to believe that Bing’s strong start didn’t have an impact on the deal. Once that deal comes to fruition Bing will have to face the real test: can it continue to take market share away from Google, or will it simply continue to eat away at itself as users move from Yahoo’s portal to the Bing homepage? Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| The G1 Burned Out Long Before The Android Ever Did Posted: 17 Aug 2009 03:28 PM PDT
While nothing is set in stone yet, it’s looking pretty grim. The latest “Cupcake” Android update apparently pushed the G1’s memory to the limit. And subsequent updates should only require more. But what’s crazy about this is that the G1 was launched just 10 months ago. Certainly, the devices will keep working with the current flavor of Android, but just imagine the pain early adopters must feel if their device is already a dinosaur that they can’t upgrade, not yet a year into its release. I’ve used the G1 pretty extensively, having obtained a demo unit from Google shortly after its launch. From just about day 1, I didn’t like it. The obvious comparison was to the iPhone, but it was a hard one to make since the devices were so different. The G1 had a physical keyboard, no multi-touch support, and could run applications in the background to name a few things. The better comparison is to the so-called “G2″ also known as the “Google Ion” or the myTouch 3G. That device, also built by HTC, is similar to the G1 but improves on it in just about every way. It’s faster, thinner (thanks to the removal of the awful keyboard), has better battery life, and just feels nicer.
So big deal, a phone that a few hundred thousand people use is passing away before its time, right? Well the issue behind it is a potentially much larger one. The G1 going out of date speaks to a problem the Android platform has: Its open nature and the desire to support as many phones as possible is always going to leave some devices out in the cold. Of course, that is hardly an Android-only problem, it’s a problem with just about every platform besides the iPhone. While the original iPhone has been out for over 2 years now, it was still able to be upgraded to the latest iPhone firmware, 3.0, this year. Granted, some of the features were disabled because the hardware has evolved, but it can still do the majority of things that the other iPhones can do. With so many different devices, and many more said to be coming by the end of this year, the Android platform will continue to get fragmented in a way that is likely to be confusing to consumers. And that doesn’t even speak to the fragmentation of developers developing for phone-specific features of Android devices when more come out. Of course, there are upsides to this openness, and we should see plenty of applications and features that aren’t available on the relatively-closed iPhone. But it’s a tricky trade-off if consumers are buying a device that they’re not sure will work with all the applications on the platform, and worse, the newest versions of the OS itself. Really, I just wanted to write a eulogy for the G1. I’m looking forward to some good Android phones in the future, the G1 was not one of them. [photo: flickr/rainer ebert] Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| iLike Deal Puts Facebook In Lose/Lose Situation Posted: 17 Aug 2009 01:40 PM PDT
The Facebook Angle This is by far the most interesting angle to the deal. iLike is the most popular music application on Facebook, and is the de facto Facebook Music app. That company will shortly be owned by MySpace, Facebook’s primary competitor. That puts Facebook in a lose-lose situation. They can let iLike continue to dominate the music scene on Facebook and let MySpace own all that. Or they can ban iLike and lose all credibility with their platform - everyone would know iLike was banned because of the acquisition by MySpace. And it doesn’t have to be an outright ban. Facebook has plenty of subtle ways of trainwrecking an application they don’t like. Keep an eye on this. Why didn’t Facebook just buy iLike? A matching or slightly better offer than the $20 million MySpace is paying would likely have gotten the deal done. And it may have saved Facebook from an embarrassing situation. If I were MySpace, I’d focus on getting their free streaming music into the iLike Facebook application as soon as possible. Advertisers will love it. This deal also shows what a top Facebook app is worth. Most of iLike’s activity comes through Facebook. They have 10 million monthly active users, and 31 million total Facebook installations (iLike has a total of over 50 million registered users). MySpace has valued that and the rest of iLike at $20 million, but has to factor in the possibility that Facebook will derail the application, subtly or overtly. If that risk wasn’t there, my guess is iLike would be worth 2-3x as much. Why is MySpace and not MySpace Music buying iLike? We’re hearing two reasons.The first is that MySpace Music, a joint venture with the music labels, isn’t going too well. The venture will lose at least $20 million this year on the back of massive royalty payments to the labels, and when the Google search deal ends next year the financial prospects of MySpace Music may get much, much worse. The last thing MySpace wants to do is put good money after bad and throw more assets into MySpace Music. Plus, the deal would likely have required notice to, if not the approval of, the label partners who own equity in the joint venture. There’s another reason being talked about by our sources as well, though. iLike isn’t just about music and music recommendations. The platform they’ve built to facilitate artist-to-user publishing and user-to-user recommendations can be used for content beyond music, such as videos and games. Our guess is MySpace intends to integrate iLike’s technology into more than artist pages. So having the assets at MySpace makes sense. MySpace Now Has Its Own Music Download Deals With Labels. iLike launched its music download store last week. MySpace Music has streaming rights to music but not download sales rights. Today Amazon powers MySpace Music downloads. I’m sure MySpace is now considering (or already decided to) moving to a direct sales approach via iLike’s deals and software. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| Posted: 17 Aug 2009 01:36 PM PDT
I believe in Twitter. I believe people want to use it and that it is useful to them. I’m less sure of its susceptibility to monetization, but then again, I cover cameras and ramen-bots, not internet business. Still, since I’m coming down to the TechCrunch 50 conference in a few weeks, and will likely be the only person attending who does not use Twitter, I felt I should furnish an explanation. Not that I think it really matters to anyone whether I use it or not, but by striking preemptively, I’ll avoid talking myself hoarse in explaining it repeatedly to those of you I meet. I’m also curious to see if there are any other “abstwainers” (or better yet, “Tweetotallers,” either way I’ve coined a term) in the TechCrunch readership, and if so, what your perspective is. Now, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been waiting for a chance to express myself on this (which may be why it is so very long (though my parenthetical style of writing shares the blame)), but it seems relevant enough and the timing is right. Please bear in mind that these are my own reasons for not using the service, not reasons for you to stop; I don’t mean to proselytize. I’ll start with my primary assertion: that a tweet is fundamentally valueless.
What is a tweet? It is a quantity of data which I believe to be useless, at least in this context. What can be said in 140 characters is either trivial or abridged; in the first case it would be better not to say it at all, and in the second case it would be better to give it the space it deserves. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule: “It’s a boy!” for instance, is both sufficient and worth telling everyone you know (incidentally, congratulations to CrunchGear writer Matt on the new baby), but I think we all know that the bulk of Twitter is not life-changing announcements or granules of compact wit and wisdom. Nor is it meant to be — but intentions aren’t admissible in my court, sir. To proceed: the “this context” I mentioned above is simply that tweets are broadcast indiscriminately. I think this further devalues them; an otherwise acceptable message (”Brunch at Hi-Spot at 1!”) becomes impersonal and meaningless when it’s sent to so many. Yes, there is @ for specifying another tweet or Twitterer (would that they had called the site something else, this accursed bird-based jargon drives me mad), but that just exacerbates things. I like to think of it this way: Twitter is a bunch of friends sitting around a table, all shouting at the same time — and shouting mundanities at that. The @ function just means you shout somebody’s name before the mundanity. Everyone else still has to listen. Conversation is impossible; every exchange is telegraphic (as is, unfortunately, increasingly true in other media). But the tweet can have a link in it, of course, which makes it more versatile — except links are subject to the same value reductions as simple text. Tweeting a link is a lot like sending it to your whole address book. If you think everyone you know should see it, it better be worth shouting from the mountaintops. How rare that is! If you like other people finding your content for you, on their schedule, this isn’t a problem, but for me it is. Add in the fact that probably half of tweets are automatically generated, and what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate anything of value. The natural objection to this is that you choose to follow people, you don’t have it forced upon you. True! I say, then, if someone is so regularly finding content of merit, why don’t they have a blog where the content can be given context, discussion, and perhaps a preview so people aren’t going in blind? I like reading interesting blogs. I don’t want to receive links every time someone find something they think everyone should see. Twitter just adds another layer to the equation — and I don’t like layers. So there you have it. Every tweet out there is either unnecessary or unnecessarily abbreviated. Why would anyone want to be the owner of such an awkward little package of data?
This one might be controversial, but I embrace controversy. I make it uncomfortable. I put my hands in its back pockets. I kiss it on the lips. Twitter, therefore, I say is an incomplete and clumsy service. The halo of Twitter meta-services is indicative (in my opinion) less of the popularity of the service and more of how it falls short of the mark. When it isn’t down, Twitter provides A; people want A, B, and C. It’s just text, sure, that’s what makes it Twitter — but simplicity isn’t the same as elegance (though the two are often seen together). URL-shortened image hosting services suggest people want to put their images right in the tweet-stream, or whatever you call it. Twitter applications like Tweetdeck (that’s one, right?) suggest that the web service is inadequate. And so on. One could exaggerate the scope of Twitter’s service to being an alternative communication protocol at a basic level, like email or IM, and say that clients are a natural extension of that — but I think that’s disingenuous and wrong. Wrong because Twitter is meant to be simple, not fundamental. It’s a significant difference. Disingenuous because you know that’s not the case: if it were, Twitter would be better integrated with existing services. I’m not blaming Twitter for not being what I would have liked it to be — but to jump on a service that looks like a transitional form, so to speak, seems unwise if there is no utility in it. I’ll get on at Twitter 2.0, thanks. It replaces nothing and adds nothing What did you do before you tweeted? It’s the social equivalent of an all points bulletin, or… a quasar or something. What did you do before when you needed to send something of little consequence or urgency to a bunch of people who may or may not want to see it? The only thing that comes to mind is skywriting. Nowadays there are more ways than I can count. Twitter is certainly a big one, but is it really better, easier, or faster than its competitors — say, Facebook’s feed? To the untrained eye (that is to say, to my eye), it looks as if Facebook has Twitter humbled in many ways (though if I’m honest, I’m not much of a Facebooker either). Twitter is certainly more mobile — that much I grant it; Facebook should be much better at that, and the FriendFeed acquisition should sew that up pretty tight in the months to come. Twitter is certainly much better for featurephones (as opposed to smartphones), but that’s a bit of a moving target, since featurephones are getting smart and smartphones are getting cheap. If I took a picture of something crazy with my phone, I’d rather send it to Facebook than Twitter, though with Twitter it would probably reach more people, because Facebook’s feed is almost as simple, and far more robust. It’s worth mentioning here that I’m pretty much talking out of my ass, though, because I’m not an especially active user of Facebook, and I may have mentioned that I don’t use Twitter at all. But if you would forbid the argument ad ignorantium, well, there goes the entire internet. News breaks alike on the followed and the unfollowed As for spreading news, there I can see it might be helpful for some. Not that the same news that gets broken on Twitter couldn’t have been broken somewhere else, but Twitter news does have a certain something. A certain urgency, since it’s part of an expanding wave of retweets, and you’re expected to tweet it forward. I’m sure some of you are wondering how a blogger can get by without using Twitter (Matt Hickey is, at least). I would remind you that this article is appearing on TechCrunch, the world’s leading source of Twitter-based news. Every tweet coming into existence has to be personally approved by Mike and MG before it appears for the rest of the internet. With these guys on watch, I’ve got nothing to worry about. (They could stand to filter a bit more though) The point is that I don’t see any particular reason to use Twitter rather than, say, relying on Facebook or RSS or even email. If it’s hot, it’ll spread one way or the other. And unfortunately, I can’t think of a less suggestive way of saying that. Besides, (and I hate to trot out this old argument, but I think it’s applicable here) weren’t we saturated with information before Twitter came on the scene? Do we really need a constant hail of tweets in addition to the emails, IMs, messages, posts, votes, invitations, events, feeds, and god knows what else? I say thee nay! And on that point:
This may sound a bit rich coming from a professional blogger, but I don’t like to broadcast myself. Before this post I have tried to restrict my self-reference on this blog and CrunchGear to things like “I’m more of a Canon guy, but…” or “SNES will always be superior to Genesis.” I think advertising yourself overtly or deliberately drawing attention is in poor taste, whether it’s tweeting your latest action, or having really big hair, or making everyone listen to your joke at a party. Vanity! Twitter encourages it. This is more of a philosophical point, so I won’t argue it too much here, but it’s my position that people should be saying fewer, more meaningful things, directed at people to whom they are relevant — as opposed to the equivalent of sending up a signal flare and screaming that you super hate mondays, blah! It appeals to the reptilian part of the brain, I think. It’s an alpha male thing, having followers. When you’re broadcasting, you get to think people are paying attention, and who doesn’t like attention? But our attention is spread so thin these days that the portion devoted to something as minor as a tweet may as well be none at all. Broadcasting may console the ego, but it’s false consolation. What it is a surrogate for (meaningful attention) can’t be gotten that way. Why do you tweet? But enough of that. I could probably rattle off a couple more paragraphs on this and that, but I don’t want to abuse the reader’s patience. 1800 words is 1796 too many, when I could have simply pulled a Bartleby and said “I prefer not to.” You must understand, I thought it worth a thorough examining, considering TechCrunch and Twitter are joined at the hip. I console myself in that this article, though overlong to a degree you all will be revealing to me shortly, has still far fewer words than are found in an average week’s posts on Twitter.
I only forbid one answer: “because everyone else is doing it.” That’s the same reason people wore Hammer pants. [Update: Good to see so many responses. Very interesting. So much venom, though!] Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| Tr.im Can’t/Won’t Sell, Goes Open Source, Blames Everyone Posted: 17 Aug 2009 01:06 PM PDT
Let me be clear, going open source is a great idea, I’m not sure if it will help Tr.im all that much, but on paper it sounds great. That’s what they should have done originally. But in a post today on Tr.im’s blog the service first apologizes for this whole fiasco, and then attempts to place blame elsewhere. As I read it, it’s either Bit.ly’s fault for making a low-ball offer to buy the Tr.im, Twitter’s fault for picking Bit.ly over Tr.im as its URL shortener of choice, 301works.org’s fault for being a “public relations stunt”, and yes, even TechCrunch’s fault because we “simply repeat vertbatim what twitter/bit.ly feeds [us]“. Let me again be clear: We received no shortage of tips from very good sources last week about what Tr.im was doing behind the scenes while all of this played out. Not one of those tips was from either Bit.ly or Twitter or anyone directly related to them. Instead, they came from third-parties who were actively or passively pursuing a Tr.im acquisition. For example, we heard the $80,000 to $100,000 figure Nambu wanted for Tr.im from no less than three sources. And even more sources came forward to say they had heard that general price range as well and thought it was unreasonable, especially considering how Nambu handled the Tr.im situation, losing user trust in the process. So is it really any surprise today that they announce they’re going open source? Does it suck that Twitter’s choice of Bit.ly made it hard for services like Tr.im to operate? Sure. But plenty of others are still out there doing it rather than descending into conspiracy theories. And it’s just poor form to drag other services into this mess, like Gnip, which is trying to do a good thing with 301works.org. Yes, it was Bit.ly’s idea, but Gnip is now handling it as a independant third-party, and no shortage of other URL shortening services have joined on. Obviously, some of those services probably don’t like that Twitter chose Bit.ly, but they deal with it and realize that a movement like this is worth teaming up with rivals for the good of all of them. “It saddens me that this is how Tr.im is portraying 301works,” Gnip’s Eric Marcoullier told us today. He went on to reiterate that Gnip is simply serving as an independant third party for the project, attempting to do something good and useful. And while a ReadWriteWeb article on the matter today seemed to suggest that Tr.im was working actively with Gnip for this new crowd-sourced Tr.im, Marcoullier notes that anyone is free to push data through Gnip, but that he hasn’t specifically talked to Nambu about how Tr.im will use it. He also notes that since Tr.im will now be open source, he hopes the community behind it makes its data a part of 301works. We have reached out to Tr.im to try and clear up their misplaced anger about this, but have yet to hear back. If we do, we will update. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| Ustream Sued By Boxing Promoter Over Pirated Broadcast Posted: 17 Aug 2009 12:15 PM PDT
The court document, embedded below, also details Square Ring’s attempts to proactively prevent the event from being pirated. According to the suit, Square Ring sent Ustream four notices in the week leading up to the fight, asking that the service either provide a ‘take down tool’, or that it have staff actively monitor and delete any streams of the fight. The document says that while some other sites did provide take-down tools, Ustream did not cooperate. Ustream has given us the following statement regarding the suit:
Piracy is a problem that has long plagued live video sites like Ustream and its competitors, which include Justin.tv. Because content is being streamed by users, it can be difficult for the services to monitor and prevent copyrighted material from being streamed. But while they’d never admit it, piracy can also help these sites establish sizable user bases — one need only look to YouTube for proof, which was a hotbed for pirated material in its early days and was later acquired by Google for $1.65 billion.
Image via Wikimedia Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Jeff Jarvis Tries To Save Local News (With Spreadsheets!) Posted: 17 Aug 2009 12:05 PM PDT Local news always seems to get the short end of the stick, both in terms of coverage and advertising dollars. And as the entire newspaper industry continues to struggle for survival, the prospects for local news looks particularly bleak. It just doesn’t pay to have a reporter cover a neighborhood farmer’s market when she could be covering the Mayor’s office or something with broader appeal. And so traditional news organizations are abandoning local and hyperlocal news. Don’t worry, though. Media consultant, blogger, and CUNY professor Jeff Jarvis has a few ideas for how to replace the local newspaper with new business models for news at the hyperlocal level. He just gave a presentation at an Aspen Institute forum on journalism today (live stream). His answer is to organize local bloggers and citizens into a metro-wide network in each of the top 25 markets, and sell local ads across their sites. Each hyperlocal site would remain independent but join a loose federation for ad sales, distribution, and shared costs. Jarvis sketches out what a new news organization might look like at the local level, and goes out on a limb by offering actual spreadsheets showing some assumptions about audience size and how the business model would work. There is also a spreadsheet for doing this through a non-profit. As everyone from Esther Dyson to Michael Kinsley and Marissa Mayer pointed out at the forum, the numbers don’t look very realistic. The model assumes in a metro market of 5 million people, the hyperlocal network will be able to get 1.75 million readers (35 percent penetration) in Year 1, growing to 3 million readers (60 percent penetration) in Year 3. The corresponding revenues for each market go from $5 million in Year 1 to $20 million in Year 3. For a large local blog, that could translate into total revenues of $126,976 in Year 1, going to $331,640 in Year 2, with corresponding income for the blogger of $42,777 in the first year, going to $148, 269 in the third (see table below). These numbers are way too optimistic. In order to get to those revenue numbers, the model had to be pumped up with SMS alerts, Twitter coupons, a “donation system for watchdog journalism,” and other lines of revenue which may never an out. Most people are just not that interested in what is going on in their neighborhoods. A local blog network would be lucky to get 20 percent of a metro area’s population as regular readers across multiple sites. Former Slate editor Michael Kinsley asked Jarvis, “If it is as easy as you make it sound, why aren't you off doing it?.” Google product chief Marissa Mayer was a little more diplomatic, but suggested the numbers need a “sanity check.” To be fair, Jarvis and CUNY are presenting the models for discussion and to show how an alternative, semi-distributed local news organization might emerge that can pay for itself. The numbers are wrong, but that hardly matters. They are a starting point for a reconception of how local news can be organized. “Aren’t you reinventing the wheel?” Kinsley asked him. “I think it needs some reinvention,” responded Jarvis. “We wanted to see if there is a vision for the future of journalism.” When Jarvis was asked who the dominant species would be in this new ecosystem, he answered: “No one owns the whole thing anymore. No one can afford to own it anymore. So the key thing is how do you take part in the network.” His numbers might be way off, but at least he is trying to rethink the news. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| Steve Jobs: The Stonking Big Profile Posted: 17 Aug 2009 11:13 AM PDT
One of the best paragraphs describes Apple’s development style:
And we’re surprised there was a suicide? That’s right: when you’re working on the new iPhone they’re going to watch you and turn on a Red Light Special lamp over your head. As Jef Raskin notes, Jobs would have been an “excellent king of France.” But will we listen? Will we ever tear down this cult of personality? Probably not. Apple does what Apple does and we - though increasingly fewer of us - walk in lock-step. Writing about the company is surprisingly hard and going past the obvious PR and marketing layer is difficult. Even Appleyard had a heck of a time and it shows in this piece. Instead of Jobs being described as a nice guy who drives to work and makes phones he becomes a “productive narcissist” with daddy issues and who could be compared with a syphilitic Bourbon potentate. I’m going to write a few more words and then encourage you to go read the piece. Today when I went to Apple.com for something or the other I felt a little tinge of revulsion. This has been Apple’s summer, whether it wanted it to be or not. We’re talking about Snow Leopard and tablets and prototypes and all this jazz and we’re all amped up on fermented Apple juice. I kind of feel that no, Apple, doesn’t deserve all this attention and that Windows 7 need a little love and what about the Creative Zii… But just as no IT guy will get fired for buying Microsoft, no blogger will get fired for writing about Apple. For better or worse Jobs’ strange strategy worked. Comparing Apple with other computer companies is almost impossible. Through force of will and a strange internal culture, Apple has left the map entirely and is operating in its own rarified astral plane. I wonder, however, how many of us want to keep looking up when there’s great stuff right in front of us. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| MSNBC Picks Up Hyperlocal News Aggregator EveryBlock Posted: 17 Aug 2009 10:02 AM PDT Even though they haven’t really found a big audience yet, hyperlocal news sites are becoming a hot commodity. In June, AOL bought Patch for $7 million, and today MSNBC acquired EveryBlock. EveryBlock was previously funded by a grant from the Knight Foundation, which ended in June. The five employees will now work at MSNBC. The price was not disclosed, but like the Patch acquisition, it is not an audience acquisition. Rather it is a hyperlocal platform play which MSNBC can now plug into its site and push in a major way. EveryBlock is a hyperlocal news aggregator, bringing in geo-specific feeds from neighborhood blogs, Flickr, Yelp, Craigslist, and elsewhere to give readers a picture of what is going on in their town or neighborhood. EveryBlock currently covers only about 15 cities in the U.S. and comScore estimates its U.S. audience to be only 143,000 unique visitors a month (July, 2009). In contrast, competitor Outside.in attracts 800,000 unique visitors in the U.S. These are relatively small numbers, but these services do a good job of collecting neighborhood news without the expense of actually reporting it. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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Facebook for iPhone 
Scientist wannabes, rejoice!
Over and out for the MVNO model? 
In Amsterdam today, the makers of mobile Augmented Reality (AR) browser
Microblogging is one popular type of cake, and 
A new lawsuit filed against Facebook in the Superior Court of California in Orange County is one of the more entertaining documents we’ve had the pleasure of reading recently. A lot of 
As 
Just in from a source involved with the transaction - the 
What were you doing in 1999? Maybe you were following the Kosovo War. Maybe you were starting to use Napster. Maybe you were entering your senior year of high school (I was). Or maybe you started blogging. After all, on August 23, 1999, 
Another month, another report that 
Let’s not beat around the bush: The G1 was not a very good phone. That’s not to say Android isn’t a good mobile OS — it is, it’s just that the initial hardware built to run the OS didn’t do it justice. It was poorly designed and had a fairly cheap feel. And now, it appears that the G1 may already be on its last legs as Android engineers 
The myTouch is actually the device Mike switched to after 
As more details emerge about the 
Tweets have no value
It’s incomplete
It’s pure vanity
So here’s my question to you. Why do you, or why don’t you, use Twitter? This isn’t a trap; I’m genuinely curious, since it seems to provide some things for many, many things for some, and nothing to a (talented and handsome) few. Anything so polarizing is worth discussion, so — discuss.
Oh, this is rich. 
Live video streaming service 
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