Thursday, March 4, 2010

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The AOL Executive Shuffle Continues: Entertainment Chief Mike Rich Departs

Posted: 04 Mar 2010 09:06 AM PST

There’s been a lot of churn in AOL’s executive and employee ranks since Tim Armstrong became CEO. The latest exec to head for the door is 9-year veteran Mike Rich, who is the senior VP in charge of AOL Entertainment (which includes AOL Music, Moviefone, and AOL Television). He joins a growing list of the old guard departing the company (Bill Wilson, David Liu, Ted Cahall, Grant Cerny) in the wake of Armstrong’s new hires.

For instance, former Googler David Eun is now president of AOL Media and Studios. Under him, David Mason, the co-founder of recently acquired StudioNow has just ben promoted to senior VP of the AOL Content Platform. And recently hired former Google engineer Jeff Reynar will lead the engineering efforts for that Content Platform, which includes StudioNow and Seed.

When Armstrong brought Eun on board, he told me that he was done making changes in the top ranks, but AOL is in the midst of reducing its entire workforce by one third. The shuffle will continue.

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Mike Rich, Senior Vice President, AOL Entertainment

Google Apps Now Disaster Proof

Posted: 04 Mar 2010 08:59 AM PST

Many of us take the disaster readiness of servers and data centers for granted. But for IT admins from both small and large companies, being prepared for disaster and emergency situations is complicated and expensive issue. Google has made an announcement today for any enterprise users of Google Apps; assuring IT admins that the suite is now fully prepared for disaster recovery. Rajen Sheth, Senior Product Manager, Google Apps, tells us that as of recently, Google is prepared for disaster recovery for all of its products in the Google Apps suite, which include Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Google Video.

Google’s secret sauce is live and synchronous replication. So every action you take in Gmail is immediately replicated in two data centers at once, so that if one data center fails, Google will transfer data over to the other one. Traditionally, Google says, synchronous replication can be very expensive for companies. For example, the cost to back up 25GB of data with synchronous replication can range from $150 to $500+ in storage and maintenance costs per employee. Google says that exact price depends on a number of factors such as the number of times the data is replicated and the choice of service provider. Of course, Google replicates all the data multiple times, and the 25GB per employee for Gmail is backed up for free. And data from Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Google Video, which encompass most of the applications in Google Apps, is also synchronously replicated for free.

The reason that Google can offer these services for free is because the tech giant already operates large data centers simultaneously for millions of users and also balances loads between data centers as needed. Google also claims that its high speed connections between data centers allows the company to replicate and transfer large amounts of data quickly from one server to another.

Google says synchronous replication is a more attractive option than the common practice that many small businesses take by backing up email by copying the data to a tape on a weekly or daily basis, which seems to be an arduous task. Larger companies opt for a storage area network (SAN) to back up data, which Google says is an expensive process.

Sheth declined to identify the timeline of when each app began to use the backup solution. Sheth did say that bringing all the apps together into replication was a complex process. Google Apps is currently being used by 2 million businesses with 20 million active users.

Photo Credit/Flickr/ClayIrving

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In Mobile, Fragmentation is Forever. Deal With It.

Posted: 04 Mar 2010 08:19 AM PST

Editor’s note: Richard Wong is a venture capitalist with Accel Partners, an investor in AdMob, GetJar, and SunRun, and a former mobile industry executive. In this guest post he argues that the fragmentation of mobile devices and platforms is here to stay, and offers some advice to entrepreneurs on how to deal with it.

Mobile data is on fire. Despite a few false starts, we are now in the midst of a transformative “Open Mobile 3rd Wave” (remember WAP, and J2ME?). We are just in the early swell of the wave; the iPhone itself is not even three years old, and thanks to continued improvements we're now seeing in smart phones, mobile OS platforms and 3G/4G networks, the raw ingredients are just getting better every month.

Per the views of many mobile denizens and thought-leaders such as well-known internet analyst Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley, I certainly believe there will emerge new industry-transforming Facebooks, Googles, and Yahoos in this mobile wave.

FRAGMENTATION & COMPLEXITY

However, a key topic discussed by us mobile geeks and startups is the challenge of mobile platform fragmentation. There is an alphabet soup of protocols, standards, and regional differences by country which can be daunting for any entrepreneur. Just look at the range of technologies on handset platforms alone, from iPhone to Android to Blackberry, and even new platforms announced in last 30 days, from WinMo7, to MeeGo, to Samsung Bada, as if we need more platforms to deal with . . .

THE MAGIC BULLET—IT DOESN'T EXIST

One of the worst myths floating around the blogosphere is the wait by some for a “unifying technology” that will make things “simpler and easier” to develop services and apps for the global mobile market.  At times, some have claimed that Java (J2ME) was the answer, then Flash Lite, then Webkit browsers, and most recently HTML5. While each solution has its merits, there will not be any unification anytime soon. Even as HTML5 richness has improved substantially, browser support will still vary and many, many phones will not support HTML5 for 7+ years.

Anyone who is waiting for a single silver bullet to solve fragmentation issues in mobile will be waiting a very long time, especially if they want to go after the global mobile opportunity. As such, it is important for mobile entrepreneurs to wade in and sort it out for themselves.  No one is going to flatten the industry such as Microsoft did in the PC-era to make it simple.

THE REALPOLITIK: COMMON STANDARDS  = COMMODITY STANDARDS FOR MANY

The realpolitik is that Mobile is truly global, and serves an extremely wide range of countries and users. There will naturally be a wide breadth of technologies, from CDMA vs GSM protocols, J2ME vs BREW, Mobile Apps vs Mobile Web, xHTML vs HDML, SMS vs MMS and others to serve this market.
Ask former execs of PSINet (bankrupt operator), AST (bankrupt PC maker) & Packard Bell (bankrupt PC maker) about the impact of the WINTEL “standard” on other PC industry players, and you’ll get a sense why Nokia, Motorola,Verizon, & Sprint aren’t rushing to follow their PC-era predecessors. Common standards = commodity standards for many players in this industry. Sadly, whether or not there is an elegant technical answer, it will be hard to drive any single set of worldwide standards given the different economic incentives of the many players, however good it would be for developers.

OK, SO AS A MOBILE ENTREPRENEUR WHAT DO YOU DO?

What do you do as a mobile entrepreneur in the face of this complexity?  If you’re going to be successful, the winning entrepreneurs in mobile will have to learn to navigate these waters.  There's no simple shortcut. Several thoughts:

  1. Don’t wait for the Magic Bullet.  The first step towards progress is acceptance of reality. I actually do believe that Webkit browsers, HTML5, continued progression of J2ME, Android and iPhone are all positive trends that will help make things easier for many developers, but none of them will be a single-threaded answer. There are too many markets where these solutions are insufficient. For example, India, one of the world’s fastest growing mobile markets is stilldominated by Nokia, which has 70%+ market share. I don't think developing only for iPhones will be enough to dominate the India market given their < 5% share.
  2. Bound The Problem & Get Down the User Learning Curve.  So, the critical next step is to limit the boundaries of the problem so you can actually solve it. Are you pursuing an enterprise app or a consumer app? Does your success require broad scale viral use, or is it perfectly good to have 2000 profitable users? Many developers focused on the consumer market are going to find that a blend of mobile web, and prototyping on iPhone-only or Android-only is the right first step and only then expand to broader platforms. Blackberry and WindowsMobile are similarly important in business applications. Rather than the costly efforts of chasing 4-5 platforms at once, focus in on the first one or two, prove your model, then expanding will help to bound the complexity.
  3. Geography matters. That said, it turns out that there are major differences by country in the mobile ecosystem. Just as important as the use case, is which country/geography one is targeting first. In Europe, 3rd party retailers such as Carphone Warehouse play a major role, reducing the influence of operator controlled stores. In emerging markets, Nokia is still a major force to be reckoned with. In North America, iPhone is capturing a disproportionate profit share of the industry.  Look at the data sources I link to below and understand which handsets dominate which geography—it is very different by region.
  4. Get a guide. It is difficult to explain the subtleties of the mobile ecosystem without a longer dialogue, but the good news is that there are quite a few battle-scarred mobile veterans around that can help you with the Cliff Notes on the industry. Find one to help you.
  5. Resources To Tap Into.  Whether or not you agree with my opinions in this article, here are some great data sources to learn more.
  • Admob Mobile Metrics—a good summary of trends in the mobile data ecosystem from the lens of Admob's network. A good view of by-country handset types from their view.
  • Chetan Sharma Consulting—Chetan, as an independent analyst publishes some great research on the trends in the mobile data space.
  • Getjar Mobile Statistics—Getjar is the leading independent mobile app store, and publishes stats on download volumes, handset types, etc.
  • Mobile Monday—great entrepreneur organized events getting the mobile community together in over 120+ cities around the world.  If you really are looking for a guide, this is a good place to start
  • WURFL— wireless universal resource file—an open source project; a “config file that contains all info on every wireless device on earth”

DON'T WAIT

There's an incredible startup and wealth-creating opportunity in this new arena of Open Mobile. The smartest entrepreneurs will not wait for these fragmentation issues to be solved but are figuring out now how to pick a use case, a core platform, and geography to bound their problem and get going. Once you have initial momentum, you can pick through these fragmentation landmines, and make a 2nd and 3rd step. Don't wait for the unifying technology to solve these issues before diving in. Its going to be an exciting time to build great mobile companies this next 5-7 years. See you out there.

Reference Glossary

SMS – short message system otherwise known as text messaging

MMS – multimedia messaging system (originated as photo messaging from J-phone in Japan)

CDMA – code division multiplexing – pioneered and still very controlled by Qualcomm – Sprint, Verizon & MetroPCS use this protocol

GSM – Global System for Mobile, the standard in Europe and most of the world – AT&T & T-Mobile use this protocol

J2ME – Java Mobile Edition (often paired with class library profile called MIDP2)

BREW – Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless – a Qualcomm owned initiative as alternative to J2ME

XHTML – multi modality markup language

WML – the original markup language of the WAP Forum which allowed more efficient use of bandwith constrained mobile networks (i.e.. less chatty)

WURFL – wireless universal resource file – open source config file of wireless devices

MOMO – Mobile Monday community of mobile entrepreneurs supporting other mobile entrepreneurs

(@Rich_Wong is a Partner @Accel_Partners and works with mobile investements Admob and Getjar ( among others) and was previously an operating exec at mobile technology provider Openwave Systems. See www.accel.com/rpw_presos for additional data around the mobile ecosystem. Disclosure: Accel Partners is an investor in Admob, Amobee, Getjar, Mig33, Medio, MetroPCS, as referenced above)

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Richard Wong
Accel Partners
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“Problematic Wi-Fi Access”: Apple Bans Augmented Reality App Sekai Camera

Posted: 04 Mar 2010 07:24 AM PST

More and more apps are stricken from the App Store as of late, for a variety of reasons. Today, the Apple hammer hit Tokyo-based Tonchidot whose augmented reality app Sekai Camera was removed without warning.

The free app, which made its – memorable – debut during TechCrunch 50 in 2008, intends to help users “tag the world” by imposing information (text, pictures, video and audio) over images in the iPhone camera.

Sekai Camera uses GPS to locate the user and measure the distance to objects in the vicinity. The problem for Apple: in places with weak GPS signals (i.e. within buildings or underground), the app relies on PlaceEngine, a technology that makes it possible to determine a user’s location via Wi-Fi. Once it’s installed on a device, the PlaceEngine client collects Wi-Fi signals from nearby access points and sends the information to a server, which then estimates your location.

PlaceEngine provider Koozyt says on its Japanese website Apple changed their policy regarding “the way apps access Wi-Fi devices”. Not only Sekai Camera, but a number of other PlaceEngine-powered apps were kicked out, too (including Yahoo! Maps for the iPhone). Details are still unclear at this point, with Koozyt saying they are currently looking into the issue.

More information on the peculiar ban are available at The Register.

Tonchidot itself cites “issues regarding the App Store review process” as a reason for the ban of Sekai Camera version 2.1.1, adding the app will make a comeback in version 2.2 “soon”. I wouldn’t be too surprised to see PlaceEngine get scrapped altogether.

In Japan, Sekai Camera is the most downloaded iPhone app to date, and it was elected "Best App in 2009″ by Apple Japan late last year (it was released worldwide in December).

We reached out to Tonchidot for a comment and will update this post when we have it.

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Tonchidot Corporation
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RealNetworks Settles RealDVD Lawsuit: Has To Cough Up $4.5mil, Stop Supporting The Software

Posted: 04 Mar 2010 07:22 AM PST

Right around the time the world's financial markets started to collapse, back in 2008, RealNetworks, the folks behind RealPlayer, released RealDVD. It was a short-lived piece of software that made making DVD movie backups fairly painless—too painless for Hollywood, which immediately took RealNetworks to court, claiming all sorts of copyright infringement hokum. That's all in the past now, for RealNetworks has settled with the six "major" Hollywood studios to the sum of $4.5 million. Ouch.


Joost Starts Second Life Under The Adconion Flag

Posted: 04 Mar 2010 06:14 AM PST

Joost, the failed video venture started by Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, was put out of its misery in November 2009 when Adconion Media Group decided to pick up the remains of the company for an undisclosed sum.

Today, the international audience and content network operator is launching a suite of online video advertising products and services, targeting agencies and brand marketers who might be interested in running in-banner and in-stream video advertising on the Joost Video Network.

Video destination site Joost.com, meanwhile, will remain up and running (gotta love that ‘beta’ tagged logo) and will be used as a portal to showcase and distribute branded entertainment content.

Here’s how Nick Higgins, director of global video at Adconion, pitches the new offering:

“Adding this product offering gives Adconion a distinguished position among ad networks, as we are the only provider with in-banner and in-stream capabilities; an exclusive relationship with a branded entertainment studio; in-house creative services; and a video portal, Joost.com, that we own, operate and sell exclusively."

Adconion stresses that this is the first product from the combined entity formed when Adconion acquired Joost's assets. Since then, Adconion has integrated its ad server with the Joost video player and is the exclusive video ad provider for Joost.com and the Joost video player in its embedded form. Adconion also touts its exclusive relationship with the RedLever studio for the content side of the equation. The two companies say that will work with agencies and marketers to develop fresh content, from advertisements to webisodes.

According to the press release, the Joost Video Network will serve video ads on Adconion's network, which self-reportedly spans 2,000 premium publishers in more than 70 markets worldwide. Adconion claims it is capable of reaching more than 350 million unique users across the globe.

All in all, it seems like Adconion made a good move by throwing Joost a lifeline, though I’d love to know what they ended up paying for the assets of the massively hyped venture.

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App Directory Mplayit: Mobile Gaming Lags On Android

Posted: 04 Mar 2010 05:58 AM PST

One of the advantages of having a plethora of app directories for iPhone and Android devices, is the wealth of additional data that has emerged regarding users buying and downloading habits. Facebook-based app directory mPlayit has a few compelling stats out today that show that games are four times as popular among iPhone users than among the Android user base. BlackBerry users are twice as likely to be looking for games content than Android users, eventhough BlackBerry devices are primarily used for business purposes.

According to mPlayit, 83 percent of Android app activity on the directory/store is related to non-game related mobile apps, and 17 percent of activity is towards downloading and checking out games. On the other hand, 36 percent of iPhone app activity is related to non-game related mobile apps, with 64 percent of activity towards gaming on the device.

Other trends identified by mPlayit include the massive growth of location-based apps, with Loopt, Foursquare and Gowalla all receiving attention on the directory by users. But mPlayit says that even lesser known location-based apps such as FastMall and AroundMe on iPhone are receiving an increased number of downloads. Evernote continues to dominate on the Android, iPhone and BlackBerry platforms, in the Lists & Notes category. Barcode-scanning apps are also increasingly popular, holding the top Utilities category slot for iPhone and BlackBerry, and the second Shopping category slot for Android and iPhone.

The fact that that Android platform doesn’t support gaming as well as the iPhone is not new. But with the introduction of powerful Android devices such as Motorola’s Droid and most recently, Google’s Nexus 1, gaming apps and functionality has improved on the device. Especially now that both devices have multi-touch technology. That being said, it may take a bit longer for both developers and users to catch on.

MPlayit /2009/11/18/myplayit-launches-mobile-app-discovery-directory-on-facebook/”>launched its Facebook app that allows users to discover, share and recommend a variety of mobile apps back in November and covers apps available for the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Mobile (Java) devices. Mplayit's directory of apps includes a dedicated page for each app where Mplayit will post videos of the app (created either by the developer or pulled from YouTube), a detailed description of the app and reviews. You can also click to buy the app from various app markets, including Apple’s App Store and the Android Market. Once you start clicking on various app and downloading apps, Mplayit will begin to recommend apps to you based on your behavior on the site.

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Skimlinks Launches Discovery Tool For Publishers To Find Affiliate Programs

Posted: 04 Mar 2010 04:58 AM PST

U.K. startup Skimlinks is hoping to revolutionize the affiliate model by turning normal product links into affiliate links. The startup gives publishers access to affiliate programs of thousands of merchants across a number of affiliate networks. Each time a user clicks through and makes a purchase, the website earns a commission from the retailer. With Skimlinks, a publisher can set which links should be affiliate ones or not. The publishers makes money from content via affiliate fees and Skimlinks takes a 25% cut of the commissions. Today, the startup is launching a nifty discovery tool for publishers to search for affiliate links by keyword.

The desktop tool, called a Skimkit, is powered by Adobe AIR and is essentially a live searchable database of millions of products from Skimlinks merchants. The tool lets publishers research, find and link to products they are writing about, with immediate access to deeplinks and image URLs.

So, If a website publisher is searching for a link for red shoes, the user can search for red shoes on the Skimbit. The startup will produce results from retailers who have affiliate programs for links. SkimKit also features a service that creates shortened, monetized links for use in Twitter and email newsletters. SkimKit is available for free to Skimlinks publishers.

Skimlinks, which was born from Skimbit, is already being uses as a monetization service on more than a half million sites worldwide and has raised a total of $2.5 million in funding. Publishers using the affiliate service include Elle.com, The Daily Mirror, and a number of fashion blogs and sites.

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Kooaba Debuts Image Recognition API

Posted: 04 Mar 2010 03:47 AM PST

Image recognition technology startup Kooaba yesterday released an API that definitely deserves some developer attention.

The Swiss company aims to unlock its library of over 10 million images, ranging from album covers to books and movie posters, and provide access to all that precious data via the cloud.

Kooaba hopes that the launch of the API will trigger third-party developers to develop more mobile applications – iPhone and Android versions exist already – or tools that tap into social networking services like Facebook and Twitter, etcetera.

Here’s a video of Kooaba for iPhone in case you’re familiar with the company and its offering:

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Opera Releases Beta Of Native Opera Mini 5 App For Windows Mobile Phones

Posted: 04 Mar 2010 02:15 AM PST

Opera Software has been busy lately, releasing fresh finalized and beta products on a near-daily basis. This morning, the company announced that it has released a native version of Opera Mini 5 beta for handsets running Windows Mobile 5 and 6.

Interestingly, the new WinMo version of Opera Mini does not require Java. That basically means any Windows Mobile phone can accommodate the app.

Despite not requiring Java, Opera Mini 5 beta for Windows Mobile includes the same feature set as the Java-based version. That means features like tabbed browsing, speed dial, bookmarks and the password manager are built right in (also see video below).

To download, simply point your current mobile browser to m.opera.com/next.

(Press release)

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Microsoft Launches Its First Android App. Yes, Google’s Platform.

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 09:47 PM PST

In December 2008, Microsoft surprised a lot of people by releasing an iPhone app — Seadragon Mobile. A month later, they ensured the move wasn’t taken as a joke or gimmick by launching another app, Tag, into Apple’s App Store. Now, they have a few, including an app for Bing. And starting today, they’re doing the same for Android.

Tag for Android is the first Microsoft-made app launched on the mobile platform. This is notable, of course, because Android is the mobile platform by Microsoft’s chief rival: Google. Still, as we saw with the iPhone, Microsoft has no problems getting its technology out there, even if it means using rival platforms. Aside from Android and iPhone, Tag also currently works on Windows Mobile, J2ME, Blackberry and Symbian S60 phones.

Microsoft’s Tag technology allows you to use your phone as a mobile barcode reader. You simply point your phone’s camera at a tag (think: a smaller QRCode), snap a picture, and the Tag program will interpret it. This can be used to place things like coupons in physical locations, for example. Other companies, including Google, are working on these mobile barcodes as well. In fact, just prior to the Nexus One unveiling, all Google employees were given the device with a special barcode on the back that other Android devices could scan to get that person’s information.

Despite the high level on animosity between Microsoft and Google, it’s great to see that Microsoft isn’t above creating apps for the increasingly popular Android platform. Microsoft made its own big mobile headlines last month with the unveiling of Windows Phone Series 7, a complete reboot of its mobile strategy, due to launch later this year. That move should help Microsoft better compete with the current hot mobile platforms, Android and the iPhone.

The Tag application is available today in the Android Market; it’s a free app.

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TechCrunch Takes Over YouTube For A Day

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 09:21 PM PST

If you head over to YouTube right now, you may find that the videos on the homepage are significantly better than usual. Well, maybe not — but at least they’ll have a strong bias for startups, Silicon Valley, and the tech industry in general. That’s because YouTube has invited us to be part of their ‘Curator of the Month’ program, which means we got to submit a playlist of our favorite videos, which will be shown on the homepage throughout the day. You can find our full list of choices right here.

To build the playlist, we polled the whole TechCrunch crew for their favorite clips, which range from JESS3’s State of the Internet to a Jeff Bezos talk on minimizing regret. There are a few oddballs in there too, like this bizarrely catchy song about Excavator Trucks (a favorite of TC co-editor Erick Schonfeld’s kids).

Hope you like our choices, and feel free to share your favorites (hopefully tech related) in the comments!

VeriFone Brings Out The Big Guns In Its War With Square: Apple Stores

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 08:57 PM PST

It’s no secret that VeriFone hopes to eliminate mobile startup Square before it even officially launches. Not only did they unveil their PAYware Mobile credit card-reading device just a week after Square made headlines with its unveiling, but they almost immediately started a major advertising push in places such as New York City cabs. And now they have perhaps their strongest weapon yet in the fight: placement in Apple stores.

Starting this month, Apple retails stores around the country will begin selling the PAYware Mobile reader (which is required for the accompanying app to work). It will also be sold through Apple’s online store. VeriFone CEO Doug Bergeron disclosed this information during VeriFone’s conference call yesterday afternoon.

Obviously, this placement could potentially mean a lot for VeriFone. It’s one thing to advertise your product, and say you can buy it online, it’s another to say you can go to an Apple Store and pick up the entire package in one fell-swoop (iPhone + PAYware Mobile reader). Bergeron also noted that the company plans to introduce PAYware mobile editions for Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile. While Square is also currently iPhone (or iPod touch)-only, the card reader itself was made to plug into a headphone jack so it should work on a variety of mobile platforms eventually.

Square, while yet to formally launch, is currently being tested by a number of partners. We’ve used it a few times to accept donations, and have been very pleased with the results. PAYware Mobile also seems pretty solid. This should be an interesting battle.

Here’s the key parts from Bergeron’s comments:

Let's move on now to our PAYware mobile initiative. The iPhone version of this complete end-to-end payment solution comprise of a VeriShield Protect-enabled card encryption sleeve, an Apple-certified software app, and payment gateway service, commenced shipment in the last week of January. Channel development is key to this initiative's success. To better reach individual and small business end users, we have launched a highly-effective marketing campaign that has garnered the attention of the national press, including Newsweek, CNN Money, and Fox Business news. We have also made progress in working with our traditional processor and financial institution partners to support this initiative and we will be making key announcement shortly.

In addition, we have established PAYware mobile gateway processing relationships with over 70 ISOs to-date, allowing them to assist existing or new (inaudible) customers in processing payment via the iPhone. Finally, and importantly, customers will also be able to purchase our PAYware mobile solution through our paywaremobile.comdirect sales site, which provide – which forwards transactions to one of five blue-chip processors. And starting in March, at Apple Retail Stores in the United States and the Apple Business Store online.

At the same time, we are also targeting large national, international party and in-home direct sales enterprises who may have already been outfitted with iPhones. Integrating secure, card present payments into these existing applications across hundreds of thousands of users is the next logical step. Later this year, we intend to deliver an EMV pin based version of PAYware mobile for the iPhone, allowing us to meet payment need for iPhone users worldwide. We are also planning to introduce PAYware mobile edition for Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile.

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WSJ: Facebook Revenues For 2010 Could Hit Between $1.2 To $2 Billion

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 07:37 PM PST

Late last year, we published a list of the top 10 IPO candidates of 2010.  Leading that list was Facebook, which has grown to 400 million users and is finally starting to turn on the revenue pumps as it works toward its inevitable IPO. But this evening, the Wall Street Journal published an article penned by Jessica Vascellaro that may dash the hopes of anyone who thinks that will happen in the immediate future. The lengthy piece, which is well worth reading in its entirety, touches on quite a few issues related to Facebook’s history and its future, and largely revolves around CEO Mark Zuckerberg — who doesn’t sound all that keen to take his company public.

While the article covers a lot of familiar territory about Facebook’s past, there’s plenty of new information too. Of note, the article says that Facebook executives have “discussed how revenues for 2010 could hit between $1.2 to $2 billion” — figures that exceed even the $1.1 billion InsideFacebook’s Eric Eldon reported yesterday (clearly, the number is looking big). The article also asserts that Facebook is working on a tool for sharing your physical location with Facebook (something that we’ve been hearing about for quite a while, and that I believe will be key in the future).

With regard to Facebook’s IPO, the article discusses Zuckerberg’s penchant for “delayed gratification”, which he says he has a special capacity for.  And because Zuckerberg still maintains firm control over the company, and when it will IPO, delayed gratification seems to be the law of the land.

There are also a handful of interesting anecdotes about Zuckerberg. According to the article, a Facebook engineer once wrote an internal memo called “Working With Zuck”, in which he warned other employees not to hope for much in the way of back-patting from their CEO, explaining they should not “expect acknowledgment for your role in moving the discussion forward; getting the product right should be its own reward.”

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Kwedit Gets Slammed On Colbert, But Raises $3.3 Million To Soften The Blow

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 06:14 PM PST

Kwedit, the innovative new alternate payment product for social games and just about any other virtual good, is on a roll. They’ve raised a second round of financing – $3.3 million in a round led by Maveron. And they were also on the Colbert Report last night. Just, not so much in a good way.

Colbert ridiculed the company as a “website that hooks little kids on borrowing credit.” You can watch the clip here.

One of Kwedit’s products is a sort of credit system. Users promise to pay back the Kwedit, and social game gives in game currency based on that promise. There’s no enforcement mechanism if the user doesn’t pay, other than a lower Kwedit score and difficulty in getting more in game Kwedit. See our overview here.

So while the Colbert clip is funny, it’s not very accurate. The company says that they absolutely do not encourage use by young children. You must be at least 13 to use Kwedit. And while Kwedit teaches users how to use credit, it’s not actually a credit product. The credit business is about charging interest over time, ideally on balances that are never fully paid off. There is no interest in Kwedit.

Kwedit says they’ve signed six new merchant contracts since launch across a variety of verticals. PokeTalk, a VoIP provider, is among them, as well as a MMO, a test prep service and a credit record protection service.

PokeTalk is using the Kwedit Direct product, which allows users to agree to pay for something online and then pay for the item by mailing in cash, or by going to a local 7-11 and paying there. Pre-paid cards also require a big up front investment in printing and distribution to get up and running.

Some of Kwedit’s partners seem to be very interested in that 7-11 angle. It’s very hard to get any kind of presence in those stores, but they can get in immediately by using Kwedit. In fact, says the company, they are seeing “tremendous interest” in the Kwedit Direct product.

Kwedit also says that they can enable charitable donations via Kwedit Direct, and neither they nor 7-11 will charge any fees for these payments. So charities looking for a new way to accept payments will likely give this a look.

As I said in our launch post, I’m very intrigued by Kwedit. It’s the only truly unique payment product I’ve seen recently and has a real chance of helping social gaming companies and other virtual goods companies increase revenue per customer in a world where only 1-3% of users are willing to open their wallet. Colbert may joke about it, but Kwedit is, actually, serious business.

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Google’s Gesture Search Gives You A New Way To Search Android

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 05:56 PM PST

Android users have a new way to search their phones today, and it’s pretty damn cool. Google has just released a new application called Gesture Search that lets you search your phone’s contacts, bookmarks, applications, and music simply by scribbling out letters with your finger. No hunting and pecking — you just draw out each letter as if you’re finger painting. The new application is currently only available for devices running Eclair (Android 2.0, which is currently only found on the Nexus One and Verizon Droid).

Using Gesture Search is quite simple. First, you boot up the Gesture Search application, which you need to download from Android Market. After installing it, your phone will prompt you to ask if you want to add the application to your home screen (which you’ll probably want to do if you intend to use it with any frequency). Tap the application, and you’ll see a black screen, where you’re supposed to start drawing the first few letters of your query. As you complete each letter, the application will refine your results. If you mess up, you can delete the last letter by drawing a horizontal line to the left (you can delete the entire word by swiping to the right).

I’ve been playing with the new application, and the character recognition seems to work pretty well. It’s still too early to tell how useful this will be on a day-to-day basis, but it has potential. For one, it’s great for people who don’t like having to flick through long lists or use the phone’s integrated keyboard. And because everyone knows how to draw these letters by heart, it makes for a good way to search when you can’t keep your eyes on your phone (don’t take this as a recommendation to use it while driving, though — that’s never safe).

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webOS Gets The Facebook App It Should Have Always Had

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 05:55 PM PST

At long last, webOS has been granted a Facebook application worth its weight in kilobytes. A completely revamped version of the Facebook application has just gone live in the Palm App Catalog – and boy, is it an improvement.

Palm has offered some level of Facebook support on webOS since the launch of the Pixi – but as we noted in our Pixi review, calling what it had “Facebook support” was probably exaggerating. You could sync your Facebook contacts, read your news feed, and.. well, that’s it.

The new app, however…

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

Will Valve Revitalize Mac Gaming With Steam For OS X?

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 05:31 PM PST


Valve is in the midst of a media blitz at the moment — not that you’d notice, since their idea of a media blitz is secretly launching a complex alternate reality game, or emailing single novelty screenshots to six different media outlets. You could be forgiven for expecting a full-site skin for 1UP, or a week-long series of “developer diaries” on IGN — that’s what every other game company out there thinks makes games sell. At any rate, GDC is coming up and the expected announcements are Steam on OS X (definite) and possibly a peek at Portal 2, Half-Life: Episode 3, or both (speculative).

Of course, the idea of Steam on the Mac makes fanboys of all stripes froth delicately at the mouth — but while an excellent game-distribution client like Steam would be welcome on the Mac, it may not be the gaming renaissance people are hoping for. It’s worth taking a bit of time to look at, since gaming is increasingly a major source of revenue and a wedge to increase market share. Let’s take a look at what Steam is up against.

Read the rest of this story on CrunchGear…

Top Ten Ways To Fix Google Buzz

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 03:27 PM PST

Google Buzz was pushed out the door too early and force-fed to users by placing it in Gmail. The launch has been marked by both privacy and usability issues. But the team at Google behind it, led by Bradley Horowitz, is working hard to fix problems and respond to user feedback. In fact, earlier today, Horowitz pointed people via Buzz and Twitter to an official Google product idea site for making suggestions to improve Google Buzz. The site is powered by Google Moderator, which lets people suggest ideas and then vote them up or down.

Below are the top ten ideas and feature requests on the site right now, which already has 13,607 votes on 338 ideas from 692 people. They range from making comments more manageable to fixing Twitter update imports so that they are more realtime to better filters and a ReBuzz button.

  1. “Collapsible comments.”
  2. “Allow me to “star” or “favorite” a buzz to read later just like Gmail, Google Reader, Google Groups and Twitter.”
  3. “Fix the Twitter feed so they update in realtime instead of hours later in giant batches.”
  4. “A “ReBuzz” button that forwards someone else’s buzz (including links, photo’s, etc. but not reactions) to your followers with a @reference to the original poster.”
  5. “Move “Mute this post” from the menu to the Buzz item itself (e.g.: next to ‘Like’ etc.).”
  6. “Buzz filter. Some people may not be interested in posts coming from certain sources (e.g. Twitter). It would be nice to have a simple way of filtering those out.”
  7. “Labels. Or any other way to group either people or buzzes (or both?) into categories. The ability to group information or people according to topics or personal preferences, etc.”
  8. “Allow multiple links in one buzz and let me add photos after adding a link. Currently only allows one link, and must add all photos before the link, or the photos option disappears.”
  9. “View the stream chronologically, without bumping buzzes back to the top every time a comment is added.”
  10. “More options for sharing posts from Buzz to other places”

Hmm, sounds like people want it to be even more like FriendFeed. What’s your top feature request for Buzz?

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Scribd Turns Three, Gets A New Look And Logo

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 02:13 PM PST

Document-sharing site Scribd launched three years ago with the idea of making PDFs and other text-documents more Web-friendly. Now three years later, the site stores more than 10 million documents, which in turn have been embedded more than 10 million times across the Web. Scribd says it reaches more than 50 million people a month worldwide (Quantcast).

To celebrate its birthday, Scribd just rolled out a redesign with a new Zune-brown logo, much faster document search (to support 1.4 million searches a day), and other small new features such as the addition of collections. It lets you explore by category or trending documents.

Scribd took a big hit to its traffic in the middle of last year when it reduced its aggressive SEO tactics and got serious about cracking down on pirated documents, from which it still hasn’t completely recovered. But its stronger copyright filtering makes partners like major publishing houses more comfortable using Scribd as a way to promote and distribute its books. Scribd’s biggest competitor DocStoc is also growing at a nice clip and adding new features at a steady clip.

Scribd is also making a big push into mobile reading by making it easy to send documents to avariety of mobile devices, including iPhones, Android phones, Blackberries, Kindles, and Nooks. The company has raised $13 million total from Charles River Ventures, Redpoint, Marc Andreessen, Jeff Jordan, and David Sacks (who recently joined its board).

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Google Puts SearchWiki Out Of Its Misery, Replaces It With Cute Stars

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 01:59 PM PST


Personalized search is something that we all know Google feels strongly about. Today, the search giant is adding a new feature to help users mark searches: Stars. So when you see search results, you can click to mark a star next to a result that you feel is relevant. The next time you perform a search relevant to a starred item, the result will appear in a special list right at the top of your results.

The feature will be rolled out to users over the next few days and will be available to users who are signed into their Google accounts. Google says that stars will make it it easier for users to remember their favorite results because they don’t have to keep track of them after they star them. Google will essentially do all the heavy lifting by remembering starred items and presenting those results when appropriate. Stars sync with your Google Bookmarks and the Google Toolbar, so you can access your list of starred items in one place if you’d like to see them. Stars can also be used to mark pages when browsing the web; you can click the star icon in Toolbar to create a bookmark, which will show up in your starred items.

Google says that stars in search will replace SearchWiki, a tool which we weren’t very fond of. Searchwiki allowed users to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. Apparently others felt the same way, because Google said that users disliked changing the order of Google’s “organic search results.” Stars appears to be an effort to personalize search results in a simpler way. Google notes that if you have been using SearchWiki, your edits will be preserved with your Google Account.

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Mobclix Compares Android and Apple; Android Devs More Likely To Give Their Work Away

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 01:45 PM PST

Apple and Google are engaged in a fascinating battle of mobile OS’s. Among other things, they’re duking it out on patent infringement, developer relations and carrier support. Lines are being drawn, and everyone’s taking sides.

That begs the question: what’s the difference between the App Store and Android Market for developers? And how does this affect their bottom line? Mobclix, a TC50 Company, just released a report comparing the Android Market to Apple App Store. They are a mobile analytics and advertising platform whose footprint includes over 6,500 publishers including ngmoco, SGN, and NewToy (creators of Words with Friends).

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

Chris DeWolfe Makes His Move – Raises Big Round, Acquires Gaming Platform MindJolt

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 01:20 PM PST

Last year we reported that MySpace founder and former CEO Chris DeWolfe was raising a big round of capital to start acquiring companies. He’s now closed on that round of capital and has made his first acquisition. He’s also “got the band back together” by bringing on a slew of former MySpace executives to help him with the new ventures.

His company, called Platform G, has acquired MindJolt, a San Francisco based social gaming platform founded by Richard Fields. Austin Ventures is backing him financially with an initial injection of capital that is rumored to be in excess of $20 million. Chris Pacitti and Tom Ball from Austin Ventures have joined the Platform G board of directors, and the company is now renamed MindJolt as well.

Joining DeWolfe is Chief Operating Officer Colin Digiaro (MySpace's former head of Monetization and co-founder of SlingShot Labs), Chief Technology Officer Aber Whitcomb (MySpace's former Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of MySpace), SVP of Business & Corporate Development Josh Yguado (Former VP of Business Development at Fox Networks Group). Richard Fields is also staying with the company and heading up strategy.

MindJolt has around 1,300 games from 1,000 third party developers. Those games are then distributed on Facebook and, more recently, MySpace. MindJolt makes revenue from advertising and splits it with those developers. But more importantly, those small developers get a huge platform for their games (19 million people a month play MindJolt games on Facebook alone). And usage is growing by as much as 7% per week. The company is profitable, although they won’t disclose revenues or other financial information.

In the future, MindJolt says they will add additional monetization features, including virtual goods, and tools to help game developers build games as well.

And the company is going to be making more acquisitions. From the beginning DeWolfe has said that he intends to execute a roll up strategy, and the company is clearly gearing up to buy more gaming companies. Austin Ventures is a good partner on this – the firm founded HomeAway, a rollup of home rental sites, and that company is worth well over $1 billion now.

The company will remain headquartered in San Francisco and will open an office in Los Angeles as well. They are “hiring like crazy,” they say.

Austin Ventures certainly isn’t being shy about dipping into the MySpace talent pool. Yesterday they backed a company that poached John Faith, until recently General Manager and Vice President of MySpace Mobile. I’m not sure there’s much talent left at MySpace people to steal, but more people will likely be heading for the exits shortly. Possibly to join DeWolfe at his shiny new startup.

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BookRenter Opens Up Textbook Rentals To Campus Bookstores And Other Partners

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 01:07 PM PST


Anyone who has bought a textbook, whether during college or graduate school, understands how expensive they can be. College textbook rental startup BookRenter is trying to make the process of buying textbooks more affordable through its online site which loans books to students for a fixed duration. Today, the startup is opening up its platform to other sites to allow any college or business to launch its own online textbook rental store. Competitors Chegg and Barnes & Noble College are pursuing similar partnerships.

Partners, such as universities or campus bookstores, will be able to use BookRenter to set up a virtual store on their sites. Partners have access to the same selection of textbooks available on BookRenter’s site (which are electronically sourced from the largest textbook supplier)s. Partners can also use BookRenter's dynamic pricing engine, which updates textbook prices in real time by responding to shifts in market supply and demand, as well as its customer service support. And BookRenter offers partners analytics platform and on-demand reporting capabilities, to give them intelligence on what’s selling.

BookRenter allows partners to take 8% of the rental price. The site currently has 3 million titles and and promises to rent books for 75% off the list price of the textbook. The expansion of BookRenter’s platform to other sites makes sense for the startup to expand its userbase. But, 8% is a low cut for a partner and many campus bookstores may see the rental platform as competition for their own textbook sales.

BookRenter, which just raised $6 million in funding, faces competition from Barnes and Noble, Chegg, a heavily-funded player in the space (Chegg offers an affiliate API to partners). But BookRenter claims a competitive advantage over Chegg and others by offering more flexible loan schedules and faster delivery (they offer next-day delivery on many titles, and use UPS). Chegg and BookRenter recently got into a tussle over a trademark to the phrase “#1 In Textbook Rentals."

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Foursquare And Gowalla Line Up For A SXSW Brawl With Site Updates

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 12:22 PM PST

Last year at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, both Foursquare and Gowalla had their public unveilings. This year, with each rapidly gaining adopters (and mainstream interest), the two will likely battle it out for geolocation supremacy, along with a range of other competitors. And both Foursquare and Gowalla have already begun position themselves for the big battle.

Gowalla Pretties Up

A few days ago, Gowalla rolled out a completely redesigned website. Notably, the new main page features an easy-to-understand explanation of what the service is (check in, share with friends, enjoy rewards), as well as large icons to show users where to download the app on various mobile devices. It also features a “Live on Gowalla” continually updating stream of check-ins. And it has an area for “Featured spots.”

Meanwhile, users’ Passport pages (basically, your profile), have been revamped as well. Big icons show the spots you’ve visited, and you can also more easily see where your friends have recently been. It’s also more obvious when you have new friend requests, as the number you have are now badged in the “Friends” tab. In this tab, there is also an easier way to turn on and off push notifications if you have the iPhone app set up.

Simply put, this updated site looks amazing. Gone are much of the dark green hues which many users found ugly (me included); they’ve been replaced by a “remixed” light green look. The site remains much prettier than its chief rival, Foursquare, and apparently there’s more changes comes. “This is part 1 of the redesign. There is much more to fix,” Gowalla co-founder Josh Williams notes on Twitter.

Foursquare Adds Functionality

Meanwhile, Foursquare isn’t content to rest on its quickly-expanding laurels. The site has just rolled out a new “categories” element to places. You can find this in the “History” area on the Foursquare website, as blogger Wes Novack notes. On this page, venues have a new question mark icon next to them and hovering over that will give you the option to assign the place to a category.

Depending on the type of category, there may be multiple subcategories to better define what type of place the venue is. These category labels then show up on the individual venue pages on the Foursquare website, just above the Tag area.

It’s not yet clear what exactly Foursquare plans to do with these categories, but an obvious answer is recommendations. For example, if you said you were looking for a wine bar close to your current location, with categories, Foursquare could easily serve that up. In that regard, it may be taking on Yelp more directly, after Yelp fired a shot across Foursquare’s bow earlier this year with the new check-in functionality (which Foursquare didn’t like too much).

And this new feature is just part of the larger set of features Foursquare hopes to roll out in time for SXSW, which starts next week. When I asked co-founder Dennis Crowley about the new feature, he wrote, “it’ll make sense – trust me.”

The Battle

Gowalla recently rolled out an updated version of its iPhone app (1.5), which doesn’t have many new features but promises to get users ready for the updates about to come. They also have an early version of their new Android app out in the wild. Meanwhile, Foursquare is said to be working on a new iPhone app in time for SXSW also. And that will undoubtedly take advantage of the new functionality being added.

SXSW Interactive starts a week from Friday.

[image: United Artists]

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