The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- From OpenWebAsia In Kuala Lumpur: South East Asia’s Web Under The Spotlight
- The Flickr Bogan-Martin Award For “Media Overreaction”
- Paul Graham’s Checklist, Would You Make The Cut? [Video]
- Chamillionaire Just Wants Your Business Card
- Half Of All Facebook Users Play Social Games — It’s 40% Of Total Usage Time
- Soladigm Smart Window Maker Emerges From Stealth, Announces Plan To Build Plant In Mississippi
- Blind Item: Which Editor of Valleywag Needs to Resign? Right Now.
- gWallet Looks To Attract New App Publishers With $20,000 Guarantee
- Drunken Tweets To Plummet Tomorrow Night As Twitter Will Be Down
- Rule Your Work Productivity With RULE.fm
- InMobi Wants The World With Its Mobile Ads, Not Just The U.S.
- Google: There Have To Be Yelps In The World, But…
- Before There Can Be An IPO, First Comes A New CFO For Zynga
- Like Facebook, Twitter Starts Using Algorithms To Bulk Up Social Graph
- Prediction: The RIM BlackPad Will Crash And Burn Just Like The Storm
- PlacePop Looks To Give Any Business Its Own Rewards Program, Raises $1.4M
- Layoffs, Reshuffle at OneRiot
- Innovative New Search Engine Blekko Has 500 Invites For TechCrunch Readers
- Chevy Volt’s 2012 Production Capacity Bumped Up 50%
- Groupon Was Almost A Slippers With Flashlights Company
- Conway: During The Bubble, 77% Entrepreneurs Failed. Now, It’s Around 40%
| From OpenWebAsia In Kuala Lumpur: South East Asia’s Web Under The Spotlight Posted: 31 Jul 2010 08:23 AM PDT
What follows is a short summary of just a few presentations, panel discussions, and startup demos I witnessed at OpenWebAsia (those with a focus on Asia only). I will update this article with more material once it becomes available (find the agendas for day one and two here and here). Growing Digital In Asia – An Overview (panel discussion)The event kicked off with a panel discussion between Mohan Belani (Co-founder at mobile gaming company Mobret and former Director at startup community e27), Michael F. Smith Jr. (Director of Global Initiatives at Yahoo!), Googler and OpenWebAsia co-founder Chang Kim, and myself. Moderator Preetam Rai had us cover a lot of ground during the 60 minutes, including how:
Please click here to watch a video of the discussion, which is provided by Satoo.tv (embedding didn’t work, sorry). What’s Happening In China? (presentation)Shanghai-based entrepreneur and blogger Dr. Gang Lu shared some insights on what’s going on in one of the world’s “hottest” web markets right now, namely China (which now has over 420 million web users and 786 million mobile subscribers). Lu’s presentation touches upon a range of peculiarities and current trends in China’s web and mobile market. It’s embedded below: This Week In Asia (panel discussion)Podcast series This Week In Asia (iTunes link) recorded its 58th episode live on stage at Open Web Asia. Guests included again Michael F. Smith Jr., Dr. Bernhard Leong (co-founder at mobile startup Chlkboard and This Week In Asia producer), Brian Wong (ex-Digg business development manager and founder at mobile ad startup Kiip), Daniel Cerventus (web producer and organizer of the event), and again myself (moderated by Kay Chew Lin). Topics discussed include:
Current Challenges In South East Asia’s Tech SceneIt’s still very early in the game, it’s already a huge market, and there’s room for massive future growth in South East Asia’s web and mobile industry. But there are still some significant hurdles to overcome, especially if you regard South East Asia as one region. Some hurdles I personally see in South East Asia’s web and mobile market (and on the way to a possible integration) are the:
Many of these problems, for example the low Internet penetration, will probably solve themselves in the future. And in fact, local startups, partly financed by local venture capital firms (which do exist), are starting to crop up all over the place. Selection Of Malaysia-Based Web And Mobile StartupsHere are some startups that are based in Malaysia, mostly in Kuala Lumpur:
If you want to know more about Malaysia’s web scene, head over to the Entrepreneurs.my blog or follow the Twitter account of Kuala Lumpur-based mover and shaker Daniel Cerventus. For more South East Asia-related information, have a look at the e27 and SGentrepreneurs blogs or download the This Week In Asia tech podcasts. Credit for the photo on top: Ben Israel      
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| The Flickr Bogan-Martin Award For “Media Overreaction” Posted: 31 Jul 2010 01:08 AM PDT
So now they have a new award, called the Bogan-Martin Award: “The Bogan-Martin Award is given yearly to the Flickr staff member who inadvertently generates the most spectacular media overreaction to a personal comment or inside joke.” So who won? Daniel Bogan this year, who was also this year’s winner of the other award. And last year was Chris Martin. Both winners names link to previous posts we’ve done. Suggesting that we’re the media that is engaging in the spectacular overreaction. Ok, Flickr. You won this round.      
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| Paul Graham’s Checklist, Would You Make The Cut? [Video] Posted: 30 Jul 2010 08:00 PM PDT With more than 200 deals since 2005, Y Combinator’s Paul Graham knows how to size up a young team of entrepreneurs. However, he didn’t get it right from day one. On Friday, we got a chance to talk to Graham after his morning panel with SV Angel’s Ron Conway. He discussed how his strategy has evolved over the past five years and why the balance of power is shifting in Silicon Valley. See videos ahead.
     
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| Chamillionaire Just Wants Your Business Card Posted: 30 Jul 2010 06:32 PM PDT
Chamillionare got his first taste of the magic of the Internet in 2004, with the launch of his first website Chamillionaire.com. The community around the site’s message boards exploded unexpectedly, “at the time it was really creative and really cool,” he told Mike Arrington at today’s Social Currency CrunchUp. Other highlights from the interview include Mike Arrington calling the hip hop artist’s entourage “goofy,” asking, “What kind of rims are cool now?” and ending with the memorable,”You guys know how to manipulate the tech industry to get what you want, but you have the lamest phones …” In retort, Chamillionaire insisted that he carries around his 3 phones, a Blackberry Curve 8700, an iPhone 3Gs, and a Sidekick XL, for “simplicity” and joked that he checks in as “Mike Arrington” when he stays at hotels. On why he attends tech conferences, "I just want to get a business card from each of you." Curious, we caught up with the artist after the panel and asked him what exactly he thought the tech community had to offer?
On his future plans? “I just want to innovate.” He said, insisting that he couldn’t reveal any more information. Video of his onstage interview, below:      
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| Half Of All Facebook Users Play Social Games — It’s 40% Of Total Usage Time Posted: 30 Jul 2010 04:49 PM PDT
Pleasants says that he’s not exactly sure what his title at Disney will be yet, but he thinks he’ll be the General Manager of Playdom. He’s also not sure if Tapulous (another gaming company just acquired by Disney) will be under his department, but he doesn’t think so. And he made sure to clarify that the deal was for $563.2 million plus an earn-out of up to $200 million — so he’s not super super super rich, he’s just super super rich. But the most interesting thing Pleasants noted was that he recently heard (from his own source, apparently) that half of all users on Facebook now play social games. More impressively, 40% of total usage time on the service is spent on these games. That’s meaningful, of course, because “a huge amount the Internet is on Facebook,” Pleasants stated. When moderator Michael Arrington asked about changes Facebook has made recently to slow the viral spread of these types of games, Pleasants acknowledged they’ve all taken a hit. But he says they’re working with Facbeook on new ways to drive growth. But he made sure to say they had to do it without spamming. When talking about what’s next, Pleasants notes that they’ve released two new games in the past week alone. When Mike suggested that most of the games are just a combination of blindly pushing buttons, Pleasants noted that things were evolving, and that games were about to get more social. The biggest issue going forward though? “The lack of credit cards with children,” Pleasants half-joked.      
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| Soladigm Smart Window Maker Emerges From Stealth, Announces Plan To Build Plant In Mississippi Posted: 30 Jul 2010 04:47 PM PDT
Founded in 2007, Soladigm had been operating in “stealth mode.” The company employs about 50 people in its Milpitas, California headquarters, and plans to hire about 300 employees over the next few years for the Mississippi plant. A $40 million loan and another $4 million in incentives from the state influenced Soladigm’s decision to locate operations in Mississippi. Soladigm pledged to invest $130 million by 2016 in its business there in order to receive the state’s full incentive package. The new Soladigm plant’s proximity to Memphis transportation connections will also help the company quickly ship its glass panels. According to the company, its tinted windows can eliminate the need for blinds and reduce building heating and cooling costs by up to 25%.      
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| Blind Item: Which Editor of Valleywag Needs to Resign? Right Now. Posted: 30 Jul 2010 04:38 PM PDT
I mean, I get that. And yet despite the irrelevance of Gawker's saddest sub-domain and the tragic impotence of its editor, the influence of its parent means that when a Valleywag story oozes its way on to the front page of Gawker.com, it's important to take notice. And to mop it up so that no-one slips. Here goes then. Background: Some time on Tuesday afternoon, Ryan Tate woke up and padded over to his laptop to check his email. Amidst the tips from disgruntled Friendster employees and pep-talk advice mails from Owen Thomas, there was an email from Nick Stern, a photographer who had spent a few days stalking Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The images were so entirely un-newsworthy – photos of Zuckerberg's modest house, photos of his "unremarkable" tennis shoes, photos of Zuckerberg's entirely unfamous girlfriend – that no other news organisation wanted them. Could Gawker spare any change? Pausing just long enough to wipe the resulting sticky goo from his keyboard, Tate hit reply. "Oh God, YES! We'd love them. It'll be a Gawker exclusive!" Of course, much of the above is bullshit speculation, but the result is the same: on Wednesday, under a "Gawker Exclusive" banner, and the headline, "Mark Zuckerberg's Age of Privacy Is Over" Tate published twenty candid photos, clearly identifying Zuckerberg's home, his girlfriend, his friends and his regular haunts. In "justification", Tate wrote… "If it feels a little naughty to take such a close look into Zuckerberg’s life, remember that this is the executive who pushed the private information of Facebook’s hundreds of millions of users progressively further into the public sphere." Hmmm, Ryan. No, not "hmmm". That other thing. GO FUCK YOURSELF. I mean, seriously, Ryan, how did you even write those words without slitting your wrists and bleeding out pure shame onto your copy of Pageviews For Dummies? Even if you accept that Facebook's handling of user privacy was a misstep (which I don’t entirely), to argue that it's analogous to following someone around with a camera all week and publicising his home address on the Internet just defies belief. Especially when that person is a billionaire who is more of a target than most for the assorted freaks and lunatics who slosh about online. But of course Tate had no choice but to cling to his "tit for tat" public interest justification. After all, the photos had no inherent news value ("the most interesting thing about Zuckerberg’s life may well be how ordinary it is," says Tate in his post) and nor is there an obvious "public figure" justification. Facebook is a private company, Zuckerberg (especially compared to other billionaire CEOs) doesn't court personal publicity outside of the business press – and his girlfriend certainly doesn't. All the publication of these pictures achieves is a hundred thousand or so page views, at a cost that includes the personal safety of a 26 year old who, despite his modest home and shoes, is worth, let's not forget, some $4 billion. If I were his girlfriend, or anyone else close to him, I'd be terrified right now. What Happened Next: After reading the story, I tweeted to Tate… More than anything, I wanted to know if he was proud of his work; whether reading it back he thought to himself "yes, I have done a good thing today." But at worst I wanted him to defend it. In fact he did neither, instead he replied… Then, as if to underline his point – that the justification for posting the photos was that he'd done it before – he emailed me the links, with the heading "BREAKING! Valleywag runs unauthorized pictures of people’s homes and girlfriends!!!11!" After some back and forth over the irrelevant question of whether Tate commissioned the photos himself or whether they landed on his desk as a fait accompli, I got back to the point…
His answer? An email containing nothing but the contact details of Editor-in-Chief Remy Stern and Founder Nick Denton. The subtext: “I can't justify my own work; you'll have to talk to My Two Dads." And so I did. I particularly wanted to understand Denton's take on the misadventures of his underling. For a start, it's generally accepted that there is only one period in Valleywag's history that the site was any good, and that was when Denton was running it himself. Also, for all of Valleywag's prying into the lives of Silicon Valley "celebrities", Denton held on to at least one basic principle: decreeing that the lives of their non-famous girlfriends, boyfriends, wives and husbands – "civillians" as he called them – should remain off-limits. So what gives? Has Denton changed his policy or, like in so many other situations, did Tate simply not get the memo? His reply deserves to be published in full (with his permission, for which I'm grateful).
Conclusion: Reading that note, two things screamed out from the page. One: how conflicted Denton sounds in writing it – speaking of his "sympathy" for my point about Zuckerberg's girlfriend and acknowledging that the choices that his kind of reporting forces those close to tech "celebrities" to make are "unpalatable". It can't be easy to know your editors are doing bad things, but that those bad things are the only way they’ll ever attract page views. And two: the fact that it was only Denton, and not Tate, who had the wit and intelligence to attempt to justify Gawker’s decision to publish. (In fact, while Denton was accounting for the behaviour of his boy, Tate was publishing a follow up story containing photos of Zuckerberg at an employee’s wedding in India, desperately arguing that his interest in them "underlines Zuckerberg’s growing global celebrity". Just stop digging, Ryan.) And it's for that second reason – his inability to stand by his grubby work – that Ryan Tate, if he has an ounce of pride left in his body, needs to resign. And if he won't do that – which he won't, because he hasn't, and because he knows that the position of village idiot has already been filled – then it’s for that reason that Denton needs to fire him and either go back to running Valleywag himself, or close it down once and for all. In the meantime, to anyone with a cameraphone or a Flipcam who spots Ryan Tate out and about in the Bay Area: you know what to do. Follow him. Follow him everywhere. Take hundreds of photos. Bug the living shit out of him. Make him understand how unpleasant it is to be followed to your front door by a stranger with a camera. And once you're done stalking? Again: you know what to do. Delete the footage. Don't even think about uploading it anywhere. Yes, there'd be a delicious irony in "Ending Ryan Tate's Age Of Privacy" because he's done it to someone else. But, as much as he'd love to feel that his life passes a public interest test, it doesn't. And just because Ryan Tate has done something hideous and unjustified to someone else, doesn't mean you should do it to him. You’re better than that.      
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| gWallet Looks To Attract New App Publishers With $20,000 Guarantee Posted: 30 Jul 2010 04:02 PM PDT
To participate, publishers are being asked to implement a simultaneous, head-to-head test over the span of thirty days (you can sign up starting today, with the 30 day window beginning August 1). At the end of that time period, if your revenues from gWallet aren’t higher than they are on you original implementation, then the service will pay out the guarantee. But you’ll have to be a pretty sizable game to participate: to qualify, gWallet says that publishers need to be new to the platform, and need to have at least 250,000 daily active users. That said, it sounds like the the company is willing to discuss a guarantee to apps with a smaller user base if you email their partner@gwallet.com address. gWallet launched late last year, positioning itself as a more trusted alternative to other ‘Offers’ companies in the wake of Scamville. One of the company’s more popular products is the video offer, which can reward an app user virtual currency in return for watching a video ad (they also have more traditional offers). This is a highly competitive and tough space; major Offers company OfferPal recently had to downsize in the wake of Facebook deciding that TrialPay would be its preferred Offers provider. Still, there’s plenty of room to innovate (and give developers a bigger slice of the revenue) — if gWallet can prove that it earns devs more money than its competitors, it will likely do just fine regardless.
     
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| Drunken Tweets To Plummet Tomorrow Night As Twitter Will Be Down Posted: 30 Jul 2010 04:01 PM PDT
The reason for the downtime? NTT America, Twitter’s hosting provider is upgrading a part of the internal network. This is interesting because Twitter is in the process of opening their own data center in Utah later this year. Despite the new tweet digs, they’ve said they’ll keep working with NTT America, so this maintenance is clearly necessary. If you see the picture above tomorrow night, you’ll know what’s up. There will be a link on it to the Status Blog where you can get status updates on the work.      
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| Rule Your Work Productivity With RULE.fm Posted: 30 Jul 2010 03:52 PM PDT It's takes a certain type of person to get excited about a work productivity tool. Mark Nielsen and Patrick Carmitchel, unsatisfied with 37Signals‘ Basecamp, have decided to disrupt the productivity software industry (see their incredibly twee video above). Says Nielsen "We decided we'd rather not see the light of day for awhile than have to live with knowing that with just a little bit of creative, a pinch of logic and a dash of sexy, we could revive the productivity software world with a tool that would even make Apple cry." Previously unknown to the blogosphere, Nielsen and Carmitchel emailed us at 2am last night and emphasized that they were out for 37Signals’ blood (we’ll get more into why we actually listened in a later post). When reminded that the formidable former Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz was also in the collaboration tool space, joining the likes of Salesforce, Zoho, and Atlassian with his stealth startup Asana, they replied "We'd like to see how [Dustin Moskovitz's] deep pockets stand up against moxie and energy." The RULE.fm product itself looks like what would happen if Apple got serious about productivity software, with much emphasis on design aesthetics. Right now its basic function is a ramped up contact list manager with real time updates from your contacts pushed to you, a Yammer-like discussion area, a place for tasks, and a communal file sharing functionality. Nielsen describes it as “a place to know and understand everything that’s going on with in your organization” and hopes the company will eventually expand into wikis, customer retention management and accounting tools. For those curious, the tour is live on the RULE.fm site right now, and the platform itself will go live on Tuesday August 3rd, making the productivity software industry just a little bit more badass.
     
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| InMobi Wants The World With Its Mobile Ads, Not Just The U.S. Posted: 30 Jul 2010 03:34 PM PDT Today at our Social Currency CrunchUp in Palo Alto, CA, James Lamberti, VP of Global Research and Marketing for InMobi, sat down with our Michael Arrington to tell us a bit about mobile advertising. InMobi is the largest independent mobile ad network in the world. Overall, they’re number two behind Google’s AdMob. That earned them an $8 million investment from Kleiner Perkins and Sherpalo Ventures a couple weeks ago. But what’s particularly interesting about InMobi is how well they’re doing outside the U.S. Out of inMobi’s 16.9 billion mobile ad impressions globally, 2.6 billion are in Africa, more than the US’s 2 billion. 10 billion are in Asia, no surprise considering inMobi was founded in India and had more time to develop reach, while Europe follows Africa with 1.6 billion and the Middle East .5 billion. InMobi’s mobile eCPM development is highest in Europe at 29%, with North American coming in a close second at 24%. When inMobi’s development rankings, are stack ranked by country, Australia comes in first due to its high adoption of the iPhone and Malaysia performs at number two. Not surprisingly the iPhone platform dominates inMobi’s marketshare the US, being responsible for 38.2% of all mobile ad impressions. Globally Nokia trumps other platforms serving inMobi ads, at 22.2% of the market. Lamberti says that InMobi’s biggest growth markets are in the US, Japan, and South America and the US, partially because of the benefits from Google Ad Mob changes on the iPhone. While 60% of all mobile iPhone impressions are still in the US, inMobi is now poised to to monetize the 40% that aren’t. Video and slides from their presentation below.      
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| Google: There Have To Be Yelps In The World, But… Posted: 30 Jul 2010 02:56 PM PDT Today during our Social Currency CrunchUp, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and John Hanke, a Google VP of Product Management, took the stage. Given that the two companies seem to be at odds with one another recently (following a failed acquisition), it was a little tense. Specifically, Google’s strong moves into local with their new Places push seem to be going right at Yelp’s core. Sure’s it’s potentially about more than just local venue reviews, but that’s a huge part of it. And that’s what Yelp is all about. Moreover, Google is using Yelp data to bulk up their Places offering. Yelp can’t like that too much. In fact, we’ve heard they’re particularly unhappy because they used to have a deal with Google for this data, but they pulled out of that deal a couple years ago. But Google decided to use Yelp’s data anyway simply by crawling it. Yelp can’t stop them from doing that unless they want to delist themselves from Google — a move which could kill them. On stage, Stoppelman acknowledged that Yelp used to have such a deal with Google. When moderator Erick Schonfeld asked if Google was now getting that data by crawling the pages, Hanke responded with “Look…” This drew some laughs from the audience. But Hanke continued by saying that “there have to be Yelps in the world.” What he means is that Google needs these type of services to be able to point users to them. Of course, Stoppelman argues that while Google used to point users to services like his, they’re moving towards showing that data on their own pages. He believes that Google no longer likes sending large amounts of data to huge sites. Hanke said that statement wasn’t fair. “We look at what people want,” he said. Google is trying to understand Places better — if Yelp has the best content, we’ll show that, he said. He asked if Google knows what information a user is trying to get at, shouldn’t they show it? “Should we pretend we don’t know what they’re really looking for?“ Stoppelman’s said he understands that argument but believes that if Yelp does have the best content, Google should give people a way to get there as fast as possible. Basically, agree to disagree. When Schonfeld asked about the failed acquisition, Stoppelman coyly noted “It’s complicated.” The audience liked that. He caught himself though, “…whatever may have happened.“ Hanke acknowledged the tension between the two companies. But again, he said it’s all about doing what’s best for the users. Yeah, expect that tension to continue.      
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| Before There Can Be An IPO, First Comes A New CFO For Zynga Posted: 30 Jul 2010 01:57 PM PDT
Wehner is stepping in for current CFO Mark Vranesh, who is becoming chief accountant of Zynga. While they obviously won’t say it, it should be fairly clear what this shuffling is all about: it’s not CFO, it’s another three-letter acronym, IPO. While Zynga is still undoubtedly a ways away from such a move, they have to get their finances in order now. Especially since they’re growing so quickly. At Allen & Co. Wehner was in charge of a number of key investments, including Pandora, Quantcast, and StubHub. He led the corporate finance teams responsible for capital raises and M&A in Silicon Valley. This move follows moves by LinkedIn, who is also position itself for an IPO run. Interestingly enough, it was just reported that a Facebook IPO was just pushed from a possible 2011 timeframe, to 2012 — well, probably. Facebook is obviously a key to Zynga, as most of their users come from the giant social network. But a new investment by Google in Zynga points to the search giant getting into the social gaming realm as well.      
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| Like Facebook, Twitter Starts Using Algorithms To Bulk Up Social Graph Posted: 30 Jul 2010 01:30 PM PDT
In fact, this is arguably the most useful social graph feature that Twitter has rolled out yet. A few weeks ago, Twitter rolled out a new name results area for search — which was incredibly helpful for finding celebrities or brands on Twitter. But this is better. This is all about finding people you may actually be interested in based on your current social graph, but for whatever reason, haven’t connected with yet. Such a feature would be less interesting if it were only tucked away in the “Find People” area of the site. But Twitter is actually going to put it front and center too. When you click on other users’ profiles, you’ll see a “Who to follow” area in their profile space to show similar users that you might be interested in. And when you follow someone, you’ll get other suggestions based on that follow as well. In terms of how they determine these suggestions, Twitter says:
[thanks Tyler]      
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| Prediction: The RIM BlackPad Will Crash And Burn Just Like The Storm Posted: 30 Jul 2010 01:12 PM PDT
We all need to give major props to Research In Motion. They were really the first major player to make smartphones relevant by offering a nearly-bulletproof mobile emailing system to business. Eventually RIM started making consumer-orientated email devices that worked with personal email accounts. RIM really showed the world that you need email while you were away from your desk. But that’s where their claim to fame stops. Don’t misunderstand the Canadian company’s importance in consumer electronics' history. RIM ranks up there with the best of them, but unless the so-called BlackPad is targeted solely at businesses and enterprise users — and all signs suggest otherwise — the BlackPad will fail.      
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| PlacePop Looks To Give Any Business Its Own Rewards Program, Raises $1.4M Posted: 30 Jul 2010 11:48 AM PDT
Today, the company is launching at our Social Currency CrunchUp, and it’s also announcing that it has closed a $1.4 million round of funding. Participants in the round include Affinity Labs Founder Chris Michel, Bebo Founder Michael Birch, and James Currier and Stan Chudnovsky, both of whom cofounded Ooga Labs. At a high level, PlacePop is pretty simple for the end-user: you fire up the iPhone app, swipe until you find the appropriate virtual rewards card, and “check-in” at the venue you’re visiting. And the startup says that a business can get its loyalty program up and running in five minutes. PlacePop isn’t the first startup to try to tackle rewards, and it faces the same chicken-and-egg issue that its competitors have: you need businesses to actually offer rewards to get users hooked, and businesses aren't going to bother if the service doesn't have any users to begin with. PlacePop is taking a few steps to deal with this (and help differentiate the startup): first, it offers a number of other social features, like sharing photos of the places you're checking into so the app has some utility regardless of if a business is offering a deal or reward. And second, it's letting you earning rewards points toward venue on Earth, even before a business joins PlacePop. That may sound a little counter-intuitive, but PlacePop is hoping that it will lead to a sort of community-led guerrilla campaign where users urge their favorite businesses to join PlacePop. CEO Kent Lindstrom explains that users can start checking-in at their favorite restaurants and other venues, and when venue owners visit PlacePop and see that they already have traction on the service, they can “claim” their profile. I’m not entirely convinced this will work (it’s going to get tough to convince users to check in based on the possibility that a venue may one day start offering rewards), but it’s an interesting tactic. So why would a restaurant want to use PlacePop instead of a service that is already starting to get traction, like Foursquare? Linstrom gave a few reasons: first, PlacePop allows venues to customize and create their own branding for their virtual card. Second, the platform will allow venues to custom tailor how they want to reward program to work — for example, a business could opt to build their own Groupon-style program, where a special deal was activated if 50 people redeemed a coupon. PlacePop obviously has its work cut out for it. Foursquare and other location-based services are looking to add deals and rewards as a layer on top of their applications, allowing for a more passive approach to earning rewards. Other startups in this space include We Reward, which lets you earn cash for your checkins.      
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| Posted: 30 Jul 2010 11:11 AM PDT Social search site OneRiot just announced layoffs and staff restructuring on its company blog, in a post entitled “Welcome to the future, it’s coming fast.”
While OneRiot’s post does not reveal how many employees or what percentage of staff was cut, it does announce the following executive changes: CEO and Tesla board Director Kimbal Musk will now take on the role of company Chairman and Tobias Peggs, formerly President in charge of Strategy, Sales, Distribution and Marketing, will replace him as CEO. Co-founder Robert Reich will be leaving the company. OneRiot's search results are ranked to reflect the realtime social conversations around any piece of content. The company recently tapped both in to the Google Buzz firehose and Facebook’s Open Graph API.      
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| Innovative New Search Engine Blekko Has 500 Invites For TechCrunch Readers Posted: 30 Jul 2010 10:56 AM PDT
     
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| Chevy Volt’s 2012 Production Capacity Bumped Up 50% Posted: 30 Jul 2010 10:52 AM PDT
     
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| Groupon Was Almost A Slippers With Flashlights Company Posted: 30 Jul 2010 10:14 AM PDT
Including a cheesy-sounding slippers with flashlights deal, which Mason describes as “act of desperation, pretty impressive considering that the company is currently making $365 million in revenues, a million a day according to our sources. Mason gave no thought whatsoever as to whether or not it would work. With Groupon now in over 170 cities in over 22 countries, its come a long way from flashlight slippers, and Mason aspires to one day be a replacement for the classic city guide, “We’re focused on creating a market as efficient as possible with regards to getting as much exposure to local business as possible.” From the humble slipper beginnings, to currently selling deals on laser eye surgery, Mason has not just created a business, he’s created an entirely new business model, now with over 500 clones. Couponing is currently the hottest thing on the internet; Asking the CrunchUp audience whether or not they had bought a Groupon deal Mason joked, “Raise your hand if you’ve only bought a Groupon so you could figure out how to clone us?” Update: The original slippers with flashlights Groupon, below. Photo: Uneasysilence      
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| Conway: During The Bubble, 77% Entrepreneurs Failed. Now, It’s Around 40% Posted: 30 Jul 2010 09:53 AM PDT
Conway expected it would show that about one-third of companies fail, one-third get investors their money back, and one-third bring a 2x to Google-x return (Conway invested in Google early on). But that’s not the case. Conway noticed that during the Internet Bubble in 1997 to 2001 — the failure rate (startups that go out of business and the investors get nothing) was a staggering 77 percent. “It was catastrophic,” he said. But things improved. The failure rate in recent years — since 2002 — has dropped to about 40 percent, Conway says. He makes sure to note that that’s just his portfolio — which they’re picky about. They only invest in about one of every 40 companies they see. Conway notes that he was able to make it through the Bubble years because of a very few smart investments in Google, PayPal, and others that also took place at that time. “We were lucky, others weren’t,” he notes. He also notes that entrepreneurs have a 66 percent chance of being successful on a startup if it’s their second one. But that’s also partially because they’re often doing a second startup if they were successful the first time around. All that said, Conway notes that his data shows that regardless of the time period — Bubble or Boom — the rate of very successful outcomes has stayed roughly the same. With that in mind, “anytime is a good time to start a company,” he concludes. Conway says there is a misconception that “every 10 years we get a Google.” “That’s not true,” Conway says. He notes that AskJeeves came, then six years later, Google came. But then six years after that was Facebook. And now the big companies are coming faster. After Facebook, it was only four years until Twitter came around. Then it was two years later that Foursquare, Zynga, and others have come along. “Great companies are being created at a much greater rate,” Conway says. You can watch the rest of the Social Currency CrunchUp live here.      
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