The Latest from TechCrunch |
- Boom – Apple’s App Store Hits 10 Billion Downloads
- Facebook Just Landed $1.5B; Open Source Alternative Struggles To Raise $10,000
- Groupon CEO Andrew Mason: I’m Following The Arnold Schwarzenegger Guide To Leadership
- Congratulations Crunchies Winners! Twitter Takes Best Startup Of 2010
- TechCrunch Giveaway: An Apple iPad #TechCrunch
- What Scares Twitter CEO Dick Costolo? Foreigners. (Well, Scaling For Them.)
- The Crunchies Awards Livestream [Video]
- Brickify: Turn Any Image Into A Lego Statue!
- PostUp Acquires UberTwitter, Renames Itself (Again) To UberMedia
- George Zachary on Doing 30 Seed Deals a Year, Not Missing Hollywood and Crazy Jim Clark (TCTV)
- Blatant IP Theft In App Store Garners Little Response From Apple
- So, What’s this Monkey Statue All About? (TCTV)
- The Clock Is Set For A Facebook IPO By April, 2012
- Electric Vehicle Makers, CODA Holdings, Appoint Phil Murtaugh CEO
- Facebook Raises $1.5 Billion At $50 Billion Valuation
- MyNines Relaunches Private Sales Aggregator With New UI, Sales Calendar And More
- Creator Of Million Dollar Homepage Makes Do Nothing For 2 Minutes
- May 1, 2002: Larry Page And Eric Schmidt Talk About Google, The Future, And Their Dynamic
- Zynga Acquires Social Game Developer Area/Code; Launches New York Office
- Verizon Can’t Even Stand Net Neutrality Lite, Goes To Court To Challenge FCC’s Authority
- As Rummble’s CEO Is Ousted, The Story Of A European Startup Unravels
- Huh? Two 25-Year-Old Americans Launch A Groupon Clone…In France?
Boom – Apple’s App Store Hits 10 Billion Downloads Posted: 22 Jan 2011 02:33 AM PST Here we are. Apple has just announced on this promotion page that there have been 10 billion downloads from its App Store since its inception. It’s a huge milestone in the life of the App Store, which lets people downloads games and software programs for their iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads (lots of those out there). Apple says it will soon announce who downloaded the 10 billionth app (or submitted a free entry form at the right time) – he or she will win a US $10,000 iTunes Gift Card. Also check out: In The Race To 10 Billion Downloads, Apple Uncovers The Top All-Time Apps and Mobile App Market Will Be Worth $25 Billion By 2015 – Apple's Share: 20% (Thanks to everyone who sent this in) |
Facebook Just Landed $1.5B; Open Source Alternative Struggles To Raise $10,000 Posted: 22 Jan 2011 02:28 AM PST Facebook just raised $1.5 billion at a $50 billion valuation, having secured just south of $2.4 billion since the company was founded. Contrast that with The Appleseed Project, which aims to establish an open source, fully distributed and decentralized social networking software suite to rival Facebook. I just got an email from the project’s lead developer, Michael Chisari, prompting me to participate in their crowd-sourced fundraising efforts. So far, they’ve raised about $2,200 in 7 days, so they’re roughly $7,800 short of their $10,000 fundraising goal. Another project that revolves around building an open source alternative to Facebook, Diaspora, managed to raise $200,000 from some 6,500 backers through Kickstarter. So why is The Appleseed Project struggling to drum up enough interest to get to $10,000 more rapidly? Is it the choice of the crowdfunding platform (IndieGoGo vd. Kickstarter)? Are they just really bad at marketing? Is there simply too much choice in ‘web decentralization’ open source projects, causing confusion as to what is more relevant, and which project is in a more advanced stage than the other? Or does it all come down to, simply, bad luck? For your information: Appleseed, a 100% volunteer project, was started in 2004, while Diaspora was only kicked off around April 2010, so they’re certainly much further ahead of Diaspora in terms of development. They’re certainly still hopeful:
My question is: if it indeed took Appleseed from 2004 to this day to get to a point where they still need to raise funds to reach stable 1.0 release, wasn’t the project a little over-ambitious? Is its future really that bright? As always, time will tell. |
Groupon CEO Andrew Mason: I’m Following The Arnold Schwarzenegger Guide To Leadership Posted: 21 Jan 2011 09:46 PM PST This evening at the Crunchies, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason took home the coveted CEO of the Year award. But we couldn’t let him leave the stage without taking the opportunity to ask him a few questions about the red-hot company. Our own Michael Arrington kicked things off by asking about Groupon’s press release for its recent funding round, when it “Raised, Like, A Billion Dollars“. Groupon and Mason have long had a very amusing and irreverent sense of humor. But how long can they keep that up before it causes a deal to fall through, or something else undesirable to happen? Mason replied that he’s taking the Arnold Schwarzenegger approach to leadership. That is, he’s taking the first part of his career and doing everything stupid he can think of, so people have no expectations for him down the line (then again, he did just win CEO of the Year, so he’s not setting the bar too low). Michael followed up by asking if Groupon had selected Morgan Stanley to lead the company’s IPO. Mason responded, “We are talking to bankers about the possibility of going public…. We have not made any decisions about whether to go public or who to do it with”. Finally, Michael asked about Groupon’s revenue — could it do $4 billion this year? To which Mason responded, “Which one’s the revenue?” |
Congratulations Crunchies Winners! Twitter Takes Best Startup Of 2010 Posted: 21 Jan 2011 09:45 PM PST This year's fourth annual Crunchies Awards have just concluded, and we're happy to say that it was an overwhelming success. For those who weren’t at the event or watching our livestream, we've included the list of nominees and winners below. Our most sincere congratulations to the winners and to all of the nominees as well. It was an incredibly tight race for many of the categories, and it's safe to say that everyone on this list is at the top of their field. We'd like to take a moment to point out Twitter's win for "Best Overall Startup Or Product", the first time the company has won a Crunchie in this category. Twitter has become an indispensable part of social communication and a key ingredient in the fabric of the web. And congratulations to Groupon’s Andrew Mason, who won for CEO of the Year; Mark Pincus, who took Best Founder of the Year, and Quora, which took Best New Startup in 2010. Best Internet Application Best Social App Best Social Commerce App Best Mobile App Best Location Based Service Best New Device Best Technology Achievement Best Design Best Touch Interface Best Bootstrapped Startup Best Enterprise Best International Best Clean Tech Best Time Sink Application Angel of the Year VC of the Year (individual) Founder of the Year CEO of the Year Best New Startup or Product of 2010 Best Overall Startup or Product of 2010 And a special thanks to our sponsors, including Tagged, Microsoft, MailChimp, SecondMarket, Red Bull and Ustream. |
TechCrunch Giveaway: An Apple iPad #TechCrunch Posted: 21 Jan 2011 09:07 PM PST We’ve given one away before, and we are doing it again. Earlier in the month we asked our Facebook fans a question we were curious about. We asked, “Choosing from all of the cool gadgets we write about, if you had the chance to win one, which one would you want?” We had hundreds of fans chime in and the number one thing people wanted was an Apple iPad. We thought since Apple had such a tremendous quarter, an iPad is the number one thing our fans want, and the iPad just won a 2010 Crunchies Award for Best Device, why not give one away? We will be giving an iPad to one lucky reader at random. At a retail value of $499, this is one giveaway you surely don’t want to miss. If you want a chance at getting your hands on an iPad, just follow these steps to enter. Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page: Then do one of the following: - Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TechCrunch hashtag) The contest starts right now and ends tomorrow, January 22nd at 7:30pm PST. Like previous giveaways, please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will choose at random and contact the winner this weekend with more details. Anyone in the world is eligible, as long as you can receive delivered packages. We’ll also throw in some TechCrunch swag for fun. |
What Scares Twitter CEO Dick Costolo? Foreigners. (Well, Scaling For Them.) Posted: 21 Jan 2011 08:38 PM PST Tonight at our Crunchies Awards in San Francisco, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo took the stage with our own Michael Arrington. The topic of discussion? Well, it was sort of all over the place — more of a fun conversation. Mike asked Costolo what he thought about the recent news that Eric Schmidt was being replaced as CEO of Google by co-founder Larry Page. You’d think Costolo would have some insight about the news simply because he himself just took over as CEO of Twitter, replacing Ev Williams, a co-founder (who also stayed with the company). “Eric is on a bit different of a plane than me. I mean in the Gulfstream sense, not the other sense,” Costolo joked. “I think he’ll be fine,” he continued to laughs. “I think it’s going to work out for him.” Mike quickly pivoted. “So far Twitter has been too cool for revenue. Is this the year there might be revenue?,” he asked. “There must and shall be revenue,” Costolo said with a laugh. He quickly corrected himself — “There already is revenue. There will be more revenue,” he said. “The next year, more still!,” he joked. “We are focused on it,” Costolo continued saying that they have many products built for that purpose now. “That’s not one of the things I worry about,” he continued. Naturally, Mike followed up with “So what do you worry about?” “International growth,” Costolo quickly replied. “You have to scale lanuages, regional support, data centers. Organizing all of that is a challenge,” he continued. “And not many [companies] have had to do that before,” Costolo said noting that it’s not like there’s a book on how do it. Costolo also said that he was a Twitter user before all “the cool kids” signed up at SXSW in 2007. When Mike asked if Costolo knew then that this would be a good company, Costolo admitted that he did not. “I didn’t really get it.” That said, he still angel invested in it. “Do you get it now?,” Mike quipped. Costolo laughed. “It continues to evolve.” You can continue to watch the show live here. |
The Crunchies Awards Livestream [Video] Posted: 21 Jan 2011 07:33 PM PST It’s the most wonderful time of the year! We’re live at The Crunchies Awards at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Once again we’ve partnered with fellow blogs VentureBeat and GigaOm to celebrate the best technology achievements of 2010. Those of you at home or backstage like myself can watch them on the livestream above, and chat about them here. |
Brickify: Turn Any Image Into A Lego Statue! Posted: 21 Jan 2011 07:20 PM PST Everyone loves Legos. There is no debate. In fact, there may only be one thing better than Legos: customized Legos. And a new web service aims to provide those to all. Brickify is a website that allows you to put in the URL to any image on the web and it will output a “brickified” image. Yes, it’s an image just like the one you just put in — but made of bricks. “Bricks” are the generic and non-trademarked term for Legos, but make no mistake, we’re talking Legos here. Once you get the brickified image, you can alter it on the site by changing around colors. And once you have what you want, you can download inventory you need to build an actual version of the images with Legos. And they’ll even give you the schematics to build it. Yep, awesome. “Turning a picture into a brick pattern isn’t the kind of problem we solve every day, but HTML5 technologies made it relatively easy. We use the canvas to load the user’s image and process the pixels in the image into bricks,” Carsonified founder Ryan Carson says. Carsonified’s Think Vitamin team built the site. “We also use the canvas to tile brick images together to form an isometric view of the final production. JQuery helps out with basic manipulation in the UI, and we use Sammy.js and Underscore.js to glue everything together,” he continues. That’s all well and good. But let’s be honest, the key is Legos. |
PostUp Acquires UberTwitter, Renames Itself (Again) To UberMedia Posted: 21 Jan 2011 03:25 PM PST Bill Gross is up to something. The CEO of PostUp, who previously founded (and sold) Overture, answers.com, and a number of other companies, has just acquired his second Twitter client in as many weeks. On January 5 PostUp acquired EchoFon, and today the company has announced that it’s acquired UberTwiter, which makes Twitter clients for iPhone and BlackBerry. In addition to the acquisition, PostUp has another piece of news: it’s changing its name to UberMedia. This is the third name for the company, which was originally called TweetUp, but changed its name last summer to PostUp as it added support for Facebook and LinkedIn. So what is UberMedia’s strategy here? The company now has a new homepage, which includes the following description:
In other words, it wants to offer a variety of third party services that are complimentary — and in some cases, directly competitive — with what Twitter offers.
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George Zachary on Doing 30 Seed Deals a Year, Not Missing Hollywood and Crazy Jim Clark (TCTV) Posted: 21 Jan 2011 03:09 PM PST George Zachary of CRV was our guest on Ask a VC today, and not only did he answer reader questions bluntly, he indulged us with his craziest story from his days working with Internet icon Jim Clark on Shutterfly. The whole episode is below, or feel free to tune into just the answers to these questions: Since you put out your call to entrepreneurs for an app discovery business plan on Facebook, any takers? Do you think app discovery is a big issue and large market opportunity? Do you foresee any change in user activity (regardless of websites or mobile) in view of changing demographics and employee productivity requirements being ratcheted up (i.e., employers don’t want employees playing around in Internet all day)?
What’s the craziest story you can tell us about jim clark? |
Blatant IP Theft In App Store Garners Little Response From Apple Posted: 21 Jan 2011 02:50 PM PST
The iOS app has been approved and is available to buy now, though of course you shouldn’t buy it (Halfbot is working on an actual iOS port). A week ago, Apple was notified that the game was clearly made entirely from stolen IP, which isn’t surprising, as the rest of the offending developer’s games seem to be knock-offs as well. But a week later, Apple has yet to pull the app or give any kind of substantial response. |
So, What’s this Monkey Statue All About? (TCTV) Posted: 21 Jan 2011 02:43 PM PST The Crunchies Statue. Sure, everyone wants it. But so many people ask us, “Why the hell is it a monkey?” (Hint.) Still, no one was quite as confused by it as our new intern. Lucky for us a documentary crew was in that day to catch the footage. Watch below. |
The Clock Is Set For A Facebook IPO By April, 2012 Posted: 21 Jan 2011 01:43 PM PST Today, Facebook announced that it raised a total of $1.5 billion in its latest round, giving the company a valuation of $50 billion. But it also disclosed something else: when it will likely go public. Buried at the bottom of its press release, it sets a date for when it expects to start filing public financial reports:
While Facebook could decide to report financial publicly without actually going public, once it goes through the trouble of financial reporting and the increased scrutiny that brings, there will be little remaining reasons to remain private. So the clock is now ticking. Expect a Facebook IPO by April, 2012. With increasing SEC concerns about private trading of Facebook stock on places like SecondMarket and pooled funds like Goldman’s which are engineered to skirt SEC disclosure rules, putting a timetable on when financial disclosures will be forthcoming is probably a good idea. Photo credit: Flickr/ kobiz7 |
Electric Vehicle Makers, CODA Holdings, Appoint Phil Murtaugh CEO Posted: 21 Jan 2011 01:35 PM PST Today, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based maker of electric vehicles and batteries, CODA Holdings, appointed auto industry veteran Phil Murtaugh as chief executive officer. On a conference call, CODA’s interim CEO Steven “Mac” Heller described Murtaugh as someone who believes “the automotive industry can innovate rapidly and be more responsible as a global citizen,” and is deeply experienced in building American auto businesses in Asia. Earlier this month, the company raised a $76 million bringing its equity funding to about $200 million, sparking IPO rumors. Murtaugh previously worked as chairman and chief executive officer of GM China. Over a decade, he grew GM's presence there from fifteen employees in its Shanghai operations to 15,000 employees throughout the country, increasing the unit's revenue from $300 million to more than $7 billion. In brief, Murtaugh discussed CODA’s plans in Asia, and how he will leverage his experience on behalf of the younger car company:
Through its battery system joint venture, currently CODA is a large-scale producer of power battery systems for the transportation and utility industries. Murtaugh touched upon CODA’s retail sales outlook for its vehicles in the U.S., as well.
With Murtaugh’s appointment, Miles L. Rubin, CODA's founder and co-chairman becomes a chairman emeritus, remains a company director and the company's largest shareholder. Heller, CODA Holdings interim CEO and a co-chairman, will move into the role of executive chairman. |
Facebook Raises $1.5 Billion At $50 Billion Valuation Posted: 21 Jan 2011 01:21 PM PST Facebook has officially announced that it has just raised $1.5 billion in funding at a $50 billion valuation, according to a release issued today (we’ve embedded the release below). As stated in the release, the investment was broken into two parts. Goldman Sachs participated in the first round (via an offering to its non-U.S. clients in a fund), which totaled $1 billion. In December, DST and Goldman separately invested another $500 million into the social network. Both rounds gave Facebook a $50 billion valuation, says the company. This brings Facebook’s total funding to a staggering $2.336 billion. It’s interesting to note that Facebook didn’t take the full $1.5 billion from Goldman Sachs in the first part of the investment. As stated in the release:
One has to wonder if the fact that Goldman excluded U.S. investors from the round had to do with Facebook not raising the full $1.5 billion (which would push the total investment to a whopping $2 billion). Another interesting tidbit from the release is this: Even before the investment from Goldman Sachs, Facebook had expected to pass 500 shareholders at some point in 2011, and therefore expects to start filing public financial reports no later than April 30, 2012. Clearly, it looks like Facebook plans to IPO no later than April 2012. So what will Facebook do with this massive amount of cash? The company says it has no set plans but vaguely stated that it will be “investing to build and expand its operations.” The Goldman investment was first reported by New York Times’ Dealbook. So much for that slow Friday news day.
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MyNines Relaunches Private Sales Aggregator With New UI, Sales Calendar And More Posted: 21 Jan 2011 12:37 PM PST MyNines, an aggregator of private sales sites, is relaunching today with a number of new features and a more streamlined user experience. Launched in March of 2010, MyNines aims to help consumers sort through the daily flash sales sites. MyNines aggregates products from various online sample sale sites and allows shoppers to find them all in one location. Users can search and filter by designer, category, highest discounts, as well as deals ending soonest, most viewed items, deals under $100, and newly listed. MyNines currently aggregates from over 80 sites, including eBay’s Fashion Vault. With the relaunch, MyNines has rolled out a complete redesign of the site and a new feature called “Boutiques,” which includes sets of products from various sample sale sites curated by stylists, fashion bloggers and celebrities (this is very similar to Google’s Boutiques.com). One of the most useful additions to MyNines is the sample sales calendar, which will aggregate the sale events from pretty much every sample into a calendar format to see which designers are featuring their sales on flash sale sites each day. You can also subscribe to the Sample Sales Calendar via Google Calendar, Outlook, or Apple iCal and you can set sale reminders for specific sales and MyNines will email you when those sales start. While MyNines does aggregate actual products from a massive number of flash sales sites, some of the biggest players in the space, like Gilt Groupe, have not signed in to be included in the site’s feeds (although Gilt’s sales are included in the Sample Sale Calendar). The site’s founder, Apar Kothari, seems optimistic, however; that eventually all private sales sites will sign on to give MyNines a feed of their daily sales. Kothari adds that MyNines will soon start rolling out more personalized shopping features and will suggest certain sales and items to members based on what sales they click on. |
Creator Of Million Dollar Homepage Makes Do Nothing For 2 Minutes Posted: 21 Jan 2011 12:00 PM PST PopJam CEO Alex Tew, the guy behind the internet phenomenon Million Dollar Homepage, has now gone the opposite extreme. Along with developer Ben Dowling, he has created Do Nothing For 2 Minutes, a site whose purpose is pretty self-explanatory. While MDH was a celebration in online excess, DNF2M is a zen treatise on computing and a challenge. Can you sit in front of your computer and not touch your mouse or keyboard for a measly two minutes? It’s actually not as easy as it sounds, especially if you work in a web-intensive field. Says Tew on the inspiration behind the site, which brought in 20,000 uniques 8 hours after launch.
Tew also holds that the key difference in the way we interact online between when he built MDH in 2005 is that the “viral has gone viral” (infinite loop!), “Ideas spread even faster because of social media. Whereas before, the distribution power lay more with the news media and blogs back in 2005. If I had done MDH today, I might have made $1m in 4 weeks rather than 4 months.”
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May 1, 2002: Larry Page And Eric Schmidt Talk About Google, The Future, And Their Dynamic Posted: 21 Jan 2011 11:05 AM PST On May 1, 2002, two men took the stage at a Stanford University event to answer some questions about their startup. The startup? Google. The two men? Eric Schmidt and Larry Page. That was less than a year after Schmidt officially became CEO of the company, taking over the role from Page. Yesterday, after a decade of success, the two announced they would be switching back. And while some answers are starting to trickle out as to why such a change is taking place now, it’s fascinating to look back in time and see how it all began. Luckily, Stanford captured the talk in 24 short videos clips found here. One particularly interesting clip is where Schmidt talks about “new leadership and organizational change”. Schmidt talks about the differences between running Novell and Google. “What I found was a company that was working extremely well, but just needed a little bit of list-making and structure. And that’s frankly what I’ve been relegated to,” Schmidt says of Google with a laugh. “Oh no, that’s not true,” Page chimes in. Still laughing, Schmidt says, “It’s okay, your strategy is working pretty good. It’s working well so far.“ Reports today have similar tension being behind the switch. And while they’re clearly at least half-joking here, it’s actually kind of amazing the partnership lasted in the same capacity eight and a half years later. It’s also funny to hear Schmidt refer to the company as “the Google”. Another clip has Schmidt talking about how Google won the then all-important partnership with AOL for search. He kicks things off by saying, ”One of the most wonderful things about being a private company is that we don’t have to answer any of those questions.” Remember, that was over two years before Google’s IPO. And that response sounds a bit like something Facebook would say today. In another clip, Page shows off a picture of a really happy day at Google. Why was everyone so happy? They had just signed the AOL deal. (Hey, like us!) In this clip, Page talks about innovation at Google. “I guess as Google’s gotten bigger — we’re almost 400 people now — you start to notice that s you get more and more people working on one thing, it’s harder and harder for them to be innovating just because of the communications cost and the inertia and all those kinds of things,” Page says. Again, that was an issue with 400 people — Google now has nearly 25,000 employees. And so perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that this slow down in innovation was one of the reasons cited for yesterday’s change. Here, Schmidt jokes that “I should say, by the way, that after seeing the way we hire people, I’m amazed that I got through the filter.” But this video may be the most interesting of all. On the topic of legal issues, Schmidt and Page joke about a couple of different things facing the company, but they’re also clearly serious. Schmidt is concerned about a lawsuit against Google, while Page is concerned about DMCA takedowns (pertaining to Scientology, in this case). Schmidt cares about the business side, Page cares about the information side. Finally, here Page talks about Google censorship in some countries. While he notes it isn’t a big issue at the time, he worries that it could become a big issue. A report today in the New Yorker by Ken Auletta has one of the main reasons for the CEO shakeup being that Page sided with co-founder Sergey Brin over their pull-out of China, while Schmidt, again from a business perspective, wanted to go the other way. Each of the short videos is a fascinating look into the early days of the company and the perspective of Page and Schmidt, the once and future CEOs of Google. |
Zynga Acquires Social Game Developer Area/Code; Launches New York Office Posted: 21 Jan 2011 11:00 AM PST Weeks after announcing its acquisition of social browser Flock, Zynga is continuing its shopping spree today with the purchase of New York-based social gaming developer Area/Code. In conjunction with the acquisition, Zynga is also announcing its first New York office with the launch of Zynga New York. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Based in New York City, Area/Code has developed a number of games on Facebook and for mobile, including CSI: Crime City with partner Ubisoft, Facebook game Parking Wars and Drop7 for the iPhone. According to the startup’s site, the developer focused on highlighting “the connections between the interactive systems and imaginary landscapes inside of games and the real world around them.” These connections could include, “online games that respond to broadcast TV in real time,” “game systems that explore real-world social issues,” Area/Code was co-founded by Frank Lantz and Kevin Slavin, and interestingly Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley was the third partner in the startup in between leaving Google and starting Foursquare. Area/Code general manager Demetri Detsaridis and Lantz will be General Manager and Creative Director, respectively for Zynga New York. This is Zynga's 9th announced acquisition in 8 months, including, Texas-based NewToy, XPD in Beijing, Unoh Games in Tokyo, Conduit Labs in Boston, Dextrose AG in Frankfurt, Germany,Challenge Games in Austin, and Bonfire Studios in Texas. |
Verizon Can’t Even Stand Net Neutrality Lite, Goes To Court To Challenge FCC’s Authority Posted: 21 Jan 2011 10:50 AM PST Who saw this coming? (Oh, right: everyone.) Verizon has taken umbrage with certain aspects of Net Neutrality, and has taken the rather predictable tract of challenging the FCC's authority in order to get out of complying with the rules. It's nothing more than a simple case of if you can't win an argument based on its own merit attack the credibility of your adversary. Verizon isn't too keen on the provision that would force it to treat all data on its network equally, so it's going to court to make sure it doesn't have to. Verizon, while claiming to be "committed to preserving an open Internet" (whatever that means), says that it's "deeply concerned by the FCC’s assertion of broad authority for sweeping new regulation of broadband networks and the Internet itself." Note the presence of the word "sweeping," which is designed to make it seem like the sky is falling. Sweeping new regulations? What kind of evil agenda is at work here? You know, making it so that ISPs don't treat you and your data like dirt. Such an evil agenda, I know. |
As Rummble’s CEO Is Ousted, The Story Of A European Startup Unravels Posted: 21 Jan 2011 10:27 AM PST Rummble, one the UK’s oldest location-based reviews and social network which actually pre-dated Foursquare, has had its CEO removed by the board and now faces a radical shift away from it’s consumer-facing service of four years towards a Business-to-Business future. What we know on the ground right now is that CEO Andrew Scott has departed the company; the existing staff remain in place and Rummble, while maintaining its web site and smartphone apps, is set to move forward towards a B2B strategy which is not white-label, but based on leveraging its core technology. Over the past week TechCrunch Europe has been delving into the story of why Rummble ended up in this situation, and where it goes from here. I have been covering Rummble for over 5 years. I had them pitch at startups events even before I joined TechCrunch and I’ve written about 45 posts mentioning them in the last three years. So I guess I feel I know the company quite well. So – to be blunt – what the hell happened? |
Huh? Two 25-Year-Old Americans Launch A Groupon Clone…In France? Posted: 21 Jan 2011 10:13 AM PST I'm pretty sure I know what you're thinking: Huh? Wtf ? Why would any Americans in their right mind want to leave the happiest business place on earth to launch anything in France?! Maybe the wine? Ok, maybe you're not thinking that. But it doesn't change the fact that 25-year-old American entrepreneurs Anton Bernstein and Joshua David hopped the Atlantic to launch Groupon clone Lookingo in France. |
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