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The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Fast Society: Not Your Mother’s Group Messaging App (TCTV)
- Apple Obtains Patent For Solar-Powered Devices
- Mechanical Men: Live From IBM’s Watson Robot Vs. Human Jeopardy Champions
- Baby, It’s Cold Outside (So Your iPhone Exploded)
- ShopSocial Raises $1.2 Million For Its “Commerce As A Social Service” Idea
- Seas0nPass Jailbreaks Your Apple TV In A Jiff
- Harvard Undergrads Launch Newsle To Find News About Your Friends (Beta Invites)
- Fox Mobile Group, Now Jesta Digital, Gets A New CEO
- Italy’s VCs Are Letting Their Best Startups Go
- RockYou Buys UK-Based Social Gaming Startup Playdemic
- Stephen Fry To Pimp Pushnote To His 2M+ Followers – Will It Work?
- What Silicon Valley Was Like Right After The Dotcom Crash: An Insider Perspective
- TripIt Bags An ExIt – Acquired By Concur For Up To $120 Million
- Bieber.ly Shortens URLs While You Look At A Giant Picture Of Justin Bieber
- LivingSocial Buys Majority Stake In Let’s Bonus, Expands Internationally
- Peer39 Is Now Semantically Plowing Through 47 Billion Pages A Month
- Get Off Of My Cloud, Shazam Discovers Spotify
- Millennial: For The First Time, Android Surpasses iOS Mobile Ad Impression Share
- How To Make An 8-Bit Twitter Avatar
- There’s Absolutely Nothing You Can Do About Spokeo, So Stop Whining
- An iPhone On Verizon? Sold.
- SalesCrunch: Pissing Us Off Isn’t Much Of A PR Or Marketing Strategy
- Kabbage Raises $6.7M To Give Online Merchants Working Capital To Grow Their Businesses
- PC Shipments Recover Somewhat; Apple Share Jumps In U.S.
- Hopeful Plaintiff Sues Yahoo, Digg, Reddit, Fark, TechCrunch, And Others
| Fast Society: Not Your Mother’s Group Messaging App (TCTV) Posted: 13 Jan 2011 08:59 AM PST When a good idea comes along, often what you see are multiple startups pop up who were all working on it independently but launch around the same time. Look at Foursquare and Gowalla in geo-location apps or Instagram, PicPlz, and Path in geo-photo apps. Right now, a lot of the action seems to be in group messaging, with Groupme, Beluga, and Fast Society all vying for mobile group supremacy. Groupme, which came out of one of our TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathons, recently raised $10.6 million (sending all those text messages is expensive); Beluga was started by a few ex-Googlers, and Fast Society is still bootstrapping but blew people away at Chris Sacca’s Tahoe conference. I recently caught up with Fast Society CEO and co-founder Matthew Rosenberg in New York City to understand why everyone is going gaga over group messaging. After all, it’s nothing new—one of the original use cases for Twitter was as a group messaging platform. In the video above, Rosenberg explains what he is trying to do with Fast Society. It is targeted specifically at 13 to 30 year-olds, young people going out in groups. Fast Society’s tagline is “Built to Party.” With Fast Society’s iPhone app (it also works with text commands), you can create groups from your contact list or add people to groups, and then send group text messages or initiate a conference call (everyone gets a number to call into). You can also share your location with everyone on a map. Unlike most of the other group messaging apps, groups are designed to be temporary. You set them up for a few hours a or a couple of days, and then they disappear. (Groupme has this functionality also, but it isn’t the default way you set up groups). The idea here is that groups are fungible and they change every night you go out. The key thing here is that these groups are private and you are not broadcasting to the entire world and your Mom on Twitter or Facebook. “My Mom ruined Facebook,” says Rosenberg. He promises, “Fast Society won’t get you grounded.” The app is already being sponsored by MTV, which is promoting its new show Skins on it. My prediction is that at this year’s SXSW conference, Fast Society and the other group messaging apps are going to try to break out. But like any social app, whichever one gains the most traction earliest will have the advantage because you are going to use the app your friends use. Which one will you adopt?        
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| Apple Obtains Patent For Solar-Powered Devices Posted: 13 Jan 2011 08:56 AM PST
From the general description of the actual patent: Portable devices having multiple power interfaces are described herein. According to one embodiment of the invention, a portable electronic device includes, but is not limited to, a processor, a memory coupled to the processor for storing instructions, when executed from the memory, cause the processor to perform one or more functions, a battery coupled to provide power to the processor and the memory, and a battery charging manager coupled to charge the battery using power derived from a plurality of power sources including a solar power source. Other methods and apparatuses are also described. According to Patently Apple, Apple originally filed for the patent in Q1 2009. But there have been many rumors over the past few years that Apple is readying a solar powered device. Photo credit/Flickr/nikonvscanon        
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| Mechanical Men: Live From IBM’s Watson Robot Vs. Human Jeopardy Champions Posted: 13 Jan 2011 08:33 AM PST
Greetings, fellow humans. Nicholas here live from IBM’s Watson Research facility in upstate New York where I’ll be witnessing the absolute latest in IBM’s artificial intelligence, a fine robot named Watson, take on past Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Just a live blog for now—pics and video to come afterward. I have but two hands. Feel free to refresh every 8 seconds for the next few minutes or so. 11am: The world’s press is here. CNN, Fox, NTV, CNET, PBS’ NOVA. I feel well out of place. 11:05am: IBM shows a video explaining why it’s damn near impossible for a robot, no matter how complex, can play a game like Jeopardy well to any degree. 11:10am: The video continues to explain Watson’s evolution. IBM hopes to "revolutionize" the filed of AI, in the process changing the world forever.        
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| Baby, It’s Cold Outside (So Your iPhone Exploded) Posted: 13 Jan 2011 06:58 AM PST
To be fair, the iPhone will warn you when it’s gotten too hot but sadly it won’t scream in outright pain as it is exposed to ill arctic winds.        
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| ShopSocial Raises $1.2 Million For Its “Commerce As A Social Service” Idea Posted: 13 Jan 2011 06:53 AM PST
ShopSocial, the latest venture started by BuzzLogic co-founder Todd Parsons, has raised $2.1 million in financing. The company, not be confused with ShopSocially (which also just landed funding), is building a platform that it says converges advertising, commerce and social recommendations. You won’t be able to learn much about its plans by browsing the ShopSocial website, but Parsons briefly demoed the platform, and it definitely has some potential in my opinion. Basically, ShopSocial enables brands and merchants to include buttons within display advertising units or on product pages that enables people to share and recommend products and services with their friends (via email, Facebook or Twitter). In return for sharing, the people who help distribute deals for items receive rewards, which can eventually come in many forms (think Amazon gift cards, direct discounts for whatever the advertisers sells, etc.). Here’s how Parsons puts it:
In addition to a means for distribution, ShopSocial says it can also enable secure transactions (like a limited-period sale or a collective buying effort for a given product) within ‘merchandising windows’ on whichever site implements them. You can find some screenshots below, but please note that these are demonstrations and not live implementations, which ShopSocial will start rolling out this quarter. The funding round was led by Metamorphic Ventures and joined by X/Seed Capital as well as several, unnamed angel investors.
       
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| Seas0nPass Jailbreaks Your Apple TV In A Jiff Posted: 13 Jan 2011 06:48 AM PST
What does jailbreaking really get you? Sadly, very little right now except a slightly buggy version of media streamer Plex and SSH access to the box. With the hard drive removed, there is precious little space on the Apple TV and, whereas previous jailbreaks allowed you to upload non-iTunes video the the device, the new homebrew apps allow only for the streaming of previously unavailable files.        
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| Harvard Undergrads Launch Newsle To Find News About Your Friends (Beta Invites) Posted: 13 Jan 2011 06:46 AM PST
Social news has many flavors. Twitter and Facebook function as social news feeds with your friends pushing out stories they find interesting. But what about news about your friends or other people you care about? Two Harvard sophomores, Axel Hansen and Jonah Varon, have cobbled together Newsle to do just that. Newsle imports your friends and contacts from Facebook and LinkedIn and shows you any news or blog posts that mention them. It also lets you follow famous people in different categories (actors, musicians, politicians, business people) to get all the news about them. Newsle recently launched in private beta. The first 1,000 readers to sign up with the beta key “techcrunch” will get in. The site lets you see a feed of news about just your friends, just public figures, or both. It emphasizes the public figures because otherwise, for most people, there wouldn’t be much news about just their friends. It constantly suggests more public figures for you to follow. The service scans hundreds of news and blog feeds and tries to disambiguate between people with the same name. It does a pretty good job of picking up items, and lets you filter out the random stuff by selecting “Important News” versus “All News” (although it still picks up duplicates, like when SAI pick up stories from other news outlets). Newsle doesn’t pick up Tweets or status messages, rather it tries to get rid of the social noise by presenting real news. You can, however, Tweet out news stories from your feed, vote them up or down, and add comments via Disqus. I have a feeling that Newsle will be more useful to the LinkedIn crowd (business people) than the Facebook crowd. Tracking news about people you care about could come in handy for startups founders tracking VCs or vice versa, sales people prepping for a metting, or simply keeping up with what is going on with your professional contacts. And if Newsle misses something, you can even add stories about yourself or your friends. If Newsle sounds familiar, it is because the idea has been tried before. Rohit Khare and Samil Ismail launched a now-defunct company called Angstro at TechCrunch 50 in 2008. It picked up news about your LinkedIn contacts, and worked well, but it didn’t ever really take off. Angstro morphed into Knx.to and Khare was eventually acq-hired by Google. Getting news only about people you know turned out to be too limited a use case. Maybe Newsle will have better luck. It certainly wins points on the interface. And the emphasis on public figures might help it solve the problem of infrequent news items about your friends. Give it a try and tell Jonah and Axel what they can do to make it better in comments.
       
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| Fox Mobile Group, Now Jesta Digital, Gets A New CEO Posted: 13 Jan 2011 06:27 AM PST
Of course, for now, there’s not much difference between Jesta Digital and FMG besides the name and CEO. Jason Aintabi of Jesta Group has been appointed as CEO of Jesta Digital and FMG’s COO, Mark Anderson will continue in his role as well. Jesta Digital will operate FMG’s slew of mobile services including Jamba, Jamster, Mobizzo and iLove, as well as Bitbop, a recently launched mobile video service and entertainment platform. Aintabi said in a release: I believe that the assets of Jesta Digital are well positioned to take advantage of the growth in mobile entertainment and the digital arenas in which we play a leading role. It’s probably a wise move for Jesta start with a new name considering that the “Fox” part of the FMG was clearly not applicable anymore. There’s still the question of whether Jesta can turn around a division that wasn’t able to bring in any meaningful revenue.        
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| Italy’s VCs Are Letting Their Best Startups Go Posted: 13 Jan 2011 06:20 AM PST  Italian entrepreneur Marco Palladino is currently 22 years old - but he was only 19 when he first started looking for funding for his startup. For roughly 2 years, he and his cofounders met with every last investor on the Italian Peninsula and without any success. But despite their empty pockets, they weren't ready to throw in the towel on their startup, an API marketplace for cloud-based services named Mashape.
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| RockYou Buys UK-Based Social Gaming Startup Playdemic Posted: 13 Jan 2011 06:12 AM PST
RockYou earlier this morning announced that it has acquired social game developer Playdemic. Based in Manchester, England, RockYou says Playdemic will operate independently as a subsidiary studio and develop Facebook games for a mainstream audience. Paul Gouge, Playdemic CEO and founder, will lead the studio as VP and General Manager. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Playdemic's management team is said to have held senior positions at publishers like Ubisoft, THQ and Eidos. Ian Livingstone, co-founder of Games Workshop and life president of Eidos, was a chief investor in Playdemic. The startup’s been around for roughly a year. RockYou says it will try and grow the user base for Gourmet Ranch, Playdemic's first title that is currently playable on Facebook with half a million monthly active users. In the game, players can grow organic crops, raise animals and prepare and serve meals to their friends.        
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| Stephen Fry To Pimp Pushnote To His 2M+ Followers – Will It Work? Posted: 13 Jan 2011 06:08 AM PST  In what we're sure will amount to a social media orgy, noted author, comedian and British cultural icon Stephen Fry is announcing the formal launch of Pushnote on Twitter at 2pm today (he's running late). Fry, who became an investor in the UK startup in June of last year, has over 2 million followers on the microblogging service. Pushnote, which was soft-launched the same month (see TCEU coverage), consists of a browser add-on that enables users to leave comments on any site they visit. It's not dissimilar in concept to Google Sidewiki, for example, and many others that have tried and failed, although Pushnote is intended to have greater consumer appeal.
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| What Silicon Valley Was Like Right After The Dotcom Crash: An Insider Perspective Posted: 13 Jan 2011 05:49 AM PST
If you generally dislike Quora or hate the fact that we occasionally publish stuff here on TechCrunch based on something interesting we’ve read on Quora, go take a look at this cute puppy picture instead of continuing. Ok? Ok. Below is an excerpt from a super interesting answer on the question “What was it like in Silicon Valley after the bubble burst in the early 2000′s?” (posted by business lawyer and executive Antone Johnson). Coincidentally, although I’ve been writing for TechCrunch almost every day for the past 27 months, I don’t live or work in Silicon Valley and have absolutely no intention of ever leaving my home country, if only for the beer here. Still, I obviously have a lot of interest in what happens over there, and I also happen to think one can learn much from occasionally reading about past times, preferably from people with excellent insider knowledge – who know how to express themselves eloquently to boot. Here goes (for the full answer, here’s a link to the thread):
Great read.        
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| TripIt Bags An ExIt – Acquired By Concur For Up To $120 Million Posted: 13 Jan 2011 04:42 AM PST
Concur, a publicly-listed provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions, this morning announced it has agreed to acquire TripIt, which helps travelers easily organize and share travel plans. Concur is initially paying approximately $82 million in upfront cash, stock and unvested restricted stock units – additional consideration over time could bring the total value to $120 million. More details on the financials are below. It’s quite a good exit for the company when all the smoke clears, having raised just a little over $13 million in funding to date. Investors include O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, European Founders Fund and Azure Capital Partners. TripIt originally launched at TechCrunch40 and is loved by Michael Arrington. In a statement, Concur chairman and CEO Steve Singh explains the rationale for the acquisition of TripIt:
Concur says more than 15 million people use its solutions to help manage their business travel and expenses. The entire TripIt team will join Concur. Concur has signed a definitive agreement to acquire TripIt for approximately $27 million in cash and approximately $44 million in Concur stock at closing, plus a contingent cash amount settled upon 30 months from closing of up to approximately $38 million, subject to certain adjustments and escrow provisions set forth in the definitive agreement. As part of the acquisition, Concur will exchange unvested TripIt options into Concur restricted stock units having an aggregate value of approximately $11 million at closing. All components of consideration bring the total deal value to as much as $120 million. Concur says it will provide more details in early February on its earnings conference call for the first quarter of fiscal 2011.        
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| Bieber.ly Shortens URLs While You Look At A Giant Picture Of Justin Bieber Posted: 13 Jan 2011 04:23 AM PST Web developer Elliott Kember checks in to tell us:
Yes, Elliott, yes it is. Update: it works, captain, it works!
       
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| LivingSocial Buys Majority Stake In Let’s Bonus, Expands Internationally Posted: 13 Jan 2011 04:08 AM PST
Social commerce startup LivingSocial this morning announced that it has acquired a majority stake in Europe’s Let's Bonus (which sounds an awful lot like “let’s bone us”, but I digress). The partnership brings LivingSocial operations to a total of ten countries, with the addition of Let's Bonus' Spain, Italy, Portugal, Argentina and Mexico presences. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. LivingSocial says it now boasts more than 16 million subscribers, is live in more than 170 markets, and is projected to book in excess of $500 million in revenue in 2011. Launched in September 2009 in Barcelona, Let's Bonus was one of the first European companies to ride the group buying wave. The startup offers daily deals with discounts of up to 70% on activities like gourmet dinners, luxury spas and romantic escapes. Let's Bonus has a team of more than 200 employees and now has offices in Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Rome, Milan, Lisbon, Buenos Aires and Mexico. Last year, LivingSocial acquired adventure company Urban Escapes, and launched three new verticals including LivingSocial Escapes, a travel site that offers savings on curated adventures, LivingSocial Family Edition and Campus Deals. In addition, LivingSocial has expanded its reach in Australia with a controlling stake in Jump On It. Expansion though acquisition or entire companies and majority stakes of course mirrors the way rival Groupon is planting its flags all over the world as well, so this move takes the competition between both group buying sites global. LivingSocial has raised $232 million in funding to date, most recently securing a $175 million round from Amazon.        
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| Peer39 Is Now Semantically Plowing Through 47 Billion Pages A Month Posted: 13 Jan 2011 04:01 AM PST
Their team deduced that display advertising was not going to go away, but that at the same time, privacy concerns will raise the levels of scrutiny over traditional cookie-based targeting. They saw it as an opportunity for the company and its semantic URL analysis technology. Amiad Solomon, Founder & President, was recently in Israel, where the company’s R&D is based. I had a chance to catch up with him and hear about the impact of pivoting eighteen months ago (from ad network to data provider) had on the company. Let’s begin with a whopper: Peer39 is processing 18,000 URLS per second. This means that their systems get hit 18,000 times per second with requests for semantic targeting information for URLs which Peer39 then has to go out and classify, then determine levels of brand safety for. All this has to happen in under three milliseconds per URL to allow the data to be monetized through ad networks and exchanges which require minimal latency. Now let’s move on to a double-whopper: the shift from closing media buying deals as an ad network, to data distribution partnerships with the likes of AdMeld and The Rubicon Project, has resulted in a 1300% increase in scale. That’s from 35 million URLs/month in December 2009, to 47 billion in November 2010. Look at that number again, 47 BILLION. So what does Peer39's technology do that makes it so compelling? First, it analyzes page content and classifies it semantically according to the most relevant categories. For example, an article about Disney’s finances might also be classified under ‘Entertainment’ if it includes information about its movies, or under ‘Lifestyle’ if it talks about movie stars. Secondly, Peer39 assists brand advertisers to be assured that the content that’s adjacent to their ads is in alignment with their strategy. For example, Disney (this time as an Advertiser) will not want to run ads in along content it considers risqué. Budweiser may have other criteria. In both cases, Peer39 parses the page before the ad is served, and as mentioned above, this happens 18,000 per second. For the courtesy, Peer39 charges either on a CPM basis (between 5-10 cents for every thousand calls), or based on rev-share (15%-25% of the media buy on the ad network or platform). If you do some basic back-of-the-envelope calculations you’ll come to the simple conclusion that the only way this can become a viable businesses is through massive scale. Solomon admits that the switch from ad network to data provider was a tough decision at the time, especially since revenues were already coming in at that point. In retrospect, he says, the timing could have not been better as more and more ad networks increased their demand for data, and large exchanges required semantics and brand protection for their real-time bidding platforms. “We were fortunate and very lucky,” he concluded.        
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| Get Off Of My Cloud, Shazam Discovers Spotify Posted: 13 Jan 2011 03:52 AM PST  Shazam, the mobile music discovery service, is adding integration with music streaming service Spotify, a feature request that I'm sure has been rampant among hardcore users. Users of Shazam's free and premium apps for iPhone, iPod and Android will now be able to access Spotify directly through a new 'Play in Spotify' feature, which upon Shazam recognising or recommending a song, takes them directly to Spotify where they can listen to the full track. That's if they have a Spotify Premium subscription (mobile access is only available for paying customers), and if the track in question exists in Spotify's, shall we say sometimes Spotty, music catalogue. You'll also need to be in either the UK, Sweden, Norway, Finland, France, Spain or the Netherlands.
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| Millennial: For The First Time, Android Surpasses iOS Mobile Ad Impression Share Posted: 13 Jan 2011 02:40 AM PST
Android OS impression share saw an 8% increase month-over-month and a 46% impression share on the network in December, compared to iOS’ 32% share (which is down by 6% from November). RIM followed with a 16% impression share for December, down by 3 percent from last month. Android ad requests grew 141% from Q3 to Q4 and since January of 2010, Android has grown 3130% over the year. Apple requests grew 12% in Q3 to Q4 2010, and since January, Apple increased by only 14%. Apple saw more growth with its tablet device, with iPad requests growing by 280% Q3 to Q4 2010. RIM requests increased 60% in Q3 to Q4 2010, rising by 224% since January. This month, Millennial broke down the revenue generated by apps in Q4, and interestingly Android had a 55% share as opposed to 39% for Apple. Android apps had a 13% increase in ad revenue quarter-over-quarter.
While Apple may have lost the top spot in terms of impression share, Millennial reported that Apple continued its reign as the top manufacturer on the Millennial network (as it has been for the last 15 months), representing 21 percent of the network's impression share by manufacturer in December. In terms of actual devices, the iPhone and iPod touch made up the two of the top three individual mobile devices. Samsung came in second in terms of manufacturers, followed by Motorola and HTC, which had a 9% growth month-over-month. Android devices represented 16 of the Top 30 Mobile Devices in December, up from 11 devices in November. And smartphones accounted for 23 of the Top 30 Mobile Devices, with a combined 48% impression share in December. With respect to apps using advertising on Millennial’s network, Android applications represented 55% of the Application Platform Mix in Q4 2010, a 13% increase quarter-over-quarter. Clearly the most compelling statistic out of the entire report is that Android finally surpasses iOS for mobile ad impression share on the network. While this is a first for Millennial’s network, Android has steadily been eating away at the smartphone marketshare that Apple and RIM once commanded. And why is this a big deal on Millennial’s network? According to a new IDC report, Millennial is the third largest network behind Google AdMob and Apple’s iAd, so a shift in share on Millennial’s network is significant. Of course the real test will be whether Android can sustain its domination over the next few months. But Android has a lot of leg room to loose even a little bit of its impression share (there’s currently a 14 percent spread between the two operating systems) so it looks likely that the report will show similar findings for January.        
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| How To Make An 8-Bit Twitter Avatar Posted: 12 Jan 2011 11:59 PM PST
It’s a great story, inspired by an 8-bitted Dribbble post by UK artist and designer Harry Harrison, San Francisco interactive designers Addison Kowalski, Amadeus Demarzi and Courtney Guertin took the idea to the next level by 8 bit-ing their Twitter avatars, which inevitably went viral among the tech set, finally consuming MG Siegler and myself in a blaze of pixelated glory about a day ago.  @PercivalSean Percival I'm not valley enough to know these 8bit avatar guys so I just made my own. Wouldn't trust them to get the hair right anywho. While Addison, Kowalski and Demarzi are actually planning to launch an EightBit social gaming app based on the characters soon, we just thought they looked cool in and of themselves as avatars.  @andrewpbrettAndy Brett warning: I am quietly judging all of you based on your decision to 8-bit your avatar. except for @alexia. about 9 hours ago via webRetweetReply Kowalski has made the above “How-To” video in case you’re interested in making your own. Overcome by mad 80s nostalgia I tried it out earlier, to much success. Here’s the breakdown (You need Photoshop): 1. Open Photoshop. 2. Press Command + K for “Preferences.” 3. Select “Guides, Grids and Slices” and enter “Every 50 pixels” for “Gridline” and “5″ for “Subdivisions.” 4. Create a new document 100 px by 100 px. 5. Use “Option + Delete” to fill in the background. 6. Use the Shape tool to make a 4 X 4 square for a face. 7. Use the same tool to draw in hair, neck shading, etc. 8. Click on “Filter,” “Add Noise” and set noise to 1%, “Gaussian” and “Monochromatic.” 9. Use the Burn tool and artistic license for the rest.
Image: Addison Kowalski        
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| There’s Absolutely Nothing You Can Do About Spokeo, So Stop Whining Posted: 12 Jan 2011 11:51 PM PST
Here’s the deal. There’s absolutely nothing you or I can do about it. Data laws are so lax in the U.S. that companies can do this sort of thing quite legally. Heck, even the WSJ, which got all worked up over cookies on Facebook apps, couldn’t say much bad about Spokeo. You’d think they were sister companies or something. In 2006 I ranted about Jigsaw, a company that basically does the same thing as Spokeo. What happened next? Did they cower in shame and disappear from the Internet? No, they raised a $12 million round. And then last year SalesCrunch…er…Salesforce, bought them for $142 million. Yeah, we sure showed them. Look, the kind of person who starts a company like Spokeo isn’t the kind of person who really cares about bad press. It’s just a bunch of free marketing. What angers me, but doesn’t really surprise me, is that the Better Business Bureau (click the link if you actually think they serve consumers) has rushed to Spokeo’s defense in a blog post. See Spokeo.com: Panic Unnecessary. In my opinion panic is probably the best way to react to this. Because unless various state Attorneys General pause their governatorial election campaigns for a moment to actually do something about this mess, all that’s going to happen is this – someone will buy Spokeo for a boatload of money. And anyway, you’re all enraged right now, but by next week you’ll have forgotten all about this.        
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| Posted: 12 Jan 2011 11:20 PM PST
Well, I hopped on a last-minute flight across the country, got stuck in a snow storm, had my flight home cancelled, had to find a new hotel, and now I think I’m getting sick. But it was all worth it. Because I got what I came for: the Verizon iPhone. Actually, I don’t have one just yet. Like all non-Verizon customers, I’ll have to wait until February 10 to get one (Verizon customers get access on February 3, which is a fairly classy move to reward loyalty). But I will have one soon enough. That’s been the question asked of me the most these past two days: will I get the Verizon iPhone? You’re damn right I’m getting the Verizon iPhone. John Biggs was more pragmatic in his initial thoughts following the Verizon press conference on whether you should upgrade or not. Certainly, for some current AT&T iPhone owners, it doesn’t make sense. But for me? I’ve been waiting for this day for over three years — how could I not switch? When I bought the original iPhone the day it came out in 2007, I had only ever been a Verizon customer. I was happy with the network on my little and decidedly un-smart RAZR — even with Verizon’s piece of shit software on it and the crapware. I wasn’t planning on buying an iPhone. In fact, I thought it would be crazy to do so. The thought going through my head at the time was actually a bit like Steve Ballmer’s: $600 for a phone?! But then I went to an Apple Store on day one to see what all the fuss was about. I picked one up. 30 seconds later I was buying it. At first it wasn’t so bad. AT&T’s Edge network was pretty slow, but seemed to work fairly well. I also don’t recall a lot of dropped calls at the time. Then Apple dropped the price and the masses rushed in. Then came the iPhone 3G. AT&T’s network was crushed and the rest is history. AT&T has been completely unable to fix their network in several major metropolitan cities these past three years. Sure, some of that isn’t entirely their fault (the permits needed for new towers, etc), but there are plenty of other things they could have done. The SXSW festival is a great example. Two years ago, the AT&T service there was the worst I’ve ever encountered. It was actually completely unusable. No calls, no texts, no data. Last year, miraculously, with even more iPhone users there, it worked very well! How? AT&T spent the money to bring in a bunch of extra equipment for support and backup. Why not do this in say, San Francisco? Or New York? The buildings are too tall. The land is uneven. Yadda, Yadda. A lot of excuses. Money has a tendency to solve problems — except when you don’t want to spend the money that needs to be spent.
Further, AT&T knows when you drop a call just like Netflix knows when you can’t stream a movie. When that happens, Netflix automatically emails you to offer you money off of your bill for the inconvienience. It’s not a lot. But it counts. AT&T? Nada. Worse, if you try to call to complain, you’ll be on hold for an hour. Then the call will drop. Or, if you do get through, they might suggest you buy their MicroCell. Their $150 MicroCell to make your $100+ a month service work. You have got to be kidding me. At the very least, that thing should be given for free to every AT&T customer who drops calls on a regular basis. After all, that device actually helps customers help AT&T by offloading usage to a broadband connection. And they want you to pay for that. What a joke. Also a joke are the very mixed reports on if that rip-off box even works. And the fact that they refused to sell us one for the TechCrunch office even though we have absolutely no AT&T service anywhere inside our office. Happen to go to CES this year? I hear AT&T was a bundle of joy there as well. Most accounts had Verizon having more actual devices on their network there, yet that network seemed fine according to those who were there. Weird. I could go on and on, but this is really just kicking a dead carrier at this point. Dead to me, at least. I hope AT&T can figure out their problems. I really do. The funny thing is that the biggest network breakthrough they’ve had in years may come thanks to Verizon: when they offload millions of customers to them. That should actually do real wonders for their network. Back in September of last year, I wrote about my hesitation to get my hopes up for the iPhone on Verizon. The reason was spelled out in the title: The "Verizon iPhone" Versus "The iPhone On Verizon's Network". I was worried that Verizon would use some of their newfound smartphone leverage with Android to try to force Apple to give into silly demands for a device on their network. Demands ranging from small (branding) to large (crapware). Thankfully, though I’m sure they tried, that’s not going to be the case. The iPhone on Verizon will look like an iPhone on AT&T, just with a different carrier name in the corner. There will be no pre-loaded VCAST apps or secondary bullshit app store. In other words, it won’t be a “Verizon iPhone”, it will be an “iPhone on Verizon’s network”.
I don’t know how Apple pulled that off. There’s talk that the subsidy paid to Apple for each phone might be slightly less than it has been from AT&T. Or maybe Verizon was just really sick of customers asking when they’d get the device. Or maybe they just really wanted in on the iPad as well, and whatever else Apple dreams up in the future. But this:
Is music to my ears. Can you imagine Verizon not branding any of the Android phones on their network? Or even just not loading it up with their crapware? And yet the iPhone is getting neither. Beautiful. Will I miss not being able to talk and surf at the same time? No. Honestly, I never really do that anyway. I do recognize that’s a big issue for some people. But I have 93 million others backing me up: current Verizon customers, none of whom have that feature. And it may be coming anyway. Will I miss not being able to roam abroad? Let me tell you about my last two trips abroad. I went to Japan, signed up for AT&T’s ridiculous $200 for 200 MB data plan. I came home, they charged me something like $700. Why? No good reason. Then, last month, I went to Paris. I signed up for AT&T’s ridiculous $200 for 200 MB plan. I came home, they charged me around $650. Why? No good reason. Both times, the charges were removed after a lengthy phone call and a week-long process. But why the hell did I have to do that at all? And when I tweeted about it both times, dozens said the exact same thing happened to them. Hell, it happened to people I was with on those trips too! My point is that if I really need a phone overseas, I could buy one for cheaper than what AT&T will try to charge me to roam. I’ll bring my Verizon iPhone and use it on WiFi when it’s available. Or I’ll jailbreak an old phone I have and pop out the SIM. No biggie. The actual biggest issue for me is the looming iPhone 5. We all know it’s coming, the question is if it’s coming to Verizon as well as AT&T in June? And if it does, do early-adopters catch a break and still get the ability to purchase the new version at a discounted price? Or are we screwed? Or does it go AT&T-only first? I don’t know. No one outside of Apple, AT&T, and Verizon do yet. Hell, maybe only Apple does. That’s an issue, I’ll admit. But there are options: if a new one does come, sell the few month old one online or to a friend and use the money to buy the new one and move your contract over. Or look at it this way: an unsubsidized iPhone at $600 is a mere 4-6 months of actual smartphone service that you’re already paying for. It’s not pretty, but it’s important to remember that the big money you’re spending isn’t on the phone itself, it’s on your contract, both with AT&T and Verizon. The same is true of early termination fees. But that’s just me trying to justify it for you. The truth is that I don’t need to justify it to myself. I’ll gladly buy the iPhone 4 on Verizon, and then if the iPhone 5 comes to Verizon in June, I’ll gladly buy that too. It’s worth it to me after years of headaches and thousands of dollars poured into the nightmare that is AT&T. It’s time to make a statement by taking away their right to send me a statement. So yes, I am getting the Verizon iPhone.
       
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| SalesCrunch: Pissing Us Off Isn’t Much Of A PR Or Marketing Strategy Posted: 12 Jan 2011 09:10 PM PST
Sounds kinda familiar. Our sites include TechCrunch, CrunchGear, CrunchBase, MobileCrunch, etc. A big deal? Not really. We’ve dealt with people using “Crunch” in their names before – sites like ArabCrunch, a blog about startups in the middle east that everyone thinks we own. Usually we just dismiss these people as jerks who want to leverage off our brand because it’s not crowd pleasing to exercise intellectual property rights. AOL legal may or may not have a different position on it. My guess is that the company named themselves this because they knew we’d write a post saying how lame it is, and any press is good press. But these are serious people. Not only are Accel and First Round legitimate, top tier firms, but founder Sean Black is a former founder and exec at Trulia. By phone today Black says he reached out to our CEO months ago by email to discuss their name, but we never responded. No surprise there, email doesn’t really have much of a chance of getting read by us most of the time. But the fact that they knew it was an issue, one important enough to discuss with us, makes me wonder why they didn’t email once again, or pick up a phone. Black also said he didn’t think it was going to be that big of a deal, mentioning Captain Crunch cereal. And that the “crunch” part of the name helped with the idea that they’re helping out sales people. Why not just pick another name to launch your brand, though? I think something like sales…um….force would be perfect. Yes, Salesforce. Now there’s a name that sounds like it could be a winner with salespeople. They should have gone with that one, I think. 3…2…1…aaaand here come the haters in the comments. Update: Here’s the email from Black. It was a “courtesy” notice, not an offer to discuss whether or not they would go with that name. Dear Heather, My name is Sean Black, founder & CEO of SalesCrunch, a new addition to the First Round Capital portfolio. We will be announcing our funding in a few weeks and we wanted to give you and your team advanced notice as a courtesy given the use of the word Crunch in our name. Like Nestle, we are in a very different business from TechCrunch. SalesCrunch is a sales training automation software (SaaS) company building tools that power on-demand sales training over any web-enabled device to help companies and their employees increase predictable sales productivity. You can read a little more about us here, but please feel free to contact me directly should you have any questions. Congratulations on all that you have accomplished since joining TechCrunch. It has been impressive to watch. I hope to meet you in person in the not too distant future. Sincerely, Sean        
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| Kabbage Raises $6.7M To Give Online Merchants Working Capital To Grow Their Businesses Posted: 12 Jan 2011 09:00 PM PST
Kabbage is essentially a way for online merchants and sellers on marketplaces like eBay to get capital they otherwise wouldn’t qualify for at a bank. Kabbage uses technology to analyze online merchants’ sales and credit history; customer traffic and reviews; and prices and inventory compared to competitors. Via PayPal’s Adaptive Payments API, Kabbage will make cash advances available to eBay and other online marketplace sellers fairly quickly (Kabbage says that many transactions take as little has ten minutes). Kabbage makes money off of fees charged to merchants for the working capital. Fees depend on how long the online merchant keeps the capital (6 month maximum) and the customer’s repayment risk. Rates range from 6 percent to 16 percent of the original advance amount. While the startup only supports eBay for now (via a recently launched deal with PayPal), Kabbage plans to use to the funding to expand to other platforms, including Amazon and Etsy.        
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| PC Shipments Recover Somewhat; Apple Share Jumps In U.S. Posted: 12 Jan 2011 07:26 PM PST
Apple’s portion of the US pie has increased quite significantly: a 23.7% jump brought them to a total of 9.7% of all computers sold in the country this last quarter. Why are more people buying macs? That’s a more complicated question than it sounds.        
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| Hopeful Plaintiff Sues Yahoo, Digg, Reddit, Fark, TechCrunch, And Others Posted: 12 Jan 2011 07:09 PM PST
We, along with our fellow defendants, have allegedly been violating US Patent No. 6,370,535, titled System and method for structured news release generation and distribution. The invention underlying the patent appears to be the notion of typing text into an admin system, storing that text on a server, and then publishing it on the Internet. The patent was awarded in 2002. The good news is this. AOL has a whole legal department to deal with these…people. Someday I really hope to get every wingnut who’s ever threatened us up on a stage and then let TechCrunch readers throw rotten tomatoes at them. That would be cathartic. The complaint is below. Update: A commenter points out that the plaintiff spelled their own name incorrectly at the top of the complaint.        
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Are we going to be seeing solar-charged iPhone and iPads in the near future? This could become a reality if Apple executes on a 
Could a new name, CEO and parent company help breathe new life into 
Back in the day, and by that I mean six months ago, a ‘Pivot’ was simply known as ‘a change in strategic directions’. Call it what you may today, 
This has been a significant few weeks for 
General smartphone impression share increased by 2 percent month-over-month and accounted for 60 percent of the mobile phone impression share in November. Touch Screen devices grew 10% month-over-month, with approximately 57% share of impressions in December, thanks to an increase in smartphone usage.
There’s been a surge of messages to us asking us to please write about and expose 
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Oh no, we’ve been sued. This week’s hopeful plaintiff is Gooseberry Natural Resources LLC, who filed a complaint in a Los Angeles federal court against Reddit, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Digg, Fark, Geeknet, TechCrunch, Newsvine, Yahoo and others.| You are subscribed to email updates from TechCrunch To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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