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- Making Learning Fun For Kids, Everything Butt Art Launches Its First iPad App
- Dear Nokia, This Pink Lumia 800 Commercial Discouraged Me. -Boys Everywhere
- Test Dropbox’s New Android App And Snag Some Extra Storage Space
- Google Chrome Market Share Drops For First Time In Two Years
- iModela Adds CNC Milling To Your Home 3D Printing Arsenal
- Evernote’s First Institutional Investor Troika Sells Stake To Sequoia For Over 10X Return
- Lead Management Company Leads360 Raises $15 Million
- Motorola Injunction Kicks 3 iPhones And An iPad Off Of Apple’s German Site
- Lean-but-mean StylistPick Guns For The Competition With New War Chest
- The 16-Year-Old Startup CEO And The Hong Kong Billionaire [TCTV]
- Daily Crunch: Dust
- The Seven Most Interesting Startups At 500 Startups Demo Day
- Facebook Tests Photo Viewer That Encourages Comments, Google+ Comparisons
- The Revolution May Or May Not Be Branded
- Yammer Time: In 2011 “Pretty Much Everything Tripled”
- AT&T Galaxy Nexus Gets Semi-Official Google Wallet Support
- Hitwise: Facebook.com Now Accounts For 1 In Every 5 Pageviews On The Web (In The U.S.)
- The Alan Lomax Folk Collection Will Be Available For Streaming In February
- Want To Buy Last-Minute Tickets To Local Events (At A Discount)? WillCall Is For You.
- HuffPo Unique Visitors Up 47%, Plans Streaming Network To Kill Cable News
| Making Learning Fun For Kids, Everything Butt Art Launches Its First iPad App Posted: 03 Feb 2012 08:55 AM PST  You know what’s funny? If you Google “how do you get kids to learn” (sans quotes, even), the first result goes to this TechCrunch blog post about an app that lets kids draw butts on the iPad. Really! The post details the company called Madbrook (aka Everything Butt Art), which launched at TechCrunch Disrupt NY in May. It’s the brand behind a series of printed books, all of which are meant to teach creativity and step-by-step drawing while using humor and silliness to appeal to the young demographic. Now, the iPad app promised at Disrupt has finally arrived. The company’s first digital creation, Butt Art -Kids Learn to Draw Zoo Animals Step-by-Step, has gone live in the App Store. OK, seriously. Butts? Yes, butts. The interactive app teaches drawing by starting everything with a butt shape (a rounded, lowercase w). The end result is not actually a picture of a butt, mind you, but a fairly cute animal drawing instead. In the printed books, Everything Butt Art at the Zoo and Everything Butt Art on the Farm, the results are zoo animals and farm animals, respectively. In the new iPad app, however, kids don’t just draw and trace shapes, they can also decorate the drawings with stamps, play a hidden shape game (Butt Hunt!), and read a full-color e-book, too. While parents may roll their eyes at this sort of thing (is this really a blog post about drawing butts?!), the key takeaway here is that Everything Butt Art is a company that has managed to tap into how kids think. They’re making learning fun, by making it silly and giggly and yeah, kind of stupid…but it works. (Butt it works?) Don’t believe us, though, just ask your iPad-happy kids to try it out. The new app is available as a free download in iTunes and comes with three animals. The remaining twelve are available as add-on packages for $0.99 per 6-pack.
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| Dear Nokia, This Pink Lumia 800 Commercial Discouraged Me. -Boys Everywhere Posted: 03 Feb 2012 08:29 AM PST  Nokia’s UK YouTube account has posted a video (below) promoting the pink Lumia 800, and shockingly enough it seems pretty targeted toward women. Here’s the thing: It’s pretty obvious that, with a pink phone, the majority of its owners will be teenage young ladies. That’s fine. But doesn’t a commercial that shows only women enjoying the phone kind of ruin it for guys? What if there’s a young man in the UK that was really excited about the pink Lumia 800? He’s probably not so excited after seeing this commercial. The same thing could be said for the HTC Rhyme. The phone was actually a pretty solid, well-priced device. The problem was that it came in purple, and was equipped with something that can only be referred to as a purse charm — a little dangly glowing gem that lights up when the phone rings. Did you guys see Verizon’s ad for the Rhyme? It’s not only terrifying, but it shows a lady (with six arms) pulling this purple phone out of her purse. The phone comes in a sort of gold and silver, and the “charm” could probably be marketed as something guys let hang out of their briefcase or gym bag, but Verizon doesn’t present it that way. Bye-bye, boobless customers. There’s nothing wrong with building a phone that caters to a certain type of user. Some people use their phone mostly for work, while others are textaholics, and still others have to update Facebook every five seconds — gender makes no difference. But by marketing directly to a certain gender (or race, or orientation), you immediately discourage every one else from picking up the phone. Is the pink Lumia 800 any less appealing to women if the commercial shows a guy using it? Truth be told, this commercial isn’t nearly as bad as Verizon’s, but Friday makes me feel ranty. [via WMPowerUser]
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| Test Dropbox’s New Android App And Snag Some Extra Storage Space Posted: 03 Feb 2012 08:23 AM PST  Dropbox has no shortage of fans or users these days — their stellar wins at the Crunchies are proof of that — and now the cloud storage service is leaning on them to test an experimental new build of the Dropbox Android app. While the thrill of being on the bleeding edge is probably enough for some people to take the plunge, the real meat of the experimental build comes in the form of the new auto upload feature for photos and videos. It’s pretty much exactly what the name implies: as soon as you snap a photo or take a video with your Android device, it automatically gets uploaded to your account. And in usual Dropbox fashion, it just works. I was actually a bit surprised to see how well the feature worked right out of the gate. Once you breeze through the app’s new splash screens and start taking pictures, it takes only seconds for your shots to start trickling into your account. The 180MB file size limit has been given the axe too, so that Oscar-worthy film you’re putting together on your Galaxy S II should make the transition just fine too. So what’s in it for you, aside from the ability to immediately shove your media into the cloud? More free storage, that’s what. For every 500 MB of photos or videos that gets uploaded, another 500 MB will be added to your Dropbox account. Provided you stick with the process long enough, you’ll eventually walk away with 5GB more space than you had coming into it. Not bad Dropbox, not bad at all. Dropbox just kicked off a similar campaign on their forums to test their slew of desktop clients, but motivated users shouldn’t bother trying to double-dip in attempt to snag 10 GB of storage. If you’re content to do a spot of beta testing in exchange for some nifty features, feel free to download the .apk right here.
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| Google Chrome Market Share Drops For First Time In Two Years Posted: 03 Feb 2012 08:16 AM PST  Google’s move to demote the Chrome website in search rankings in January led to a decline in browser market share, according to new data from Net Applications. Google’s Chrome web browser dropped from 19.11% in December to 18.94% in January, the firm found. Meanwhile, among the other browsers, only Internet Explorer saw significant gains during the month, going from 51.87% in December to 52.96% in January. The reason behind Chrome’s drop – the first in two years – is likely the advertising scandal Google found itself last month. Google had hired a third-party ad agency Unruly Media to drive views of a new Chrome video by paying bloggers to post it on their own websites. One blogger linked back to the Chrome download page, without using a “nofollow” attribute which would have prevented the page from getting an extra boost. The move was in clear violation of Google’s own paid link policy put in place to combat spam. Penalties for actions like this range from a month to a year of penalized search rank. Google ended up doing the right thing and demoting the Chrome download page (www.google.com/chrome) for at least 60 days by setting its rank to zero. Previously, Chrome ranked #2 in a search for “browser,” but after the demotion, it was #50. Today, the Chrome website is showing up on page 6 of Google Search – in other words, practically invisible. Chrome’s loss, for now at least, is IE’s gain. In fact, TechCrunch itself saw similar trends in January, much to our surprise (shock/horror). IE was ahead of both Firefox and Chrome for referral traffic mid-month. Our data showed that it was (TC parent company) AOL traffic that was so IE-friendly. But that seems to be a coincidence. According to Net Applications, Windows XP’s market share grew in January, going from 0.67 points to 47.19 points, something that could have contributed to IE’s bump. To be clear, Windows XP didn’t necessarily see more users, it saw more usage. Maybe the typical year-end wrap-up work at businesses led to increased XP usage, as IE6 still powers some business applications? Or maybe browser market share numbers pulled from sources like Net Applications should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt. For what it’s worth, other browsers saw dips, too, including Firefox, which went from 21.83% to 20.88%, and Safari, which dropped from 4.97% to 4.90%. Opera, saw a tiny gain from 1.66% to 1.67%. More data is available here on the Net Applications website.
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| iModela Adds CNC Milling To Your Home 3D Printing Arsenal Posted: 03 Feb 2012 07:31 AM PST Upset that the Makerbot can’t produce solid, smooth objects for your home 3D printing pleasure? Why not give the iModela a look. This CNC milling machine costs a little under $1,000 and uses a drill head to carve out 3D objects in solid plastic. The iModela is made by Roland DG (a subsidiary of the guys who make musical instruments) and has a very Japanese UI and aesthetic, which is pretty cool. They offer some interesting free models and a plastic sample kit for folks interested in getting started. Some BoingBoing commenters are also recommending the DeepGoove1 CNC mill that can mill steel as well as wood and plastic. These things might not be quite ready for general home use yet, but the fact that you can grab a CNC machine for around a grand is pretty incredible in itself.
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| Evernote’s First Institutional Investor Troika Sells Stake To Sequoia For Over 10X Return Posted: 03 Feb 2012 07:16 AM PST  Russian venture firm Troika Ventures is announcing that it has sold its share in productivity app Evernote to fellow investor Sequoia Capital. Troika Ventures was Evernote's first institutional investor, and backed the company with $4.5 million in 2009, and participated in Evernote’s $20 million C round in 2010. Evernote has raised a total of $95.5 million in funding. The most recent round took place last year, when Sequoia and Morgenthaler Ventures put $50 million in the company. Troika is not disclosing deal size but the firm invested back when Evernote only had 500,000 users (that number has shot up to 20 million since then). And valuation (based on sale price) is up 10 times. Just based on Troika’s $4.5 million investment in the A round, it is safe to assume they sold their stake for more than $45 million. Although Evernote was rumored to be joining the billion dollar valuation club in its last round, the company isn’t valued that high (but ‘still doing quite nicely”). Perhaps that possible IPO isn’t so far away? "Evernote was one of the first companies that we invested in," said Artyom Yukhin, the head of Troika Dialog's venture division, in a release. "In addition to financing, we provided expertise and assistance at an early stage to bring the company to the forefront of consumer internet and mobile services…The exit, at over ten times our original commitment, was a difficult decision for Troika and for me personally, but we ultimately decided to provide liquidity to our investors at a multiple return on their investment rather than await the next exit opportunity. Evernote has an absolutely unique team and we are proud of its achievements and have no doubt that the company will continue to flourish under the leadership of its CEO, Phil Libin." Of course, this means Sequoia, who also participated in the company’s 2010 $20 million round as well, is upping its stake in the company and betting big on Evernote. By our calculations, Sequoia presumably just bought another $50 million-plus in the company.
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| Lead Management Company Leads360 Raises $15 Million Posted: 03 Feb 2012 07:14 AM PST  Leads360, a consumer sales automation and telephony platform, announced today it has completed a $15 million round of new funding. The round was led by Volition Capital and saw participation from existing Leads360 investor Rustic Canyon Partners. The company plans to use the funding to expand its product lineup, pursue strategic relationships and raise awareness about its platform. Despite how the name sounds, the company doesn’t actually sell leads – it sells software and services to manage the leads an organization already has. Founded in 2004, the L.A.-based startup has now managed over 40 million prospects for over 2,000 clients, including many among the Fortune 1000. Over the past three years, Leads360 reports seeing 40% to 50% revenue growth, and claims to do a better job than CRM systems with specialized customizations at managing consumer sales. With the Leads360 software, businesses can set follow-up reminders, track appointments, manage new leads alerts, prioritize quality leads, and track key performance metrics in order to calculate ROI by lead source. In addition to its standalone software, Leads360 also offers Leads360 for Salesforce, which integrates into Salesforce’s existing CRM system, and Leads360 for iPhone, which lets you manage leads in real-time, while on the go.
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| Motorola Injunction Kicks 3 iPhones And An iPad Off Of Apple’s German Site Posted: 03 Feb 2012 06:26 AM PST  Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there lived a website called Apple.de. And on this website, in historical Deutschland, there lived three iPhones and an iPad. They were a happy bunch: some wise but slow with old age, others quick and lean, but they all had one tragic flaw in common. According to a court in Germany, all four of them are infringing on Motorola patents related to embedded 3G/UMTS wireless technology, FRAND standards essential patents to be specific. This means that the technology within the patents is now a standard across the industry, and the company that owns said technology is required to license it to competitors under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms. That said, the Mannheim Regional Court has enforced a permanent injunction on the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G and the iPad 2 3G. Luckily for German fanbois, the ban only affects Apple’s online presence. Customers can still purchase all four products in various retail locations, including Apple brick-and-mortar stores. This all comes back to a ruling in December, where the Mannheim court issued a preliminary injunction against Apple’s infringing products.
You may notice one wireless Apple device — the one that speaks — missing from the list. That’s likely because the iPhone 4S uses a Qualcomm chip as opposed to an Infineon/Intel chip. FOSS Patents suggests that Moto and Qualcomm have a licensing deal already in place, which would mean that Apple is covered by extension with regards to the 4S. In other Apple/Motorola/Germany-related news, Moto also won a permanent injunction today against Apple’s iCloud push email feature. This means Apple customers in Germany will likely be forced to revert back to the old method of push email, rather than using iCloud.
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| Lean-but-mean StylistPick Guns For The Competition With New War Chest Posted: 03 Feb 2012 04:31 AM PST  Bringing US business models to Europe might seem an obvious move for some – but it’s frequently far harder than it might appear. US incumbents can indeed try to expand, but some fall at the first hurdle. Exactly this happened on January 20 when Shoedazzle announced its closure in the UK. UK head Nigel Whiteoak has since admitted to me that the company was looking to make more of the continued opportunity in the US, versus trying to expand in the UK. Shades of the Romans over-reaching their borders? Maybe. Whatever the case, the news has been a boon to Stylistpick, the local UK player which is making hay in the UK and now heading to other markets with a war chest. StylistPick has now raised an $11million B round led by Fidelity Growth Partners Europe. The subscription-based fast fashion brand, kept existing investors Accel Partners and Index Ventures on board, who invested $8 million in a Series A in April 2011. The board of directors is now Davor Hebel (Fidelity), Sonali de Rycker (Accel), Robin Klein (Index) and Eileen Burbidge (Passion Capital).
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| The 16-Year-Old Startup CEO And The Hong Kong Billionaire [TCTV] Posted: 03 Feb 2012 01:13 AM PST |
| Posted: 03 Feb 2012 01:00 AM PST  Here are some recent posts on TechCrunch Gadgets: Steve Jobs Impersonator With Angel Wings And Halo Used To Hawk A Worthless Android Tab The $199 PlayBook Returns For A Limited Time
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| The Seven Most Interesting Startups At 500 Startups Demo Day Posted: 02 Feb 2012 11:59 PM PST  Halfway to living up to its moniker with over 250 startups, 500 Startups held a series of demo days this week and last, where a group of 33 scrappy startups presented their wares to investors in both New York and San Francisco. As we are wont to do with these things, we visited the 500 Startups offices in Mountain View and interviewed the seven that we thought were the most interesting, from both an investor and consumer standpoint. The startups chosen spanned all sorts of market territory, from a novel take on media-based eCommerce to an SaaS for farmers, but what they all had in common was a unique approach to the problem they were trying to solve as well as inkling of that other indeterminate thing that makes a startup great. Also, I’m pretty sure Switchcam, a startup that allows for a combining of different camera angles on video, should be on here. Most amazing moment: When ‘Love With Food’ founder admits to following me into the bathroom to tell me about her food related startup, of all things! Ever wish that you buy whatever product/outfit/gadget/whatever as you were reading about it online. Well you’re one step closer with startup 72 Lux, which provides publishers with a widget that allows readers to shop directly from whatever web page they’re reading, without taking them off the page. Nifty. “Instagram for reviews” Tiny Review allows people to express what they feel or think via mobile in three lines or less. After a little over three weeks in the iOS app store, the modest startup has about 25k users, and that’s with almost no coverage from press. Hmm … wonder what will happen when they do finally get some coverage. Definitely one of the buzziest startups at Demo Day, HighScore House gamifies the process of doing chores, giving kids parent-set rewards like “ice cream for breakfast” whenever they complete assigned tasks. This just smells like the future. SafeShepherd logs who is tracking your data (like browser cookies) across the web and then acts like an intermediary, asking them to remove it from their database — Saving you hassle at the least. Hence the name. Fitocracy cofounders Brian Wang and Richard Talens used to be total chubs. Now they’re both buff and ready to bring a bunch of out of shape nerds with them on their quantified fitness platform Fitocracy (which has so much reach online it was the subject of a XKCD cartoon). Props to Wang for taking his shirt off after the demo. Farmeron At first glance LoveWithFood seems like a Foodzie clone. Luckily founder Aihui Ong chased me into the bathroom to explain to me how exactly they differ; For every box of bite-sized gourmet food samples you receive, LoveWithFood donates a meal to a homeless shelter. And yes, I wish the name was FoodWithLove, but you’ll take what you can get, especially if it’s for a good cause.
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| Facebook Tests Photo Viewer That Encourages Comments, Google+ Comparisons Posted: 02 Feb 2012 07:25 PM PST  Facebook is testing a new photo viewer layout that mounts engagement buttons and comments to the right rather than beneath images. See, Facebook doesn’t want you to just view comments, it wants you to start a conversation. Apparently the company doesn’t care about being accused of copying Google+, since the viewer’s layout is very similar to that of its competitor. The fact is that this is good design, though, so it makes sense for Facebook to integrate whether or not it has appeared elsewhere. Currently when Facebook users view photos, they see a big blank space on the right but can’t see the comments below with scrolling past the fold and away from the image. That makes users more likely to leave the photo viewer before engaging. The blank space is better filled with comments that lend context to a photo, as a small percentage of Facebook users are now seeing. Facebook hasn’t been shy about taking inspiration from other products. In the months since Google+ launched, Facebook has added features found in Google+, including an asymmetrical Subscribe option, video chat, enhanced friend lists, and near-infinite post length. Facebook’s goal is the best user experience, and Google got a lot of that right. Google+ certainly wasn’t shy about using Facebook’s design as a starting point. Facebook employees have repeatedly assured me that product teams aren’t thinking about ad revenue when they design products. Still, convenient repercussion of the tested photo viewer design may be an increase in ad clicks. Rather than displaying ads beneath photos, the tested design shows them more prominently in the comments sidebar. Finding these types of synergies between business and user experience will be key to Facebook honoring the interests of its future investors. So why does this small change matter? First, encouraging conversation aligns with Facebook’s goal of driving connections between people, such as friends of a photo’s owner who might interact in its comment reel for the first time. Second, these comments drive notifications for all other commenters, which inspire more return visits and time on site. I bet the test will show increased engagement, and Facebook will implement some version of side-mounted comments. [Thanks to our anonymous tipster for the screenshots]
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| The Revolution May Or May Not Be Branded Posted: 02 Feb 2012 06:39 PM PST  The Occupy movement, or rallying cry, or whatever you want to call it, is by its nature decentralized. By refusing to come together under one banner other than the word “Occupy,” they’ve both diluted their message and allowed it to spread more quickly. You don’t need an Occupy license to occupy a bank’s lobby in Kansas City, but at the same time there’s a natural question of whether one occupation is related to another. Political considerations aside, the point is that Occupy might benefit from a recognizable face. On this front, some faction of the movement has decided to do a little branding, but in keeping with the democratic, bottom-up nature of the organization (or rather disorganization), they’ve opted to run a contest and let the “official” logo be selected by popular vote. It’s a great application of web technology to an interesting problem, and will probably prove to be a memorable case study in an increasingly common phenomenon: the necessity of branding an emergent movement or pattern on the internet. It’s something that has already been faced by, for example, Anonymous. Like Occupy, Anonymous is necessarily decentralized and in a way leaderless — but there are obviously leaders and centers, like @anonops and a few other “official” sources. But then there’s the Guy Fawkes mask and the empty suit, both certainly symbols of Anonymous by common consent, though whether they emerged naturally or were simply in the right place at the right time (and whether there’s any difference between those two) isn’t clear. Or think about the SOPA/PIPA protests. While everyone seemed to figure out a good way to express the concept of censorship on their site or avatar, the lack of a single unifying phrase, graphic, or general “brand” (loosely speaking) was conspicuous, considering the extraordinary cross-cultural and cross-community agreement on the issue. Which brings us to Occupy. The logos being submitted are the usual mix of free fonts, corporate-looking nonsense, and the occasional good idea. For the record, I like the one at top left, and these: But I’m suspicious of the whole concept. The problem to me is not Occupy-specific. It’s simply that emergent phenomena don’t respond well to efforts to define them. The reason no single visual metaphor appeared for SOPA was because there was no naturally propagating icon around which people could gather. There was no burning monk, no Kent State photograph, no graphic or sketch or person that naturally expressed and associated itself with the movement. The closest thing was the censor bar or redacted text, which was sort of good enough but didn’t adequately encompass the ideas behind the opposition. With Occupy as well, I think that efforts to create an identity for it will fail, because identity only emerges from collective action. It happens naturally or it doesn’t happen at all. I think this will be demonstrated more frequently over the next few years as activism, social change, and more everyday things as well become memetic and emergent. A logo will be picked for @occupy and for use on “official” communiques, whatever that might mean to them. But what Occupy and Anonymous and STOP SOPA and all the rest need isn’t a logo, it’s a symbol. Those aren’t quite as easy to come by. [hat tip to GigaOm for setting me thinking]
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| Yammer Time: In 2011 “Pretty Much Everything Tripled” Posted: 02 Feb 2012 05:57 PM PST  Yammer grew like crazy last year. How crazy? Product VP Jim Patterson just tweeted out the Yammer 2011 Year in Review infographic below with the comment: “Pretty much everything tripled.” Paid seats went from 300,000 to 800,000, total users went from 1.6 million to 4 million (2.5X growth), and employees went from 80 to 250. Also, all told, 200,000 companies are using Yammer, including 85 percent of the Fortune 500 (and TechCrunch). We just can’t quit you (although we’ve tried). Some of these stats CEO David Sacks already shared with us earlier, and he also told us that sales tripled. But the 800,000 paid seats number is new.Yammer is in the process of raising a large $40 million round.
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| AT&T Galaxy Nexus Gets Semi-Official Google Wallet Support Posted: 02 Feb 2012 05:44 PM PST  The tale of Google Wallet’s life thus far is a bit of a weird one, but here’s the gist: Google launched it back in September, initially as an exclusive feature on Sprint’s Nexus S. We reviewed it here. Then came Google/Samsung’s new flagship Android phone, the Galaxy Nexus — and, for one reason or another, none of the Galaxy Nexuses on any of the US carriers supported Wallet. Android fans roared, and everyone involved pointed fingers everywhere else until everyone just kind of forgot about it. Flash forward to day: without much fanfare, AT&T Galaxy Nexus owners are reporting that Google Wallet now appears to support their devices. Word of the newfound support came from Droid-Life, who noticed that it could be downloaded to their device following a rather ambiguous “Small changes for device compatibility” update. Meanwhile, they’ve also figured out a somewhat hit-or-miss trick for getting the same package installed onto the Verizon Galaxy Nexus right through the market (as opposed to manually hacking the APK onto the device), though it’s still pretty unclear as to what’s enabling it for some and not for others. Anyway: if you’ve got a Galaxy Nexus on AT&T, go hop into the Android Market and see if you can nab Google Wallet. What do you have to lose? At worst, you’ll be back where you were before. At best, you’ll be paying for your Jack In The Box like a time traveler by the end of the evening.
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| Hitwise: Facebook.com Now Accounts For 1 In Every 5 Pageviews On The Web (In The U.S.) Posted: 02 Feb 2012 05:32 PM PST  In case you happened to be the victim of a day-long coma yesterday, it was a very exciting day for Mark Zuckerberg, Silicon Valley, and that quaint little social network we’ve all come to know, love, and be terrified of. Facebook filed its S-1 on Thursday with the crystal clear intent to go public on a market near you very soon, and will be raising $5 billion ahead of its IPO at an expected valuation of between $75 and $100 billion. The company’s filing revealed some significant (or perhaps mind-melting) stats, including the fact that Facebook is seeing 845 million users every month, half of whom are daily users, and half of whom are mobile users. Zuck still owns 28 percent of the company, among other things; really that was just the beginning. In fact, there was so much excitement and noise around Facebook’s IPO yesterday that the volume of visitors looking to check out Facebook’s filing for themselves succeeded in crashing the SEC’s website. Hitwise tells us that SEC.gov apparently saw a 15 percent increase in total visits, compared to the day before and a 42 percent compared to previous Thursday. And guess who was the number two source of traffic for the site? That’s right, TechCrunch.com — coming in less than 3 percent behind the top source, Google.com. Thanks to you, readers, we gave the SEC all the traffic they could handle. And apparently more. Today, Heather Dougherty, Director of Research at Hitwise shared some further stats, which provide a great follow-up to yesterday’s IPO madness. Yes, a $75 to $100 billion valuation is enough to marinate on, but just how much traffic — and what kind is — Facebook.com generating? While this data is from January, many readers may already be familiar with a lot of this, but it’s just further evidence of how colossal Facebook’s share of the market has become — both at home and abroad. For starters, Hitwise found that Facebook.com is now seeing one out of every eleven visits in the U.S., and one out of five pageviews online in the U.S. takes place on Facebook.com. Yep, 20 percent of pageviews in the U.S. happen on the Facebooks. [Insert Myspace dig here.] Furthermore, in terms of engagement, the average visit time on Facebook.com is 20 minutes, and breakdown of male to female in Facebook’s visitors, shows that the social network is more popular among women, as 57 percent of its traffic for the last 3 months, ending January 28th, came from the ladies. Meanwhile, the ages of Facebook.com visitors shows that the breakdown of its its visit share by age compares favorably to the online population, as you can see in the graph to the right. As Erick said yesterday, Facebook managed to report $1 billion in profits for 2011, which is a fairly exact number, considering all of the variables at play. It could be that Zuckerberg managed accounting to come out at this round, even number, a sign to investors that the company has everything completely under control. Investors love predictability. And on that note, beyond the average of 20 minutes users are spending on the site, 96 percent of of visitors to Facebook.com were returning visitors in January 2012. Hitwise’s numbers also show that, in terms of reaching affluent users, Facebook's size allowed the site to win 499,949,430 visits from the most affluent income group, ahead of YouTube at 223,732,591 visits and Twitter at 15,166,795 visits. Facebook makes billionaires and caters to them. Further adding to its accolades, when it comes to search, "Facebook" happens be the most searched term in the U.S., with Facebook-related terms accounting for 14 percent of the top search clicks. is the most searched term in the US and Facebook-related terms account for 14% of the top search clicks. Internationally, Facebook.com remains in the top market in every country aside from China, due to the influence of China’s Facebook and Twitter competitors, Sina Weibo, Baidu, and Renren, which are the largest generators of traffic. The social network’s largest web footprint is in Canada, where it captures 12 percent of all visits in the market. With all the excitement around Facebook yesterday, it really comes as no surprise that Facebook.com is, according to Hitwise, “the largest website in the U.S. and a top performer in numerous international markets.” The loyalty, engagement, and sheer number of monthly users proves that this company is, simply put, a freak of Internet nature. The social network has spread across the Web with its sharing functionalities, Facebook Connect, and is bringing social to just about every industry imaginable. Zuck’s proposed goal of making its social graph portable and fundamental to the fabric of the Web has certainly been realized, as it played an integral role in the rise of Zynga, social gaming, is making eCommerce social, music, and on and on. For more on the Hitwise data, check out the post here. And here’s more of TechCrunch’s coverage of Facebook IPO Day:
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| The Alan Lomax Folk Collection Will Be Available For Streaming In February Posted: 02 Feb 2012 04:47 PM PST  Alan Lomax single-handedly (and some would say, heavy-handedly) saved the folk music from oblivion. Son of John Lomax, Alan travelled across the US and around the world recording folk musicians in their natural habitat. Some of his most notable songs – work songs, cowboy songs, and ballads – formed the bedrock of the folk movement and the succeeding rise of the singer-songwriter in the 1960s and 70s. Everyone from Bob Dylan to Nickelback owe him a debt of gratitude. Now his extensive recordings – part of what he wanted to call a “global jukebox” – will be available for streaming at Cultural Equality this month. You’ll be able to scroll through most of his collection including songs from Haiti, Spain, and the Soviet Union – 17,000 tracks in all. These songs are our heritage, poems written and passed down through time from ancestors over the sea to the dusty cotton fields of the deep south. As Lomax once said, “The dimension of cultural equity needs to be added to the humane continuum of liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and social justice.” We can always use a little more cultural equity, not to mention a wee bit more liberty.
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| Want To Buy Last-Minute Tickets To Local Events (At A Discount)? WillCall Is For You. Posted: 02 Feb 2012 03:02 PM PST  If you’re anything like me (and hopefully for your sake, you’re not), then you tend to do things –scheduling, booking, and so on — at the last minute. For we Last Minute Scramblers, some highly usable services have popped up that not only allow us to book at the last minute, but receive deals while doing so. Here’s to rewarding bad behavior. You may be familiar with HotelTonight, for example, an app for Android and iOS that takes last-minute deals (discounts up to 70 percent) offered by hotels on their unsold rooms — and serves them to you via your smartphone. Well, another San Francisco-based startup thinks that there’s more to this whole last minute booking thing. Yes, from 500 Startups’ summer batch comes a new app, called WillCall, which wants to be the HotelTonight for … live events. (WillCall was one of Alexia’s seven favorite startups at 500 Startups Demo Day, which you can check out here.) Debuting today on the App Store and on the Web for Android and Windows Phone 7 users, WillCall’s free apps offer users a short list of high quality shows each and every night of the week. The startup partners with promoters and venues to curate this list, enabling its users to purchase tickets directly from its app. A la Uber, WillCall is starting with San Francisco before it rolls out it service in other cities, but roll out its service domestically it will, as the team plans to be in Los Angeles and New York City shortly after SXSW (in March). So, to begin with, it really is a short list of events in San Francisco for which WillCall will be offering last-minute tickets, mostly for smaller venues and independent artists. But WillCall doesn’t just want to be for concerts, says founder Donnie Dinch, as the team plans to offer last-minute deals on musicals, symphonies, standup comedy, ballet, theater and art events, and more. There is a bar, a standard to be set, though, so you won’t find discounts on my clarinet recitals. However, at the start, events will mostly be theater and concert-focused. As to the discounts, Dinch says that WillCall wants to be as transparent as possible with users, and sell tickets for what they’re worth. When tickets are $20 a show, the barrier to sales isn’t so much price as it is being able to find tickets at the last minute. However, for symphonies, and plays, for example, where the price of admission is much higher, discounts come in handy, and that’s where WillCall will be focusing the majority of its discounts. The average discount will be 30 to 50 percent off, the founder told us, which is great not only for last-minute concert-goers looking for a deal, but for the venues as well. Inventory surplus can be a big problem for hotels as well as ticketed events; in terms of the latter, the merchandise is perishable, as tickets that go unsold for a concert equals can’t be offloaded a week later. For venues that still have a lump of tickets left for an upcoming event, handing them out via WillCall just makes sense. As a free app, WillCall plans to monetize by entering into a rev share with venues on the tickets sold, taking what basically amounts to a 50/50 cut of proceeds. WillCall also wants to capitalize on the social nature of event-going, offering its users the opportunity to receive push notifications when a friend buys a ticket to an event. So, essentially, the app informs you when a friend in the same metro area purchases a ticket to an upcoming event, and offers you the chance to get in on the fun. As WillCall rolls out across the country, it’s going to be a great last minute option for busy, workin-type folks, procrastinators, and more to snatch up those day-of tickets and get out on the town. For more, check out WillCall at home here, or watch the video below:
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| HuffPo Unique Visitors Up 47%, Plans Streaming Network To Kill Cable News Posted: 02 Feb 2012 02:04 PM PST  Say what you will about The Huffington Post and AOL, their merger has given HuffPo the resources to conquer the online news aggregation business. Today HuffPo dropped some big stats about the year since its acquisition, most importantly a 47% growth of monthly unique visitors to 36.2 million. Next it’s aiming to take down CNN and the cable news industry with The Huffington Post Streaming Network, which will stream content live on the web for 12 hours a day. HuffPo proudly announced that it added 170 editors and reporters, as well as 9,884 bloggers. Omitted was the fact that it laid off 120 editorial staff members earlier this year, and that swaths of Huffington Post freelance bloggers got the axe in favor of full-time journalists. On a brighter note, the site launched 44 new verticals, including HuffPost Green, and HuffPost Gay Voices, which are topping the comScore unique visitor charts for their categories. The Huffington Post Streaming Network, or HPSN its abbreviated, will be “a never-ending talk show” to “mirror the Internet experience” says HuffPo founding editor Roy Sekoff. 100 employees in HuffPo’s NYC and LA office will work on the project which launches next quarter, and it will bump up to 16 hours of streaming a day next year. Hollywood Reporter says there will also be on-demand clips, that the live stream will include a news ticker at the bottom, and that viewers will be encouraged to video call in and participate. Regarding the potential to become a full blown cable tv network, Sekoff said “We are happy to have it happen as long as we stay true to our format. We do not want to become like everyone else.” YouTube recently announced partnerships with 100 content providers including Reuters, Slate, and SB Nation to create original web tv series. Unfortunately, you still have to make an active choice of what to watch next when you finish a video, as shown above. HPSN is another example of the tech industry disrupting the inefficiency of old world media. Right now, news junkies have to pay enormous monthly cable bills to get a constant supply of video content. Sure they could go online and bounce from news clip to news clip, but that experience is exhausting. HPSN’s relaxing, laid back experience will work on the web, but it could be a big winner on internet-capable televisions. Disclosure: The Huffington Post is owned by AOL, TechCrunch’s parent company. Image Credit: Shutterstock – Arcady
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