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- Things You Never Thought Would Happen: Wu-Tang’s Raekwon Makes “Google That” Rap Video
- What Gaming Can Teach Us About Social Apps
- With $3M In Hand, Gopogo Launches To Let You Create, Share & Discover Location-Based Stories
- Last-Minute Booking App HotelTonight Goes International With Toronto And Vancouver
- Mon.ki Is Building A Rapportive For The Web
- Apple ≠ Sony: Why Apple Can Succeed Post-Jobs
- Ditto Picks Up $3 Million From August Capital, Others For Its Virtual, 3D Eyeglasses Sales Site
- Walmart Adds “Pay With Cash” For Online Shoppers At Walmart.com
- D’oh! Homer Simpson, And His Donut, May Show Up In Angry Birds Space
- Fashion Retail And Styling Platform JustFab Seeing Over $100M In Revenue, Expanding Internationally
- AHAlife Raises $10.1M To Curate And Sell Hard-To-Find, Luxury Products From Around The World
- Another Crowdfunding Player Enters The Fray: Apps Genius Launches GetFunded.com
- Ikea Reveals A Cute Cardboard Digital Rangefinder Camera
- Shape Security: Kleiner Perkins & Eric Schmidt Lead $6M Round In Stealth Security Startup
- Yandex Q1 Earnings: Revenues Up 51% To $200.3M, Net Income Up 53% To $43M
- ZestCash Debuts New Big Data Underwriting Models To Determine Consumer Credit Risk
- Comparing Pre-IPO Facebook To Pre-IPO Google: Fair, Or A Case Of Apples And Oranges?
- Opera 12 Beta Launches, Loses Voice, Unite and Widgets
- Confirmed: Galaxy S III To Pack Samsung’s New 1.4GHz Exynos 4 Quad Processor
- Finally, Professional Social Network LinkedIn Gives Users An iPad App
| Things You Never Thought Would Happen: Wu-Tang’s Raekwon Makes “Google That” Rap Video Posted: 26 Apr 2012 09:20 AM PDT “She told me that she Googled my name up / Shootings, robberies and big coke came up”. These are lyrics from “Google That”, a vulgar, violent new rap song from NORE Styles P, and Wu-Tang Clan member Raekwon immortalizing the search engine. In it, the rappers brag about how their crimes and jail time are so famous you can find them on the Internet. Most tech companies probably wouldn’t mind being mentioned in pop culture, but probably not like this. Rap enthusiast Ben Horowitz might love it, though. Here’s the video and full lyrics. Full Lyrics (warning, graphic):
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| What Gaming Can Teach Us About Social Apps Posted: 26 Apr 2012 08:47 AM PDT  Every time I see a photo sharing app come across the transom, the same question crosses my mind: what about trolls and porn. A game we saw yesterday, Pictorious, asks you to take pictures of items in order to get likes from friends and strangers. Additionally, sites like Pinterest have to act like Soviet censors in order to prevent dirty hot porn from taking over. The threat of someone ruining a good thing is everywhere, and in a world of socially connected apps, trolling is the norm. If you’ve played online video games recently, you’ll notice that trolling is arguably more virulent and nasty than even a Goatse pic popping up on Instagram. The folks at Penny Arcade along with some major players in the gaming industry have released a video detailing various ways to stop trolling and if you’re a community manager or programmer, it deserves a look. In short, nastiness in games happens because there are no consequences. The folks at PA say “we’ve given the school bully access to the intercom system” and the bully gets to say whatever he wants. Although many apps are barely popular enough to warrant an audience let alone trolls, this concept is still important to keep in mind. The solution is fairly simple: persistent muting and earned rights within the game. If a player is consistently mean, the other players can shut him during the entire game and, more important, the troll needs to know he’s being muted. Second, voice chat or commenting should be a privilege earned through play, not a default option. Freedom of speech be damned: this is a game, not parliament. The same can be said for trolls in social networks. Pinterest, for example, did the right thing by offering accounts only through invitation. It increases the value of the account, for one, and it ensures only friends of friends end up in the mix. Arguably, I’m kind of a jerk on Pinterest but I’ve never pinned anything nasty. I’m more likely to respect a community when I see others respecting it. Earning the right to “play” is also important. Whether you’re using Facebook or Draw Something, there should be some way to earn real control over the environment through dedication. This doesn’t mean you gamify your SoLoMo application using best-of-breed badging and Tweetstream techniques. That’s bullshit. Give people something valuable for being nice, like the ability to take part in a world-wide conversation. Our own comments, if you’ve noticed, went from massive lists of invective and slurs against mothers all over the world to a quiet conversation. Why? Because Facebook comments ensured that people had to earn the right to talk and they also were held accountable for their words. You’re less likely to say “YOU SUCK DIE IN HELL APPLEDICK” when your picture and name are above the post. Anonymous commenting has its place but not in a place that is trying to curate a positive experience. Give the video a look and take some of its advice to heart. It’s not just applicable to gaming. It’s applicable anywhere two or more people congregate and don’t want to be bothered by nihilists.
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| With $3M In Hand, Gopogo Launches To Let You Create, Share & Discover Location-Based Stories Posted: 26 Apr 2012 08:15 AM PDT  With the rise of social networks, people are now sharing more information about themselves online than ever before. Sharing is happening at an unprecedented volume, with some calling it … “The Sharepocalypse”. Social feeds now disseminate content in realtime, but the problem of course is that a lot of this sharing gets lost in the noise — and with content piling up so quickly, stuff quickly gets lost. Want to find a tweet you wrote a year ago? Good luck. A New York-based startup called Gopogo is launching in beta today to address this problem, with a geo-location platform for recording, sharing and discovering connected experiences. The startup launches with $3 million in seed funding from an undisclosed private equity group and has been testing its model with more than 10K people in both NYC and Los Angeles. Gopogo users create “Strings,” what the team describes as sharable social objects that consist of any group of places that have relevance and context for the user. The startup is today launching its online platform, with an iOS app in the approval process, that lets users capture and record the activities and experiences of their day, linking them together in “Strings” to tell the story of their day, for example. Users might start off a weekend in New York City with a walk on the High Line, followed by some coffee at a cafe, before heading to art gallery. Strings unite those activities in a geo-tagged chronology, with photos, videos, and commentary included, and can then archive them and share on social networks as well as with the GoPoGo community. At the end of the day, users can then browse the site’s library of user-generated Strings, and discover the experiences of others, by location, theme, or areas of interest. It’s a bit like a more dimensional Facebook Timeline, and reminiscent of what HipGeo is doing with social travel, or a location-based Piictu. While there are plenty of apps that let users check in, write reviews, upload photos, and write realtime anecdotes, says Gopogo Founder and CTO Jason Snyder, they remain fragmented collections and communities of information, so the team wants Gopogo to be the platform that unites social media platforms, allowing users to record and save their experiences, and then share them across channels, as Strings publish as URLs. Eventually, Gopogo wants users to be able to make their way to its website or mobile app, and connect their relevant Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Instagram, and Foursquare accounts, so that they can upload content from their various streams and curate them into a String. Though, of course, the goal is to make this a two-way street, in which users can upload photos, write reviews, check-in all within Gopogo, and then push those updates into their various social streams. That will make Gopogo into a big time saver, and more of a social media command center that lets you turn your experiences into a complete story and context based on location. The first stop for Gopogo is Foursquare integration, using their API to allow users to check-in to Foursquare from Gopogo. Bit.ly integration is also slated to be available soon, and Twitter, Yelp, and the rest will follow thereafter. Gopogo is in beta right now, and the UX on the homepage is a little buggy, so keep that in mind as you test it out. The homepage definitely needs to do a better job showcasing noteworthy strings right off the bat, so new users have an opportunity to familiarize themselves with how they work, and what they look like. That being said, Gopogo’s Strings are a great concept. As the general web user gains more facility with social networks, and smart mobile applications produce more and more data, the demand for an easier way to contextualize and archive these mobile experiences will continue to grow. In terms of how Gopogo plans to make money, the business model is still in flux, but the team sees the platform as a way for brands and content creators to better engage with their customers, build brand awareness, and drive traffic into their stores. The goal will be to let businesses create their own branded strings, so if you’re Frank’s Hot Sauce, you would create a String of restaurants, delis, etc that offer food that goes well with your hot sauce. Or users could gift strings to each other, and just show up at the locations, where the experience will already be pre-arranged for you. For businesses, Gopogo would offer the opportunity to see where they fit into people’s Strings, which are public data once they’re published, so they can dive into this info to see how users connect with other businesses in their neighborhood. The startup is also working with celebrities to publish their “perfect days,” so that, like Twitter, people of note can use the platform as a channel to leverage their influence and drive traffic to their brands or stores of choice. In turn, Gopogo is also hoping to offer a white-labeled version of its platform to allow ad agencies and the like to create fully-branded, custom versions of its service to create, promote, and manage special offers and events targeting their existing member base. It still has a ways to go, but there are plenty of opportunities to monetize if Gopogo can get to that critical mass of users. With 10K beta testers, it’s certainly on the way. For more, check out Gopogo at home here.
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| Last-Minute Booking App HotelTonight Goes International With Toronto And Vancouver Posted: 26 Apr 2012 08:10 AM PDT  HotelTonight, the smartphone app that lets you book same-day hotel rooms, is moving into international markets for the first time. It now supports bookings in Toronto and Vancouver, and it plans to add other Canadian and international cities this year. The app is built for those moments when you suddenly realize that it would be nice to have a hotel — say if you’re visiting San Francisco from somewhere else in the Bay Area, and you decide to stay in the city for the night rather than head home. Instead of popping into a random hotel and possibly getting ripped off or finding it full, you can open the HotelTonight app, which will offer three curated hotel deals in the area — one that’s “Hip”, one that’s “Luxe”, and one that’s “Solid”. (The deals first become available at noon local time, and can be purchased until 2am.) Co-founder and COO Jared Simon says the company has already started to build an audience of devoted fans, who are attracted not just by the deals (hotel rooms can be discounted by up to 70 percent), but the app’s high-quality experience and glossy look (the company hires a professional photographer to take pictures of every hotel in the system). “Our goal is that HotelTonight becomes a verb — wherever you are, if you want a room, you’re going to ‘HotelTonight it’,” Simon says. “In order to do that, we need to be ubiquitous.” HotelTonight already offers rooms in a number of major US cities, but obviously, international expansion is a big part of achieving that goal. For this expansion, the app also supports payment with Canadian dollars, Euros, and British pounds. However, this doesn’t mean that the company is opening offices internationally or hiring salespeople in Canada — Simon says that in order to build a unique company culture, everyone is still located in the San Francisco office, and all the hotel deals are negotiated from there. The company’s investors include Battery Ventures, Accel Partners, and First Round Capital.
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| Mon.ki Is Building A Rapportive For The Web Posted: 26 Apr 2012 08:01 AM PDT  Prepare for the concept of the address book to be flipped. Today, a startup called mon.ki is launching a new way for you to discover “who you know” by providing that information to you in the context of what you’re viewing. The product, which they’re calling a “social compass” of sorts, automatically extracts information from the web page you’re viewing, and then displays relevant information from Twitter about the people and tweets related to the page. To be clear, it’s not just about finding out who tweeted about that page, but about the people related to that page. For example, a TechCrunch article would point you to the author’s profile, as well as Twitter profiles related to that writer. And Twitter integration is just the beginning. The company is adding support for Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn, too. In addition to today’s launch, mon.ki has also closed a round of $400,000 in seed funding. The investors in the seed round come from five different countries and include Tom Chiu (Director Sandhill Angels), Daniel Zumino (Investor Vistaprint, France), DAD (Spain), Groupon Latin America co-founders Oskar Hjertonsson and Daniel Undurraga, and Saeed Amidi (Plug & Play). Mon.ki is also being advised by industry veterans Joseph Smarr (Google+, Plaxo), Jay Bhatti (Spock), Shane Mac (Gist, Zaarly) and David Weekly. The idea for the startup arose from co-founder Tim Delhaes’ challenges in dealing with an overwhelmingly large and distributed contact list. With thousands of contacts spread out through multiple Google Apps accounts plus social and business networking services, finding who he knew where took a lot of effort. It’s the whole, “I have his info somewhere…” problem that he wanted to solve. To address the problem, the team at mon.ki knew they had to keep it simple. “We didn’t want another application or tool that gives you more management tasks,” said Delhaes, “contact management must be as boring as expense reporting.” So they went after the space from a search angle, and began thinking how you could build a personal search engine – not one for webpages or documents, but for people. To develop the technology, mon.ki, whose other founder is Marcelo Iturbe, teamed up with a research team at a university that worked for Yahoo for five years. “It seemed like something you couldn’t just pull out of your pocket with a couple of hackers and 48 hours sitting naked in front a computer,” said Delhaes. (Umm…), “It looked like there’s a major problem to be solved and no one had really solved,” he explained. The resulting tech is deceptively simple, you install a browser extension (Chrome for now), and then, when you need information about the page you’re on, you click it to launch a pop-out sidebar detailing the Twitter profile info of the person or persons related to that page, as well as related tweets. In two to three weeks, mon.ki will add more social networking accounts, and in eight weeks, they’ll have integrated these better, so that each person’s profile is displayed as a single entry (as opposed to having their profile on Facebook separate from Twitter, separate from LinkedIn, etc.). While mon.ki is definitely attacking a challenging space, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. For example, testing the app on the TechCrunch homepage didn’t surface the profiles for the writers except for MG and Mike Butcher. But at the end of the day, the idea itself is promising – it’s like a Rapportive (the email plugin/lifesaver that shows profile info related to who you’re communicating with) for the web. For now, mon.ki is still in private beta, but the first 500 readers who sign up at mon.ki then email their Twitter ID to techcrunch@mon.ki will be added to the beta in the next few days.
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| Apple ≠ Sony: Why Apple Can Succeed Post-Jobs Posted: 26 Apr 2012 07:45 AM PDT  While I often prefer to watch analysts hoist themselves with their own petard, it’s not often that one dumps out a bit of drivel so short-sighted as George Colony at Forrester. In short, Colony believes that Apple is the next Sony – a desiccated organization that has nothing new to offer the world. While he’s right about Sony, he’s wrong about Apple. Analysts, to be fair, do know a thing or two about a thing or two. I’m sure he’s great at plumbing financial data and picking expensive steaks. But in this Forbes piece he cites Max Weber’s Theory of Social And Economic Organization, a book that I read in college but haven’t had the time to peruse of late. Weber, writing in 1947, breaks organizations down into legal/bureaucratic, traditional, and charismatic. Weber probably knew from charismatic, considering his demi monde, but I doubt his version of a charismatic leader – "he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities” – is applicable in any case in our modern business climate. Colony goes on to posit that without a Gandhi-like (or, if we’re being unkind, Jim Jones-like) übermensch at the helm, Apple will peter out just as Disney (still going after 20 years), Sony (not going as strong, but they rule a third of the gaming space) and Microsoft (what a dog that company is, amirite, guys?) did. Rather than seeing a number of vibrant companies duking it out for market share, Colony sees a darkling plain where ignorant armies clash by night. All is vanity, indeed. If anything, Apple can become the next Disney – but with a specific caveat. Walt Disney, like Jobs, was a micromanager until he wasn’t. If you follow his life (read Gabler’s Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination even if you don’t care about Disney – it’s a great management biography) you’ll see a period of intense work followed by what can be called a period of pouring new wine into old skins. What worked under Disney – an intensity of purpose, a focus on story and the physical, a perfectionist’s eye for production quality – are what were ingrained in the company throughout its long history. The cultural products that came from Disney studios are beloved by nearly everyone and, aside from an arguably rough patch in the 90s and the recent John Carter fiasco, they still own Pixar, they still made Tangled, and they still make a load of money at their amusement parks. What’s the caveat, then? Apple makes premium products for the world market. Disney’s product suffers from piracy, competition, and the fickleness of art. Apple’s (barely) suffers from copycats and the vagaries of manufacturing. You don’t need Walt Disney to greenlight every move Mickey’s ear makes in Fantasia. You need a company-wide understanding of timing, story, and grace. Nor do you need Steve Jobs to greenlight the rounded edge of an on-screen iPhone button. You need a company-wide understanding of timing, story, and grace. The Apple org chart was once a star with Jobs at the center. Now that center may be diffuse, but I doubt sincerely that Cook and Ive can’t keep the center held given the focus and clarity that Apple has exhibited to date. Given a proper culture and identity, Apple can remain Apple and, considering the state of the company thanks to years of missteps and hubris, it will never become Sony.
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| Ditto Picks Up $3 Million From August Capital, Others For Its Virtual, 3D Eyeglasses Sales Site Posted: 26 Apr 2012 07:28 AM PDT  The next big thing in fashion e-commerce is a moving target — literally. Ditto, a site that lets users upload videos of themselves to use in trying on eyeglasses, has today announced that it has picked up a $3 million in funding from a group of investors led by August Capital. Ditto’s co-founder and CEO Kate Endress says the funding will be used to further enhance the technology behind the service, and to grow the company’s own eye wear business, which resells frames from Persol, Chloe, Ray-Ban, Tag Heuer, Vera Wang and others. Endress, who is fresh out of Stanford Business School after a career in retail and finance, has joined up with two others, Sergey Surkov and Dmitry Kornilov, engineers respectively from Google and Nokia, to start the company. And that ratio says a lot about what direction the company might go in future: She says that as Ditto has staffed up, it’s kept the 2 engineers to 1 product person mix, and already has some patents pending on the tech behind the product. Why eyeglasses? “The reason we were so interested in eye wear was because we think it's so hard to do that online,” she said. “We feel like this is the next revolution in virtual fitting.” Indeed, although it is focused now on using the product only on its own retail site, Endress says that Ditto has already been approached by other e-commerce outfits to use it elsewhere. “Certainly I believe the problem with fitting online extends beyond eye wear but we feel it is a great place to start,” she said. Ditto (sorry) the geographic focus: initially it will stay limited just to the U.S. but Endress says she thinks it’s a “global problem, and we can make buying eyeglasses fun all over the world.” In addition to being able to take 180-degree views of yourself in your new specs, Ditto has added some social elements into the mix: it allows users to post side-by-side snapshots in different glasses, and then post those pictures to Facebook for feedback from friends. For those of you visually-challenged out there, you know that glasses do not come cheap — Ditto’s range is from $110 to $1,800 — and so like others in the space Ditto is throwing in a few extras to sweeten the deal: free anti-reflective lenses and free shipping on the glasses. As part of the funding round, Howard Hartenbaum, general partner at August Capital and one of the founding investors behind Skype, is also joining the board of Ditto.
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| Walmart Adds “Pay With Cash” For Online Shoppers At Walmart.com Posted: 26 Apr 2012 06:47 AM PDT  Walmart.com is launching a new way to checkout, targeting customers who don’t have credit or debit cards…or money in the bank for that matter. The company is now allowing customers to buy online and pay with cash. The change reflects the current economic conditions in the U.S., as Walmart states (citing FDIC figures) that one in four U.S. households is “unbanked” or “underbanked” – meaning they rely on cash for their purchases. In addition, Walmart says the majority of its own in-store transactions are cash or debit, and only 15% are paid for using credit cards. In a survey, the retailer said that over two-thirds would opt for using cash as an online payment mechanism, if available. The way Walmart’s new system works is like this: shoppers can browse for items as usual on the website, and then add them to their cart and process to checkout. But during the checkout process, the option to “pay with cash” will be provided as an alternative to credit or debit cards now. After selecting that option, the customer then receives the order number on a confirmation page and an email receipt, which they then take to any local Walmart store or Neighborhood Market where they pay for the item. Of course, this seems to necessitate printing out the order form, which makes us wonder: hasn’t Walmart heard about the exorbitant cost of printer ink? I mean really, how about an SMS text message instead? Now that would be innovative. Are these shoppers supposed to go to a FedEx/Kinko’s or something? The reserved item has to be picked up in 48 hours, or it’s returned to stock. Products can also be shipped to a shopper’s home, if they choose, following payment. An introduction of a system like this at the world’s biggest retailer points to hole in the market that could have been, or could still be, filled by a technology startup. For example, Dwolla’s cash-based payment network works with both online and brick-and-mortar merchants, but has the limitation of needing to have a bank account if you want to add or remove funds from your Dwolla account. Another startup, PayNearMe (formerly Kwedit), more closely resembles Walmart’s system by allowing shoppers to buy online, then pay offline with cash. Of course, in many developing markets, paying with cash is nothing new – that’s how most bills are paid. But in the U.S., the option to “pay with cash” at checkout is something of a novelty, and in Walmart’s case, it’s a hopeful push to improve the bottom line in its online biz, something which pales in comparison with Amazon’s massive success in this area.
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| D’oh! Homer Simpson, And His Donut, May Show Up In Angry Birds Space Posted: 26 Apr 2012 06:39 AM PDT  We heard from Peter Vesterbacka himself that Angry Birds Space would be Rovio’s biggest launch yet. It’s had crazy success since its launch in March, and in proper Rovio fashion, the company has just released an update to the next level: “Fry Me To The Moon.” But with access to the next level, we also get a glimpse of what the level past that might look like, and guess what! It looks a helluva lot like Homer Simpson’s favorite donut. So what are the chances that you’ll be hanging with The Simpsons during future sessions of Angry Bird-flinging? Well, nothing’s set in stone yet — Rovio has responded by saying that the company “doesn’t comment on rumors or speculation — but this isn’t far-fetched by any means.” The Simpsons have featured Angry Birds on the show more than once, and Rovio already has a relationship with Fox. If you didn’t know, Fox is the producer behind The Simpsons, as well as the movie Rio, which is of course part of the Angry Birds Rio franchise. This opportunity, should the partnership in fact be the real deal, is a big one. I’d guess that a Simpsons-flavored Angry Birds Space level is only the beginning. We could eventually see cross-platform promotion in the form of The Simpsons show and perhaps a movie, and we shouldn’t discount the possibility that Rovio would make an Angry Birds Simpsons game to stand on its own. Remember, Vesterbacka has promised four new games over the course of 2012, and that doesn’t include AB Space.
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| Fashion Retail And Styling Platform JustFab Seeing Over $100M In Revenue, Expanding Internationally Posted: 26 Apr 2012 06:30 AM PDT  JustFab, a fashion retail and styling platform, is announcing a number of new metrics today, including over $100 million in 2012 revenue as well as international expansion. JustFab was incubated by Intelligent Beauty in March 2010 and has since grown to over 2.5 million members. Similar to sites like ShoeDazzle and BeachMint, JustFab operates a monthly distribution model. Users sign up for JustFab.com, input their style preferences and each month, will receive a personalized boutique of shoes and handbags that have been chosen to fit their individual style. With each offering, members receive styling advice and outfit recommendations to complete their look from head to toe. Each item is $39.95, new styles are added monthly, and all items are actually created and branded by JustFab. Co-founder Adam Goldenberg explains that while the quality of the handbags and shoes are high, the site is able to keep the costs down because it works directly with manufacturers. He compared the quality of JustFab’s products to those from Steve Madden or Nine West, where prices can range from $60 to upwards of $100. As we wrote last Fall, JustFab raised $33 million in Series A funding led by Matrix Partners with co-investment from Technology Crossover Ventures and fashion mogul and TV star, Kimora Lee Simmons. Simmons also became President and Creative Director of the company. JustFab now counts six million members and has increased revenue by 50 percent in Q1 over Q4, selling more than 200,000 pairs of shoes and bags in just one month. And the company is setting its sights on international expansion, launching JustFab Germany and JustFab Canada. But Goldenberg has his sights set on creating more than just a retail platform. The site is launching an online fashion community that allows users to upload photos and get style advice from other members as well as from JustFab style panel experts. Additionally, JustFab is extending its support services so that all members have access to a fashion consultants 24/7. JustFab has also added pay-as-you-go pricing to give consumers the option to try the service before they commit to the subscription model. We sat down with Goldenberg to chat about JustFab and its expansion below:
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| AHAlife Raises $10.1M To Curate And Sell Hard-To-Find, Luxury Products From Around The World Posted: 26 Apr 2012 06:10 AM PDT  AHAlife, an e-commerce site for hard-to-find and exclusive luxury lifestyle products, has raised $10.1 million in Series B funding, led by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, with DCM and FirstMark Capital also participating in the round. This brings the company's total funding to $19.1 million. As we wrote in our review of the site, AHAlife introduces one new product a day in editorial format through its email list, tells the story about how the product was made, who made it, and where it came from while allowing you to also purchase the product. Products span fashion, food, beauty, travel, accessories, home décor, tech, and travel experiences. What makes the site compelling is the blend of content, commerce, and curation in AHAlife’s platform. Celebrity curators on the site include Tim Gunn, Wendi Murdoch, Donna Karan Daniel Boulud, Cynthia Rowley, and Tina Brown. As founder and CEO, Shauna Mei tells us AHAlife’s focus is on helping luxury brands who have never gone online sell via e-commerce. In term of products sold on the site, she says the company is “Focuses on quality not quantity of items sold on the site and aims to help customers cut through the noise,” The new funding will be used for global expansion, especially to Japan and other Asian markets, as well as building out the merchandising and technology teams.
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| Another Crowdfunding Player Enters The Fray: Apps Genius Launches GetFunded.com Posted: 26 Apr 2012 05:59 AM PDT  This may not have been the U.S. government’s exact intention when when it passed the crowdfunding-friendly JOBS Act, but you have to wonder if it has also jumpstarted the number of crowdfunding sites out there competing for entrepreneurs’ and consumers’ attention. The latest comes from the social and mobile games developer Apps Genius — (in)famous for its scatological riff on Angry Birds, “Angry Turds” — which today announced that it is launching a new crowd-sourced funding site, GetFunded. Like Kickstarter and many others, GetFunded will be a “crowdfunding platform for entrepreneurs who are seeking new investments in their businesses and ideas,” according to a statement from App Genius. Adam Kotkin, the CEO of Apps Genius, clarifies that just because his company is focused on games, this doesn’t mean that GetFunded will be, too: it’s aiming for everyone and everything. He tells me the site will be launched in the coming weeks. This will be something of a change of course for Apps Genius. The company has been around for about two years, focusing on social and mobile games for Facebook as well as iOS and Android platforms. In addition to Angry Turds, it’s also developed a series of celebrity games — it signs exclusive deals with people like Snooki to develop these. Kotkin says another three games are coming out in the “near future.” So why the side-step to crowdfunding? “I thought this was timely given the JOBS act,” says Kotkin. He also points out that the company’s experience in social gaming and helping them to “spread pretty quickly” will aid it in its crowdfunding effort — which is “also a social process.” The e-commerce platform for GetFunded is being built specifically for the site and hadn’t been used for App Genius’ games before — which are distributed both as paid apps as well as free games that use ads and in-app purchases to drive revenue. Kickstarter, probably the most popular crowdfunding site at the moment, is going from strength to strength. The company is estimated to have raised $119 million in funding and made commissions of $6 million on that. It is being used to fund everything from the development of watches to film projects.
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| Ikea Reveals A Cute Cardboard Digital Rangefinder Camera Posted: 26 Apr 2012 05:35 AM PDT  Ikea is seemingly getting serious about consumer electronics. First there was the new home theater line and now a digital camera. But the two are slightly different. The disruptive HDTV system, UPPLEVA, is a serious entry into a stale market. The digital camera is, well, cardboard. And cheap. But still awesome. Ikea included it the cardboard camera in a Milan design show press kit according to IT Gizmodo. The little camera is made of cardboard and runs off of two AA batteries. The internal memory can hold 40 pics and syncs with a computer via a swing-out USB connector. The shutter button is little flap on the front side. They say it will eventually be sold in Ikea stores but the price isn’t announced just yet. How fun. Just don’t take it the beach.
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| Shape Security: Kleiner Perkins & Eric Schmidt Lead $6M Round In Stealth Security Startup Posted: 26 Apr 2012 04:29 AM PDT  Big corporations have been riddled by security attacks over the past year, and hackers seem to be growing even bolder and more resolute. As a result, market research firm The Radicati Group said that it expects the corporate web security market to grow to $2.5 billion over the next four years. It’s in this climate that a young, stealth startup is trying to put companies back on the offensive, and some notable Silicon Valley investors are buying in. Mountain View-based Shape Security is announcing this morning that it has raised $6 million in Series A financing, led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt’s TomorrowVentures. Accel Partner Peter Wagner, Sequoia Limited Partner Guarav Garg, Vodafone CTO Chris Burke, Baseline Ventures, and unnamed executives at LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook also participated in the round. As a result of the new financing, Kleiner Perkins Managing Partner Ted Schlein and Sequoia’s Guarav Garg will be joining the startup’s board of directors. Shape Security is still operating in stealth mode, so it’s keeping its cards close to its chest and not sharing many details, but this much is clear: Its goals are ambitious. Shape CEO Derek Smith said that his startup is looking to change the web security paradigm by shifting costs from defenders to hackers. Generally speaking, companies are forced to rely on identifying and classifying malware and botnets attack signatures that have occurred in the past, with the hopes of easily finding and shutting them down in the future. But sustaining this kind of security requires a lot of human and financial capital, so Shape has developed military-grade technology that doesn’t rely on past attack signatures, and instead forces hackers to “spend more and more to achieve less and less.” There’s no doubt that businesses and consumers are fairly consistently under attack from increasingly intelligent botnets, malware, and trojans, and traditional security architectures just aren’t cutting it anymore. And it’s not getting any easier any time soon. There’s been a lot of swooning over Apple’s outsized success of late, but information security veteran Eugene Kapersky said today that Apple is ten years behind Microsoft in security. Because Apple’s share of the desktop market has remained minimal relative to that of Microsoft, hackers have focused their efforts where they can find more bang for their buck. But Apple’s growth has begun to change that, as demonstrated by a number of recent malware attacks. Kapersky told CBR that his company has begun to see an increasing number of malware attacks aimed at Macs, saying “it’s always been possible to develop Mac malware, but [the recent Flashback/Flashfake malware outbreak] was a bit different. For example it was asking questions about being installed on the system and, using vulnerabilities, it was able to get to the user mode without any alarms.” The point is that, for consumers or businesses, the landscape is beginning to change, and if Apple continues growing at its current rate, soon it’s not going to matter whether your company uses Macs or PCs, they will both be appealing to hackers. Especially when it comes to malware. Thus, Shape is developing a technology that aims to change how businesses from eCommerce to social networking protect their customers (and themselves), regardless of browser, software, or hardware. Kleiner Perkins Managing Partner and Shape Security board member Ted Schlein says that he thinks the startup has the promise to be one of the more disruptive forces in the security industry “since the early days of anti-virus technology.” Of course, investors would say that, and it’s really not clear as of yet how much value Shape is really bringing to the table. But part of the reason that this string of notable investors is so jazzed about its potential is due to the experience (and past success) of its leadership. Shape’s co-founders include CEO Derek W. Smith, CTO Justin Call, and VP Product Management, Sumit Agarwal. Agarwal is the former Senior Advisor For Cyber Innovation at the U.S. Department of Defense, as well as former Deputy Assistant Secretary for the department, and was the head of mobile product at Google. We’ve also learned from the startup’s SEC filing that Troy Tribe is on board, who is a co-founder and former VP of Business Development at Solera Networks, the makers of network forensics solutions. As Shape's founders hail from Google, the Department of Defense and major defense contractors, it will certainly be interesting to see what the potential is for Shape’s patent-pending technology. Judging by the fact that Smith said the team is working toward an invite-only beta launch this summer, it shouldn’t be too long before we learn more. They’re also targeting first product launch for later this year, likely by the fall. Stay tuned for more. Find Shape Security at home here.
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| Yandex Q1 Earnings: Revenues Up 51% To $200.3M, Net Income Up 53% To $43M Posted: 26 Apr 2012 04:10 AM PDT  Yandex, Russia’s biggest search company, has posted Q1 earnings, with revenues up 51% to $200.3 million, and net income up 53% to $43 million. The results beat analyst expectations: on average analysts expected revenues of $194.64 million, with earnings per share of $0.15 (low $0.13; high $0.16), but other numbers may still give investors pause: Yandex’s share of the search market in Russia, its largest market by far, is now at 59 percent against competition from Google and others: last year it was closer to 65 percent. Before today, Yandex had been trading down amid concerns that competitors (mainly Google) were gaining market share on the company in the search advertising market, an area where Yandex in the past had enjoyed a healthy lead. Yesterday saw the share price dip to its lowest point since December 12. Yandex today said that text-based ads still account for 90 percent of its revenues — 5.3 billion rubles ($181 million). Some 73 percent of those were on Yandex’s own properties, which now have 179,000 advertisers. Meanwhile, the addition of media powerhouse Rambler to Yandex’s ad network helped that business grow revenues by 117 percent. Text-based ads from Yandex’s ad network accounted for 17 percent of Yandex’s total revenues in the quarter. Yandex has been focusing a lot of its efforts on making sure that it stays on top in the Russian-language market, which includes other CIS nations and still a lot of opportunity for growth — and growing interest for companies like Google. That’s in contrast to, for example, European countries where Google has effectively cornered the market for search. Ilya Segalovich, co-founder and CTO, last week called Google’s average 97 percent market share across Europe a “crazy number” that makes it a challenge to break into that region. More recently Yandex has also been extending its footprint into markets that are less dominated and have some affinity with Russia in economic model — for example, it has this year launched its mapping and navigation products in Turkey. That business is still small, but growing: today Yandex noted that average daily visitors to its sites in Turkey nearly doubled in March compared to January (390,000 versus 200,000). And yesterday, Yandex showed that it was also interested in looking for ways of moving into new markets by way of venture investments: it became the institutional investor to back Seedcamp, the London-based early-stage seed investment fund and mentoring programme for IT companies. Yandex says that its involvement will involve “sharing knowledge and expertise” both with Seedcamp and startups and the ability to invest in projects will also let it choose projects for investment. “Yandex also acquires a small stake in each project supported by Seedcamp,” the company said in a statement. While it didn’t provide the value of its investment, TNW notes that each project on average gets €250,000. There are signs that Yandex could also be looking for a stronger mobile play going forward. That could mean further reach in mobile search — Yandex is reportedly talking to Apple now to become the default search provider on iOS devices in Russia, similar to the deal Yandex already has for Windows Phone and for Samsung’s bada feature phones. And it could mean developing a mobile platform of its own, as its competitor Google has done, possibly becoming one of the latest to try its luck building a device based on a forked, customized version of Android. The recent acquisition of mobile software developer SPB Software, Segalovich says, puts Yandex “Very close to having a full set of mobile services,” — mail, maps, and search apps among them — “the only thing missing is the browser.” One of Yandex’s local competitors, Mail.ru, is also releasing earnings later today.
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| ZestCash Debuts New Big Data Underwriting Models To Determine Consumer Credit Risk Posted: 26 Apr 2012 04:00 AM PDT  ZestCash, a company founded by former Google CIO and VP of engineering Douglas Merrill to legitimize the payday loan industry, is announcing a new patent pending credit decisioning model to better analyze credit risk. ZestCash also introduced Hollerith, a new set of underwriting models that allow the company to extend credit to 25 percent more Americans and increase repayment from customers by 20 percent. ZestCash takes an entirely different approach to underwriting by combining Google-style machine learning techniques and data analysis, combined with traditional credit scoring. As a result, the company can offer credit to many people who historically would have been turned away. The company allows users to borrow between $300 and $800 in what are called ‘payday loans’ and is currently available in five states— Wisconsin, Utah, Idaho, Missouri and South Dakota. Traditionally, lenders have used single regression models that analyze approximately fifteen points of data to make credit decisions. When ZestCash launched two years ago, it began applying big data analysis to underwriting for the first time. Now, instead of employing just one underwriting model, the ZestCash decisioning infrastructure can run dozens of models in parallel, returning loan decision results within seconds. Basically, ZestCash used to run one big data underwriting model that looked at up to a thousand variables. This new infrastructure lets it run multiple big data models in parallel, so it can look at more data points to more accurately determine whether a person is a good candidate for credit. ZestCash now runs about 10 unique underwriting models simultaneously that consume thousands of raw data elements including third-party data and data collected from borrowers. The models then transform this data into tens of thousands of useful meta variables to assess key customer behaviors such as fraud, short-term and long-term credit risk, or the amount of money a borrower will likely repay. The models are then "ensembled" to arrive at a final underwriting decision that more accurately predicts credit risk. Some of this data includes cell phone contract credit history and rental information. Shawn Budde, ZestCash Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer adds that the new modeling has helped increase customers' net payback by 20 percent. Since the company's launch one year ago, ZestCash has helped more than 10,000 customers who have borrowed nearly $10 million dollars from the company. ZestCash just raised $73 million in funding in January.
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| Comparing Pre-IPO Facebook To Pre-IPO Google: Fair, Or A Case Of Apples And Oranges? Posted: 26 Apr 2012 03:38 AM PDT  Facebook, in its updated S-1 released on April 23, dazzled us with more milestone user numbers: 901 million monthly active users, and 500 million on mobile. But it also reported a “seasonal” decline in revenues — $1.058 billion compared to $1.131 billion in the quarter before — and (perhaps more importantly ) annual revenue growth slowed down: in Q1 2011-Q1 2012 it was 44.7 percent, nearly half of the 88 percent for the same period the year before. Some new data from Privco teases out those revenue growth numbers even further by comparing Facebook’s financials to those of pre-IPO Google, in an attempt to show that it is not seasonality but more particular issues with Facebook. The picture is not pretty — and some might wonder if it’s fair. With Facebook expected to go public in the next quarter, Privco notes that when Google was in the same position, its revenues were still on the rise — albeit at a smaller rate. Facebook’s decline of 6.4 percent, Privco notes, was reflected in both areas where the company generates revenues, advertising (down 7.5 percent) and Payments/Facebook Credits (down one percent). Privco also notes that even when you compare revenue growth on a year-over-year basis, Facebook is also showing to have lower growth rates than Google did: And lastly, Privco has drawn up a graphic looking at how Facebook has done directly compared to Google over the last year, and shown that here, too, Google has performed better in terms of its revenue growth: Privco’s “irrefutable conclusion”: “The seasonality excuse Facebook tries to use in its latest S-1 simply does NOT stand up to the data. Facebook’s declining growth is specific to Facebook and reflect clear organic slowdowns in its business,” the analysts write. There seems to be some issues with this, though: For one, the graphics above are comparing companies at different stages of maturity. Facebook is now eight years old, and Google was five when it went public. Facebook — even if it hasn’t made a song and dance about it — has been plugging away at its ad business for almost as long as it has existed — since around 2006 by some estimates. Another point is that the advertising models behind these companies are hugely different. Privco’s CEO Sam Hamadeh points out to me that “Facebook and Google pre-IPO as businesses couldn’t be closer as comparables” — Wall Street speak for companies that have very similar size and business model characteristics. “No, the companies aren’t twins, but they are clearly as close as could be as comps,” he says. That goes also for their respective revenues: that just before its IPO, Google had about $700 million in quarterly ad revenue, while Facebook’s most recent quarter’s ad revenue was just above $800 million, he notes. But in actual fact, Facebook has been launching a bunch of new products — Sponsored Stories, for example, only coming into play halfway through the quarter. Along that, it has also been introducing radically different ways of distributing and measuring ad effectiveness, and those changes need time to see if they will take off. On top of that, Facebook’s advertising is essentially based around display ads, while Google’s is primarily in search. For now, to paraphrase the old American saying, those twains have not really met. Ultimately, if advertising is a game of scale, then Facebook’s user numbers and the engagement of those users will be an essential cornerstone in trying to gauge the company’s future success. Whether investors have the patience to see how that plays out is another question. I have had a lot of back-and-forth with Sam in the last few hours about his company’s research and he also brought up some other interesting food for thought for this discussion, all of which can of course be debated more: These numbers are not a consequence of Facebook simply moving more cautiously in its ad strategy, he argues. Google, he says, has been a more conservative ad player than Facebook: According to Privco’s research, when Google went public it was following a strict maximum of only up to two text ads per page, with no images or graphics permitted. Facebook, says Privco, went up to seven ads per page late last year, allows images, and as of February even permits videos and sound in ads. “We wouldn’t agree that Facebook is somehow moving more slowly or conservatively than was Google at similar…if anything quite the opposite.” He also questions what Facebook will do next to grow revenue further: “Google was widely believed to have much ‘dry gunpowder’ in its back pocket for future growth,” he says, “and was still posting 100%+ year over year revenue growth. Facebook he says has used up much of this “dry powder” over the past year to hit revenue targets, with seven ad slots per page (up from 4 a year ago), permitting paid Sponsored Stories in users news feeds, introducing larger and more intrusive ad formats in Feburary, allowing video, sound and interactivity (survey questions and the like) in its ads, selling ads on its log-out page (introduced in December). “There aren’t many places left to sell Facebook ads,” he claims. Time spent on Facebook. Sam points out that this is going down, according to data from comScore, and “no increase in number of ad spots can make up for this fundamental fact. Unless Facebook can lure users back more often – such as by purchasing new apps like Instagram – Facebook’s usage growth, and therefore its ad revenue growth are slowing. The very fact that we’re now discussing seasonality as a factor (as if we were speaking about Harrods or Marks & Spencer) should be very concerning to investors, and to its lofty valuation.” Projected 2012 revenue: Privco’s averaging of analyst reports puts it at $6.7 billion, but after this week’s S-1, Privco thinks it will be closer to $5.41 billion. Privco’s number is based on a 45.5 percent growth rate, “Faster than Q1 to give them some room for upside from newer ad formats making up for some usage and user growth slowdowns,” he says. The $6.5 billion figure, he notes, is based on 75 percent year-over-year growth for all four quarters this year. Given that the first quarter was only 44 percent, “The next 3 quarters would need to somehow make up for that by growing close to triple digits.”
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| Opera 12 Beta Launches, Loses Voice, Unite and Widgets Posted: 25 Apr 2012 11:00 PM PDT  Opera is launching the first official beta of the next version of its desktop browser today. As usual, the Opera 12 beta includes a number of new features and enhancements, but this release also marks the end of some of the company’s more ambitious projects. With Opera 12, the company is ending support for Unite, the browser’s built-in personal cloud/streaming media platform that made its debut in 2009, and Opera Widgets. Opera is also phasing out support for its built-in speech recognition, text-to-speech and VoiceXML technologies. This release isn’t just about removing features, though. Far from it. Among the new features is a new engine for writing and displaying browser themes (Opera previously called these ‘skins’). In addition, this version now runs plugins individually, similar to what most of its competitors are doing already. Thanks to this, a crashing plugin can’t take the whole browser down anymore. Other new features include support for HTML5 drag and drop, support for the Do Not Track header and opt-in hardware acceleration and WebGL. Opera is also making some low-level changes to improve the browser’s load times and launching 64-bit versions for Windows and Mac. Among Opera’s more ambitious recent projects is definitely Opera Reader, which aims to create a new reading experience for the Web and make it look more like traditional books. With this release, Opera is opening this project up for standardization as CSS3 Generated Content for Paged Media. For developers, this version adds improved support for CSS3 animations and transitions and cross-origin resource sharing. This new version now also supports getUserMedia to access the browser’s camera.
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| Confirmed: Galaxy S III To Pack Samsung’s New 1.4GHz Exynos 4 Quad Processor Posted: 25 Apr 2012 09:54 PM PDT  Samsung has been doing their damnedest to keep their next Galaxy phone under wraps, but there’s one thing they just couldn’t keep quiet about — the processor. The Korean electronics giant announced not long ago that their new 1.4 GHz Exynos 4 Quad chipset would be the one to power their next big smartphone, which is expected to be unveiled in London on May 3. Alright, so the name could use some work. Fortunately, the processor seems to have more than enough oomph to make up for Samsung’s strange choice of nomenclature — the 32mm processor’s big claim to fame is that it provides twice the horsepower of its predecessor while cutting power consumption by a full 20%. Those are some impressive numbers to be sure, but we’ll soon see how well those claims hold up in the real world. After all, scores and benchmarks are one thing, but much of a device’s feel when it comes to responsiveness and fluidity relies on how well the developers can handle that hardware. Interestingly enough, the Exynos 4 Quad was designed to have the exact same pin layout seen on its dual-core predecessors, which means that manufacturers could easily adopt the new high-powered chipset without too much headache. It’s not like that many companies beside Samsung use Exynos chipsets (China-based Meizu comes to mind though), but hey — it’s the thought that counts, right? Oh, and if the sound of a 1.4GHz quad-core Exynos processor sounds familiar, that’s because it seems to been the same chipset spotted in that surprisingly thorough Vietnamese leak from last week. With the new Galaxy’s official reveal set to take place in one week, here’s hoping that Samsung gets even more gabby with details ahead of launch. I’m not really holding my breath since they’d effectively be stealing some of the event’s thunder, but I’m still betting on a massive leak making the rounds just before May 3 rolls around. Any takers?
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| Finally, Professional Social Network LinkedIn Gives Users An iPad App Posted: 25 Apr 2012 09:00 PM PDT  Although the iPad has been available for more than two years, LinkedIn has yet to offer its users a native app despite the fact that mobile engagement has been growing at a fast pace for the network. But last August, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said that the company is doubling down on its mobile strategy. And the network then debuted new versions of its iPhone and Android apps as well as an HTML5 mobile site. In fact, LinkedIn now says 22 percent of its active members have been visiting on mobile devices. And today, LinkedIn is finally launching its native iPad app to the public. As LinkedIn’s head of mobile products Joff Redfern explains, the app was built with the user and tablet interface in mind. Since the iPad has become a leanback experience, LinkedIn wanted to make sure that the app satisfied iPad users’ needs. Via the web, LinkedIn noticed that iPad users were visiting the site mostly in early in the morning, which they call a “coffee session,” and in the evening, between 7 pm and 11 pm. With this data, the company wanted to build an application that allowed professionals to start the day and end the day with LinkedIn. Via an updates section, users can access a stream of updates from your connections, including who's changed jobs and who's viewed your profile. You can also access news that connections are sharing and see the latest discussions from the groups you are members of. In addition to an activity stream, you can also access your own profile, connections and activity dashboard and send and receive your LinkedIn invitations and messages from your inbox in the network. One of the more compelling features included in the iPad app is the ability to sync the device’s calendar with your LinkedIn profile information. So you can have a schedule of what your meetings are for the day paired with contextual information about contacts from their LinkedIn profiles. This feature is also available with the latest upgrade of LinkedIn’s iPhone and Android apps. As Redfern explains, many users on the mobile devices were doing the most searches for contacts right before meetings, so it made sense to add the feature. And LinkedIn is debuting an iPad-friendly mobile website as well, accessed by visiting touch.linkedin.com. While the app is available in English today, LinkedIn will soon launch the app in other languages. Although LinkedIn offered its users iOS and BlackBerry apps, it took the professional social network a few years to launch a native Android app, so it’s not entirely surprising that it has taken the company a while to develop an iPad app as well. Redfern explains that LinkedIn had three dedicated engineers working on the app. As for what’s next, Redfern says LinkedIn will be monitoring what makes sense when it comes to developing an Android tablet app. TechCrunch TV reporter Colleen Taylor sat down with Redfern to demo the app and chat about what’s new. Watch below. Colleen Taylor contributed to this article.
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