Saturday, March 3, 2012

The Latest from TechCrunch

The Latest from TechCrunch

Link to TechCrunch

Social Retargeting Ad Network RadiumOne Raising A $50M Round At A $500M Valuation

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 09:14 AM PST

RadiumOne - Results Powered by Connections

We’re hearing that RadiumOne, an online ad network that aims to combine social and intent data to serve ads, is finalizing a monster $50 million round from investors. While the funding isn’t closed yet, we’ve heard from industry sources that the valuation is hovering around $500 million pre-money.

RadiumOne, which has raised $33.5 million to date, mines social data and use this information to identify relevant consumers for brands. The startup analyzes how users interact with one another on social networks to find the consumers that identify with a brand's current customer base, and then serves advertisements to this audience across the company’s network of publishers.

RadiumOne gets this data directly from social networks (which sell anonymous user behavior data to advertisers), its own gWallet offer platform, blogging platforms, microblogging platforms (i.e. Twitter), URL shorteners, photosharing websites and other applications, including its own consumer apps (group messaging app Ping.me and Via.Me). As social media users share information like links, blog posts, videos and more, RadiumOne analyzes this data to place the consumers on a social graph that will accurately describe their “behavior.

Yesterday, the company debuted Via.Me, an iOS app that allows you to capture, filter, and share pictures, images, videos, audio and other content across multiple social networks.

The company was founded by serial entrepreneur and gWallet founder Gurbaksh Chahal. Chahal sold his ad network BlueLithium to Yahoo for $300 million in 2007 and at the time, Chahal’s company was the fifth largest ad network in the United States and the second largest in the United Kingdom. Chahal’s non-compete contract with Yahoo ended in October 2010, and he got back into the online ad business with RadiumOne.

We’re hearing that the company is on track to surpass $100 million in revenue this year. And clearly the company’s valuation has increased since its last round in 2011, which pegged the company at $200 million. Stay tuned.



Samsung Galaxy S III To Launch In April?

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 08:52 AM PST

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While not launching the next Samsung flagship at MWC in Barcelona was probably the right choice for Samsung, that doesn’t change the fact that we’re itching with anticipation over when the Galaxy S III will show its pretty little edge-to-edge face.

We know most of the specs (well, rumored ones at least), which means we know we’ll see a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED Plus display, a quad-core Samsung Exynos CPU running at 1.5GHz, and a little 4G LTE icon. What we don’t know, however, is when we’ll see any of this.

But reports are now leaking out of Korea, citing Samsung’s global marketing and advertising agency Cheil Worldwide, claiming that the phone we hate to wait for should show up in April. Things don’t get any more specific than that unfortunately, but this still gives us plenty to work with.

For one thing, we already knew that launch date rumors were circling around the March/April time frame. Secondly, Samsung itself confirmed that the phone would arrive “before Summer,” which leads us to believe that narrowing the launch period down to April seems correct.

We’ve also heard that the S III will launch simultaneously in over 50 major markets, rather than seeing an incremental roll-out like the S II. This means that whatever launch date is given will likely apply to us in the States, instead of Samsung’s home team getting early access.



YC-Backed Flypad Wants To Turn Your iPhone Into A Steering Wheel

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 08:45 AM PST

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Smartphones have a lot of cool technology built in, from high-res touchscreens to gestural command features, like shaking, rocking, or rolling, and motion sensing via accelerometers. Just as mobile computing is revolutionizing the way we communicate and interact with the world, unsurprisingly smartphone technology is also having its way with gaming.

Since we’re rarely without our mobile devices today, mobile gaming (especially social-mobile) is becoming increasingly popular — but thanks to the wizardry of smartphone tech — a number of intrepid souls are turning back to explore the interactive possibilities between our mobile devices and our hardware — our desktops, etc. The most entertaining example of which would be the ability to transform our smartphones into game controllers.

Joypad, for instance, is transforming iPhones into game controllers for iPads, Macs, and PCs by syncing them over BlueTooth or Wi-Fi, just as Brass Monkey is doing for browser-based games.

Today, a member of the current batch of Y Combinator startups called Flypad joins the group of entrepreneurs looking to game-ify smartphones, albeit with a more specific focus. Flypad transforms the iPhone into a steering wheel for PC racing games, allowing gamers to steer their vehicles of choice in games like Need For Speed: The Run — with their iPhones.

Initially, the team was on a similar trajectory to that of Brass Monkey, in that it offered support for Android and iOS that, through apps and Wi-Fi, linked smartphones to browser-based Flash games. However, the team found that browser-based games attracted a more casual gaming audience that didn’t care quite as much about peripherals (devices connected to a host computer) as more hardcore gamers playing PC racing games. To that point, the newest version of Flypad has seen 7,000 downloads in beta testing and is resonating particularly in international markets, where the cost of buying controllers, steering wheels, and the like, are higher.

Going forward, Flypad has two immediate goals, which are to increase the amount of play-able racing games (and beyond) in its bullpen, as well as rolling out a full set of APIs for game developers, which allow them to easily add the iPhone as an input for their games.

Of course, integrating with existing games is just the beginning, as the team’s eventual plan is to enable a whole new class of games to be developed. Typically, game controllers today are simply just pieces of hardware, but eventually controllers themselves will be running their own complex software, opening up whole new ways of interacting with games.

Some of the other solutions out there today, says Flypad Co-founder Ayo Omojola, tend to have heavy developer focuses up front, but, at the end of the day, gamers don’t play games because of the phone or the novelty of the technology, they play because they love the gameplay or experience of their favorite racing games. So Flypad focused on offering a quick way to preload content into the experience, so that gamers don’t have to worry about the technical side, they can just sit down and play.

So, while they initially offered a browser mechanic that enabled gamers to quickly play on the Web, although HTML5 in progressing rapidly, the gameplay just wasn’t the quality as those Steam games, for example, which is why Joypad is currently offering compatibility with some of the games in the Need For Speed series, DIRT3, Burnout, and Ignite. Certainly, Flypad faces some friction in that it isn’t platform or device agnostic, and the fact that many serious gamers prefer fixed-wheel controllers to something more free-wheeling like a smartphone control; however, at this point Omojola says that the team is focused on killing the experience of PC racing games on the iPhone.

Next, the founding team, which also includes Aurav Namit and Femi Omojola, plans to actually embed themselves in their users’ living rooms, so that they can better observe the habits of gamers, how they play, what their engagement looks like, etc. But for now they know that opening their doors to other game developers represents the best immediate opportunity for increasing the number of games (and features) that they can integrate with their smart, motion-sensing steering wheel. To do so, the team recently released its Flash API, and is looking to launch its Unity API next.

Of course, in the big picture, it might be easy to see Flypad’s technology as an add-on, but in reality, their smart steering solution is meant to get developers excited about creating games for smartphones, and that in turn, hopefully encourage gamers to follow. What’s more, the real nifty bit of the technology Joypad offers is the ability to provide users with dynamic interfaces on their smartphones, which change in realtime, so that, say, if you’re playing Madden, your playbook only shows up on your phone and not that of your opponent.

The technology around mobile device-controlled has so much potential, and although it’s still fairly novel to most gamers, I’m sure we can expect some cool things out of Flypad as they push forward.

For more on Flypad, check them out at home here and in the intro video below:

Retailers Getting Into Mobile Payments, Citing Security Concerns, Wanting User Data

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 08:13 AM PST

George-Costanza-wallet

Consumers may be ready for mobile wallets, but the marketplace is not. Especially if stuff like this keeps happening. Apparently, some two dozen retailers, including big names like Walmart and Target, are working together to create their own mobile payments system, according to sources at the WSJ. That means in addition to mobile wallets provided by banks, mobile operators (Isis), credit card networks, startups (like Square and Dwolla) and tech companies like Google (Google Wallet) and PayPal, consumers will be asked to wrap their heads around yet another mobile payment method: one from the retailers themselves.

That’s bad news for consumers, as an addition like this can create confusion. But it could end up being great news for more disruptive payment systems like Square.

The report says the retailers behind this new push are developing mobile payment technology on their own because they “surveyed the ecosystem” and didn’t like what they found out there. The retailers were concerned about the security of the current systems, and were disappointed by their ability to deliver offers and coupons to consumers.

Frankly, that sounds like bullshit.

That’s not to say that there haven’t been security issues with some early mobile wallet systems. Recently, for example, an Android hack was found to expose the Google Wallet PIN on demand. However, the hack only worked on rooted phones – something which Google says it doesn’t support when it comes to Google Wallet. Square, too, came under fire from competitor VeriFone last year, when it was discovered that the company’s hardware dongles weren’t encrypting data. (For what it’s worth, TechCrunch called “FUD” on that one).

But with established financial services companies like MasterCard, Visa, American Express, and PayPal moving into the mobile payments/mobile wallet space, a claim that existing systems are insecure seems a bit off the mark.

So do the retailers think they’re really more favorably positioned to build something more technically advanced? The WSJ quotes Steve Mott, who runs a consulting firm that’s working on the new payment system, as saying the retailers “have decided they need to and can build a better system.”

Better for who? The consumers? No. Better for the retailers.

It’s not about building a better system at all, actually. It’s about owning the system.

The fight here is not about becoming the best mobile wallet provider, it’s about owning the access to the customers’ data that being a mobile wallet provider allows.

It’s also about owning the additional revenue streams that mobile wallets will provide, explains Daniel Trigub, who works in Business Development at Blue Bite, a location-based mobile marketing firm, and expert in mobile marketing and payment technology.

“[The retailers] want that same piece of the payments pie,” he says of the move. “They want to own the consumer and all that data that comes with knowing who the transaction is coming from. There is ultimately a fight for user data and information…whoever owns that (POS guys, handset manufacturers, Googles of the world, credit card companies, etc.) will be very powerful,” he says.

And once the retailers own the data, they can use it to provide value-added services, like targeted coupons, to their users.

Like a digital version of the store’s own plastic credit cards, it makes sense that retailers want their own mobile-friendly counterpart. After all, there’s a reason why every single checkout cashier asks you if you’d like to save 10 percent today by opening up a store credit card account.

But if there are too many players in the mobile wallet space, it’s bad for consumers. It creates confusion. Do you use the retailers’ wallet? Visa’s? MasterCard’s Google’s? PayPal’s? The carriers‘? With too many choices, the answer could end up being “none of the above.”

This move does leave room for more disruptive, non-NFC based wallet players – companies like Square, for example – to win. A cloud-based, and completely unique technology that provides not just dongles for swiping cards, but also hands-free mobile payments that allow you to just say your name at checkout, no need to pull out your phone? Maybe replacing the swipe-to-pay experience with a tap-to-pay experience isn’t the answer, after all. Maybe it’s about blowing up the current system entirely, and starting over.

Yeah. Good luck, retailers.

IndoChino Mixes Virtual Tailors With The Real, Plans Pop-Up Stores In US This Year

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 07:42 AM PST

Screen Shot 2012-03-02 at 10.37.15 AM

There are plenty of custom tailors on the Internet these days and they seem like the perfect business – you take a commodity product and spiff it up then send the work to places where expert custom manufacturers aren’t that hard to find (namely places like Hong Kong and Taiwan). The resulting products are bespoke and make the owners feel like they’re in on something special. It works every time.

That’s why IndoChino’s recent “traveling tailor” program is so interesting. IndoChino makes suits and shirts based on your specific measurements. You follow a quick set of video tutorials to measure your chest, shoulders, gut, and groin and then send those numbers off to skilled tailors. The tailors whip together your clothes, add a monogram, and you pay $600 or so for the privilege. Then, barring massive weight gain or loss, you can go back to the site and order new clothes without the hassle of finding a tailor.

However, IndoChino wants you to go through the hassle of finding a tailor – their tailor. The first Traveling Tailor event happened in Vancouver last November and the next one will be in Calgary (both are cities in a country called Canada, IndoChino’s home. Canada is North of the United States and is also known as “America’s Hat”) this year. The events were a rousing success with a number of dudes rolling through to get fitted and, more important, a number of conversions. The most important thing is that each of these walk-up clients immediately became IndoChino customers, even if they didn’t buy anything immediately.

The problem with many custom sales sites is that there is an essential desire in shoppers to touch and hold items they’re about to buy. While this need has been denuded drastically over the years, the only way it truly works is if you have an overtly non-draconian returns policy. Most services, then, allow you to return anything at any time and offer lifetime guarantees and free shipping.

For a custom service like IndoChino, however, you have the quite a bit invested in these clothes and they can’t be easily refurbished and resold. Therefore, these traveling tailor pop up stores make perfect sense. They’re a simple strategy to build word of mouth marketing, increase the customer base, and ensure users understand and can truly visualize what’s for sale.

The company is planning on moving down the West Coast this year with an upcoming event in Seattle as well as events in San Francisco and New York. Timing hasn’t yet been determined.

These pop-up stores feature samples of all their wares as well as on-the-spot fittings (and order forms) for lads who want to look smart for upcoming soirees.

The company has 55 employees in Canada (see above), Shanghai (not in Canada), and China (another country that is not Canada) and was founded in 2007 by Heikal Gani and Kyle Vucko. The founders found it hard to buy off-the-rack suits that were sufficiently handsome and so decided to buy custom. A few years later they’re shipping suits to 60 countries (including the aforementioned Canada.)

With more sites like this (and this and this) popping up on the Internet, that guy with the beard is probably going to have to clear out his warehouse.

Foursquare’s Inflection Point: People Using The App, But Not Checking In

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 07:19 AM PST

Crowley 2.0

When Dennis Crowley, the CEO of Foursquare, visited the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last year, he told me he spent a lot of time explaining Foursquare to the operators and vendors that are the main visitors at this event.

This year, he said the number of business cards he was handed was "like this," making a big C-shape with his index finger and thumb. Why the change? "I think we are one of a handful of companies that builds products that would actually encourage people to upgrade their devices," he said. That’s an important fact to remember as smartphone penetration continues to grow and takeup slows down, specifically in the developed markets where Foursquare has most made its mark.

That growth in reputation has been matched by a growth in Foursquare's business: the company has tripled its numbers in the last year, going from "around five million" to more than 15 million, Crowley said.

That’s something that is impressing investors, too — with news that Spark Capital is reportedly buying up employee stock. But perhaps more interesting, he says, is that the company is starting to notice a marked change in behavior:

"People are using the app, but they're not checking in," he told me. "I asked myself: did we break something? But in fact, it's because people are using Foursquare to look for where their friends are, to find things, and as a recommendation service. It's almost like it doesn't occur to them to check in."

Crowley compares this to the moment on Twitter in 2009 when the service suddenly shifted gears, and it was not about the number of people tweeting but about how many are reading those tweets.

"When you start, you are so focused on engagement," he said. "Then you hit this point when you are big enough and say there is something awesome going on anyway. At some point you look and say, oh wow, the consumption model is actually taking off."

That seems to fit well with Crowley's vision of how Foursquare is going to grow in the near future.

Some social media sites like Facebook have made a big effort to net in members using whatever means possible — so, for example, you get pared-down Facebook experiences delivered on some of the most basic phones around.

But Foursquare seems to be more interested in behavior than the scale: "We want to change experiences," he said. The best way to do that, Crowley added, is to use maps, access to GPS and the other sensors you have on smartphones. "We want people to use the stuff we build, and to do that you have to focus on the great things," he said. "These are not toys; they are big defining features that are changing the tune on location services."

That has so far taken the company to making apps for most major mobile platforms, and while some of those are seeing especially strong usage in particular markets — BlackBerry usage, he says, is highest in southeast Asia and Brazil — by far the most popular platform is iOS.

But that growth has only partially manifested in staffing: Foursquare has gone from 18 people eight months ago to 100 now, but some big holes remain. There is, for example, only one business development guy in Europe, Omid Ashtari, who apparently currently works out of Soho House in Shoreditch, London. But there are also some key engineers coming on board from Google and other places.

And, that growth is slowly but surely starting to emerge as monetization on the platform, too. Crowley says that so far there are already 750,000 merchants registered on its platform, and most of that growth has been viral, without a sales force driving it.

None of those merchants are being charged "yet", but he said but he said Foursquare will probably start experimenting later this year with new features that will be charged.

He said he's confident that there will be a market for this because there are already companies calling up asking what they should be budgeting for the services — even without them launched.

What will those features be? The kinds of tools you are already seeing around retail engagement, but with a Foursquare flavor: "We have enough check-in data to make some amazing stuff," he said.

It sounds like the data will take the form of a kind of dashboard that would segment customers and popular items. Whether the connection to the Foursquare app makes either that data easier to collect, or more unique than what can already be gathered by the businesses themselves through their loyalty programs, is the big question.

But if it appears that Foursquare is becoming a more commercial network, one thing that Crowley says it won't be in the near future is a way to pay for things. "It's not something we are actively working on," he said. "It's the bottom of the funnel for us and if we did something it would probably be in partnership."

That is probably a good thing, given how many other companies are piling in on mobile payments now, not just operators, but credit card companies, startups, and if you believe the WSJ today, big retailers like Target and Walmart.

But as a measure of how far he seems to be from this scene, he is pretty dismissive of NFC — a big topic this last week at MWC — and doesn't see the point of a phone able to make a transaction if a credit card works just as well. "I prefer to find solutions to actual problems that exist.”

[I'll be posting a short video from our conversation soon, with material not in the story. Watch this space.]

Yelp Shares Pop Over 60 Percent In Early Trading; Valued At $1.3 Billion

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 07:11 AM PST

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Wow. Reviews site Yelp just saw a huge pop in early trading of its stock on the New York Stock Exchange this morning. Yelp opened at $22 per share, after pricing at $15 last night. Shares, which are listed under the symbol ‘YELP’, are trading up 60 percent from last night’s pricing, putting Yelp’s valuation at over $1.3 billion

Yelp offered 7.15 million shares, aiming to raise about $107.25 million. As heard yesterday, the deal is said to be heavily over subscribed. Yelp's total revenues in 2011 were $83.2 million, up 74.6 percent from $47.7 million in 2010 (and 25.8 million in 2009), but net losses were up to $16.9 million in 2011 — a 74.2 percent increase from a net loss of $9.5 million in 2010. (Adjusted EBITDA losses were $1.1 million).

In 2011, Yelp, which was founded by Jeremy Stoppelman, saw 65.7 million unique monthly visitors for the year (with 5.7 million uniques on mobile), up from 39.3 million in 2010. Yelp users left 24.8 million reviews in 2011, up from 15.1 million in 2010.

We’ll update this post on where shares close.

Samsung Tops 2 Million Galaxy Note Sales, Plans To Hit 10 Million By Year’s End

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 06:53 AM PST

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Samsung says it has sold over 2 million Galaxy Note superphones globally. Now, it’s only fair to remember that this number includes international sales, so even though the Note only became available on February 19 here in the States, it’s been on Asian shelves since October and U.K. shelves since November.

Let’s put this in perspective. Apple sold twice that many (4 million) units of the iPhone 4S in its first weekend on the market. Samsung sold 3 million units of the Galaxy S II after 55 days on the market. So, when measured against these flagship smash hits, it’s hard to call the Note a mega-success.

But that’s not to say we should dismiss it. The Note has gotten pretty poor reviews, two dies in Fly or Die, and is generally more of a niche device. It’s huge, comes with a stylus, and certainly takes the user out of their comfort zone. But people still seem to be excited about it.

The company expects to sell another 10 million by the end of 2012, according to Forbes.

Samsung has made a huge marketing push with the Note, including an over-the-top Super Bowl ad, trying to bring something a bit different into the mainstream awareness. It would seem that, at least in this goal, the company has succeeded.

CoupFlip Is A Secondary Market For Daily Deals

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 06:47 AM PST

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Now this is an interesting, if potentially flawed, concept. It’s called CoupFlip and it’s essentially a secondary market for Groupons, Amazon Deals, and the like. Say, for example, you buy a Groupon to the local stoat grooming place and you realize you don’t have a stoat. Before CoupFlip you’d have to hunt down the local chapter of the Stoat Lover’s Club and possibly sell your deal at a slight loss or you eat the cost (not the stoat), vowing never to be fooled by Groupon again.

Now with CoupFlip you can upload a PDF of your deal and get cash immediately. This coupon sits quietly in the system and CoupFlip will bring it up when you visit, basing its recommendations on your location and buying habits. It is, for example, a great way to get Groupon deals (like this one) after the fact (like this).

The important distinction here is that CoupFlip “takes inventory” of deals – you don’t sell them on consignment – and you get cash on the barrelhead.

“CoupFlip capitalizes on the opportunity here for a secondary market to unlock billions of dollars of unused value. The convenience for the consumer couldn't be better. We are the best solution for the millions of people who have ever failed to use a daily deal or wish they could get their hands on a deal they missed in the original ‘flash sale,’” says CEO Phil McDonnell. McDonnell was formerly a Google engineer and now lives in New England.

“We're a Silicon Valley-style tech startup, but we're homegrown – and our sole focus at the moment is on Boston. Our key advisors are New England-based venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. To put it frankly, we're living proof of the Northeast's entrepreneurial potential,” he said.

“CoupFlip combats buyer's remorse – that pang of regret you feel after making an impulsive daily deal purchase. When you see a weekend spa package for $99, you don't calculate the long-term impact of that purchase on your personal finances. You jump at the deal immediately – right then and there – because you emotionally know it's a darn good deal,” writes McDonnell.

“Unfortunately, even if that weekend spa package is an incredible deal, it might not make sense for you personally. That's where CoupFlip steps in.”

There doesn’t seem to be anything outright wrong about CoupFlip’s efforts although I suspect Groupon may feel differently. However, it’s exactly the same as giving your friend a coupon, and barring any pending requirements to show photo ID and proof of citizenship at your local Thai place in order to get the $20 for $40 of food special, there’s nothing anyone can do. It’s just a market for coupons, pure and simple.

What are the flaws? Well, people sell deals for a reason – they’re usually bad. The company could topple over with the weight of unwanted junk. CoupFlip uses algorithms to rate the popularity and potential for sale and prices the coupons accordingly. While you might get less for the stoat washing service, you’ll probably get more for a $50 dinner for four at Masa. Besides, the world needs parasitic services like this one – just ask StubHub.

Fly Or Die: Samsung Galaxy Note

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 06:23 AM PST

The Galaxy Note from Samsung has been a tough one for us to figure out. Is it a phone? Is it a tablet? Wait! Is that a stylus?

There was plenty to wonder about. But after spending quite a bit of time with the superphone, which you can relive with me here, John and I decided to chat out what all the fuss is about.

The phone itself is solid, feels premium for the most part, and LTE makes Mr. Big Stuff over here super fast. The S-Pen is fun, but meh at best. Truth be told, the real issue is size. At 5.3-inches, its 1280×800 HD Super AMOLED display poses benefits as well as problems.

John and I discuss this and more, trying to figure out whether Samsung’s huge marketing push for this thing is really worth the trouble.



The 9 Flavors Of Windows 8 Show The Key Difference Between Microsoft And Apple

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 06:07 AM PST

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For better or worse, it seems as if Windows 8 will be available in nine separate editions. That’s up three flavors from Windows 7. The unofficial news comes from a registry key found within the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. If this key is to be believed, Windows 8 will be available in the six editions of Windows 7 with the addition of Windows 8 Professional Plus, Enterprise Evaluation, and ARM edition. That makes nine Windows 8 versions in all — seven more editions than Apple’s OS X.

The difference is important. It speaks to the approach these to companies have toward OS sales. Microsoft, the still massively dominant player in desktop computing, has a version for nearly every environment ranging from OEM netbooks to massive enterprise environments. The difference between the versions often involves additional (or missing) applications, networking support and security features. On the other hand, Apple puts all their goodies in one basket and sells only one consumer desktop option. There’s always OS X server, too, which Apple branded as the “Server For Everyone”.

These differences are even more apparent when considering their price. OS X costs $29.99 and Server is only $49.99. Windows 7 Starter and Basic isn’t sold directly to consumers but they can still be found online for less than $100. The Microsoft Store lists Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate from $199, $299, and $319, respectively (upgrade prices are a bit less).

Navigating the different versions of Windows is a hassle. The operating system can cost nearly as much as new computer. Plus, if a consumer was going to spend hundreds of dollars for the OS, they’re forced to either spend even more money or live with missing features. Windows is heavily pirated for a reason.

Apple on the other hand shoehorns everything into one version and makes it available for a relatively low price. Why? Apple is a hardware company that happens to also sell software. Apple makes money when they ship hardware, not software. Apple just needs its software to keep users happy and interested in coming back for more hardware, not pay the company’s light bill.

As a software company, Microsoft doesn’t have this luxury. Redmond must make money off software like Windows and Office. This is their bread and butter. However, prior to Windows 7, Microsoft had trouble encouraging enterprises to upgrade to the latest version of Windows — Windows XP SP3 is just that good, like Windows 2000 before it. Windows Vista was a bust just short of the disaster of Windows ME. Microsoft hit it out of the park with Windows 7, though, and is going to have a hard time convincing enterprise customers to upgrade to Windows 8.

Windows 7 was nearly an instant hit. It hit 4 percent of the total desktop market share just three weeks after its release. Microsoft moved more than 100 million copies in six months, making it the company’s fastest selling operating system ever. As of January 2012, it’s estimated that Microsoft sold more than 525 million copies of Windows — a feat partly accomplished by the six separate versions of the OS.

There isn’t a winner here. Microsoft and Apple have different approaches and goals in regards to their desktop operating systems. It’s easy to stand on a soapbox and yell at Redmond, “You’re doing it wrong! No one wants to spend $300 on an OS!” But that fact is Microsoft seems to know what they’re doing and have the numbers to back it up. Likewise, Apple is on a tear lately, pushing out new revisions of OS X every year as the Mac’s market share increases. That said, Microsoft has a lot more riding on the success of Windows 8 than Apple does on Mountain Lion.

Windows 8 will be released later this year and will finally push Microsoft into the so-called post-PC world. It has a tough game ahead. Windows 8 needs to curb OS X’s explosive growth and kill the iPad. Like Windows 7 before it, Microsoft is letting consumers try out a final beta copy prior to its release (download info here). Windows 8 needs to be more than a home run; it needs to be a World Series game 7 walk-off grand slam against team Apple.

[image credit: engadget]

Soluto Saucily Sunders Apple’s Seriousness With Salacious Squib

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 05:08 AM PST

Former Disrupt winners Soluto love them some Windows. It’s their OS of choice and their products aspire to make it work a little better. Needless to say, they’re pretty excited about Windows 8 and to celebrate their unbridled joy they created this cute little commercial lampooning Apple’s original 1984 bit.

As Windows becomes more secure and presumably more stable I wonder how much longer companies like Soluto and anti-virus purveyors like McAfee and avast! can stay in the same business. However, if history is any guide, Windows will need tweaks, improvements, and fixes from now until time immemorial. Nice work if you can get it.

Hello Metro

As Brizzly Enters Its Final Hibernation, AOL Tries To Sharpen Its Social Media Claws

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 03:32 AM PST

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It may have taken longer than even its own creators might have guessed, but it’s finally come to pass: Brizzly, the Twitter/Facebook client that was bought by AOL as part of Thing Labs in September 2010, is shutting up shop at the end of March, with the news announced last night on Brizzly’s blog by Grant Shellen, and co-signed by Zachary Taylor and Jason Shellen, Brizzly’s and Thing Labs’ co-founders.

Behind the move to shut down Brizzly is another story, it seems, about what is going on with AOL and its social media ambitions for its instant messaging service, AIM.

Since the acquisition of Think Labs, the team, according to the blog, has been putting most of their efforts into AIM.

“Once we set to the task at hand—improving the hell out of AIM—we had little to no time to work on Brizzly, and it became clear that the new things we're working on are far more worth our time and attention,” Shellen wrote.

That has included a re-vamp, launched last month, which has tried to make the product significantly more “social”: there is now an expanded group chat function; as well as updates on when people have mentioned, liked, followed or commented on your Twitter, Facebook and Instagram content; and email alerts for AOL Mail and Gmail.

But it is not a replacement for Brizzly because the one crucial thing it doesn’t do is incorporate those social media feeds themselves. Why wasn’t that included? It might appear in a later incarnation, but for now the impression is that AOL, ideally, would like to keep all potential interactions in its own garden. (And in any case, that is what is happening as a result.)

Yes, it seems that AOL definitely wants to keep its place at the social media table. However, its chair seems to be getting increasingly creaky.

AOL does not say how many active users there are on AIM right now, but the picture doesn’t look very good. In the company’s last quarterly earnings, AOL noted that AIM numbers were in decline (with those declines being offset by the Huffington Post Media Group, owners of TechCrunch).

There are also reports that AOL is gearing up for a round of layoffs that could include AIM itself. A report in Bloomberg notes that Jason Shellen, the ex-Thing Labs founder who now runs AIM, might seek a buyout in the next few weeks.

ComScore (yes, they can be problematic) estimated that as of October last year, AIM's active users in the U.S. were at 4.9 million — a decline of 65 percent a year ago (that's not including mobile and tablet access, just PC). It's now third behind Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger from Microsoft.

I don’t know how many users Brizzly had (I’m trying to find out and will update this when and if I do), but it was a cool and useful service. Now, the talented folks from Thing Labs, rather than working on totally new, groundbreaking products, are clearly doing some interesting work in getting the decidedly more legacy AIM up to speed. But whether all that effort will be enough to bring up user numbers — and subsequently create revenue streams — remains to be seen.

A worrying trend for this strategy is that in general the IM market appears to be getting less popular — possibly propelled by users more focused on Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the new guard. ComScore notes that usage of IM services in the U.S. dropped by 31 percent over the year to 36.8 million visitors.

Worldwide, where AOL ranks in 10th place among IM providers, there are some interesting pockets of growth, but they are mainly outside of the U.S. and in China and Russia, says comScore, which provided us with comparative numbers between January 2011 and January 2012:

In other words, a social media plan focused around AIM is either very, very visionary or going totally against what appear to be pretty strong market indications.

London’s Conference Drought Ends As Le Web, LWS and Digital London Turn Up

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 02:30 AM PST

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There’s an old saying in London. You wait an hour for a bus and then three come along at once. Thus, for the last few years people have been asking me when London would get a large technology conference which catered for startups. Admittedly I had a good go with GeeknRolla, which has now been replaced by the London Web Summit on March 19. But now London is being spoiled by yet another event: Le Web, the huge annual conference in Paris in December, is adding a Summer edition conference in London. If you’re looking for a ‘third bus’ to complete the analogue, then check out Digital London, a slightly more corporate event but one which looks like it has some interesting tracks on the future of cities, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Due to be held on June 19th and 20th, I’ve heard that Le Web London is partly the result of heavy lobbying by the U.K. government and the U.K. Trade and Industry department’s Tech City team to get them here. So it looks like our taxes are starting to bear a little fruit…

The venue will be Central Hall Westminster, so super central London. No confirmed speakers as yet but we’re sure Loic and Geraldine Le Meur will pull off a great show with great speakers, as their contact book in Silicon Valley is hard to beat.

Registration is now open, including a 50 percent discount on the ticket price for the next two weeks and a special discount package for Le Web London and Le Web Paris.

Meanwhile, please don’t ask in the comments if they will change the name to “The Web” for London. That joke boat has sailed.

Here’s Loic and Geraldine with the announcement.

Daily Crunch: Song And Dance

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 01:00 AM PST

Enterprise Identity Management Platform ForgeRock Raises $7 Million From Accel

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 09:00 PM PST

ForgeRock

ForgeRock, the open source vendor behind the I³ Open Identity middleware platform, has raised $7 million in Series A funding from Accel Partners.

ForgeRock offers one unified platform approach to solve enterprise companies’ secure Identity management challenges. The I³ Open Platform allows customers to manage Authentication, Access Management, User Entitlements, Federation, Identity lifecycle management, provisioning and more. This can be implemented in-house, or in a private or public cloud infrastructure.

I³ products currently include: OpenAM (Access Manager) for Authentication, SSO, and Cloud-enabled Federation; OpenIDM (Identity Manager), which is a scalable identity lifecycle management and provisioning solution; and OpenDJ (Directory Java, a next gen identity repository.

Accel partner Bruce Golden explains of the firm’s investment and interest in ForgeRock: Accel seeks to invest in businesses that have the potential to become category leaders in fast growing new markets, or show potential for large-scale disruption in existing markets. Identity management is a crucial business and technology issue for businesses of all sizes, and we believe that ForgeRock is well positioned to become a leader in this market.

ForgeRock enables Identity management for a number of well-known customers including Thomson Reuters, BSkyB, News International, Nokia Siemens Networks, Betfair, AOL, Toyota, Lexmark, Wirecard, Aberdeen Asset Management, OTE, Allianz, Lloyds International, VPS, Capgemini, NSB, Xerox, Vodafone, Nomura, and BNP Paribas.

Aereo Responds To Broadcasters’ Lawsuit: Your Position Does Not Have “Any Merit”

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 08:21 PM PST

johnny_automatic_scales_of_justice

Barely two weeks ago, Erick was on hand at a news conference in which Barry Diller and company presented IAC’s latest media-tech investment — a startup called Aereo. Simply put, Aereo streams broadcast TV through the browser and provides a DVR in the cloud by “miniaturizing TV antennas and packing them in equipment that sits on the network,” as Erick wrote at the time. The cloud-based service streams over-the-air channels for just $12 a month, which means that, even in spite of the unassuming size of its antennae, Aereo’s model represents a threat to the old guard.

Today, a group of broadcasters, including Fox, Univision, and PBS filed two separate lawsuits against Aereo (the two groups collectively represent most of the major media outlets in New York City), claiming that the startup is infringing on the broadcasters’ copyrights and that its technology fails to meet the criteria of any sort of legal loophole. As such, the broadcasters are seeking an injunction, which would prevent Aereo from releasing its product on the market. In addition, the broadcasters will be seeking monetary damages “for what they claim are Aereo’s violations of the Copyright Act,” according to the New York Times.

Barry Diller loves to ruffle the feathers of old media, and there’s no way that he was unaware this was coming. According to the startup’s self-description — “Live broadcast TV, meet the Internet. Finally.” — there was no way that something like this was going to slide under the noses of the tycoons, especially considering that Aereo had been planning to roll out its service in Brooklyn in the next few weeks — and at that undercutting price point.

Disruption of traditional media has been tried again and again, and unfortunately many of those startups or companies have failed because of the legal quagmire the broadcasters can afford to mire them in. Try to mess with the structure, and there’s a good chance you’ll get sued until the cows come home.

In the lawsuit, which you can find on Scribd here, the broadcasters basically say that it doesn’t matter how big those rascally-rabbit ears on top of their boob tube are:

No amount of technological gimmickery by Aereo — or claims that it is simply providing a set of sophisticated “rabbit ears” — changes the fundamental principle of Copyright Law that those who wish to retransmit [their] broadcasts may do so only with [their] permission. Simply put, Aereo is an unauthorized Internet delivery service that is receiving, converting and retransmitting broadcast signals to its subscribers for a fee…

So there you have it. Aereo believes it is not culpable here, because its individual subscribers are linked to a set of antenna, and as Jeff Roberts at paidContent points out, Cablevision successfully defended a similar case regarding its remote digital video recorder technology, “after an appeals court found that there was no [actual] transmission to the public.”

Nonetheless, just in case there was any question of whether or not this was going to end up in court, settled by the gavel, we’ve just been pointed to Aereo’s response to the broadcasters’ lawsuits. Boiled down to a sentence, Aereo is standing firm in its innocence, and doesn’t think the broadcasters’ position has “any merit,” and will be seeing them in court, thank you very much:

Today, two groups of broadcasters filed two separate federal lawsuits against Aereo in the Southern District of New York claiming that Aereo will infringe their copyrights by making available technology which enables consumers to access broadcast television via a remote antenna and DVR. Aereo does not believe that the broadcasters' position has any merit and it very much looks forward to a full and fair airing of the issues.

Consumers are legally entitled to access broadcast television via an antenna and they are entitled to record television content for their personal use. Innovations in technology over time, from digital signals to Digital Video Recorders ("DVRs"), have made access to television easier and better for consumers. Aereo provides technology that enables consumers to use their cloud DVR and their remote antenna to record and watch the broadcast television signal to which they are entitled anywhere they are, whether on a phone, a tablet, a television or a laptop.

Let the legal proceedings begin.

Image from Project-Pak

Gogobot’s First Big iPhone Upgrade Gives Users A Mobile, Friendsourced Trip Planner

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 07:14 PM PST

trips_plans

With the social travel space taking off right now, and competition increasing, it really behooves the bigger players in the space not to do too much smelling of the roses. Social travel planning startup Gogobot would be a good example. The site found some early adoption and buzz, after winning a Crunchie for Best Design and was named one of the best 50 websites of 2011 by Time.

Initially, Gogobot was designed to be a place people could go to share reviews on their favorite destinations — like Yelp for travel. But it quickly began adding features, like the requisite inclusion of Facebook and Twitter signup/integration, game mechanics and rewards (like badges and leaderboards), and launched a good-looking mobile version in iOS app form. These moves beefed up the service significantly, and led to the startup’s $15 million Series A raise in November.

Gogobot then went on to leverage its user-generated database of travel photos in a smart partnership with Flipboard that would turn its photos into sleek, geo-tagged postcards, like a travel scrapbook. Yet, since launching its iPhone app in October, Gogobot has pretty much left its sole mobile app alone, aside from a number of small releases mainly focused on speed and performance.

That approach is changing today, though, as Gogobot has launched its first major upgrade to its iPhone app, which looks to add to the app’s utility as a social travel planner. Gogobot CEO Travis Katz tells us that, initially the team figured that users wanted to do most of their travel planning on their desktops, and use mobile to navigate their trips and share their experiences. But user feedback showed the opposite — that people want to plan their trip, explore, and share while on the go, too.

So the new mobile Gogobot now allows users to plan their entire trips to one of more than 60,000 travel destinations, based on recommendations from friends and those with similar interests. Users can browse reviews and photos of hotels, restaurants, and attractions (which Gogobot sorts based on their popularity within your personal network), picking and choosing from the best options to create their own travel plan. They then get instant access to maps and directions, phone numbers, hours of operation, making reservations at restaurants and booking hotels rooms right from the app.

Once they get back home, Gogobot users can surf through the photos of friends and family who are still out on the go, with Gogobot collecting those images into postcards. According to Katz, this has become one of Gogobot’s most popular features, and has also received an upgrade, now offering users access to two postcard styles which can be shared via Facebook, Twitter, SMS, or email.

Gogobot users can still add places and write reviews to their Gogobot passport while on the go, but browsing the best things to do, and adding those places they like to their trip plan are great new features while you’re maneuvering about on your vacation. It’s also pretty huge that Gogobot sorts the top places in any city, based on your own personal network, so if your friends have been to a specific hotel or city, Gogobot will show those friendsourced recommendations first. If you don’t, it sorts them based on popularity, and always surfaces the reviews that have personal relevance within your network first. For example, this is the passport Gogobot created for Mista Katz, without doing any work.

And just for a sense of how far the startup has come? TripAdvisor, by all accounts the largest player in the space, (which also went public in December and grew revenues to $137 million in February), comes up short of Gogobot in monthly active users, according to AppData. It’s behind in dailies, but keep in mind AppData just measures Facebook data, only a portion of Gogobot’s user base. It’s a solid update from Gogobot, and worth checking out.

You can find the updated app in the App Store here.

Twitter Has (At Least) Three New VPs

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 07:01 PM PST

elad gil

It looks like Twitter has promoted three of its directors.

A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment for this story, but the promotions aren’t exactly a secret. Both Elad Gil (pictured) and Joel Lunenfeld have updated their LinkedIn profiles to reflect their new titles — vice president of corporate strategy and vice president of global sales strategy, respectively. Gil joined Twitter after the company acquired his location data startup Mixer Labs, while Lunenfeld’s profile says he spent nearly a decade as the CEO of marketing agency Moxie Interactive.

Meanwhile, Chloe Sladden, who was Twitter’s director of content and programming, seemed to confirm via tweet that she has been promoted to VP status as well. Her LinkedIn profile hasn’t been similarly updated, but it seems safe to assume that she’s vice president of content and programming, or something in that vein. She was previously VP of Special Programming Projects at Current.

As far as I can tell, these are new positions. From the outside, at least, it looks like Twitter is just giving more seniority and fancier titles to the company’s current leadership — a natural step as it grows.

Yelp IPO Wants To Raise $107.25M At A $898.1 Million Valuation

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 06:17 PM PST

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Tomorrow morning comes the moment Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman’s been waiting for seven years. According to the NYT, Yelp will drop on the NYSE under the YELP ticker tomorrow morning.

Yelp will be offering 7.15 million shares at $15 dollars a share, wanting to raise about $107.25 million in its IPO. The deal is said to be heavily over subscribed, and I’ve heard that some Yelpers were disappointed by the low price — despite the fact that the company is still not profitable and trading at a valuation of more than ten times its revenues.

While Yelp generated $83.3 million in 2011, it also operated at a $16.9 million loss.

Yelp will be the fourth in a series of high profile tech IPOs, with Groupon, LinkedIn, and Zynga all debuting before it to mixed results. Industry giant Facebook is set to wreak havoc IPO in the spring.
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