The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- The September Problem
- Why Entrepreneurs Fail And Most Startups Are DOA
- Google Wallet’s Founding Engineer, Product Lead Already at Work on Next Startup, Tappmo
- Tim “The Freak” Lincecum Co-founds Stealth Startup 12Society, More Celebs To Come
- The Agony And Ecstasy Of Mike Daisey
- Getty Images CEO On Building A Company That Lasts [TCTV]
- Developers: Quick! Get “Retina-Ready” Or Risk Abandonment
- TechCrunch Giveaway: A New iPad! #TechCrunch
- iPad Launch Brings Back Familiar Faces, “Changes Lives”
- Explore 13.7 Billion Years Of Cosmic History In Your Browser With ChronoZoom
- Flipboard Gets Retina-Ready, But Will Users Spend More Time In-App?
- Gillmor Gang Live 03.16.12 (TCTV)
- Fab: In 2 Years, iPad Users Will Account For A Quarter Of Our Revenue
- Bizdom Accelerator Is Looking For Startups In Cleveland, Detroit For April 2012 Session
- Facebook Bans Source Code Extraction In Proposed Governance Changes
- Aetna: The Company Scaring Its Competition And Delighting Startups
- Samsung And RIM Rumored To Be Tied Up In BB10 Licensing Talks
- How The JOBS Act Could Change Startup Investing Forever
- This American Life Retracts Mike Daisey’s Piece On Foxconn For “Significant Fabrications”
- Sir Richard Branson & Flipboard Investor Jerry Murdock Put Nearly $1M Into MySocialCloud
| Posted: 17 Mar 2012 09:00 AM PDT  All right. That’s it. You kids come in off my lawn, gather round the table, throw a log on the Nest, and hear now a tale of the dread and fabled Time Before The Web. In the beginning, 1 there was Usenet, and it was good: online conversations ordered by topic, built around ongoing threads rather than individual posts, so that they could and often did last for months. Then came the Web. And eventually, lo, the Web gave us Digg, and it was good, for a while. Then Digg declined. Then there was Reddit, and it was good, for a while. Now Reddit too has declined. Us techies had Slashdot, until it declined. Now we have Hacker News… which is arguably in decline. But at least we have Gawker! No, wait. “Capture the intelligence of the readership? …That’s a joke. For every two comments that are interesting, there will be eight that will be off-topic or toxic,” saith none other than Nick Denton himself, re the ‘tragedy of the comments’. Ah, but that’s just them. Here at TechCrunch, all comments are from incisive, witty people who have both read and understood the article they are commenting on, right? Right? …Sigh. Back in the ’70s and ’80s, science fiction writers saw the Internet coming and started trying to predict the way in which it would work. John Brunner anticipated direct online democracy. Vernor Vinge and William Gibson opted for virtual-reality “cyberspace.” Not yet, guys. You know who came closest to getting it right? Orson Scott Card (who’s now, alas, something of a loathsome crank) in Ender’s Game. It’s mostly a book about killing aliens, but there’s also a plot thread in which the protagonist’s brother and sister (anonymously) argue so brilliantly and cogently in online forums that they become major political forces. Well, OK, he got the existence of the blogosphere right. Its effects, not so much. Nobody in a position of actual power much cares what bloggers think, and why should they? It's almost impossible to express and maintain a coherent message in a medium whose elements–individual blog posts–are so transient. That’s why some startups are trying to reinvent blogging. Quora, for one; and, more recently, Branch, which (so far) basically hosts invitation-only symposiums on subjects like “How do blogs need to evolve?” (I know, I know, how meta.) The answer increasingly seems to be, amusingly, “Be more like Usenet!” Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Unfortunately, that won’t help. Whether we’re talking about Digg, Reddit, blog comments, or Usenet itself, the fundamental problem with online conversation is this: the larger the community, the more its conversation regresses to the mediocre mean. Back in the glory days of Usenet, this was called “the September problem”; most participants were at universities, so every autumn brought a new flood of students. Then, as conversation quality declined, the phrase “It is always September on the Internet” arose. And so it has been ever since. Restructuring conversations around questions (a la Quora) or subjects (a la Usenet) rather than posts-and-comments won’t affect this. Invitation-only symposia will, but are by their very nature elitist and distancing. People want to talk back. I respect all the attempts people have made and are making to improve online conversation; social filters, gamification, etc. But I don’t think the problem can be fixed by mere incentivization. Call me a SNOOT (PDF), but I prefer a simpler solution: turn off all spellcheckers, and the Facebook Comments grammar corrector, and build a machine-learning system to automatically rank and filter comments and other conversation by grammar and spelling. (Adjusted for whether they’re written in the author’s first language, ideally.) A pipe dream, you say? But no! I give you the contentiously named StupidFilter, “an open-source filter software that can detect rampant stupidity in written English.” This just might be the future. Because, in the words of another great SF writer, “The analysts … concluded that it was just human nature and you couldn’t fix it, and so they went for a quick cheap technical fix.” Words to live by. Image credit: FigzBox 1By “in the beginning” I mean “in the early nineties, when I was a teenager.” I am told that back in the dim mists of forgotten time before even then, there were things like the Well, but surely these are only myths.
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| Why Entrepreneurs Fail And Most Startups Are DOA Posted: 17 Mar 2012 06:00 AM PDT  Editor's note: Contributor Ashkan Karbasfrooshan is the founder and CEO of WatchMojo, he hosts a show on business and has published books on success. Follow him @ashkan. This isn't an anti-entrepreneur rant. It's also not a piece to discourage anyone from launching their own business. It's a warning for those who seek to launch their startup to understand some of the lesser-discussed reasons why 99% of new businesses are Dead On Arrival. As outlined, success is 1) subjective, relative and fluid: i) we define success based on what drives us, ii) but we tend to measure it relative to other people's success and over time, iii) we convince ourselves to change its definition, revising upwards or downwards, depending on the conditions on the ground. 2) a function of six variables: vision, ambition, determination, execution, timing and luck. Part 1: Before You Launch Your Startup… Sometimes, Macro Timing is Everything Success is as common as an eclipse, the result of externalities lining up at the right time. However, entrepreneurs rarely launch their business as a result of market (macro) conditions, but rather, personal (micro) timing and circumstances that have little to do with the broader landscape, even if the macro backdrop is at odds with the micro circumstances. An example of this is launching a hiring startup in a recession when companies are laying people off by the boatloads. No amount of vision, ambition, determination, execution and luck will offset your bad timing. Ideally the macro and micro come together at the right time. Don't underestimate the micro timing, either Of course, that isn't an excuse for those who fail due to the wrong timing, either. You can overcome bad timing if you execute well otherwise. However, more often than not, entrepreneurs launch businesses when they're inexperienced or when their personal situation doesn't lend itself to the startup life's rigors (recently married, new child, student loans, etc.) What are you: an Intrapreneur or an Entrepreneur? Assuming the timing isn't off, many aspiring entrepreneurs simply aren't cut out – or truly willing – to be entrepreneurs, whose roles and responsibilities literally include janitorial services. The sheer majority of people who launch businesses are in fact intrapreneurs – entrepreneurial types who can succeed in a larger organization by launching new products, business units etc., when they benefit from support in administration, sales, marketing and have the stability that comes with a regular paycheck. Too many brilliant minds waste energy and mindshare on non-value generating functions because they think they're destined to be entrepreneurs when they are, at best, possibly intrapreneurs. For these, it's far better to launch a product, service, division within an existing company to have a better chance to succeed and then over time, if desired, pursue the traditional entrepreneur route which includes mind-numbing, back-breaking and otherwise demoralizing tasks that don't add value. Part 2: Still Want to Launch a Startup? "I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed" – Michael Jordan. The mark of a good entrepreneur (and athlete or entertainer) is learning from mistakes, somehow turning them into opportunities and coming back stronger to win. It's part art, part convincing job, part delusion. The instant you realize you've made a mistake, learn from it but find ways to turn it to your advantage. If mistakes demoralize you to the point of bringing you down or giving up, stop now: entrepreneurship isn't for you. Failing to Ask Around and Asking The Wrong People Entrepreneurs are accused of not listening, but the best ones are listening and learning all the time. However, we're selective in how we process and apply what we hear and learn; that’s part of what makes entrepreneurs seem difficult. A common mistake is hatching, launching and growing a startup without actually asking people around you what they think. I'm not referring to friends and family, but people in the industry or other entrepreneurs who have battle wound scars. If you're going to launch an ad-supported business, for example, ask people on Madison Avenue. If you're going to need massive funding for a disruptive product, ask VCs on Sand Hill Road. Don't Underestimate the Critical Milestones of Your Startup People don't think that the status-quo is broken, and even if it is and they voice their discontent, human beings are creatures of habit. So don't simply assume that advertisers will beta test your service or users will adopt your product. Wrong Geographic Market VCs oftentimes remind entrepreneurs to set up shop where they can hire talent. It's equally important to be in hubs where you can rise with the ecosystem. This doesn't mean that you "have" to be in NY, San Francisco, etc., but usually the pros will offset the cons. Open Your F*****g Blinders Sometimes we have a tendency to launch a new venture based on our previous limited experience. As proud individuals, entrepreneurs also tend to launch projects based on some kind of personal drive to prove people wrong. That can be a positive source of motivation but it can also send you down the wrong path. Stealth is Stupid Do yourself a favor and drop the stealth approach. Whatever you're thinking of, no matter how unique and revolutionary it might seem, others are doing what you're doing. In fact, you ought to tell everyone what you're working on so that you 1) find out about the others and 2) get feedback to avoid shipping a clunker. I've never seen a stealthy project come out and be either impressive or interesting; usually it's overhyped and underwhelming. Experience is What You Do With It A failure can be a learning experience, or a shock to your confidence. Winners come back from defeats and overcome setbacks. If you can't do that, then maybe entrepreneurship isn’t for you, at least not now. Everyone can be an entrepreneur if they realize what it takes to be a successful one. If you enjoyed this, you might like things entrepreneurs should avoid when fundraising. [image via flickr/fireflythegreat]
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| Google Wallet’s Founding Engineer, Product Lead Already at Work on Next Startup, Tappmo Posted: 16 Mar 2012 10:11 PM PDT  More people leaving Google Wallet means more founders for mobile payments startups! Jonathan Wall, a founding engineer on Google Wallet, and Marc Freed-Finnegan, its product lead, are already heads down on their next venture Tappmo after having their last day at Google on March 5. They’re not saying too much about what it is aside from saying it’s about revolutionizing offline payments. (No surprise there.) “We think the next few years will bring groundbreaking developments in mobile commerce and we are excited to dive in with our new venture,” Freed-Finnegan says. Google Wallet has seen a wave of departures over the last month or so and the company may need to rethink its strategy. There are so many constituencies that Google needs to have on its side to win. But everyone including the carriers, retailers, Google, the banks and PayPal wants control. And nobody — especially the carriers — really wants to give up power. Verizon has even actively blocked the Google Wallet on the handsets it sells. After losing so much of their direct relationship with customers over the past few years with the advent of the iPhone and Android, carriers want to hold onto what may be their last lucrative tie with consumers beyond their monthly bills. So you have Google Wallet, which has the support of one relatively weaker carrier with Sprint. Then you have the major carriers like AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile trying to collaborate on their own payments solution Isis. Then there’s PayPal, which is trying to do cloud-based payments and is shying away from NFC. Then the big-box retailers like Walmart and Target are collaborating on yet another solution. Then there are startups like Square, Dwolla and more. It’s a mess, really. So it will be curious to see if a few Google Wallet insiders can offer an interesting solution to a very tangled space.
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| Tim “The Freak” Lincecum Co-founds Stealth Startup 12Society, More Celebs To Come Posted: 16 Mar 2012 08:52 PM PDT  Back in October 2010, billionaire tech investor Mark Cuban jumped into the daily deals game with a $1.5 million seed investment in gift online shopping deals startup JungleCents. Because the startup took a somewhat alternative approach to daily deals, using a lead generation model to give publishers supplemental revenue streams, today, JungleCents has seen some pretty good traction, as its deals are now reaching 2.2 million email addresses (publishers included), and its sign-up rate tripled in the last three months of 2011. However, at the beginning of this year, Cuban acquired all of the JungleCents assets, allowing the startup’s co-founders, Sameer Mehta and Nadir Hyder, to take off to found a new venture. Today, we’re getting a bit of a glimpse into what the guys have been working on, as they are officially ready to announce a new startup, called 12Society. Joining Mehta as co-founders of the new venture are Chirayu Patel, a former solutions architect at VMWare, and one slightly more well-known name: San Francisco Giant and two-time Cy Young Award winner, Tim Lincecum. Because the startup is still in stealth mode, the co-founders are remaining tight-lipped about just what they’re cooking up, but this much has become clear: 12Society is a guy-focused lifestyle company built on “the intersection of culture, technology and commerce,” according to CEO Sameer Mehta. The kernel for 12Society came out of a problem that the co-founders identified while at JungleCents, specifically that many brands out there want not only to get the attention of the 18 to 35-year-old male demographic, but they want to get them actively engaging — and shopping. The co-founders said that one of their biggest take-aways from their experience was companies that find a smart way to be an intermediary between products and male consumers, while reducing the friction standing in the way of direct purchasing, then that company is already setting itself up for success. Because guys tend to be less brand conscious — yet more loyal to the brands they choose to wear on their t-shirts or in the phones they buy — they can make for great brand ambassadors. That is, if you can get them involved in a way that isn’t underhanded, kitschy, or that reeks of shilling. The same is of course, true for women, and collectively the co-founders say that editorial-driven marketing leads to higher conversion (and receptiveness), because it’s inherently more personal, curated by the people who create that content. The point of saying all this is that, while 12Society’s model is not yet ready for the light of day, the startup will be developing its content with influencers like Tim Lincecum to create a user experience that is both guy-focused and feels more like a realtime conversation with these influencers. The 12Society CEO said that there eventually will be six celebrity or “notable” figures involved — interestingly, all at the founding level. Whether deals, offers, gossip, or short form content, you can be sure that those influencers will be heavily involved in the creation of that content. The startup has already been working with Hollywood agencies, like ICM, Brillstein Entertainment Partners, and Management 360, to ensure that the “culture creators” they represent “have a front row seat.” As to the San Francisco Giants starting pitcher, Mehta says that his “passion and perspective in what we are doing has already been a great asset to the company.” While the company has been self-funded thus far, the team in the process of raising its first round of outside funding, and it would be awesome to be privy to the meetings in which Lincecum pitches 12Society to investors. Get it? Startups have been turning to celebrities and influencers more and more of late as a way to build instant buzz, but how many celebrity-founded startups can you name that have stood the test of time? Not many. So it will be interesting to see if this dynamic is able to have success where others have failed. To guide them along the way, the team has added Anthony Saleh of Atom Factory, Founder of Young and Restless Dee Murthy, and Mike Walsh of Rockstar Group (and also an investor in Uber). The team will be announcing further notable co-founders in the coming weeks, and it sounds like at least a few more athletes will be in the mix. Official launch to come within the next few months. Stay tuned. For more, and to sign up for beta access, check the startup out at home here, or see the announcement on Tim’s Facebook fan page here. They’re also on AngelList here.
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| The Agony And Ecstasy Of Mike Daisey Posted: 16 Mar 2012 06:06 PM PDT  It seems that noted firebrand Mike Daisey’s story – the one about the crippled, underaged factory workers who unspooled tales of woe and torture at the hands of their evil Foxconn masters at Apple’s behest- was at least partially fabricated. He was outed as, at best, a bad journalist and at worst, a fraud. To be clear, he’s a monologist and playwright and had no business telling this story (just as he really had no business telling Amazon’s story way back when) but he, like so many creatives, riffed on science and technology for popular effect and got both drastically wrong. Daisey was a droning Woody Guthrie whose intentions were good but whose rigor was lacking. His efforts to expose the Great Sin of our technological age – that the items we use and love must be made by unhappy hands – were noble and I believe he’s done some good. What he failed to grasp in his effort to dramatize the horrors of modern manufacturing was its absolute banality. There is no great demon forcing humans to work at his forge. There are no hellions bent on the destruction of the peon’s will at some dimly-lit workbench. There are simply young people working for older engineers in well-lit assembly lines. In an effort to save time and money, the engineers require their employees to work in a manner that streamlines both time and money and for their efforts they receive a small salary and housing. Manufacturing isn’t frightening because it exploits the worker – all endeavors, in some way, exploit the worker. It’s frightening in its brutal and absolute efficiency at consuming resources, human effort, and intellect to cast a torrent of consumer goods at the endless open maw of the world consumer. We don’t need a new ethical iPhone. We need to make do with the one we have, at least for a year. To feel schadenfreude at Daisey’s fall is wrong. I will instead remind you that most of what he said was, technically, true. And while his story may have been a fabrication, his mission to help the oppressed was a good one, and a true one. We can learn from his example, at least in terms of consuming less and reducing our endless neophilia. Over the next few years, Foxconn will change. The people working there will slowly spread out into the Chinese cities and countryside, replaced by increasingly adroit robots. The age of men and women building complex things dawned in the 1700s, reached its apex in the Industrial Revolution, and is now seeing its nadir. The small, quick hands of a factory worker will be replaced by small, quick pincers and the sun will set on the manual worker in Shenzhen and other points east. This is inevitable. Until this change sweeps away all of Daisey’s concerns, we can adjust our expectations, reduce our consumption, and stop ascribing totemic powers to new technology. Or, more likely, we won’t. Either way, a million iPads will roll down a thousand assembly lines, five hundred tired eyes scanning the screens for the tiniest imperfections while the relentless juggernaut of our own desire ravages the planet and pulls us further from the sense of humanity that Daisey tried to mightily to impart on the impassive faces of the Asian manufacturing giants. He may have failed as a journalist, but he humanized a problem that we have been avoiding for too long. For that, at least, we can’t fault him.
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| Getty Images CEO On Building A Company That Lasts [TCTV] Posted: 16 Mar 2012 05:35 PM PDT 
Watch the video above to get Klein’s thoughts on revenue models (“We may be old fashioned around here, but we actually think that people have to pay for content. We think that content creators also need to make a living”), enforcing intellectual property ownership (“[The music labels] did something that is unspeakable: They sued their fans and their customers”) and going with the flow (“The customer is not always right, but the customer is almost always ahead of you.”) There are plenty more bon mots where those came from, so please do watch the interview in full. Feature image of Jonathan Klein courtesy of Flickr user Joi Ito
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| Developers: Quick! Get “Retina-Ready” Or Risk Abandonment Posted: 16 Mar 2012 05:05 PM PDT  I just got the new iPad in the mail, and naturally the first thing I did was load up a few of my old apps and throw some content on there. Oh god! Oh no! One of my favorite apps, GoodReader, which opens a great variety of files and which I use to consume the enormous PDFs from Google Books, is a patchwork of pixels. My go-to Mahjong game, aliased to hell! Muji notebook – my pencil leaves a chunky trail! Developers, I just want to tell you how critical it is that you upgrade your app to look at least passable on the new displays. The full-on big update can come later. But Apple has thrown your standard-def apps under the bus, and you need to drag yourselves out before your capricious iPad users lose faith. It’s not some big revelation — we all knew there would be a transitional period — but I underestimated how bad it could be. Apple has not implemented any safeties for displayed content: the PDFs in GoodReader and the graphics even in premium games are being resized in the poorest possible way. Not even a bilinear filter to save the eye! Look at how awful text looks without handling (open in a new tab): Millions of new iPads are going to be opened up over the next few weeks, and every app that hasn’t made the change is going to be wide-open to a Cuckoo attack by competitors. Right now Kindle is threatening to unseat GoodReader on my iPad, because it displays text clearly. For developers offering “lite” versions and hoping to capture users, failing to support the new resolution will, plain and simple, result in lost users and potentially lost income. If your app renders text or graphics, for the love of god update it, or don’t be surprised when a lower-quality app takes your place on a user’s iPad because that user didn’t feel like waiting another hour for the update that will make their content look good. You can worry about app size, truly redone icons, and the other details later. Just get something out there! Every hour counts!
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| TechCrunch Giveaway: A New iPad! #TechCrunch Posted: 16 Mar 2012 04:43 PM PDT  Happy new iPad Friday! All of the new iPads are shipping already and for those of you who ordered a new one online, you should be getting them soon (if you haven’t already). So in light of that, and also because it’s St. Patrick’s Day weekend and what better way to send you off than this — we have a brand new iPad to give away. Thanks to our friends over at Kabam, we have a new 32GB WiFi Black iPad. The contest will start now and go through this weekend, ending this Sunday at 9:30pm PT. That gives you three days to enter. Once the giveaway is over, we will make sure our winner followed the rules and contact them this weekend. Everyone can enter, as long as you can receive deliverable packages. To enter, all you have to do is follow the simple steps below. 1) “Like” our TechCrunch Facebook Page: 2) Then do one of the following: - Retweet this post (including the #TechCrunch hashtag) Kabam is also having a special giveaway of their own — they are giving 15 new iPads away in 15 days. Starting today and going through the end of March, anyone who has Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North on their iOS device will automatically be entered into a daily drawing for the new iPad. The game is completely free & available in the App Store. Anyone can learn more about the contest or get a bonus entry by simply tweeting the phrase located here. So even if you don’t win our giveaway, you have a lot of other chances to win one. Good luck everyone!
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| iPad Launch Brings Back Familiar Faces, “Changes Lives” Posted: 16 Mar 2012 03:18 PM PDT  If you’re reading this right now, you already know what day it is: iPad day. We headed down to the 5th Ave. flagship store in Manhattan this morning to see just how crazy things would get, but truth be told, the mood was quiet. In fact, the media seemed to be the most raucous, while soon-to-be iPad owners simply tried to keep warm in the freezing mist. Since it was before the crack of dawn, many of the people standing in line were still rather sleepy, but as I searched through the crowd for an enthusiastic face, I came up with a familiar one instead. Remember that girl who stood in line for 40 hours when the iPad 2 launched, only so she could sell her spot for $900? She’s baaaaaaack. Unfortunately, her big offers (one topping out at $2,000) fell through. Maybe it was because she wasn’t first in line this time, but third. We also caught up with the second person to leave the Apple Store with an iPad (NY1, Bloomberg, and others believe he was the first, but the first actually ran off without speaking to the media). Number Two flew in from Brazil to pick one up for his friend and himself, and seemed intensely emotional about it. “Apple products have changed my life,” he said.
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| Explore 13.7 Billion Years Of Cosmic History In Your Browser With ChronoZoom Posted: 16 Mar 2012 03:17 PM PDT  Sometimes I feel like we of the tech community tend to get bogged down in the little stuff. Hardware specs, OS choices, rumor after endless rumor — it can be nice to just take a step back and stop sweating the small stuff. For a bit of perspective, why not take a few minutes this fine Friday afternoon and explore the nearly 14 billion year history of the cosmos as we know it? There are plenty of ways to do it — randomly clicking through Wikipedia could get the job done — but why not do it with a little pizzazz? With ChronoZoom, we can do just that. ChronoZoom splays out the entirety of cosmic history in a web browser, where users can click into different epochs to learn about about the events that have culminated to bring us to where we are today — in my case, sitting in an office chair writing about space. Eager to learn about the Stelliferous epoch? Click away, my fellow explorer. Curious about the formation of the earth? Jump into the “Earth and Solar System” section to see historian David Christian talk about the birth of our homeworld. What’s more, the entire project was constructed with the magic of Azure and HTML5, so it’s simple enough to veg out on a couch with iPad or Android device in hand and delve into the deep, dark, wondrous past. The ChronoZoom project is the brainchild of Professor Walter Alvarez and a former student of his named Roland Saekow. Alvarez is perhaps best known for working with his father to put forth the theory that dinosaurs were eradicated 65 million years ago because of a massive asteroid strike, but his path crossed with Saekow’s while he was teaching a course called Big History at UC Berkeley. When I think of history, and especially ancient history, I think of the Egyptians. The Romans. The Tigris and the Euphrates bounding Mesopotamia. Big History, as Alvarez puts it, extends far far beyond that — it seeks to explore the the events that have shaped not just the earth, but the universe. Hence, the tremendous scale displayed in ChronoZoom. What started as a novel idea for a learning tool to present the past ultimately gained significant support from Microsoft Research and a team from Moscow State University, and, well, here we are. ChronoZoom is still in its beta stages, and while it's definitely apparent at times (I imagine they’ll fill more information into the thing soon), the whole experience is both surprisingly fluid and terribly cool. If you thought the Sagan’s famous Pale Blue Dot was sobering, try watching all of recorded human history disappear in an instant as you switch to a larger scale view of universal antiquity. How’s that for making Android vs. iOS squabbles look petty?
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| Flipboard Gets Retina-Ready, But Will Users Spend More Time In-App? Posted: 16 Mar 2012 01:47 PM PDT  Good news, new iPad users: everyone’s favorite iPad news magazine Flipboard (OK, my favorite, but I hear the Flipboard / Zite battles get fierce) is now Retina-ready. I know, we all thought the enhanced app would be approved by tonight, but, as it turns out, the update was shipped a bit earlier. Consider this your PSA. However, in the brief note Flipboard sent me about the update, something struck me as interesting: company co-founder Evan Doll casually speculated that the Retina Display would lead to longer Flipboard reading sessions. Will that actually be true, though, in the long-term? Of course, you already know everything about how excellent the new iPad’s display is (like putting on glasses for the first time), so you can imagine how nice Flipboard will look, given its emphasis on big pictures, and a glossy magazine-like appearance. The company says the update will make the images more saturated and sharper, and the typography more comfortable to read. But it wasn’t until I read Doll’s statement – you know, “blah blah blah, Flipboard is amazing…Retina’s so awesome…blah blah, we believe people will spend even more time reading their Flipboard,“ that I realized something: we don’t at all know that to be true. The world has never had a tablet with a display like this and the long-term impacts on user behavior are still unknown. It’s possible – I’d say, it’s even likely – that a beautiful display like this will cause changes in user behavior. But how much? In what way? And in which app verticals? It’s funny, but this particular side effect of the iPad Retina rollout hadn’t crossed my mind until just now. If anything, I’ve thought of the Retina Display as a merely selling point, one of the many reasons to upgrade from the older model iPads to the new one, just as it was one of many reasons to upgrade from older iPhones to the Retina-ready iPhone 4. But Retina Displays impacting users’ time spent in-app? That would be interesting, if it turns out to be true after the initial ooh-and-aahness of the new iPad’s display wears off. Plus, you can’t correlate the impacts the Retina Display had on iPhone apps as to how the change will impact iPad. The devices, while both mobile, are used in very different ways. The iPad is designed for immersive, lean-back consumption experiences, so display improvements could lead to increased app usage, I suppose. But this question really boils down to how much of an app’s usage is based on the content versus the presentation of that content? This is an area that’s only now really being explored in any detail. Case in point: Fab.com found out just a few weeks ago, how incredibly different the behavior of its iPad user base was from its mobile and web users. They buy more, shop more often and are on track to account for 25% of the company’s revenue over the next two years. But what Fab still has to speculate about, is why. Like most everything in the world, there’s no one simple explanation for the matter. But with the launch of the iPad’s Retina Display, there is a possibility of homing in on one area of user behavior: before Retina, and after. Let’s see what happens. The Retina Display’s impact on the app usage is a metric I’d like to follow up on in a few weeks/months/years’ time. Hopefully, Flipboard will be open to sharing that data. In addition, feel free to send me your metrics, Retina-ready app makers, if you happen to notice any Retina-induced changes to user behavior. I’m @sarahintampa on Twitter. Contact info on my profile.
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| Gillmor Gang Live 03.16.12 (TCTV) Posted: 16 Mar 2012 01:00 PM PDT |
| Fab: In 2 Years, iPad Users Will Account For A Quarter Of Our Revenue Posted: 16 Mar 2012 12:34 PM PDT  There’s something interesting going on over there on Fab. The design shopping site found that some of its best customers – that is, those who convert to paying customers the quickest, those who spend the most, and those who return the most often – are mobile users. The company has known about this data for some time, but wanted more in-depth analysis, so it hired software-as-a-service firm Custora to help them dive in and figure out the lifetime value of the mobile customer, specifically those using the iPad. The results are impressive. Since the beginning of the year, Fab says it has known that customers with mobile apps are more engaged. The company launched its mobile apps on iOS and Android in October, and by the time it reached one year post-pivot, the company found that over 40% of usage came from mobile applications. Could it be that mobile applications, with their addictive, time-sensitive notifications about Fab’s flash sales draw users in? Or is there something that’s inherently more enticing about the Fab experience when using a mobile device or tablet? By the start of 2012, it became apparent that mobile customers behaved differently. They purchased more than two times faster, bought more often, and had larger basket sizes than online shoppers. But Fab noticed just a few weeks ago that iPad customers’ behavior really stood out. With help from Custora, the company discovered that iPad customers convert to making their first purchase exponentially faster than non-iPad users, with over 40% making a purchase by month 3 and over 70% purchasing by month 7. Fab was also seeing impressive conversion rates for iPad users. “A lot of really good businesses build their business model around getting to 10% conversion rate to purchasers within 6 to 12 months,” says Fab CEO Jason Goldberg. “It's simply amazing that we're seeing 10% conversion to purchase within the first week for iPad users.” In terms of revenue, iPad users were found to be worth twice as much two-year revenue as non-iPad users. And, even though only 15% of Fab users are iPad users, those customers are expected to generate 25% of Fab’s revenue over the next two years. That last figure is really remarkable, especially because, in the grand scheme of things, the tablet market is still in its early days. What will these figures look like three years in? Five? And more importantly, why are iPad users such great shoppers? Is it just that they can afford to be? As it turns out, that’s actually one of Goldberg’s explanations. iPad users have more disposable income, he notes, and are “just more likely to be design lovers.” But it’s more than just the person on the other end of the device, he says. It’s the device itself, too. “The tactile touch experience of the iPad more closely resembles being able to physically ‘touch’ a product like physical-world shopping versus the web which can feel more distant when browsing with a mouse or track-pad,” says Goldberg. Plus, the Fab iPad app itself has been designed to take advantage of the device’s form factor, by focusing on one product at a time, while the Fab web experience allows users to browse across sales and products. The iPad app will soon get another major improvement too – the company is developing its Retina-ready application, which it plans to have out in a few months’ time. But all this almost makes you wonder if perhaps online shopping sites should begin taking their cues from the iPad to better improve their own experiences. Although computers don’t typically have touchscreens, there are ways that online stores could somewhat mimic the tablet experience through layout choices and navigational flows. Would users balk at a tablet-like interface on the regular ol’ web, or will they eventually come to expect it? It’s far too soon to know the answer to that, but as far as shopping sites go, expect them – and maybe even Fab – to experiment with the concept in the months to come.
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| Bizdom Accelerator Is Looking For Startups In Cleveland, Detroit For April 2012 Session Posted: 16 Mar 2012 12:31 PM PDT  Here at TechCrunch, we live, eat, sleep and breathe startups. But sometimes we can get a little too focused on Silicon Valley and forget that there are startup scenes blossoming all over the country and the world. Two up and coming startup states just so happen to be Michigan and Ohio, and one accelerator, Bizdom, is looking for the next generation of entrepreneurs. The accelerator is accepting applications for its April 2012 accelerator session, which will last three months. The program offers seed funding and mentoring to help young founders and creators leverage their talent as much as possible within Detroit and Cleveland. Here’s what they’re looking for, in their own words:
Once you’ve completed the application and have been accepted into the program, Bizdom hooks you up with up to $25,000 in seed funding for 8 percent equity in the company. You’ll also receive mentoring and guidance from various experts in the areas of sales, marketing and technology. Then, at the end of the three-month program, startups will have the opportunity to pitch investors to get further funding as they enter the real world. The application deadline for Bizdom’s April 2012 session ends on March 23, so you’ve only got about a week to make this happen. Move fast.
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| Facebook Bans Source Code Extraction In Proposed Governance Changes Posted: 16 Mar 2012 12:14 PM PDT  Facebook has proposed several changes to its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and is asking the public for feedback until March 22nd. The most important changes are the prohibition of extracting source code from its downloadable software, and a clear explanation that friends can share your information through applications. The changes are necessary since Facebook released its first download “Messenger For Windows” this month, and because it has come under greater scrutiny from government privacy offices. You can see the full track changes version of the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities below and go here to leave your comments. The changes aren’t very controversial, but if they receive enough comments, Facebook will open them to a vote. Along with giving it the right to delete the accounts of users who meddle with its software, Facebook wants its documents to note that it may automatically provide updates:
The rest of the changes focus on updating language so the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities is consistent between Facebook’s data usage policy, including changing “hateful content” to “hatespeech”, including social plugins in the provisions that apply to offsite sharing buttons, and clarifying that friends can share your data with third-party applications. Over the past few months Facebook has undergone privacy audits and evaluations by the Federal Trade Commission and the Office of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner. Over the years, one complaint has been that users aren’t aware that their private information can be shared with apps by friends. While there’s no change to how that sharing happens, today’s proposal adds the bold text that follows to the governance statement: “When you or others who can see your content and information use an application, your content and information is shared with the application.” Facebook is responsible to the Irish Data Protection Commisioner for exploring alternative privacy controls for this type of sharing by July 2012.
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| Aetna: The Company Scaring Its Competition And Delighting Startups Posted: 16 Mar 2012 12:10 PM PDT  Editor's note: This guest post was written by Dave Chase, the CEO of Avado.com, a patient portal & relationship management company that was a TechCrunch Disrupt finalist. Previously he was a management consultant for Accenture's healthcare practice and founder of Microsoft's Health platform business. You can follow him on Twitter @chasedave. Whither health insurance? A former medical advisor to the Obama Administration who happens to be the brother of former Presidential Chief of Staff predicted in the New York Times that by 2020 health insurance companies will be extinct. Nearly two years ago, I penned a piece entitled Health Insurance’s Bunker Buster. It outlined two key reasons that health insurance — as we have known it the last couple decades — will cease to exist. Yet, in the midst of this backdrop, you have a CEO of a major insurance company looking positively giddy about the future when he is presenting at an event such as Health 2.0. Mark Bertolini of Aetna looks to be doing his best imitation of Lou Gerstner, who engineered the wholesale reinvention of IBM.
It looked like Gerstner was brought in to oversee the fire sale of the piece parts of IBM. Instead, his turnaround drove a 10x increase in IBM’s stock price over 10 years and put IBM on a path to renewal during the transition from one generation of computing to another. Aetna’s aggressive reinvention is great news for healthtech companies. Aetna is single-handedly creating a great exit opportunity for startups having completed over $1.5 billion of acquisitions in the last year. More importantly, those companies are helping healthcare organizations transition from the “do more, bill more” generation to the value/outcome-based generation. Unfortunately for most health insurance companies, their behavior is reminiscent of DEC, Data General, Wang and a host of once-successful computer makers that are in the dustbin of history. While still very profitable, DEC et al. saw the handwriting on the wall yet didn’t take decisive action. Health plans are largely following in DEC, Data General and Wang’s footsteps. Sure, they are making a few tactical moves here and there, but far from the rethink that is necessary. In contrast, Bertolini has stated that increasingly Aetna views itself as a healthIT company with an insurance component. Not exactly what you expect to hear from one of the largest health insurance corporations. Observing Aetna from afar, it appears there are at least four key insights driving their behavior:
There are readers who know more about Aetna and health plans in general. Please debunk or add to my hypotheses on Aetna’s strategy. The Prezi below is the introduction to a presentation I have given to some pharma execs that holds Aetna out as an example of how a healthcare organization can shift their core focus. In Pharma, it’s important to ask What Can Pharma Learn from the Railroads and IBM, — namely that they need to reinvent themselves or their business will remain a slow growth or flat business. For health insurance, it is more akin to the minicomputer makers where they must reinvent or they’ll go the way of DEC, Wang and Data General. Health insurance companies have been lumbering, risk-averse giants. That served themselves well in the staid healthcare marketplace of old. While serving well overall financially, health insurance companies have the dubious distinction of the lowest average Net Promoter Scores of any industry. Lower even than cable or airline industries. My belief that a major factor in this is that health insurance companies strayed from their roles as insurance companies and became prepaid healthcare service companies mucking around with the equivalent of car tune-ups, tire changes and the like. Imagine if we had co-pays, deductibles, Explanation of Benefits for tune-ups and tire changes. We would be paying a 40% insurance bureaucracy tax there as well. Health insurance companies created a “system” that can be charitably described as a Gordian Knot designed by Rube Goldberg. It’s no wonder their Net Promoter Scores are so abysmal. The “good news” in the horribly bad numbers is that there is every reason for health insurance companies to follow Aetna’s path and reinvent themselves. It doesn’t serve health plans to be among the most hated companies in American according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index. The blurbs on each are enough to make any health insurance exec wince.
The Rube Goldbergian insurance reimbursement system makes it virtually impossible to avoid comments like the last one. All of the change agents I speak with in health insurance companies realize the criticality of a major rethink and are excited about the work ahead to reinvent themselves. They also realize that it is very difficult for an established organization to change from within. Technology hubs such as Silicon Valley and Seattle have become the de facto R&D centers for healthcare organizations seeking to reinvent themselves. Startups stand to benefit from this friendlier environment. The entire lifetime of the iTriage product Aetna bought was shorter than historical decision processes within health plans and providers. This should be a cautionary tale not only for health insurance companies, but providers and pharma as traditional industry demarcations are disappearing. It’s time to get the lead out and realize that patients are more than a vessel to attach billing codes to. Related Articles:
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| Samsung And RIM Rumored To Be Tied Up In BB10 Licensing Talks Posted: 16 Mar 2012 11:46 AM PDT  How does that old saying go again? "Everything old is new again?" That exactly how I feel about the RIM rumors that have been making the rounds today. According to a bit of analyst chatter, Samsung has their eyes on Waterloo-based RIM, and more specifically the new mobile operating system they've got cooking in the oven right now. If these reports hold true, then Samsung is ultimately after a minority stake in RIM and access to BB10, which they will load onto some of their forthcoming handsets. If BGC Partners analyst Collin Gillis is to be believed, then the deal is coming into play because Samsung is concerned about the future of their relationship with Google after their Motorola purchase is finalized. Sound familiar? I'm not surprised — Samsung and RIM have been erroneously linked together in the past, with rumors of a full-on buyout making the rounds back in January. At the time, a Samsung spokesperson flatly denied the claims, going as far as to say there was no contact between the companies regarding a takeover. The one thing that gives this story any semblance of legitimacy is that Samsung is said to be considering a small stake in the company rather than buying it outright. Samsung wouldn't want to take on the entire company and all of its trappings — if they indeed want access to BB10 (which seems like a stretch to me), they'll ideally want to take as small a stake in RIM as they can and still get access to it. For what it's worth, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins would prefer that scenario to one where parts of RIM are broken up and sold to the highest bidder. Unsurprisingly, RIM's stock price has risen as news of the rumor wings its way around, but I have a feeling that a brief stock boost is the best RIM will be getting out of this situation. They could desperately use some help on the hardware front, and while linking up with Samsung could yield some fresh takes on the classic BlackBerry formula, Samsung still has some other options when it comes to an alternative mobile OS. Bada, anyone?
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| How The JOBS Act Could Change Startup Investing Forever Posted: 16 Mar 2012 11:45 AM PDT  [Editor's note: The following article is by Ryan Caldbeck, the founder of CircleUp, an equity based crowdfunding website. He clearly has something to gain from the topic -- but as an investor, he's also particularly well-informed. So we're running this guest post. But, for reference, check out these criticisms by the SEC and some politicians.] Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the JOBS Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at supporting small businesses by making it easier for them to access capital. A key feature of the bill enables crowdfunding, the process by which small companies raise growth capital from a large number of individual investors. While many people are debating the impact of the bill on investors, what seems lost in the debate is what types of businesses are likely to benefit, and how crowdfunding can change the way we all think about early stage investing. Today, startup investing is reserved for the 1%. Less than 1% of Americans are 'angel' investors and less than 1% of all small businesses receive outside equity investment. (This despite significant investor returns, according to the Angel Investment Performance Project). Within this narrow band, the distribution tightens further – a majority of all angel investments go to technology driven industries. And, 80% of angel investors are men. As a result, a vast majority of the economy – entrepreneurs, investors, and whole industries – are left out of this virtuous cycle. Crowdfunding will open up new funding possibilities for these neglected areas of the economy. A good example is the consumer products industry, which comprises roughly 15% of the U.S. economy but less than 5% of the angel investment market. Investors like to invest in what they know – one reason technology is so well funded given the roots of angel investing in Silicon Valley. With a wider range of perspectives and backgrounds, crowdfunding investors will bring unique insights for investments in growing consumer brands that have early traction in the market. Think of a $2 million revenue baby food company with 50 parents that are investors – they know and trust the brand, and now can help support the company reach the next level of growth. For small businesses, the benefit is more than just investment capital. Businesses will gain a passionate community of backers who can help grow the business through social media and word of mouth, important channels for small consumer companies. Crowdfunding will increase, not decrease, transparency in this market. Today, as nearly every entrepreneur will tell you, the early stage investing process is isolated and opaque. Companies share information to one investor after another, all in separate private meetings, all with the goal of telling the 'right story' for that particular investor. Crowdfunding brings this process into a broader community space. A well-regulated crowdfunding platform prevents fraud by requiring companies to share their information widely, by conducting third-party background checks on entrepreneurs, and by providing the transparency necessary to allow for greater scrutiny from a diverse audience of investors. The "crowd" acts as a collective due diligence tool – each person contributing an independent view on the merit of the investment. Fraud thrives in the shadows, not in the light of a vibrant open market system. Crowdfunding is the antithesis of the financial practices of the last decade. There are no credit default swaps, leverage multiples, or obscure fund structures standing between company and investor. It is direct. It is personalized. Investors actively seek out the companies they believe in, evaluate the merits of the investment on a case-by-case basis, and make an investment. The Senate is expected to vote on their version of the bill early next week. They will rightly put some restrictions and oversight in place. Crowdfunding advocates know we are at the earliest stages of a long-term transition, and having sensible investor protections in place will help create lasting value as this market develops. Crowdfunding and appropriate oversight are not mutually exclusive. Let us hope that the Senate joins the House and President Obama in support of crowdfunding. In a partisan election year, creating jobs and providing more opportunities for investors and small businesses shouldn't be a controversial proposal. Ryan Caldbeck is the founder of CircleUp, an equity-based crowdfunding website focused on providing growth capital for small private companies. Prior to CircleUp, he spent seven years focused on consumer product and retail-focused private equity at TSG Consumer Partners and Encore Consumer Capital.
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| This American Life Retracts Mike Daisey’s Piece On Foxconn For “Significant Fabrications” Posted: 16 Mar 2012 11:09 AM PDT  At over a million digital listens, “Mr. Daisey Goes To The Apple Factory” is This American Life’s most popular episode. That’s no small feat for one of the world’s most well-known radio shows. When it aired, it set off yet another firestorm of controversy regarding the ethics of Apple (and other large tech companies) using cheap Chinese labor through major manufacturers like Foxconn. Mr Daisey, who has been touring for years with a monologue about his visit to the factories there and the moral implications thereof, provided details to This American Life to put together what was really a powerful and attention-grabbing piece. Unfortunately, in the words of This American Life host and producer Ira Glass, “We’ve learned that Mike Daisey’s story about Apple in China – which we broadcast in January – contained significant fabrications. We’re retracting the story because we can't vouch for its truth.” This week’s show will take a full hour to detail the errors and fabrications in Daisey’s report. The episode’s lurid details provoked many responses on the web, including several editorials on TechCrunch. These details were not entirely new, and we have written about the labor and environmental conditions in Chinese factories before, but such a discussion is always relevant. But although the discussion was fruitful, it seems it may have been based partially on false information. Without duplicating too much of the blog post, press release, and forthcoming broadcast, it seems that a Marketplace staffer, China correspondent Rob Schmitz, thought that some of Daisey’s claims didn’t add up. The fact checking team at This American Life (not NPR, as previously written) had already cleared the story despite some small discrepancies, but some things Schmitz was personally acquainted with stuck out — for instance, the idea that Daisey had met in Shenzhen with workers who had been poisoned by n-hexane. The poisoning occurred, no doubt, but it occurred a thousand miles away in Suzhou, a place Daisey never visited. He also contacted Daisey’s interpreter, whom Daisey claimed to be unable to reach, and apparently for good reason. She contradicted much of what Daisey claimed in his monologue and on the radio. Schmitz has written up his investigation here. In the investigative segment shortly to air, Marketplace’s Schmitz confronts Daisey with this information. His response (echoed in a blog post):
A few weeks ago, a book called The Lifespan of a Fact was released, a peculiar volume detailing a battle between a writer, whose essay had been embellished with inaccuracies and fabrications, and his fact-checker at The Believer, who was attempting to undo those embellishments. The question of which was more valuable, the point being made in an essay that didn’t strictly cast itself as a factual one, or the truth of the matter that it in many ways obscured, is an interesting one. But in this case things seem a little more clear-cut. Mr. Daisey represented as facts and his own experience things that were not true and which he had not done. TechCrunch interviewed Daisey as well early in 2011 (part one; part two). His statements to us must be questioned, now factually as well as conceptually. Fortunately, none of our reporting on China and Foxconn relies on his testimony. Our own John Biggs has been to China to report on the state of manufacturing there twice, the first time to Shenzhen proper to see how smaller factories and shops are run, and the second time to “Foxconn City,” where he received a tour of the mega-campus where your devices are made and assembled. These reports, needless to say, are factual. Update: it is This American Life that did the retracting, not NPR as first reported (and immortalized in the URL). Entirely my mistake, due to the fact that the show is often broadcast on stations the primary affiliation of which is NPR. This American Life is produced by Public Radio International, and Marketplace is produced by American Public Media.
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| Sir Richard Branson & Flipboard Investor Jerry Murdock Put Nearly $1M Into MySocialCloud Posted: 16 Mar 2012 10:47 AM PDT  MySocialCloud is a new, and somewhat stealthy, startup that aims to organize your online life through bookmarking, stream consolidation, filtering and auto-login capabilities. The service, which until now has only been available to users at a handful of colleges out in California, has some pretty impressive backers, too. The startup has raised “just shy of a million” from Sir Richard Branson and Jerry Murdock, also an investor in Flipboard and Twitter. The idea for the service was prompted by one of those awful moments in life: a hard drive crash. Explains MySocialCloud’s founder and CEO Scott Ferreira, after the event, he realized that the worst thing that he would lose off his MacBook was an Excel spreadsheet where he kept a list of his 500 usernames and passwords to various services. Not the best system, perhaps, but let’s face it – most of us have similar strategies: lists, spreadsheets, or worse – using the same password across the web. (Just admit it). Ferreira said he knew there were already technical solutions to storing your passwords online, but he didn’t really like any of the alternatives out there. “They’re not very user-friendly, they’re cumbersome to use, some of them you have pay for, and some of them look really sketchy,” he says. “So I set out to build my own.” As he and his friend from USC, co-founder Shiv Prakash, started to build the service in May 2011, they realized there needed to be more to it. Users don’t want to just store their usernames and passwords, they also need to be able to find content, save it for later and share it with friends. “There’s a life cycle to websites in general that starts with the discovery and ends with creating a username and password or storing and saving a site,” explains Ferreira. So instead of just building a better version of something like LastPass, for example, the team decided to build a site that does it all. Today, MySocialCloud hooks into social networks like Facebook and Twitter to help you find interesting content your friends are sharing, then allows you to bookmark items you like for later reading, share those items with your friends, and store your associated usernames and passwords for the websites, too, if desired. Both the bookmarking and password-storing can be done on the site and through the use of a “Cloud It” bookmark. The end result is something akin to a social news reader. A two-column stream of posts and tweets is displayed on the homepage, and you can click through to open up the corresponding website to read the content. When you bookmark an item, there’s also a field where you can enter in your username and password information for safe-keeping. Despite Ferreira’s previous system of using a spreadsheet for this task, he assures me that MySocialCloud’s security is top-notch. Passwords are stored in an encrypted form in the database and can only be decrypted by the user. All communication between the user and the backend servers is encrypted using 256-bit SSL, and there’s something else, too – nobody’s information is encrypted in the same way on the site. So even if a hacker compromised the servers and manage to get into one person’s info, they would have to start the process over to compromise the subsequent account. “We’re hackers ourselves,” explains Ferreira, “we know what would drive us crazy.” As for Sir Richard Branson’s investment, that came by way of a tweet, saying that he wanted to meet with 18 entrepreneurs in Miami while he was there celebrating the 25th anniversary of Virgin Atlantic. Ferreira and his sister, co-founder Stacey Ferreria, applied to go to the pitch session, were accepted, and flew down to share their idea. Instead of 15 minutes, they ended up in conversation with Branson for nearly an hour. Branson later introduced to them Murdock, and within a month, both had invested in the startup. It’s a great story, but of course you need more than rockstar investors to have a successful company. And MySocialCloud, at present, is earning its “beta” label. The user interface needs polish, the stream didn’t automatically update in my tests (you have to push a reload button), and the informational pop-up messages have weird, video player-like buttons that don’t seem to make sense for what they are supposed to be: quick hints as to how a particular feature works. This is all surface stuff, though, so there’s room for improvement. But MySocialCloud is not without its competition – the dozens of other “social” news discovery apps out there, like News.me, Zite and even Murdock’s other investment, Flipboard. The question is whether the password-saving aspect will be enough to differentiate this service from others further along in this market. (Ferreira also claims the speed with which it pulls in the data beats Flipboard, but since the interface requires manual refreshes, this is hard to confirm). For now, MySocialCloud remains in private beta, but TechCrunch readers can get in using the code “tc2012” to sign up here.
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