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Path, Google+ And Jack Dorsey At The 2011 Crunchies: Comebacks Win

admin2 — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:45:47 +0000

The world loves to celebrate comebacks from failure, but the Crunchies and the companies it features are all so new that the show hasn’t done much of that. That changed last night at the 2011 Crunchies , with Jack Dorsey, Path and Google+ winning big . Path’s story hits home the most for me. My first tech blog post ever, back in early 2007 at VentureBeat, was about the rise of the Facebook . It featured an interview with Path founder Dave Morin , who at the time was leading the company’s barely launched developer platform. Soon afterward, Facebook exploded, I managed to get a full-time job as a tech blogger… and within a couple years, as is the way of things here in Silicon Valley, Dave and I moved on to new jobs. Then, I watched Path launch as a photo-focused app last year… and struggle to meet high expectations . When Dave got in touch right after I joined TechCrunch about covering the pending launch of Path 2.0 , I excused myself by telling him that other writers who had been following Path more closely were better suited for the job. But we both knew I was also being a skeptic, unlike the first time we talked. Path 2.0, however, turns out to be awesome . The mobile app perfectly combines photos, check-ins, status updates, and other key elements of top social services in an intimate setting, in a way that displaces Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram and other leading social services today. I’ve been kicking myself about not covering the relaunch ever since, but that’s what I get for not believing. It very much deserved the Best Design award. Google Plus is the search engine’s latest of several social efforts over the years, but the first one that looks anything like a Facebook contender. Orkut turned out to be a sideshow, the various Friend Connect and OpenSocial platform/standard attempts never really hit it big with developers, and Google Buzz sputtered when the company tried to force it into Gmail in 2010. The guys who got on stage last night had been a part of at least some of the previous launches, so it was vindications all around. The one I know best is Joseph Smarr , who I’ve covered over the years as he worked through his former employer, Plaxo, to build open standards for social sharing. Since moving to Google, he’s been the mastermind behind private lists feature Circles and other key social parts of Plus, that have helped make it a uniquely good fit for what many social network users have wanted. After a decade of work building social products, he earned the Best Social Application the hard way. Jack Dorsey has perhaps gone through the toughest redemption process of all. Having created Twitter in 2006, he left in 2008 as the service struggled to: maintain uptime, roll out new products, and make money. But then he launched payment company Square, which has become a key new way for all sorts of small businesses to take credit card payments. And then, he came back to help lead Twitter last March, while staying on at Square. Since then, Twitter has rolled out a series of product changes that helped make it more mainstream, and in the second part of last year it began growing faster than it ever has before . Even its revenue plans are looking more promising. He got on stage twice last night, once for the social impact that Twitter has made as a key way that people share information around the world, and again because of the job he’s doing leading product development at the companies he founded . The best victories are the ones you have to fight for the hardest.

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Path, Google+ And Jack Dorsey At The 2011 Crunchies: Comebacks Win

Twitter’s Dick Costolo: “We’re Growing Faster Than We Have Ever Grown Before”

jos — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:09:46 +0000

Does Twitter need Google or does Google need Twitter? It’s a question complicated by recent events, such as the two companies not coming to an agreement to extend their previous partnership through which Google showed Tweets in search results. That deal wasn’t renewed,and then Google decided to promote its own Google+ results in search, which didn’t go over well with Twitter at all. Asked about this at by Peter Kafka at the D: Dive Into Media conference this evening, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo responded: “All of us look to Google as the shining light on the hill, a mission-driven company. We think when people are searching for things like a hashtag on a billboard, people will go to Google to look for them and we think Google should return the results they are looking for.” Costolo was visibly fuming. (Or maybe that was just his regular intense demeanor). But then asked whether Twitter can be successful without Google and all that lost search traffic, Costolo insisted: “We’re growing faster than we have ever grown before, irrespective of whatever Google or Facebook is doing. All of these services can co-exist.” Later on during the conversation, Costolo reported that Twitter’s advertising business is growing and engagement rates on Proomted Tweets, trends, and profiles is high. “We’ve figured out the business,” he says. “The advertising model is working, we just have to scale it.”

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Twitter’s Dick Costolo: “We’re Growing Faster Than We Have Ever Grown Before”

Hey, Bromasters, Take Your Kenu Highline On The Slopes When You Shred

user — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:01:43 +0000

So you want to take a photo of you and your buds on the slopes or at the bar or at A&F or whatever and you know, just know you’re going drop that shnitz on the floor. So what do you need? A freakin’ Kevlar cord, Mr. Brojangles. That’s what you need. So this is the Kenu Highline. It’s basically a locking connector, a coiled cable, and a little loop. You lock your iPhone to the cable, attach the loop to your jacket, and go totally nuts. Attach it to anything. Your jacket. Your bropurse. Your 7 Jeans with the big, tribal stitching. Anything, Brosephus, but they clearly want to grab the snow sports folks because the entire website is dedicated to shreddin’, ski-liftin’, and hittin’ the apres ski brodeo. It’s only $20, so it’s not that expensive and if it saves you chipping your phone on the floor of the ski lodge while you and your broposse roll up to the bar for some Coors then that’s like money in the bank, brosephine, money in the bank. Product Page

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Hey, Bromasters, Take Your Kenu Highline On The Slopes When You Shred

ScholarPro Intelligently Matches Students With Educational Scholarships

ACMAir — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Chicago-based ScholarPro is launching today as an intelligent matching system for students and educational scholarships. Designed to ease the search and application process, ScholarPro’s adaptive matching engine promises to deliver smarter, targeted lists of scholarships. It aims to fix the current dated process that require students to navigate complex application processes and then fail to deliver relevant results. On the site, you answer a few simple adaptive questions, such as where you are from, etc. and the platform will match you to scholarships that fit your needs. You can actually apply for the scholarships directly from ScholarPro. As founder Francis Kim explains, the startup’s matching engine is actually built on the adaptive quiz and aims to strictly qualify student for scholarships so results are opportunities students actually qualify for. Fot now, ScholarPro only offers scholarships available in California but will be steadily expanding. Kim says the site is free to use and wouldn’t reveal revenue plans just yet. The startup recently raised just under $1 million and was led by Sandbox Industries with Sam Yagan, Mac Harman and KD Capital participating.

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ScholarPro Intelligently Matches Students With Educational Scholarships

14 Steps To Successful SEO For Startups

user — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:00:34 +0000

This is a guest post by Ryan Spoon (@ ryanspoon ), a principal at Polaris Ventures . Read more about Ryan on his blog at ryanspoon.com . For startups, it is dangerous to entirely separate product and marketing – both strategically and organizationally. A great product isn’t overly useful without an audience. And a great marketing strategy can’t save a poor product. Product and marketing have to coexist. So when imaging, building and eventually launching your product, it is important to also hone the marketing strategy. There are five core channels: – Paid marketing (SEM, display, affiliates, etc) – Social & viral marketing – Search engine optimization (SEO) – Partnerships & business development – PR For early-stage companies, advertising at scale is expensive and consequently difficult. Furthermore, PR and business development become easier efforts as the company matures. So where does that leave you as a resource-constrained startup? Marketing needs to come from the product itself. Last week I explored the role that social and virals play . And while the tech world is fascinated with social media and major platforms like Facebook and Twitter, we shouldn’t overlook the role of SEO (and consequently Google). Like Facebook and Twitter, SEO is another opportunity to expand your funnel and increase your audience — without an advertising budget! Also like social, SEO is far more effective when built directly into the product (“from the ground up”). Here are 14 guidelines for thinking about SEO.

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14 Steps To Successful SEO For Startups

Dave McClure Isn’t Worried About The “Series A Crunch”

vertical8 — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:56:14 +0000

In recent months, there’s been some hand-wringing about a “ Series A Crunch ” — namely, a glut of startups raising seed and angel funding, then struggling once they need a proper Series A. But in a recent interview, 500 Startups founder Dave McClure said those complaints are misguided. McClure was interviewed Thursday by TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis at the Founder Institute ‘s Founder Showcase. During the interview (video embedded below), McClure made it clear that he sees no problem in backing a lot of startups. When comparing 500 Startups to Y Combinator’s Paul Graham, he said his firm is “more of a singles or a doubles hitter” in contrast to Graham’s search for home runs. He estimated that 500 Startups has invested in more than 250 companies, and when asked if he could name all of them, said, “No, no fucking way. With a spreadsheet in front of me, yes. I’m allowed to do that.” McClure also ran through some rapid-fire math to argue that more firms should be taking his approach. Take a firm with a $500 million fund — it’s probably looking for a return of $1.5 billion in 10 years, and since it will typically own 20 percent of a company at exit, that means its startups need to be acquired or IPO for a total of $7.5 billion. And given the normal success rate of VCs, that means the firm is really leaning on a few exits to earn more than $1 billion. “It’s too small a sample size,” McClure said. “Expecting that you’re going to get billion-dollar wins out of 30 picks is tough.” At that point, Alexia wanted to know if McClure is “single-handedly responsible for the Series A Crunch,” and he fired back that “the framing of that is just wrong.” What’s really happening, he said, is that it’s much easier to build a company now. As for later-stage investors who are complaining, the trend should actually help them, because it means they get to choose from more companies: “It’s not really their problem, except on a selection basis.” And many startups aren’t going to need a traditional Series A, McClure said, because they will start earning revenue or can look for alternative sources of funding. Anyway, McClure said the approach seems to be working for him. He said 500 Startups has invested about $19 million of the $29 million that it has raised, and that it’s currently showing a profit of 30 or 40 percent, though those gains are currently “unrealized.” He added: “We might do other things to increase that sum at some point.” When pressed on whether that means he’s going to be fundraising soon, McClure demurred, saying that any comments on that front would probably be a violation of SEC regulations. “Which is a stupid fucking law, which should change,” he said. “I will change that in five years.” 9th Founder Showcase – Alexia Tsostis of TechCrunch Interviews Dave McClure of 500 Startups from Founder Institute on Vimeo .

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Dave McClure Isn’t Worried About The “Series A Crunch”

Larry Page Is Super Excited To Announce That Google+ Has 90 Million Users

admin — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 02:04:46 +0000

The official numbers are in for Google’s new social network, Google+ . Beating out most previous third-party estimates that we’ve seen, the company said today that it now has 90 million users worldwide. Presumably this means monthly uniques visitors given that the earnings release says “now,” but we’ll try to get more clarification around engagement numbers when we get on the quarterly call in a few minutes. The most recent third party stats we’ve seen (from comScore) have indicated it had around 67 million unique visitors as of November. Worldwide December numbers from the measurement firm aren’t out yet, but US ones are: they showed G+ bringing in 15.9 million November then growing healthily to 20.6 million last month. Google is evidently so pleased with this growth — or so eager to refute doubts about it — that the company led off the release with a statement from chief executive Larry Page on the matter. ”I am super excited about the growth of Android, Gmail, and Google+, which now has 90 million users globally – well over double what I announced just three months ago. By building a meaningful relationship with our users through Google+ we will create amazing experiences across our services. I’m very excited about what we can do in 2012 – there are tremendous opportunities to help users and grow our business.” (As Dan Frommer notes, Page seems to be especially fond of the “super excited” California colloquialism.) Like I said, engagement numbers are key to understanding what’s really going on with the search engine leader’s social network. The heavy integration of G+ across other Google properties could be leading lots of people to check it out once but not come back. But enough skepticism, this growth is very impressive no matter how you look at it, especially in such a short amount of time. For the many G+ fans/users out there (especially all you TechCrunch commenters), and for companies looking to use it as a new developer or marketing platform, this is a big day.

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Larry Page Is Super Excited To Announce That Google+ Has 90 Million Users

Google Collected 4.5 Million Anti-SOPA Signatures Today

bestcbstore — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 07:52:36 +0000

Google generally gets in hot water when it is thought to be abusing its pole position in the search industry. But it’s no use denying that while some moves skirt the edges of abusing monopoly, others are more than welcome. During natural disasters, for instance, Google has provided helpful links and resources for people who want to donate or volunteer. And their logo doodles pay homage to personages and events many people would otherwise have overlooked. Today must rank among the best applications of their choice placement: a link on the Google homepage and thousands of shares have produced a mind-blowing 4.5 million signatures on their anti- SOPA petition. When I wrote Kill Switch a few months ago, there were some petitions linked to that had tens of thousands at the time and now as many as 150,000 (the Whitehouse.gov one got just over 100,000 ). And the petition at Avaaz is almost to 1.5 million. The grassroots opposition to these bills has been immense, more so in fact than other rather terrifying bills like NDAA, perhaps on account of the fact that SOPA and PIPA are directly aimed at internet freedoms. Regardless, 4.5 million is a hell of a lot, and in one day as well. I just wrote earlier today how we need to improve the way that the internet and our governing authorities interact, but things like this are certainly among the best applications of existing online methods. The numbers may, of course, be considered somewhat inflated and less salient than 4.5 million written signatures complete with social security number and voter address, but that’s not really the point. 4.5 million people took the time to go to this page, inform themselves, fill out the pertinent information to register their discontent. It was also shared quite widely, as many of our readers will surely be able to attest; according to Facebook’s stats, it has been shared over 344,000 times, Google shows over 125,000 shares on Google+, and surely a few of those 2.4 million #SOPA, #stopSOPA, etc. tweets pointed to Google’s petition as well. You can sign the petition here if you haven’t already , and contact your legislators here .

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Google Collected 4.5 Million Anti-SOPA Signatures Today

There Were More Than 2.4M Tweets About SOPA Today

jos — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 07:22:49 +0000

Today was the internet’s big protest day against SOPA and PIPA, and not surprisingly, there was plenty of discussion about the issue on Twitter. Specifically, the company tweeted that that there were more than 2.4 million SOPA-related tweets between midnight and 4pm Eastern time. The top terms were SOPA, Stop SOPA, PIPA, Tell Congress, and the hashtag #factswithoutwikipedia (referring to Wikipedia’s anti-SOPA blackout , natch). So how impressive was the Twitter turnout? Well, the company likes to release “tweets per second” stats for events that spur the most activity, but a company spokesperson told me Twitter doesn’t have those numbers for SOPA. Still,, Twitter says it saw 8,868 tweets per second, for example, during the MTV Music Awards, which adds up to more than 2 million tweets in four minutes. It’s an apples-and-oranges comparison, but suggests that anti-SOPA tweets weren’t quite at that level. Speaking of Twitter and SOPA, the company seems to be protesting the bill in a manner similar to Facebook — rather than blacking out or otherwise altering the Twitter service to show opposition, executives posted anti-SOPA messages on their personal accounts. CEO Dick Costolo wrote : “Please join me in urging Senators @SenatorReid & @ChuckSchumer not to rush #PIPA vote.”

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There Were More Than 2.4M Tweets About SOPA Today

Remote DJ’ing App PlayMySong Raises $350K Seed Round

Budowniczy425 — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 23:06:01 +0000

Finnish startup PlayMySong , the crowdsourced music DJ’ing service that lets a store’s customers remotely program the stereo, has just closed a round of seed funding totaling $350,000. The round was led by Lifeline Ventures, a Helsinki-based accelerator focused on funding web and gaming startups and includes participation from Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. Though relatively small, the company says it’s enough funding to open an office in New York and head out to San Francisco for meetings and other fund-raising efforts. PlayMySong, which is live in Heleski and a handful of U.S. locations, has also just launched its service in New York as of today. For those unfamiliar, PlayMySong is a mobile application that allows you to remotely control the songs being played on a venue’s stereo system, while also simultaneously checking in to Foursquare or Facebook. The service has a bunch of competition, from startups to side projects, like Jelli , TuneTug , Roqbot , Spartify , AutomaticDJ , DJtxt , StereoPill , Hey I’m Like , Diskly , and many others. To use PlayMySong, venue owners connect their iOS device running a special app to their stereo sound system using a standard 3.5 mm audio cable. Customers can then connect to that device over the Wi-Fi network or a 3G connection and choose which songs from the venue’s playlist they want to hear. For businesses on the premium service, they can also communicate with customers via ads and messages. They also have better listings in the search results, complete with logos and other features. The company is also now inking a deal with a major beer brand that will put PlayMySong in hundreds of bars, but the deal isn’t closed yet. Founded in Finland in 2011 by Rami Korhonen (CEO) and Timo Kari (CTO), the company arrived in the U.S. this just month.

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Remote DJ’ing App PlayMySong Raises $350K Seed Round