In the past we’ve posted communications whenever someone has threatened to sue us. I think it’s entertaining, and it hopefully makes people think twice before firing up the legal machine with ridiculous claims. So when YouTube sent us a cease and desist letter, I posted it. And when that asshole Shannon Terry threatened to sue us out of existence, I posted that too.
Now the most ridiculous claim yet. Richard Figueroa, who claims to have the rights to this image of Ashton Kutcher, is demanding that we pay him $150,000 immediately or else he’ll sue us for $1.5 million.
Hi Michael, My name is Richard Figueroa and I am contacting you on behalf of the image you are using of Ashton Kutcher that Beth Boldt had taken. Beth is upset that your company has been using his image to generate traffic and revenue to your company without her permission.We are asking that you pay Beth $150,000,00 for the image that you have been using to generate business. If you choose not to settle this bill now we will ask for $1,500,000 in damages in loss of income form the image you have been borrowing for creating traffic to your website with here picture.if you google Beth Boldt you will get an idea of who she is in the modeling and entertainment industry.We would like to settle this quietly without the media getting involved however if you choose not to agree on these terms we will file a lawsuit against your company for copyright violation and we all know how that’s going to turn out since she’s the photographer of the image you are using.
So here is her invoice: Please make check out to Beth Boldt in the amount of ($150,000,00) send it to
[deleted contact information]
And after payment is made you may not use the image of Ashton anymore unless you want to negotiate a contract.
Thank you
Richard Figueroa
BethBoldt
Here’s the problem: we never used that image of Ashton Kutcher on any of our websites. The one image we did use (in this post) was supplied by Ooma (Kutcher is the creative director for Ooma), and Ooma says they own that image.
The problem turns out to be that if you do a search on Google (or “the Google” as Figueroa calls it), the image in question appears at the top of the results and is linked to TechCrunch. Why? Well we did some digging and it turns out that someone linked to the image in a comment to one of our posts.
I explained all of this to Figueroa on the phone but he insisted that Google bought us and that we need to remove the image from Google immediately. Sadly, Google has not acquired us, and I have no easy method for removing images from Google’s servers.
Normally I’d just let something like this drop since this guy doesn’t understand anything about copyright law or the Internet, but he has also been calling and emailing our advertisers and threatening to sue them, too (listen to the voicemail below). They are understandably concerned, and Heather and I now have to spend time today calming everyone down.
Don’t be this guy.
The voicemail below is to one of our advertisers. Listen to a second one, sent to Ooma, here.
Update: Starting at comment #79 below it looks like Richard weighs in with a number of comments. In comment no. 113 he tried to post my phone number and get people to call me and complain but I just deleted it.
Update 2: Richard has been calling me this evening saying people are crank calling him and that he will take “legal activation” against everyone who calls him. I’ve removed the phone number above. Please stop calling him because he just calls me afterwards.
Update 3: So the link to TechCrunch on Google’s search results is gone and the picture now links to Yahoo Answers. Richard still isn’t happy and is demanding I link that search result to him. I’m just speechless.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Being Stupid And Litigious Is No Way To Go Through Life
Snocap Drops 60% Of Staff And On The Market: Looking Good For The Deadpool
B2B digital music distributor company Snocap, the spawn of Napster founder Shawn Fanning, looks like its warming up for a Deadpool entry with confirmation by CNet that the company has let go of 60% of its staff and is on the market.
Snocap has apparently “received interest from several companies” as is pursing these for an asset sale.
Snocap was founded in 2002 and has amongst its investors Ron Conway, Morgenthaler Ventures and WaldenVC. The company allows rights owners to place music onto p2p networks and retail sites with DRM, aiming to leverage P2P networks for distribution whilst still charging for music.
Snocap’s last big deal was to provide music sales for MySpace in September 2006 and we wrote about Shawn Fanning’s plans in December 2006 to start a World of Warcraft focused social network called Rapture. According to Snocap’s website the MySpace deal is still in place, which presuming it is transferable to a new owner would provide some value in the Snocap fire sale.
Snocap is now on TechCrunch Deadpool watch.
Supply Side Economics Fail Music Industry Again
The latest brainwave from the besieged music industry is the proposal to offer free music to end users via the Total Music brand. Spawned by Universal Music, Total Music looks likely to sign the big four record labels and a range of smaller firms as well, with Sony BMG on board and Warner Music looking as it will be as well.
Free is the ultimate selling point in market side economics, because ultimately you can’t beat the opportunity cost of zero. But here’s the catch: Total Music may market itself as offering free unlimited music, but it’s not really free, the cost is just hidden. That cost: $90 per device for access to Total Music, based on $5 per month over 18 months (the figures Universal are using). In our above example Microsoft has decided not to absorb the $90 Total Music charge but has instead added it to the price on the 4gb Zune, taking the total price to $239. Which would you buy?
In the Zune example Microsoft may embrace the Total Music model and subsidize the subscription costs. Say that Microsoft split the difference and the Zune went from $149 to only $194, it’s a better figure but it’s still $45 more that the iPod. Could Microsoft absorb the whole price? Unlikely; after all why would it willfully hand over $90 of a $149 product, which we presume would certainly destroy Microsoft’s product margin on the Zune, and could even make each sale a loss.
I’ve used Microsoft as an example but it could be any company with a music player that isn’t Apple. Universal is looking at targeting anything that plays music, so aside from MP3 players you could be seeing this hidden cost built into mobile phones, media streaming devices and perhaps even computers.
I should note that some people like their music legal and will pay a premium, but given a $90 price difference this is unlikely to be a majority of buyers, particularly when the iPod offers legal options as well, options that are a choice and not an imposed upfront cost to the buyer.
The music industry may talk about free music, but all it is doing with Total Music is shifting the point in which the consumer pays to one that isn’t nearly as transparent as iTunes.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Exclusive: Arrington Goes Nuts in “Unnecesary Force”
This just went live from JibJab. There are now two new movies in their Starring You line of animations where you can upload your head to star in the movie. Here’s one with Arrington and me called Unnecessary Force, which jibjab kindly made for us. I tried to stop him folks.
Also check out Math Camp Massacres. (For more on Starring You, check out this video).
China Blocking RSS Feeds
The Chinese Government has added a blanket ban on all RSS feeds, according to a report at Ars Technica.
There has been reports previously that Feedburner feeds have been blocked, but to-date information delivered by RSS feeds has generally gone uncensored, providing Chinese viewers information that would otherwise be blocked if attempting to visit a regular webpage or blog.
A quick test of WebSitePulse’s Great Firewall testing tool indicates that no one in China will be reading this post via feed, although whether the main page of TechCrunch is blocked in open to question, WebSitePulse suggests that it’s ok, however the Great Firewall of China site says that it’s blocked.
The number of broadband internet users in China will surpass the United States within the next 12-18 months; China is fast becoming one of the most important online marketplaces in the world. Whilst some could well argue about the rights of a sovereign nation to censor content within its own borders, the more pressing issue from a Web 2.0 development and industry perspective is the use of the Firewall by the Chinese Government to unfairly block foreign competition, particularly at a time where the Chinese Government is trying to start, or is already in Free Trade Agreement negotiations with a number of countries, including Australia.
There is also some suggestion that China will enter an APEC FTA in the future: would it then be fair that online industries are either excluded from the FTA or that access rights are ignored by China under those agreements? Western Governments are still generally not focused enough on the benefits of online business in a broader economic sense, so unless there is some serious lobbying, or more understanding leadership, our industry will likely be forgotten in the clamor for mineral, industrial and agricultural trade.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Google Prepping A Second Life Competitor?
Rumors of a Google powered virtual world based on Google Earth surfaced in January; today there is word that Google may be testing their virtual world at Arizona State University (ASU).
According to Google Operating System, ASU students have the opportunity to test a new product “that will be publicly launched later this year” by “a major Internet company” that is related to social networking, 3D modeling and video games. The questionnaire attached to the application process asks would be testers if they have a Gmail account, and if not would they be willing to get one. The product’s name is shown as “My World.”
Google’s Sketchup service already provides the tech to do 3D modeling and could also be used to create avatars.
We know for certain now that Google has big plans for social networking, from SocialStream to Google’s planned November 5 launch of the mother of all open social networking platforms. Whether the planned service will be a true Second Life competitor is still to be seen, however I suspect that if Google is prepping a virtual world it will be closer to IBM’s Virtual World chat platform than Second Life. To deliver a full UGC world is a not an easy step where a basic 3D world which builds on Google Earth, SketchUp, and existing Google social networking platforms including Orkut would seem more likely.
myworld.png
Yuuguu Takes Desktop Sharing Mobile
UK based Yuuguu will officially launch at DEMO today with a cross platform desktop sharing platform that also works on mobile phones.
Yuuguu, a name apparently derived from the Japanese word for fusion, enables users to see, share, and control other computer screens and applications. Yuuguu supports web browsers on any device, notably on mobile phones providing anywhere access and flexibility.
Suggested uses include team members working on a project or by friends sharing applications.
Yuuguu also includes low cost voice conferencing services for one-to-one and one-to-many voice calls.
This is a close to saturated vertical, and I’m tempted to say that a startup entering the space must have rocks in their head, or something completely different. Mobile desktop sharing is fairly new, however I couldn’t get it to work. Issues aside, Yuuguu’s idea is sound, with a lot of potential.
yuuguu1.png
Microsoft May Invest in Facebook At $10 Billion Valuation
Microsoft May Invest in Facebook At $10 Billion Valuation
Friendster Plays To Strengths, Launches In Chinese
Friendster is back, at least in Asia.
The social network that was the coolest thing on the block until MySpace came around has been slowly regaining its reputation and users over the years, and now boasts 50 million registered user and 27.4 million monthly unique visitors. The only problem (if you call it a problem) is that, like Orkut, most of those users are outside of the U.S. Specifically, they’re in the Asia/Pacific region - 24 million of the total 27.4 million unique monthly visitors come from there, as do 35 million of the 50 million registered users.
So it’s no surprise that the social network is playing to its strengths and launching its first non-English version, in traditional Chinese. This isn’t a separate website or URL; users simply click to Chinese to have the content localized to that language. User generated stuff remains in the original language.
France Telecom’s Orange to adopt OpenID
Yesterday at the Digital ID conference in San Francisco, Orange, one of the major mobile operator and ISP with more than 40 million subscribers announced they would adopt the OpenID registration/identification standard. There was already a clear trend from big internet properties to adopt (Digg, Technorati Microsoft and AOL but also Yahoo and WikiPedia already announced that).
But this is the first time that a major TelCo is taking that step. There is already an implementation of OpenID on the French portal available at openid.orange.fr . Orange presents also on the page a list of OpenID providers.
This is a good news for OpenID standard. The question remaining concerns the pace of adoption by the users. I could not find the access to the openID page by navigating from the homepage of the portal. It will probably pushed at later stage after the first tests. I also found the explanation not simple enough to understand for a new user (most of them are not early adopters) and Orange should probably think about a a short visual/demo to explain simply the benefits of such a service. An international roll out will probably come out soon.
Terabitz To Expand Beyond Home Searches Today
Palo Alto-based Terabitz launched in July 2007 as a sort of Netvibes/Pageflakes for people searching for real estate.
A search on the site pulls up a basic Google map of the area and nothing else. But users can then drag in modules to add information - local foreclosures, recent sales, listed homes, schools, even fast food restaurants. Every module that is added by a user also adds the appropriate information to the map as well. It’s a very convenient way to get a feel for the neighborhood.
The original idea for the company came from seventeen year old Kamran Munshi, who is now a freshman at Cornell. His father, Ashfaq, ran with the idea and raised $10 million in funding. The company has 42 employees (12 in the U.S., 30 in India).
Later today the company is launching a new feature - the ability to create a map with various modules included and then embed it on another website. So any site that wants to add a Google generated map that includes, say, local businesses and restaurants (a hotel, for example) can now do so easily. The tool is free, but will be branded with Terabitz.
Expect Failure From Hulu: NBCU Chief
The first positive points we’ve awarded to Hulu come for pure honesty with George Kliavkoff, NBC Universal’s chief digital officer telling a crowd at OMMA New York Monday that they should expect failure from Hulu.
To be fair, as much as the headline quote alone is worthy of at least a couple of links demonstrating how the bridesmaid service has failed already, in context Kliavkoff’s quote is good advice for any startup: you have to fail sometimes to succeed:
” you have to fail fast in order to quickly identify your errors and cut your losses. Success involves setting up “processes to fail fast.”
According to Kliavkoff, Hulu will launch in October and NBC will be providing incentives for viewers to spend time at Hulu. What those incentives are were not disclosed, nor was it explained why users would visit Hulu for NBC content when NBC itself is now offering its shows as free ad-supported downloads on NBC Direct.
Kliavkoff also told the audience that he does not believe that viewers will ever prefer consumer-generated content over premium fare, saying that “at the end of the day, premium, produced content wins,” an interesting take given the phenomenal success of services including YouTube and others.
Think you know Web2.0? Ok. But can you predict Web2.0?
How good are you at making predictions? Meet PlaytheDay a quiz game that will entertain those who can predict the future. The game is very simple: you need to answer 8 questions related to a future event. If you get 8 answers right in a row you win. There is one prize to win everyday and several series of quizzes in different spaces (celebrity, music, sport, Internet and finance,…) are available. Each questions come with a tip and link to a website where you can evaluate or find the answer. The fun part is that the games are closed one day before the actual date and on the day answers are progressively revealed along with the list of participants that are still racing for the prize.
To start off they have created a free predictive quiz on web2.0 events taking place next october 14th (you can already participate). You can find questions like “how many votes will the most popular story on Digg have at 4pm” or “How many comments will the top story on TechCrunch get at 4pm”. Honestly answering is mostly a question of luck rather than skill. But the game is free and the upside is not bad: you can win an iPod touch and you have here another opportunity to prove you are a real Web2.0 Guru :)
This free game is aimed at raising awareness around their site but the main activity of the service will be selling tickets for participations to other quizzes.
Betting games have been around for a while. Gottabet and Bluebet allow you to create a bet on virtually anything. Predicting games have been also around for a while: PicksPal allow you to predict sport event, and other services like SocialPicks do the same with stocks.
PlayTheDay has been around for a while but the official launch takes place this week. This game is operated by FairPlay, a privately held company incorporated in Cyprus and created by team of veterans in the gaming industry including an Israeli entrepreneur previously senior employee at Random Logic (that operates 888.com)
Saturday, September 15, 2007
GotVoice Adds Talking Bears and Speech-To-Text Transcription
http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/gotvoicescreen.png
GotVoice is a great voicemail utility that has so far focused on delivering visual voicemail (phone/web), custom voicemail greetings, and broadcasting voice messages (like Pinger). Through some clever coding, GotVoice links directly into your voicemail to pull messages into the system and send messages back out through it. However, the product has been lacking one of the killer voicemail features of their competitors, speech-to-text.
gotvoicescreen.pngToday they’re differentiating themselves from GrandCentral and closing the gap with their other competitors by adding speech-to-text transcription. And adding avatars to boot.
Their new avatar system will let you add some personality to your voicemail playback using SitePal’s avatars. It’s sure to come in handy if for some reason you enjoy getting your messages delivered by a bear.
Their speech-to-text offering allows you to transcribe voicemails to text for delivery via email or SMS. You can transcribe all your messages, or filter by contact. Transcription is available on their $9.99/month premium accounts including 40 messages a month with additional charges for each message thereafter, although they have a 14 free trial.
Spinvox and CallWave also offer call transcription. Spinvox is pricey in the U.S. if you take into account exchange rates, costing £9.99/month for 50 messages. CallWave is currently a good deal, transcribing calls for free during their open beta.
Scouta Releases Windows Client that Recommends Media Using iTunes
Scouta releases today a Windows client for generating video and audio recommendations based on the podcasts and videocasts in a user’s iTunes collection. This release comes just over a month after the company released a Mac version to do pretty much the same thing.
To use the client, all you have to do is install and configure it with your Scouta user account and set the frequency at which you want it to sync with your iTunes collection. Be sure to have some podcasts in iTunes before trying this out; otherwise it’s pretty pointless (it won’t recommend content based on your music collection alone).
The client will also only create recommendations using the podcasts and videocasts you’ve actually listened to or watched. Once recommendations are generated, users can tweak them by manually rating content in the Scouta web interface.
If you only casually consume podcasts, Scouta may be overkill and not worth the time to set up (even though the process is pretty dead simple). Personally, I discover enough online content through emails from friends and by simply browsing sites like YouTube and the iTunes catalog. But, if you love discovering new content online, this client could come in very handy.
MOG, iLike, and Last.fm also provide content recommendation systems that integrate with iTunes, except they focus on music and not general media.
The screenshot below provides a view of the Scouta recommendation interface.
Wikia Gaming Launches With 250,000 Articles
I love Wikia - CEO Gil Penchina, a former eBay executive, says he works harder than anyone in Silicon Valley at building his startup. I routinely point out to him that his startup doesn’t actually do anything - their wiki software is based on the open source MediaWiki project, Google, Looksmart and FM Publishing handle all the revenue via ad sales, and their users create every drop of content on the site. All he has to do is make sure the lights stay on (to be fair, Wikia has made substantial contributions to MediaWiki).
Anyway, back to the news: Wikia is launching Wikia Gaming tonight, a collection of video game focused wikis. The sites contain over 250,000 articles on games already, on all major platforms. The World of Warcraft site is the largest single wiki, with 43,000 articles.
Wikia, which has raised $14 million from Bessemer and Amazon, claims a quarter billion monthly page views. 800,000 articles on 3,000 topics have been created and edited by over 200,000 registered users in 70 languages.
Multi-Language Image Search Tool Released By University
PanImages is a new search project coming out of the University of Washington that allows users to search for images in their native language and receive far more results than with traditional search.
Emerging search engines such as Like.com allow searches via image queries, but are far from becoming mainstream. Most image search today is conducted by an analysis of the metadata around the image. So an image search on Google for “flower” returns results that have the tag “flower” in the photo metadata - 11.4 million results. But if you only speak Spanish, a search for “flores” returns just 2.2 million results.
Search engines are slowly beginning to allow cross-language queries to return more results to people who speak less popular languages. Google’s effort launched earlier this year, handles just a dozen major languages and does not address image search.
PanImages, by contrast, supports over 300 languages. Users simply type in the query and the language they are speaking and see a result set that includes translations. Clicking on a result returns Google Image and Flickr search results for that term.
The data itself is still somewhat thin, and users are asked to add translations when the site doesn’t already know what you mean. But the early results are useful, particularly if you speak a fairly obscure language. An images search for the Zulu word for refrigerator returns just two results. A similar search on PanImages returns 472,000 results.
Satisfaction Gets $1.3 Million To Crowdsource Your Help Desk
Customers are a hidden source of product specialists that corporations have been slow to tap. They usually become very knowledgeable about products they love and can often solve problems an understaffed support department doesn’t have the resources or will to solve (e.g. how to unlock an iPhone). It’s no wonder crowdsourcing your customers has become a popular and lucrative business - just see our recent coverage of PowerReviews and Bazaarvoice).
satisfactionscreen.gifSatisfaction Unlimited is another one of the companies tapping this knowledge base by helping young companies crowdsource their support amongst their customers. They’re doing it through a network of corporate discussion boards that let customers ask questions, propose ideas, submit problems, or just chat. Satisfaction is currently powering online support for a couple notable properties (Twitter, Pownce, Slideshare) and is now opening up a public beta to even more companies. They’ve also just raised a $1.3 million round from First Round Capital, O’Reilly Alphatech Ventures, Jeff Clavier, Adaptive Path, Mike Brown, and Jason Schultz.
Satisfaction’s network consists of AJAXy bulletin boards for over 200 companies. Not all of them are “owned” by the companies they represent, but rather spots for consumers to meet each other and mull over their latest issues. The open beta will let companies come in and claim these boards so they can moderate the forum and connect with their customers.
Having a network of these help boards provides an advantage to setting up your own board since the network comes with an existing user base. Tangler’s forums system also has this advantage.
The boards themselves are very similar to Jive’s entry-level product, their enterprise knowledge base. Users can create profiles and make posts to the board. Corporate mods can surf the board to moderate and answer questions. You can also search for and follow different conversation threads by email and RSS as they unfold. While Jive offers a significant number of extra upgrades to their system, Satisfaction fits the bill for smaller businesses.
MySpace Getting A Little Less Chaotic?
Interesting blog post by MySpace co-founder and president Tom Anderson this morning. He’s proposing a new default layout for MySpace pages that has significantly better organization of user information, and moves from a two column to three column approach.
So we’ve been working on a new home page design here. Thinking of launching this in a few weeks, but I wanted to see what people thought about. Take a look and tell me what you think
The page certainly has more of a Facebook look and feel than the existing default theme, with clearly delineated content areas and modules, and a new horizontal navigation bar across the top.
Unlike Facebook, MySpace allows users to customize the CSS of their profiles. If you really don’t want to leave MySpace but love the clean lines of Facebook, there are templates to customize MySpace to look just like Facebook.
Salesforce Enters Custom Application Market With Force.com
Salesforce will enter the custom software market next week with the launch of Force (site will go live Monday morning), a new platform that will allow developers to create database driven applications and deploy them as services. So if Salesforce doesn’t offer what you are looking for, and no one has built it for you on Salesforce’s AppExchange, you can simply build it yourself using the Apex framework.
At its core Force competes as a development platform with .NET, Java, etc. But there are also a slew of startups that have focused on allowing people to easily create and deploy database driven applications - DabbleDB, Zoho Creator, LongJump, Coghead and WyaWorks, among others. All will take a hit from Force. In fact, this may be sort of game ending for them. Salesforce has its eyes on much bigger fish than those startups.
Any internal process or function that requires custom software may be a candidate for Force. Disney, which has been testing the platform, is using it to manage character (Mickey Mouse, etc.) appearances. EA has built a recruiting application. Bronx School is using Force to manage attendance, performance, etc. Salesforce says they can actually manage the entire school on Force.
Salesforce is also announcing VisualSource, a set of tools that allow developers to build applications for multiple devices (tablets, iphone, etc.) and add HTML, AJAX and Flex to Force applications (making for much nicer looking and more user friendly applications). See the screen shot below for an example user interface.
Pricing is a flat $25/month/user.
Salesforce has always said its about software as a service. Next week, they say they’re deploying the platform as a service with Force. I imagine they’ll find a receptive customer base.
Google Presently Powerpoint Clone Could Be Days Away
Google’s long awaited Powerpoint clone could be days away from launching, according to a report at The Inquirer.
The service is said to be called “Presently” and is based in part on code from Zenter and Tonic Systems, two companies Google acquired earlier this year.
Presentations have long been the missing link in Google’s attempts to provide a full office suite that challenges market leader Microsoft Office. The Powerpoint clone was first rumored in February then confirmed by Google CEO Eric Schmidt in April. More recently Google integrated Powerpoint viewing functionality into Gmail.
If a launch of Presently is coming shortly, the timing is perfect for Google, given that they have this week announced a deal with global consulting firm Capgemini to distribute their office package.
Will Europe’s Free Mobile Service Blyk Finally Launch?
From TechCrunchUK: Europe’s Blyk, the much anticipated and much delayed advertising supported mobile service, may be gearing up for launch very soon. They’ve scheduled a press conference for September 24. The service has also recently said they are “on track for launch.”
The service will be free for users and targeted to 16-24 year olds. Presumably that age group will be more receptive to receiving an endless stream of advertising in exchange for free mobile minutes and texting.
Mosh Mobile is theoretically a U.S. equivalent to the service, but none of the carriers I’ve spoken to have ever heard of them, and they don’t appear to be funded. My guess is it’s more of a pipe dream than anything.
Look for iPhone UK news next week as well
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Wikia’s ArmchairGM: Wiki Meets Social Network
Wikia, a for profit wiki site created by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, acquired ArmchairGM for $2 million last year and got into the sports fan business.
The site has been slowly rolling out new features. Wikia CEO Gil Penchina described it to me as “Wiki 2.0″ - because it combines the best features of open source wiki software with social networking features like adding friends, building a profile, meeting new people, create groups, etc. ArmchairGM also allows users to add “foes” in addition to friends, since a lot of sports rivalries are generated on the site.
The site also has a unique user generated virtual gift product. Unlike other social networks, users create the gifts themselves by uploading images. Other users can then use those gifts, too, and some become quite popular.
Wikis and social networks don’t exactly mix well. Parts of the network, like user profiles, need to be locked down so that only the owner can edit them. Other parts of the site remain wide open and allow anyone to edit.
And its growing, fairly rapidly. ArmchairGM alone is now at 1 million monthly page views. Wikia has also rolled out the ArmchairGM software for ten other verticals not included in that page view count - see, for example, Foodie, Gaming, and Politics. The company recently brought in the NFL as a site-wide sponsor.
Parent company Wikia continues to grow rapidly, says Penchina. They had 250 million page views in August.
NBC Runs From iTunes Into The Arms Of Amazon
Last week a lot of drama developed between Apple and NBC over who broke up with who. All we really know is that the pair allegedly split over conflicts around DRM and pricing control. It was quite a hit for Apple, with NBC making up 40% or iTune’s digital video downloads.
Today NBC found a friend in Amazon, announcing a deal to sell the network’s digital TV content. Amazon already sells NBC Universal’s movies. NBC shows available on Amazon Unbox will include The Office, Heroes, and 30 Rock. They will also be selling content from their subsidiaries: USA Network, SCI FI Channel, Bravo, Telemundo, mun2, NBC Sports, and NBC News.
Beginning on September 10, Amazon Unbox customers will download for free — in advance of their network premieres — the pilot episodes of NBC’s new shows Bionic Woman, Chuck, Journeyman and Life. New episodes will be available for purchase on Amazon Unbox the day after they air on TV. Complete seasons may be purchased as soon as the season concludes.
The deal is yet another twist in NBC’s ongoing plans to monetize their content online. NBC has already announced plans to release the same content on their new site Hulu, with no word on how the new deal will affect the offering. (Bit Torrent, however, is still up and running)
Googlers Get Kinky On Wikipedia
Warning: presume all links in this post are NSFW.
Users of Google registered IP addresses contributed to Wikipedia entries including “Amateur Pornography“, the “List of male performers in gay porn films” and “Mutual Masturbation” according to data pulled from Wikiscanner. Other sexually related edits include the pages for sex show and the talk:#$%^ sex; a particular person is using a computer with a Google IP address to share the details of his sex life with the world.
Another user decided to clean up one Wikipedia entry by correcting the definition to read “”Motherf&$@er means to f&$@ your mother also known as incest,” which of course made the entry that much more clearer.
User’s of IP addresses registered to Google’s Corporate IT Department edited a page pertaining to something called “Breast expansion fetishism” and these two which I won’t name lest I haven’t upset enough people with the language in the post already.
Overall though, people using Google IP addresses are a fairly tame bunch, with no evidence that they have been editing the pages of Google competitors, the story I had initially looked to research. However, there were two edits by people using Google IP addresses to pages relating to Google; the first removes the term Googly from the Google (Verb) Entry, the second bizarrely deletes mention of Google having an office in Ireland.
Real Time Coverage Of Apple Announcements
Hop on over to CrunchGear to see the real time coverage of the special Apple press event today that started at 10 am PST. Lots of new iPod news, and a make-your-own ringtone tool in iTunes. And they always save the best stuff for last.
Eye Candy + Google = Groovle
Ontario based Groovle has a such a simple business model, it’s worthy of asking “why didn’t I think of that?” Groove uses Google Custom search in conjunction with picture hosting to offer custom Google search pages.
Users have two options in terms of how a Groovle page looks; they can either select from a list of preexisting pages or upload their own picture. Groovle offers an extensive variety of ready to use pages in categories including celebrities, nature, space, and sport.
Groovle makes its money from the search results generated by Google Custom Search, and given that those results are delivered by Google the business runs on a low cost, low barrier to succeed model. Sports fans, celebrity lovers, and anyone looking for a basic search oriented (ie one without widgets) custom start page who don’t want to create one themselves will like Groovle.
groovle.jpg
Justice Department Says ISPs Are Like The Post Office
The U.S. Justice Department has taken a step toward you getting more charges from your ISP. In comments to the FCC today, the Department said imposing Net neutrality regulations could “could deter broadband Internet providers from upgrading and expanding their networks to reach more Americans.”
Chief amongst their examples was that the one of the oldest data delivery systems, the U.S. Postal Service, charges customers differently based on guarantees and speeds of delivery, ranging from bulk mail to overnight. Similarly, the Department believes ISPs who deliver data packages, should be able to offer different levels of service to spread the costs of improving networks.
Net Neutrality proponents counter with a different analogy, pointing out telephone networks have always been neutral to the data transmitted across their wires.
This is good news for telecoms, like by AT&T Inc., Verizon and Comcast, who argue that high-volume uploaders should pay for part of the cost of upgrading internet infrastructure to handle the new load. It’s bad news for the internet companies (Google, eBay, Yahoo ,Microsoft) ISPs have seen get rich off their networks.
However, Telcos caution that they don’t want to charge for access to public sites, but want to offer private Internet-based services with faster speeds for uses such as downloading movies.
Adobe’s Online Image Editor Previewed
Right on schedule, Adobe previews an online version of its ubiquitous Photoshop tool, to be called Photoshop Express.
Adobe isn’t saying much, other than to point out that it is not a Photoshop replacement but rather “a new member of the Photoshop family that’s meant to make Adobe imaging technology immediately accessible way to large numbers of people.”
Either way, a number of startups are not going to be having such a good weekend.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
I Want This In Photoshop Immediately
http://www.techcrunch.com/page/4/
This image resizing and manipulation demonstration is sort of jaw dropping, particularly as the video goes on. The related paper, written by Dr. Ariel Shamir and Dr. Shai Avidan is available here.
YouTube In The Spotlight For Hosting Racist Material
YouTube is in a spot of bother in Germany for hosting Nazi related material uploaded by users.
Clips include scenes from the 1940 Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda film Jud Suess and music videos from German far-right rock band Landser.
A German parliamentarian was quoted as saying that YouTube hosting these films “amounts to aiding and abetting incitement of these people.” The display of Nazi imagery or logos, or supporting Nazi ideals is illegal in Germany and punishable by jail time as well as severe fines.
According to a ZDNet report Germany’s Central Council of Jews Vice President Salomon Korn was considering pressing charges against Google Germany over the matter.
Facebook Takes Further Steps To Curb User Abuse; Change In How Applications Are Measured
Last week Facebook updated their developer platform to restrict some of the more egregious abuses of users by application developers - bait and switch profile advertisements and friend spamming.
Today they announced additional changes. And Facebook also announced that they are changing the way applications are measured to show user engagement instead of just how many users have added an application.
Defending Users Against Abuse
Today they’ve updated the platform again to further restrict questionable behavior. In a blog post on the Facebook developers site, Dave Morin outlines the new rules and says “With the upcoming changes, we hope to shift the balance more in favor of good apps.”
It is now impossible for applications to hide things from profile owners. Previously, applications were showing ads to friends without the owner seeing the ad when looking at his/her own profile.
Facebook has also taken steps to limit invitations sent to friends, and have stopped applications from sending emails to users who’ve added it.
Application Metrics
Morin also says Facebook is going to start giving users more information on which applications are actually being used, as opposed to simply added and forgotten:
This week you’ll see us shift our application directory metrics to a focus on user engagement. This will help inform users as they make decisions on which applications to add as well as shift developer focus to engagement rather than total users. More specifics will be available as we roll out these changes this coming week.
This is a good change. Newer applications with fewer users will now have a way to move up on the charts if users are really engaged with the application. We’ll have to wait and see exactly how they plan on measuring engagement, but overall this is good news for the lesser known but “good” applications that are currently hard to find.
The Quickly Evolving Platform
Facebook is still a young platform, and it’s good that they are taking steps to reduce abuse of the user base. But they don’t seem to be taking any remedial action against past abusers, meaning those applications get to keep the millions of users they’ve racked up using questionable practices.
Since application developers aren’t penalized for finding the weaknesses in the Facebook platform, expect them (and their venture dollars) to continue to focus on finding the next hole to exploit. If Facebook were to slap a few of the worst offenders on the wrist, perhaps others would lose the incentive to engage in bad behavior.
Also, the changes are very cumbersome for even the non-abusers. For example, applications will now need to find another way to contact users since email is out. That creates uncertainty, and reduces the incentive for the good guys to innovate since they don’t know if functionality will disappear.
At the end of the day, it may take more to police this ecosystem than occasional band aids to the platform to stop abuse as it appears. A more subjective reward and punishment system may eventually evolve where Facebook takes an active role in policing the behavior of application developers. It may or may not be a good thing, but it is almost certainly inevitable.
Lots and Lots of Google Phone Rumors: HTC, Android, and even Yahoo in the mix
The pace of rumors and leaks around the fabled Google Phone is picking up, suggesting that Google is making a real push to launch something early next year and is no longer trying to keep everyone quiet.
Yesterday CrunchGear got confirmation from a senior (and anonymous) HTC exec that they’ve created some twenty devices for Google to test and are shooting for a Q1 2008 launch.
Today Engadget is focused on the operating system side of things. They note that Google quietly acquired Android, a creator of mobile phone operating systems, in 2005. And that the Android team, led by founder Andy Rubin (former cofounder of Danger) is leading the effort to write the Google Phone operating system.
The two rumors fit together nicely. Engadget says Google is likely shopping its OS to handset makers. HTC would certainly be one of the manufacturers that they would be talking to. And the huge success of the iPhone may have spurred Google to kick things into high gear. That would involve adding a lot of new people to the team, and the leaks we’re starting to see are the predictable result.
Google’s effort is different than the iPhone. They look to be focused mostly on the OS and layering Google applications like Maps and Gmail on top of that, while simultaneously talking to device manufacturers about a number of devices. Apple, instead, took a much more holistic approach in creating the iPhone. Google’s product likely won’t appeal to the mainstream audience that the iPhone attracts…but it probably won’t have a $500 price tag, either.
And just to throw another tidbit out there - the HTC exec that was mentioned on CrunchGear yesterday said Yahoo is on a parallel track as Google, and has actually been working on custom phones for longer than Google. We may be seeing a Yahoo phone next year, too.
If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join Digg
Video sharing site MetaCafe launched a new area of their site today - it uses the Digg API to show the most popular MetaCafe videos.
Viewers can sort by most dugg, highest rated, most discussed, most viewed, etc. Only Metacafe videos are shown.
Digg’s video channel and Metacafe overlap somewhat, particularly for people who just want to quickly find and browse interesting videos. That makes this pairing somewhat unlikely - I would have expected Metacafe to simply build their own Digg-like voting system or use Pligg’s open source software (see VideoSift’s similar functionality, which was recently in the news). The fact that they are working with Digg shows that they are willing to hitch their brand to that shooting star, damn the competitive angle.
Metacafe released a press release this afternoon on the new functionality. Notably absent from the release was Digg, who did not jointly release it, or provide a quote. (Update - see comment #2 below).
Ladies Rejoice, TheFind.com Acquires Glimpse
Shopping search engine startup TheFind has acquired the high-fashion shopping site Glimpse.com for an undisclosed amount. It’s an early deal for Glimpse, which just launched earlier this year.
TheFind is a comparison shopping search engine that crawls many shopping sites across the internet (190 million products at over 500,000 stores). Other shopping sites often charge for the privilege of getting listed in engines like Shopping.com. This keeps the results page clean of nonsensical results while generating some extra revenue.
The impetus for the deal was to increase their offering targeted to the female market. TheFind will be powering the shopping search for Glimpse.com, enabling the site to cover more online boutiques, specialty fashion retailers, and brand stores.
TheFind was founded in 2003 and launched their main search site last year after running a of their technology on FatLens.com. They are funded by two rounds of financing totaling $23 million from Bain Capital, Redpoint, and Lightspeed Ventures.
Monday, August 27, 2007
TechCrunch Reader Polls
A little while ago, Fred Wilson over at A VC posted a reader poll in which he asked his readers to identify themselves by their occupation. We thought this was a cool idea so we’ve decided to run our own polls below.
We have provided an occupation poll that is a near facsimile of Wilson’s. Further down, we have placed a couple of polls that address other topics.
Thanks for taking a few seconds to fill these out - the results should be interesting!
Which of the following labels best describes your occupation?
* Startup founder
* Established company staff
* Student
* Other
* Startup staff
* Established company founder
* Educator or academic
* Journalist (Traditional or Citizen)
* Research scientist
* Venture capital firm staff
* Venture capital firm partner
* Angel investor
* Hedge fund staff
* Hedge fund partner
* Buyout fund staff
* Buyout fund partner
View Results
How often do you read TechCrunch?
* Daily
* A few times per week
* Hourly
* Once per week
* Every other day
* A few times per season or less
* Every other week
* Once per month
View Results
Do you smile or grumble when TechCrunch covers Facebook news?
* Grumble
* Smile
View Results
MyProgress Lets You Track Your Progress
Vancouver based MyProgress offers a service that provides progress monitoring features (generally used in computer role playing games) for life tracking.
MyProgress allows users to track their personal finances, skills, “knowledges”, wealth and health dynamics.
The site tracks every piece of information users enter, from a new purchase, capital gains, an hour of photographic or driving experience, or a rental price change, and provides a detailed overview on how fast they are progressing in comparison with the others across multiple categories, such as age, occupation, and location. The service provides analytics about user’s life and build forecasts based on past data.
MyProgress is billed as the world’s first online application “designed to helping an individual [not a corporate] manage their progress and read their life log as an RSS feed.”
GrandCentral’s “One Number For Life” Not Really
So much for GrandCentral’s “one number for life” promise. The company is turning off customer phone numbers and giving them new ones following their acquisition by Google last month.
Troy Schneider received such a notice, advising him that in 8 days his GrandCentral number would be canceled and that he would be required to immediately start using a new number allocated to him. Judi Sohn received the same message: with no prior warning she had 8 days left on her existing phone number then it would cease to operate. Sohn was fortunate to some extent: Google has offered to pay for the reprinting of her business cards, but that would appear to be a one off, and a token gesture at that.
The inconvenience of losing a telephone number, particularly for a business, is more than just stationery. Paper telephone listings must be changed (some people still use them), sign writing must be fixed, and every single listing of the old number has to be found and changed. Most land line telephone providers would offer a redirection service for the old number, however with Google it’s simply a matter of 8 days then no more phone number. Every customer that tries calling the old number post cancellation and cannot connect to the business is potentially a lost sale.
There was no comment at the time of writing from Google or GrandCentral. Ironically the last post on the GrandCentral blog talks about the wonders of being able to keep a GrandCentral Number for life.
Update: Founder Craig Walker comments below and notes that this affected on 434 users:
Everybody, thanks for your comments and I want to quickly reply to try to clear the air regarding this issue. I’ll post a full blog about this on the GrandCentral site in just a bit, but first I want to assure everybody that we are NOT disconnecting anyone’s service. Unfortunately we received word recently that one of our partners was stopping their service in part of the country and since that time we’ve been working to port those phone numbers to other partners. We’ve done this successfully for the vast majority of those users but unfortunately there were approximately 400 users whose numbers could not be ported (434 to be exact). As soon as we found out these users could not be ported to other partners, we contacted those users, set up an alternative GrandCentral number in the same area code for them, and gave them a reply email to request additional GrandCentral number choices. Vincent (our COO and Co-Founder) and I have been personally replying to these emails to help make this transition easier. This would have been these case whether or not we were acquired. We completely sympathize with any pain or disruption this might cause these users and will continue to work directly with them to help find a solution. I will post more on our blog shortly, but wanted to give you all a quick heads up.
Facebook Opens Email Up A Little; I Want More
Facebook
opened up their very closed email platform today by allowing users to add normal email addresses in a message. Previously you could only send messages to Facebook friends. Now you can add in others, too.
This is great news for people who use Facebook for most or all of their emailing. But for those of us that use normal email for our day to day business, getting Facebook messages is more of a problem than a feature. That’s because Facebook makes you log on to the site to read messages/emails from your friends. They’ll send a note to your normal email address when a new message comes in, but they make you log on to Facebook to actually read it.
I rarely do that, and have missed some important messages from people trying to contact me. As a next step, I think Facebook should offer to forward the actual messages to an outside email address (and/or provide a password protected RSS feed). Eventually Facebook should offer full POP or IMAP support for their email. They can still restrict it so that you can only receive messages from friends, but at least you could access it from your desktop or web based mail application.
Vlingo: Voice Enable Any Mobile Application
People really hate cell phone keypads for data entry.
Anyone who’s called customer service knows voice guided phone applications aren’t new, but they’re a good way to navigate menus and enter text. And applications like Spinvox which incorporated speech recognition to turn verbal voicemails into written text messages, and TellMe, which uses voice recognition to power local search, are useful and popular.
Cambridge-based Vlingo wants to make voice enabling applications easier, by using their own speech-to-text J2ME/Brew application API (Windows/Symbian later this year). With the API, developers will be able translate a user’s voice to text, and use it in their application as if typed directly into the program. One of their first examples was for local search and shopping. Vlingo voice-enabled a text box on the program you could fill out by holding down the talk button and saying a phrase, like “Pizza in San Francisco”. The system then fills in the form with what you said, letting you modify the text normally if it gets it wrong.
In our trials the system generally worked with my Californian accent. However, an Australian accent had very little luck, highlighting the difficulties of internationalizing speech recognition. Often speech recognition companies make their jobs easier by limiting the vocabulary or training the system on a comprehensive lexicon of words and accents. But due to the breadth of their effort, Vlingo had to take a more general approach, using machine learning through statistical analysis so the system could work in a wider array of uses. There’s a demo below.
It’s a very ambitious project, but the team behind it comes with some significant experience in the speech recognition space. The two co-founders (Mike Phillips and John Nguyen) worked for SpeechWorks, which was acquired by ScanSoft, which then renamed itself Nuance. Nuance most recently paid $293 million for VoiceSignal, a company using speech recognition for mobile search in 21 languages.
Vlingo plans on monetizing the service by charging developers on a cost per month or per user basis. They’re a team of 13 with $6.5 million from CRV and Sigma Ventures.
eBuddy Adds MySpace Instant Messaging
European web chat startup eBuddy, which is in a fight-to-the-death struggle with Silicon Valley based Meebo, just added support for MySpace instant messaging tor their product.
eBuddy now supports MySpace IM, AOL, ICQ, GoogleTalk, MSN and Yahoo. Log in to some of all of these services from the eBuddy home page.
MySpace says they now have over 18.5 million users of the service, which soft launched in September 2006. By comparison, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and AIM have 224 million, 93 million, 30 million and 30 million users, respectively (Comscore worldwide - July 2007). GTalk trails the rest, with just 4.8 million users.
Rumor is that Trillian, a downloadable piece of software that also accesses all major IM networks except Skype, will be adding MySpace support soon, too.
Esther Dyson, Guy Kawasaki and Yossi Vardi Join TechCrunch20 Expert Panel
The TechCrunch20 Panel of Experts is now nearly complete. Today we add Esther Dyson, Guy Kawasaki and Yossi Vardi to the impressive list of individuals who will judge the startups launching at the conference and determine who will ultimately win the $50,000 top prize.
The final companies for TechCrunch20 have been selected, and more announcements are coming soon. Register for the event, which is being held in San Francisco on September 17-18, here.
Esther Dyson and her company EDventure specialize in analyzing the impact of emerging technologies and markets on economies and societies. She is the author of Release 2.0, a book which discussed how the Internet has affected our lives. Esther has been a board member or early investor in numerous startups, including Flickr, PowerSet, ZEDO, Medscape, and Medstory. In addition to her active roles in a number of not-for-profit and advisory organizations, Esther enjoys private aviation and commercial space startups and hosts an annual Flight School conference in Aspen.
Guy Kawasaki is CEO of early-stage venture capital firm Garage Technology Ventures and an active blogger. Guy was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, CEO of ACIUS and founder of Fog City Software. Guy has written eight books, including The Art of the Start. He sits on the board of BitPass, FilmLoop and SimplyHired. His most recent venture is launching Truemors, a site dedicated to democraticizing information by encouraging everday people to post news.
Yossi Vardi is one if Israel’s hi-tech veterans, having helped build some 40 hi-tech companies in Internet, software, telecommunications, electro-optics, energy, environment and other areas. Several companies Dr. Vardi co-founded became successful public companies, among them Alon, Advanced Technologies, and Granite Hacarmel. Internet companies backed by Dr. Vardi include Mirabilis Ltd, ICQ (acquired by AOL), Gteko (acquired by Microsoft), Scopus and Answers.com. He is a member of the World Economic Forum, on the board of Amdocs, and the advisory board of 3i. He has served as an advisor to the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program.
MyHeritage Expands Its Family Tree
Genealogy site MyHeritage is merging with Pearl Street Software. Through the team-up MyHeritage will pick up Pearl Street’s VP of Technology and gain control of the #2 family tree software in worldwide sales (Family Tree Legends), the #2 family tree submission site (GenCircles) with more than 160 million ancestors, and more than 400 million public records in the Family Tree Legends Records Collection.
The addition of the team and products put the company in a better position to deal with upstart Geni, which announced over 5 million profiles in 5 months in July. They’ve also been getting a great deal of the press. However, Geni still has a long way to go when taking on the established ancestry industry. MyHeritage has a large lead on the site with over 10 million registered users of their site. Ancestry.com, the leading genealogy site, has added 5.6 million people to their family trees this week.
As a sign of the competition, MyHeritage will now be making all the Pearl Street Software free.
Playboy Launches Social Network: “High schoolers, old dudes and your Mom can’t join”
Update: Playboy U is built on the Ning platform
The recent launch of Silicon Valley funded adult/porn site Zivity raised a few eyebrows. Now one of the old sovereigns of sexy is getting into the game, too. CrunchGear reports that Playboy is launching their own sexy social networking site just for college students, Playboy U.
Playboy U requires all users to have a .edu email addresses, mimicking Facebook’s early policy of only allowing college students to join. They say, “Sorry, but high schoolers, old dudes and your Mom can’t join”. However, The site won’t be as lascivious as the periodical. In what may be a bummer for some, the site will be “an exclusive college-only non-nude social network”. Furthermore, it will be a place to “show your school pride, connect with other students and celebrate the social side of college”. But I’m sure they’re not going to police the whole network for porn.
Student profiles will consist of the usual social network features including, bios, photos, videos, Blogs, and Forums. Schools will have customized pages, parties and on-campus events, and a national radio show with student callers.
Other magazines have been trying to get with the times and fight floundering readership by launching their own social networks too. Rolling Stone recently announced plans for their own network as well. But Playboy may have some better luck with readership already skewing toward the college following.
Lots of college students lament the loss of their exclusive Facebook social network to the older crowd. They may be receptive to a newer, cooler alternative. Something tells me that Playboy may not be the brand to steal their hearts, though.
SpiralFrog: Free Music Alive And Hopping
Remember SpiralFrog that free music download service that announced itself nearly a year ago? Well, after slowly releasing invites to Canadians, we received a private beta invitation.
SpiralFrog originally made a splash when they sealed a deal with Universal BMG to give away free downloads of some of their songs in exchange for a share of on-site ad revenue. Later they closed a deal with EMI and have since added a bunch of smaller labels totaling over 700,000 songs. However, now we know a little more about how their free system works.
Songs on SpiralFrog are not ad-supported through interstitial advertising or free in the sense that you can bring them anywhere. Instead, you get DRMed songs (WMA) leased to you for a free 30 day membership (or you can buy on Amazon). You can renew your membership, and the lease to play your songs, by answering survey questions (# concerts per year, how you discover music, etc). All that data helps SpiralFrog know what kind of ads to serve on the site.
To keep the whole system secure, they’ve locked down the download process end to end DRM controls. First you have to get a download manager, and then ensure you have Windows Media Player 9.0 or up. The system is kind of annoying and only works on Windows machines since it uses Microsoft DRM. Although, Microsoft DRM has already been cracked. The DRM requirement also means the songs only play through Windows Media Player, making them unportable. Unlike other DRM setups, though, there doesn’t appear to be a limit to the number of computers you can download to as long as you set SpiralFrog up on them.
Once the system is in place, you can search for artists and download their songs/videos individually. The songs are queued in a download manager and stored locally by artist and album in your SpiralFrog folder. The system seems to have intentionally been crippled so you view more advertising, with downloads happening one at a time and only while on the site. Using the site, I was able to download a bunch of songs and play them with no problem, but other early beta user have had trouble.
I don’t know if SpiralFrog will be able to sustain their business off of on-site advertising and affiliate music sales. A lot of other services are simply going DRM free, not download free. Blogmusik also recently went legit in France, but the US courts and music industry are a lot harder to sway. However, limiting the lease time on the songs means they can continuously tweak what hoops their users need to hop through to keep playing the music they download. For now it may be a simple option if you want a (legal) source of free tunes.
Why Darwin Beats Danny Carlton
Danny Carlton writes a little known personal blog under the pseudonym “Jack Lewis” at jacklewis.net/weblog. But don’t try to visit it if you use Firefox, because he’s banned users of the popular browser from visiting his site. Firefox users are now redirected here.
Why? Because he objects to the fact that some of those Firefox readers are using an ad-blocking extension to block ads showing on the site. To counter the problem, he’s thrown the baby out with the bathwater and kicked 13% or so of the Internet off his site.
While Carlton is certainly enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame, in my opinion this is not a good strategy to build a blog. Users are solid gold. Even the ones that block ads. They sometimes write comments, which is free content. They link to you from their own blog. And they tell friends about your site. All that leads to more readers and, ultimately, more revenue. If a user wants to skip the ads and is willing to go to the trouble of installing ad blocking software, so be it. I still love ‘em. And I gladly hand them my content for free.
Carlton doesn’t agree, apparently. Although I wonder why he continues to provide a full content feed, sans ads, at jacklewis.net/weblog/atom.xml (and it has been reposted here). Those users are “stealing” his content, too. What about them? Perhaps he’ll now turn his attention to the evils of RSS.
The Internet will certainly be a less colorful place without Carlton’s passionate editorial. A perusal of his blog posts (via Safari) tells me he thinks Barack Obama is a communist and that “fourth graders can be lied to and told the Theory of Evolution is a fact.” The problem is, Darwin was right. Only the fittest survive. And Carlton just made his blog an endangered species.
Is Orkut A Social Networking Heavyweight? Comscore Says Yes.
The upcoming Orkut redesign prompted us to check out Orkut’s page view numbers according to Comscore.
U.S. Comscore data shows, as expected, barely a blip from Orkut (Facebook shown for comparison). Orkut has 425 million monthly page views compared to 15 billion for Facebook:
But, wow, take a look at the worldwide Comscore numbers - Facebook doubles to 31 billion monthly page views, but Orkut jumps all the way up to 38 billion (we’ve also included some of the other big social networks for comparison in this chart):
Not that it adds much to the conversation, but Alexa agrees Orkut is bigger than Facebook in terms of page views.
Is this accurate? I don’t know. Compete barely shows Orkut as existing, let alone anywhere near Facebook’s traffic. But Orkut is famously popular in Brazil and other Non-U.S. countries. Perhaps, somehow, it is actually a social networking heavyweight.
Now That The iPhone Can Be Unlocked, Will Apple Try To Block The Hack?
For those who might have missed it: Engadget has the scoop on a new software solution that unlocks Apple’s iPhone, allowing it to be used on any mobile carrier worldwide (presuming of course they run a 2G GSM network).
The creators of the iPhone hack (iPhoneSimFree.com) claim that the hack is “restore and upgrade resistant”; essentially reseting the phone and/ or loading the latest software updates doesn’t affect the hack. The big question is whether it will be resistant to future updates.
So will Apple try to block the hack, or will the Apple engineers in Cupertino be secretly cheering that their gift to mobile users can now be used worldwide and just simply leave the hack alone?
It is unlikely that the decision will be Apple’s alone. AT&T will be very unimpressed at the notion that users could buy an iPhone and bypass their network. The iPhone has already proved itself as being a massive confidence boost for what is considered by some to be America’s worst mobile carrier. The tangible benefits of a AT&T exclusive iPhone are also strong: roughly 1 million users are locked in to AT&T plans averaging somewhere between approx. $50-$100 per month per user, a benefit in the hundred of millions of dollars over the life of the contract. AT&T would be hoping for millions of additional users in the future as well.
On the other hand, someone, somewhere in Apple must be at least a little bit excited by the notion that more people than ever will now consider buying the iPhone. As much as Apple receives some financial benefit from AT&T in terms of a signup or ongoing payment, the real money for Apple is in the hardware and the Apple services such as iTunes, services iPhone users do and will use.
Either way, as long as the iPhone hack works America’s balance of payments should see a very small improvement in the coming months, as first adopters, and tech fiends world wide take iPhones home with them from their next trips to the United States.
Is The Internet Dead And Boring?
Mark Cuban wrote Friday that he believes the internet to be “dead and boring.”
Cuban argues that:
“Some of you may not want to admit it, but that’s exactly what the net has become. A utility. It has stopped evolving. Your Internet experience today is not much different than it was 5 years ago….Web 2.0 is proof that the Internet has stopped evolving and stabilized as a platform. Its very very difficult to develop applications on a platform that is ever changing. Things stop working in that environment. Internet 1.0 wasn’t the most stable development environment. Todays Internet is stable specifically because its now boring.(easy to avoid browser and script differences excluded)”
He goes on to state that “The days of the Internet creating explosively exciting ideas are dead. They are dead until bandwidth throughput to the home reaches far higher numbers than the vast majority of broadband users get today.”
On a weekend where a Wall Street Journal article explaining the LOLcats phenomena is a leading story on Techmeme, there could certainly be some argument in favor of the notion that all that is old is new again, and that the web has become at least a little boring. Ultimately you can judge. Read Mark Cubans full post here, and let us know what you think in the poll below.
Google Will Be Beaten By Facebook, Mahalo: Scoble
Above is part 3 of a 3 part Robert Scoble video blog series on “Why Mahalo, TechMeme, and Facebook are going to kick Google’s butt in four years.
” To see the other parts scroll on the player; Part 2 at around the 6 minute mark gets to the main points*. Essentially Scoble argues that Google is in trouble because they are unable to adapt their algorithms and business model in the face of social search sites such as Mahalo and even Facebook; Techmeme is thrown in for good measure as well. Scoble argues that the search results from sites such as Mahalo will appeal to more people due to their ability to be socially constructed as opposed to Google’s computer generated results.
As much as I think that Jason Calacanis is doing a good job with Mahalo, and that he is creating decent content for those frustrated by current search technologies, I’m not even sure Calacanis would be so bold as to argue that his company is going to kick Google’s butt in four years time.
Scoble though does open the more interesting question: what is the future of search?
I won’t even start linking to the many, many search startups that are trying to answer that question.
Scoble seemingly forgets though that even if Google’s current model doesn’t incorporate social search, there is absolutely nothing stopping Google going out and acquiring one of these companies then incorporating their model within the Google product family. I’m also not convinced that we are yet to see the David to Google’s Goliath, but I could be wrong.
* for what ever reason Kyte insists on showing only the latest video in the embed so I was unable to include Part 2 straight up.
