The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- How Does Lady Gaga Make Money On YouTube? Find Out At TechCrunch Disrupt.
- Wake Me Up When The Circuit Bends: Inside American Idiot On Broadway
- The Return Of The Lost iPhone May Come On June 7, WWDC Day
- Klout Raises $1.5 Million To Measure Influence And Authority On Twitter
- Think Of The Children: Parents Television Council Finds iPhone Apps Too Saucy
- Internet Brands Snaps Up ExpertHub Network
- AOL Sells Instant Messaging Service ICQ To DST For $187.5 Million
- AOL’s Total Revenue Drops To $664 Million For The First Quarter
- Carol Bartz On Foursquare: “It Depends How Much Money They Want”
- Tremor Media Shakes Another $40 Million Out Of The VC Money Tree
- Did Microsoft Just Step In To Help HTC Fight Apple? Or Are They After Android Too?
- iPhone Leapfrogs BlackBerry As The #1 Handset For Opera Mini In The US
- Dazzboard’s Web-Based iTunes Alternative Now Works On Macs
- Add It To The List: You Cannot Club Seals To Death On The iPhone
- Ooyala Testing Pay Per View With ABC
- When Jack Dorsey Met Fred Wilson, And Other Twitter Tales (Book Excerpt)
- The Taste Of The iPad. UrbanSpoon Makes Its HD Debut
- John Mayer Clarifies: Twitter Isn’t Dead, Tumblr Is Just Better. Join Me.
- Mozilla Officially Unveils A Pre-Alpha Test Version Of Firefox For Android
- Facebook Considering HTML5, Won’t Talk iPad App
- PHP Founder Rasmus Lerdorf Joins Group Payments Startup WePay
- Facebook And iPad FTW. Twitter, Blippy, Foursquare Not So Much [Video]
- Jason Calacanis’ Six Handy Tips On How To Resign
- Apple Continues To Morph Into The Chocolate Factory. Expect Fewer Gobstopper Leaks.
- The Problem With Opera: It Tries To Scream When It Just Needs To Sing
| How Does Lady Gaga Make Money On YouTube? Find Out At TechCrunch Disrupt. Posted: 28 Apr 2010 07:50 AM PDT
There’s still time to get our early-bird discount for Disrupt if you grab a ticket before Friday. We’ve invited Carter because he is successfully navigating the music industry’s disruption. CD sales are steeply down from a decade ago due to Web-based theft and single-track sales –and no one expects them to recover. Even without theft, Gaga fans can just as easily watch her on YouTube rather than paying for her music. Instead of fighting the stream, Carter and others like him are meeting the audience online and experimenting with ways to monetize popularity. Carter will tell us how one of the world’s biggest stars is managing her brand by using the digital disruption to her advantage, rather than detriment. (And yes, we did ask, but the Lady herself is on tour in France at the time.) We’re also excited to ask the 800-pound gorilla in the room, Google, about the evolution on online advertising. (Is that okay, Nikesh, that we just called you a gorilla?) To pow-wow on how the mobile platform is changing, his Googler colleague, Gundotra, will join us, as will Facebook’s Cox. If you’re a startup and want to exhibit at Disrupt –which also includes the opportunity to attend a speed-dating session with VCs, courtesy of Zoosk – check out exhibitor info. If you qualify for Startup Alley as an early-stage startup, it’s even cheaper than buying two tickets for your team. (No kidding.) Hope we’ll see you at Disrupt.
     
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| Wake Me Up When The Circuit Bends: Inside American Idiot On Broadway Posted: 28 Apr 2010 07:47 AM PDT  Last week I walked through the set of American Idiot, a new broadway musical featuring the songs of the skiffle band, Green Day. I'm not big on musical theatre - I was never given even a chorus part in high school and ended up doing crew, which was much more fun, so maybe it's sour grapes - but this musical has 44 different video screens on stage, each doing something different, making it one of the most technically impressive productions on Broadway. I was there to find out how they did it. The forty-four screens, as you see above, are all Sony Bravia TVs of various sizes. The goal during production was to "sequence" the screens to match the onscreen action. Interestingly, because of union labor guidelines, the TV controls had to be connected to the lightboard using a theatrical networking protocol called DMX512 so the trained lightboard operator - whose training usually stops a the ability to push a slider up and down - would be able to press one button to get all of the TVs to work correctly. Why? If they had to hire a special "TV operator," the unions would force every production in the future to hire a "TV operator" and given tight budgets, they have to kluge like crazy. It's the equivalent of controlling a massive network of computers from a green-screen terminal with only a serial port simply because the boss likes his Wang desktop. There's no business like the slow, outdated network protocols business!
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| The Return Of The Lost iPhone May Come On June 7, WWDC Day Posted: 28 Apr 2010 07:28 AM PDT
After all the police raids and legal musings, the next-generation iPhone that Apple engineer Gray Powell lost in a bar will likely reappear at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference, which the company today announced will take place on June 7. It is widely expected that Apple will officially unveil its next iPhone, the iPhone HD or whatever it will be called, at the event. Yup, the one with the front-facing camera for video chat, bigger battery, better microphone, and retro 70s Braun stylings. Maybe there will be some surprises left. If not, there is always the iPad, iPhone OS 4.0, iAds, and “tips and tricks” sessions on API Design for Cocoa.      
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| Klout Raises $1.5 Million To Measure Influence And Authority On Twitter Posted: 28 Apr 2010 07:03 AM PDT
Klout, which recently released a new API, evaluates Twitter users’ behavior with complex ranking algorithms and semantic analysis of content to measure the influence of individuals and topics around the web. Since the company's launch in 2008, Klout has registered over 250,000 users and over 300 API partners, including CoTweet, HootSuite, and the newly-launched Tweetup, and is handling millions of API calls a day. The new funding will be used to scale product development and to launch a new web app that is more consumer-focused. With the large number of API partners, it’s clear that the Twitter influence startup is gaining traction, especially in third party Twitter clients. There’s always the risk that Twitter will develop its own measure of authority that can be used, but for now Klout seems to be leading the pack in terms of measuring influence on Twitter.      
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| Think Of The Children: Parents Television Council Finds iPhone Apps Too Saucy Posted: 28 Apr 2010 06:35 AM PDT  So you bought your child an iPhone and you gave him or her an iTunes account and password and told them that they can simply download as many apps as they want, 24 hours a day, even if they cost money. But what's this? Junior or Julia has started downloading saucy sex sensors and card games containing images of ladies in various states of undress? How did this happen? It's Apple's fault. The Parents Television Council (also known as Parents Against Adults) believe that Apple isn't doing enough to prevent underage children from downloading apps even though each app download requires a password to be tapped in and parental controls can prevent certain apps from appearing on the phone. After all, it's Apple's responsibility to ensure that kids don't see boobs, not yours.
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| Internet Brands Snaps Up ExpertHub Network Posted: 28 Apr 2010 06:26 AM PDT
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it is perfectly in line with Internet Brands’ growth-through-acquisition strategy. The INET CrunchBase profile lists 10 small purchases in the last 3 years alone, and its portfolio of brands is currently 100+ strong. Its latest buy, startup ExpertHub, operates a network that includes dozens of websites, such as CriminalDefenseLawyer.com, BankruptcyLawFirms.com, and LawFirms.com. Internet Brands also announced the acquisition of two websites in its Shopping vertical: DoDTracker.com – which aggregates deals from major retailers – and PursePage.com, a designer handbag review site.      
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| AOL Sells Instant Messaging Service ICQ To DST For $187.5 Million Posted: 28 Apr 2010 05:18 AM PDT
We originally reported that DST was sniffing around ICQ back in December. The acquisition makes sense for DST considering that the instant messaging service has a significant Russian user base. ICQ, which AOL acquired in 1998 for $400 million, draws around 32 million monthly unique visits. But over 25 percent of those visits are from Russia, where it holds the no. 1 spot for instant messaging. Rumors of ICQ’s possible sale were first reported last November. We’d heard speculation that Naspers was interested last year but dropped out of the bidding process. Back in December, we also heard Google and Skype were interesting in buying up ICQ. The final price falls below AOL’s rumored asking price of around $200 to $250 million. DST has invested heavily in Facebook, Zynga and most recently Groupon. The deep-pocketed investor has also funded Mail.ru and Astrum Online Entertainment.      
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| AOL’s Total Revenue Drops To $664 Million For The First Quarter Posted: 28 Apr 2010 05:16 AM PDT
If revenue dropped 17% year-over-year in the last quarter of 2009 compared to the same period a year before, its total revenues for the past quarter were down a painful 23% compared to the first quarter of 2009. AOL has disclosed that it has sold ICQ to Digital Sky Technologies for $187.5 million in cash, and that it is still considering a sale or shutdown of social network Bebo this year. Zooming in on the advertising part of the equation, Q4 revenues on that level dropped 19% year-over-year, from $439.8 million in the first quarter of 2009 to $354.3 million in Q1 2010. Revenue from international display advertising, in particular, took quite a nosedive with a 29% drop year-over-year. Search and contextual advertising also took a hit: -27%. On a slightly more positive note, AOL has reduced costs in Q1 2010 as operating expenses declined $139 million versus the first quarter of 2009. The company had $262.4 million of cash-on-hand, or approximately $2.45 per share of cash, on its balance sheet on March 31, 2010.      
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| Carol Bartz On Foursquare: “It Depends How Much Money They Want” Posted: 28 Apr 2010 04:49 AM PDT  I just got out of a Yahoo! press conference in London where I got an opportunity to talk briefly with Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz. The topic on everyone's lips was Yahoo's rumored talks with Foursquare, so I asked her what she thought of TechCrunch's advice to the location-based startup: don't sell out to Yahoo!. Bartz's response: "It depends how much money they want." Listen to the full audioboo below. 
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| Tremor Media Shakes Another $40 Million Out Of The VC Money Tree Posted: 28 Apr 2010 02:15 AM PDT
Tremor Media is already the largest online video ad network in the U.S., and the company says it’s been profitable since 2009. Now the company just closed a large $40 million series D financing to accelerate its product R&D particularly its ad management system, and expand into “other media channels” (TV perhaps?). The round was led by the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund, with some money coming from DFJ proper and Triangle Peak Partners. Previous investors also put in more money, including Canaan Partners, Meritech Capital Partners and SAP Ventures. This round doubles the total capital Tremor has raised since launch to almost $80 million. According to comScore, Tremor’s video ad network reaches a potential audience of 81.7 million people in the U.S., putting it ahead of YuMe, Advertising.com, BBE, and Break Media. Online video advertising is the fastest growing portion of online advertising, and Tremor needs to cement its position among the top video ad networks. That $40 million will certainly come in handy as it attempts to do that. It also could be a war chest for smaller acquisitions.      
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| Did Microsoft Just Step In To Help HTC Fight Apple? Or Are They After Android Too? Posted: 28 Apr 2010 01:00 AM PDT
As you may have heard, Apple filed a massive lawsuit against phone-maker HTC nearly two months ago. Apple is alleging that HTC is infringing on over 20 of its iPhone patents. While HTC makes phones for a number of partners, it’s pretty clear that this is Apple going after Google’s Android platform indirectly. And now Google may have just found an unlikely ally in this fight: Microsoft. [Update below with a new interesting twist.] Yes, the software giant, which makes the rival Windows Mobile (and soon Windows Phone 7) phone software has announced a deal with HTC that allows them to license their patented technology. On the face of it, this deal may make some sense since HTC also makes Windows Mobile phones. But the key to this is right there in Microsoft’s statement on the matter, “Microsoft Corp. and HTC Corp. have signed a patent agreement that provides broad coverage under Microsoft's patent portfolio for HTC's mobile phones running the Android mobile platform” (Emphasis mine) So yes, this seems to be Microsoft lending its (undoubtedly massive) arsenal of patents to help HTC and Google combat Apple (though, naturally, the rationale behind the deal — and Apple — are never named). It’s hard to imagine what else this could possibly be about [more below]. It’s also hard to figure out why Microsoft sent this release out at 11:30 at night. While Microsoft undoubtedly gets some pleasure out of helping someone else fight its longtime rival, Apple, these days, the company seems much more at odds with Google. And yet, they’re helping them out here (yes, again, indirectly). Of course, this undoubtedly makes sense economically for Microsoft — they’ll receive royalties from HTC, presumably for each device sold. Yes, Android devices. The release also notes that the “agreement expands HTC's long-standing business relationship with Microsoft.“ This past month, HTC was thought to be the leading candidate to buy Palm — if for no other reason than their mobile patents that may help in the Apple suit. But last week, HTC reportedly dropped its bid for Palm. Perhaps the negotiation of this deal made that much easier to do. Update: And this just got much more complicated. Microsoft is now apparently claiming that Android is infringing on its patents, CNET reports. So this deal may have more to do with HTC covering itself if Microsoft decides to go after Google. But it’s hard to know for sure at this point. As Ina Fried reports:
So Microsoft, with this deal, may be both threatening and inadvertently helping Google (if their patents help HTC against the Apple suit). Very interesting, to say the least.      
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| iPhone Leapfrogs BlackBerry As The #1 Handset For Opera Mini In The US Posted: 28 Apr 2010 12:53 AM PDT
We already knew a lot of people were seemingly eager to try out the alternative browser on the iPhone – the app saw 1 million dowloads on its first day in the store. But how is it holding up now? According to the just-released report, the iPhone has now become the third most popular handset for Opera Mini users worldwide. All the other top 20 devices are Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets. Furthermore, the iPhone is currently the #1 device used by Opera Mini users in the United States, well ahead of BlackBerry, which previously occupied the top spot. Out of the top 10 countries according to Opera Mini usage, the United States and the United Kingdom are the two countries where the iPhone has become the #1 device used by Opera Mini users. According to preliminary numbers, Opera expects the US to soon have the fifth-most Opera Mini users, displacing Nigeria, South Africa and Ukraine on its ascent up the list. Since mid-April, the States jumped from #8 to #5 in the top 10 countries list. As for the actual state of the mobile web on a global level, according to Opera: In March 2010, Opera Mini had over 55.2 million users, a 9.3% increase from February 2010. Combined, those users viewed more than 25.8 billion pages in March. Since March 2009, page views have increased 200%.      
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| Dazzboard’s Web-Based iTunes Alternative Now Works On Macs Posted: 28 Apr 2010 12:01 AM PDT
Dazzboard allows users to sync media and playlists to mass storage devices, like most non-Apple MP3 players and Android phones. Along with the standard music, photo, and video syncing you’d expect from an iTunes alternative, the application also lets you to sync content with web services including YouTube, Facebook and Flickr. You can also transfer files between multiple devices. To get it working on a Mac you’ll need to be running Safari and Snow Leopard 10.6.2 or newer. Unfortunately I had issues getting the application working properly (I keep getting errors about the backend server, which are probably related to the launch), but the functionality appears to be nearly identical to what’s available on the Windows version, which we’ve previously covered. Dazzboard is based in Finland and recently raised $1.5 million.
     
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| Add It To The List: You Cannot Club Seals To Death On The iPhone Posted: 27 Apr 2010 11:13 PM PDT
iSealClub is the latest app to be rejected from the App Store. In it, you yes, club seals. I’m shocked — shocked! — that Apple would reject such an app. Developer Matthew Smyth writes:
Smyth emailed Apple before ever writing the app to see if they would find it questionable, and they responded that they didn’t pre-approve apps. So Smyth built it. And yes, it was rejected on the grounds that it contains “content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, sounds, etc.) that in Apple's reasonable judgement may be found objectionable.” Actually, I thought the whole thing was a joke when Smyth emailed it to us, but it turns out his app is actually based on something real: the Canadian Seal Hunt. Yes, it’s real — and awful. But actually, Smyth has something of a point with the following:
He goes on:
A very interesting point. That said, I’d say there’s just about no way this app gets accepted, hypocrisy or not. So you’ll just have to make do with the video of it in action below.
     
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| Ooyala Testing Pay Per View With ABC Posted: 27 Apr 2010 11:02 PM PDT
Paypal is the only pay option. If you click on it, a confirmation page pops up clearly showing that the payment is being made to Ooyala, not ABC. There are no commercials during the episode. This is not a product that Ooyala currently offers that we know of, and we’ve reached out to the company for comment. Screenshots below:
     
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| When Jack Dorsey Met Fred Wilson, And Other Twitter Tales (Book Excerpt) Posted: 27 Apr 2010 10:08 PM PDT
Editor’s note: The following excerpt is from Mastering The VC Game, a new book by Jeffrey Bussgang that goes on sale Thursday. It tells the backstory of Twitter from the perspective of founder Jack Dorsey, from his early obsession with couriers and his attempts to create a better dispatch system to his “Aha” moment with Twitter (“What if we simply set status, archive it on the Web, use SMS to do it, and it all happens in real time?”) to why the company picked Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures as its first venture investor (“I want a VC who is always thinking a few steps ahead of me”). Bussgang interviewed both men, and details how the VC and entrepreneur clicked in the second half of this excerpt. The first part recounts the tale of how Dorsey came to invent Twitter. Bussgang is a general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners and previously co-founded Upromise, the college savings service which was bought by Sallie Mae. Jack Dorsey (a.k.a. @jack in the lingo of the Twitterverse) founded Twitter, the social networking and microblogging site where users—Twitterers—post very short (140 characters, tops) updates known as tweets. The concept for Twitter came out of Jack's lifelong fascination with mapping the real-time movements of people and things within complex environments. "Since I was very small, I've been fascinated by how cities work," Jack told me in his typically straightforward way. "I always got really excited when I thought about visualizing them, specifically around maps. What would you place on a map to show how a city worked?" In St. Louis, where he grew up, Jack first noticed the existence of something he found magical: couriers. "I loved couriers. You had this transfer of physical information happening throughout the city and the world. Someone picking up the package, putting it in a bag, going somewhere, taking it out of the bag, giving it to someone else. I thought that was so cool. I wanted to map it, to see that flow on a big screen. When I did some research into how courier systems worked, I found that there was a parallel information transfer that was digital, and it was called 'dispatch,' which was just a coordination effort." Jack so loved the idea of digitally mapping interactions around a city and the notion of couriers as a physical manifestation of these interactions that he decided to start a bicycle courier service of his own at the age of sixteen. "I put my brother and me on bikes, just so I could write the dispatch software. [A self-proclaimed computer geek, Jack taught himself to code software at a young age.] We quickly found out that St. Louis had no need for bicycle couriers at all. But I really enjoyed writing the software and getting to the point where I could map and visualize the work." The rapid demise of his teenage start-up did not deter Jack. While in the second year of an engineering program at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, he came across a New York City–based company called Dispatch Management Services Corporation (DMSC), which managed dispatch centers for couriers—on foot, bicycles, and motorcycles. "I had to get into that!" Jack enthused, as our conversation took him back in time. "I got in contact with the chairman, Greg Kidd, the guy who had built the company and taken it public. I said, 'I'm writing some dispatch software, and I'd really love to come to New York and work with you all.'" Jack pursued Greg hard, and within a couple of weeks, he moved to New York, transferred to NYU, and started writing dispatch software for DMSC. At DMSC, Jack delved deeper into his fascination with dispatch and couriers. "There was an essence of communication there," he described to me. "An abstraction. You have all these entities roaming about, and they're all reporting what they're doing in real time over a variety of different devices. We had couriers on CB [citizens band] radios, on PDAs [personal digital assistants], and on cell phones. We had taxis and emergency vehicles with GPS. They're all reporting constantly where they are and what work they're doing, and it's all flowing into this one system that a dispatcher can view in real time on a map. That's what's going on in the city! I thought that abstraction was so cool that I wanted that same thing for my friends." Jack and Greg decided they could improve on the DMSC dispatch system. In 1998, they moved to the West Coast and raised enough money from the Band of Angels (a group of current and former Silicon Valley executives who provide seed financing to technology entrepreneurs) to found dNET, Dispatch Network. "We wanted to do a Web-centric dispatch system that would essentially provide an ATM for couriers, most of whom don't have bank accounts, so they could easily draw their commissions through the Web." While he was working to get dNET off the ground, Jack discovered Instant Messaging (IM). "IM is interesting because you look at your buddy list and, at a glance, see what your friends are listening to, what they're working on, what they're doing. The problem was that you were bound to the computer keyboard. I was fortunate enough to have a RIM 850, the predecessor to the BlackBerry. It was this squat, little email device. One night, I couldn't sleep, I just had to write a prototype script. It would sit on a server, take incoming emails, broadcast them out to a list, and also record them in a database that I could view on the Web." That was the first glimmer of Twitter. But for a variety of reasons, dNET did not get traction in the market, and so Jack embarked on a period of freelance programming before joining a podcasting start-up called Odeo, primarily to work with Evan (a.k.a. @ev) Williams, formerly of Google. But Jack's brief foray into podcasting didn't squelch his passion for brief status messaging. "At that time, one of my co-workers introduced me to SMS (short message service), which I had never seen before. She used it all the time. Once I saw that, I'm like, 'Whoa, this is awesome!' This communication blew my mind, and the way she was using it blew my mind. I thought, What if we simply set status, archive it on the Web, use SMS to do it, and it all happens in real time? We all kind of went into a corner, wrote out a bunch of user scenarios, and started inviting co-workers in. They fell in love with it. We knew we had something." Thus, Jack and his team developed the service we now know as Twitter. They called it "Twttr" at the time and launched it in July 2006. The very first tweet was an internal one that Jack sent out at 12:50 p.m. on March 21, 2006: "just setting up my twttr." A few minutes later, he tweeted innocuously: "inviting coworkers." This was the beginning of the Twitter revolution. Interestingly, Jack pursued a strategy of: Don't hide what you're doing. If you think you're doing something interesting, get it out in the open, shout it out from the rooftops, and solicit as much feedback and input as possible. This strategy was particularly relevant for an Internet-based consumer service like Twitter. The initial reviews after the launch were mixed. One commenter reacted negatively, calling it "the dumbest thing ever! Who would want all their personal text messages on a public website for anyone to read and track?" Despite such skepticism, the service began to gain momentum and a grassroots following while still hidden inside Odeo. "We knew it was getting big and were just waiting for a trigger. That turned out to be South by Southwest, in 2007." South by Southwest is a festival and conference—replete with panels, book readings, conversations, and parties—hosted in Austin, Texas, each year. Jack and his colleagues lugged big plasma screens across the country and set them up in the hallways of the conference to display the live Twitter chatter about the conference sessions in action, one at the registration desk and one at the exit from the main conference room. "We were really good at getting the right friends in. We had a lot of high-powered, vocal bloggers using Twitter at South by Southwest. They were talking about it non-stop at the conference. And the press happened to be watching, too. And it just blew up." Jack was confident that Twitter would take off, but even he was surprised by the enthusiasm it generated. "This very simple message and subscriber model worked for everything I was interested in. I thought it could be massive. But, as a consumer application, I was really surprised by the velocity and by the patience that our early users had to get it right." While Twitter was gaining momentum, the start-up that owned the company, Odeo, wasn't. In fact, Odeo had run out of money and didn't have additional funding support from its venture capital investor. Odeo's CEO, Evan Williams, decided to buy the assets from the investors, taking Jack, another co-founder, Biz Stone (@Biz), and many of the employees with him. Jack became Twitter's founding CEO, and thirty days later the team started thinking about raising capital and spinning out as a separate company. "We weren't really ready to take money right away, but we got a note from someone. We went to meet them for breakfast at the top of this hotel in San Francisco and had a pretty good conversation. We were still kind of forming the company and whatnot. When we got back to the office thirty minutes later, we found a scanned image of a check for half a million dollars in our inbox." The instant offer of funding prompted Jack to think through what he really wanted in an investment partner. "The way the company and the product gained traction was that we got the best people we could think of and we worked with them. And we wanted the same thing from our VC. We wanted the best person across the table from us. It was not where he comes from, but 'Is this guy fun to work with? Is he going to challenge us? Is he smart?' This person was going to take a seat on the board." As it turned out, Twitter went with a VC who found the Twitter concept just as fascinating as Jack did. Union Square's Fred Wilson says he likes to think of himself as the entrepreneur's consigliere, but a consigliere with great pattern recognition. "I want to be the person they call when they need some advice. Whether it's 'I've got a problem with sales' or 'We need to raise some more money. What do you think the right way is to go about doing that?' Or, 'I have this big deal. I'm nervous about it because I'm not sure we can actually meet the expectations. But I want the revenue. What do I do?' Those are all big questions. The beauty of being a venture capitalist is we've seen all these issues a lot of times. I've been doing this business for a long time now and I've observed enough to know what's happening and interpret it appropriately." Twitter's Jack Dorsey says that he did, in fact, think of Fred as his strategic counselor. "Fred had our phone on priority dial, so he could reach us at any time and we could change things instantly. He is very engaged and whenever we need something, we call him up. He is excited to do anything for us." Jack points out that Fred isn't just focused on big-picture strategy, but also on the nitty-gritty features of Twitter as an avid user. "We listen to what he thinks and what he needs from the product," says Jack. "And that has been a great way to get into the relationship and for both of us to trust each other more. As we worked on the product together, we began to learn, 'Oh, this is how Fred is, and this is how Jack is.' We began to learn each other's faults. And that couldn't really happen any other way." In some ways, the VC is a glorified recruiter. However, it would be a mistake to think what recruiting a VC firm can do is equivalent to what an entrepreneur would get from a professional executive search firm. A VC is more focused on the mix of talents needed to improve the start-ups, chances for success and anticipating the right kind of executive that is needed at the right point in the company's life cycle. As Twitter's Jack Dorsey put it, "I would hate to have a VC investor to whom I just send an email to say, 'I need a business development person. Can you make some introductions?' I want a VC who is always thinking a few steps ahead of me. The type of VC who would say, 'Well, I think we're doing this, and therefore we might consider defining this new position in this way and therefore talking to this person.'" The definition of the best individual venture capitalist to work with will be different for every entrepreneur. Jack Dorsey, Mr. Twitter, was looking for a VC who had passion for his market, could help him with his product, and could challenge his thinking. Jack talked with many VCs when he was trying to get financing for Twitter, starting with firms on the West Coast. "We had a lot of conversations with people down in the Valley," Jack said. "At the end of the pitch, the person across the table would say, 'Well, we'll let you know fairly soon, like in an hour or so. We just want to talk internally, but we're really excited.' We didn't react well to that. We wanted to be questioned, we wanted to be challenged, and we wanted to see some of their thinking around actually developing this product." For whatever reason, Jack found more of those challenging VCs on the East Coast than on the West Coast. "I think it was just an attitude thing," he said. "I found the East Coast to be a little bit more aggressive. They say what they mean in the hopes of just moving on right away. On the West Coast, people were a little bit more laid back. If they thought we were going down the wrong path, they wouldn't necessarily say it, but they might make it known in an indirect way. I just didn't appreciate that at all." Jack ended up with NYC-based Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures. "We turned down a bunch of VCs," Jack said. "We saw a name, but there wasn't enough behind the name immediately. A VC has to show me right away that I can trust them. It's hard to do. But when it's right, it's right. And we were very fortunate in it being right with Fred. He was very aggressive, in a good way, in a thinking way. He had no subtlety at all. But more importantly, he was a day-to-day user of our service and he obviously loved it. He came to the pitch with a bunch of requests for features and lots of questions about why we had done what we had done. That helped clarify our thinking around the product and it helped clarify our thinking around the company. And that's exactly what we wanted in the boardroom." During their courting period, Fred showed Jack he could provide more than just money; he could contribute to the product's vision and direction to help lead the company to success. If your VC doesn't show you that passion for your product and your own personal success, as well as an ability to add value during the due diligence process through their strategic or product insight, then he and his firm may not be the right business partner for you. As Dorsey put it to me, "When selecting our VC partner, I knew I was hiring a boss I couldn't fire." Fred Wilson has an interesting take on the relationship between the entrepreneur and the venture capitalist. "I think venture capitalists, first and foremost, need to feel like their job is to make entrepreneurs successful. So I think of venture capital as a service business. The entrepreneur is your client. It's a very weird relationship because the entrepreneur is not exactly paying you, even though they really are paying you. But they absolutely can't fire you. In fact, you can fire them. So it's among the weirdest kinds of service relationships that one could come up with." More money provides more runway and room for mistakes, but at the cost of some additional dilution. Dorsey recalled a conversation he had with Netscape founder and angel investor Marc Andreessen. "Marc advised us very early on to take as much money as we could, because a recession was coming and everything was going to hit the fan. And this was in early 2008, maybe the end of 2007. And he's like, 'I know you're worried about dilution, but just try to get as much money as you can, build a war chest so you can weather the storm, because the storm is coming.'" Timing and your own personal commitment are both important factors. Twitter's Jack Dorsey gets asked the question every day—when will Twitter exit? He explained to me his views on this issue in a way that reinforces my thesis that the best entrepreneurs don't focus on the money, they focus on their dream for the business. "You always have to go back to the question, 'Is exiting the right thing for the product?'" Jack explained. "There were many times in our history when, technology-wise, we weren't up to snuff and we could have used more infrastructure. We could have used the resources of a Google or a Facebook or a Yahoo! But until you feel like you've completed some aspects of the vision, it just doesn't make sense to hand it over. If you have that idea and you've more or less seen the end of it, and now you're just racking your brain trying to figure out how to push it any further, the product might be better off in the hands of someone else, because you've done what you can. That's basically what it comes down to for me. Are you done? If you are, then exit. If you're not, keep going for it."      
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| The Taste Of The iPad. UrbanSpoon Makes Its HD Debut Posted: 27 Apr 2010 09:11 PM PDT
On the face of it, UrbanSpoon for the iPad may not seem as useful as it is for the iPhone. After all, most people don’t just whip out their iPad on the street when they’re looking for a restaurant (though some may when the 3G version hits, who knows). But plenty of dinner choices are made right before you leave the house — and that’s what UrbanSpoon for the iPad is perfect for. The app, which just went live in the App Store, looks beautiful. It’s like the iPhone version except there is a persistent map below the regular “slot machine” area where you pick and choose (or have the app pick and choose) your options for food. Once you make your selections, you can either hit the red “Spin” button or shake the iPad — yes, just like the iPhone. The choices will be highlighted on the map. Or you can choose a “List” view which then shows the details about each place, including their UrbanSpoon rating. Check out the video below for more. Find UrbanSpoon in the App Store here. It’s a free download.
     
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| John Mayer Clarifies: Twitter Isn’t Dead, Tumblr Is Just Better. Join Me. Posted: 27 Apr 2010 07:20 PM PDT
In his post entitled, “Twitter Isn’t “Over”, I’m Over It,” Mayer talks about how the over-abundance of tiny amounts (140 characters) of information on Twitter is a limitation of the service. That line of thinking has been around ever since Twitter’s launch a few years ago, so nothing groundbreaking there. He does, however, make a pretty decent point, “Finding out in 140 characters what a stranger has to say about you is like a mathematical equation without an established value of 'x'. Who are you, stranger?” But much more interesting is what Mayer does next. He gives a huge, wet kiss to another micro-blogging service: Tumblr. “This is where Tumblr comes in. It's the future of social networking if your image of the future features intelligent discourse. I love reading other Tumblr users replies, because they're thoughtful by virtue of the fact that if they're not, they'll bring the intellectual property value of their own blog down, and that's a commodity on Tumblr,” he writes. And Mayer goes on, “This post is an experiment in itself. If you want to communicate me, open a Tumblr account, follow me, repost my blog and then add to it. I'll follow you back. Agree or disagree, lionize or demonize, but for God's sake, be original. You'll have all the room in the world to do it now.” Damn. That’s the type of endorsement you can’t pay for. And Tumblr knows it. Founder David Karp responded via his Tumblr blog with, “After three years at this, I can't begin to describe the feeling of having this philosophy — the reason Tumblr will never feature a legacy comment system — described so perfectly. I love you, John.“      
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| Mozilla Officially Unveils A Pre-Alpha Test Version Of Firefox For Android Posted: 27 Apr 2010 06:56 PM PDT
Mozilla is quick to note that this is a pre-Alpha build of the browser, and is only for testing purposes. But that isn’t stopping Mozilla’s Vladimir Vukićević from announcing it on his blog. “There also aren’t yet any automated nightly developer builds or automated updates to this build; it’s even more of a pre-nightly build (even earlier than pre-alpha). But, it’s usable enough that we wanted to get some feedback on it as we continue to develop,” he notes. To get this build, you can visit this link on your Android device. Or you can point your phone’s browser to: bit.ly/fennec-android. And yes, there’s a QR code on Vukićević’s blog post if you want to scan it, and download it that way. Whichever way you do it, you’ll need to make sure your settings allow you to install non-Market apps (go to Settings, Applications, and check “Unknown Sources”). Some other warnings and notes to consider about the build from Vukićević:
He also notes that there’s an experimental version of Weave, Mozilla’s syncing tool that will work with this pre-Alpha build of Fennec. Visit this page and click on the “Experimental version” to find it.      
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| Facebook Considering HTML5, Won’t Talk iPad App Posted: 27 Apr 2010 04:39 PM PDT
Yes, videos on Facebook do play when clicked on from the iPad or iPhone, but only ReadWriteWeb noted that this was through an h264 player (which both the iPhone and iPad have always supported), and not actually any sort of HTML5 implimentation. We’ve since confirmed this with Facebook which says, “You are correct, this is not html 5. All new videos are encoded in h264 format, so we’re playing videos natively in the iPad since it supports h264-encoded videos.” Okay, but more importantly, are there plans for Facebook to support HTML5 just as Apple, Google, and many others have started to? “We'll consider it for the future,” a Facebook representative tells us. I also took the opportunity to ask about the status of a native Facebook iPad app. Facebook’s iPhone app is easily one of the best applications in the App Store, but since it’s not universal (meaning there are versions for both the iPhone and iPad), it, like all other iPhone apps, looks a bit junky when running scaled to twice its size on the iPad. “We don't have anything to announce re: your iPad question,” is all I was told. Facebook was one of the first applications ready to go alongside the initial launch of the App Store in 2008, but it has been missing in action in the iPad App Store. And it’s a problem because a lot of people are searching for it, only to find cheap imitations. You might recall that the creator of the Facebook iPhone app, Joe Hewitt, stopped development on it over his distaste for some of the App Store policies. Facebook brought in a team to replace him, but so far, nada.      
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| PHP Founder Rasmus Lerdorf Joins Group Payments Startup WePay Posted: 27 Apr 2010 04:30 PM PDT
WePay’s platform is built to facilitate payments in group situations, where you often have to collect money from multiple people (as opposed to systems like PayPal where 1-to-1 transactions are more common). Founder Bill Clerico says that so far the service has gotten a lot of traction with fraternities, and is also catching on with roommates who regularly have to share bills. Since launching a month ago, Clerico says that the volume of transactions has been growing 50% each week. WePay also recently launched a ticketing feature, which Clerico says is less formal than sites like Eventbrite. He says that the feature could be used by fraternities to sell tickets to their parties, or for clubs to sell tickets to special events. WePay has a strong roster of investors, including Y Combinator, Max Levchin, Dave McClure, Paul Buchheit, Ron Conway, Mark Goines, Andrew McCollum, Joe Campanelli, and Angus Davis.      
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| Facebook And iPad FTW. Twitter, Blippy, Foursquare Not So Much [Video] Posted: 27 Apr 2010 03:27 PM PDT
I sat down with August Capital partner David Hornik at the TechCrunch TV studio to talk about the tech issues of the week: The Age of Facebook, Our mutual love of the iPad, and a discussion of companies who’ve stumbled recently: Twitter, Blippy and Foursquare. We also explore Hornik’s strange obsession with Alice in Wonderland. If you’re pitching him for an investment, try bringing him a first edition. It’ll only set you back a few hundred thousand dollars.      
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| Jason Calacanis’ Six Handy Tips On How To Resign Posted: 27 Apr 2010 03:03 PM PDT
Here are Jason’s six tips for a proper resignation, along with a handy script. You can read his whole post on calacanis.com.
So there you have it. A handy list of tips on how to resign. Or at least how to resign to Jason Calacanis.      
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| Apple Continues To Morph Into The Chocolate Factory. Expect Fewer Gobstopper Leaks. Posted: 27 Apr 2010 02:10 PM PDT
A report today in the New York Times confirms earlier rumors that Apple has purchased Austin, Texas-based chip company Intrinsity. And yes, it appears that company is the one largely behind the new A4 chip found inside the iPad. An analyst put the price at $121 million, but again, he’s an analyst, so who knows. But really, the price doesn’t matter. Apple has over $40 billion in cash in the bank — this purchase was very likely just a small drop in that bucket. More important are the implications of such a move: Apple continues to scoop up talent and extend its ability to do more work in-house. You’ll recall that back in 2008, Apple bought PA Semi, the company it is also believed that Apple used to design another part of the A4 chip (well, the people who didn’t leave anyway). Apple is also rumored to be looking at ARM as a possible acquisition (though ARM has downplayed those rumors). After those three, the only other company Apple relies on for its new chip is thought to be Samsung — and that’s only to manufacture the thing. Immediately following the iPad announcement, I wrote that the biggest news of the event may not have been the device itself, but rather that Apple was in control of building (or at least designing) the chip that runs it. While right now, this is iPad-only, it seems very likely that this chip (or some variation) will find its way into a future iPhone (maybe even the one coming this Summer). And if you listen to Steve Jobs’ own comment — “Apple is a mobile devices company” — it’s not hard to imagine a day where Apple is in charge of making the chips for its entire line of products. If that’s the case, and Apple continues to roll-up the necessary pieces to do all the work in-house, Apple HQ may one day be even more like The Chocolate Factory. Products will come out, but you’ll need a Golden Ticket to get in. And Apple can seal off those pesky Everlasting Gobstoppers leaks.
     
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| The Problem With Opera: It Tries To Scream When It Just Needs To Sing Posted: 27 Apr 2010 01:28 PM PDT
<a h Today, Opera announced a new version (10.52) available for OS X. The promise is that it’s ten times faster than the last version I used (10.10). In fact, they’re saying it’s the “world’s fastest browser for Mac.” So I decided to try it out as my primary browser the entire morning. First off, let me just say that the thing does seem pretty fast. Noticeably faster than Chrome or Safari? No (more on that below), but definitely faster than Firefox. And, a few rendering issues aside, it does seem like a pretty solid browser. But still, the entire time I was using it, I found myself itching to go back to Chrome or Safari. It took me a while to figure out why. But I’ve come to the realization that it was staring me in the face. I simply don’t like the way Opera looks on a Mac. Now, I say that knowing full well that they’ve revamped the look for OS X since the last version. And it does look much better than that version — not quite so pixelated. But there’s still too much chrome (no, not the browser Chrome, UI chrome). Worse, the chrome seems to be too dark. The bottom toolbar is cluttered up with buttons I’ll simply never use (Unite? Widgets?). And those blue status indicators on the top of tabs are simply hideous. This latest version of Opera looks as if it’s the spawn of Safari and Firefox mating. On paper, that may sounds like a good idea, but the result is awkward. It just feels alien. That’s not to say I demand all applications to look the same. Safari is obviously Apple’s own web browser, but it’s not my browser of choice. I like Chrome much more for a number of reasons (the first of which is the Omnibox), even though it doesn’t particularly look too Mac-like. Before Chrome for Mac was available, I had used Mozilla’s Camino browser for a number of years rather than Safari as well. That’s two other browsers made by two other vendors that seem (at least to me) to have nailed browser development on the Mac. Opera, in my opinion, still hasn’t. (Nor, in my view, has Firefox.)
Opera on Windows is a different matter. I don’t use Windows on a daily basis (or really, at all, except when I have to test something out) so take this with a grain of salt. But Opera on Windows looks pretty solid compared to the competition in my view. It’s much, much better than Internet Explorer, and on-par with Firefox. Safari for Windows doesn’t look right in the same way that Opera on the Mac doesn’t look right, so I never use that. While Chrome, of course, is still king of the hill in my book on Windows too. I guess what it boils down to is that when browsing the web, I basically just want a giant window that renders an HTML page correctly and fast — that’s it. All these features sound nice, but most are just clutter. That’s especially true on the desktop, where most of us are on fast connections (or fast-enough), and things such as Opera’s “turbo-charging” don’t seem to make much of a difference (obviously, that’s different on the mobile web — but usually only with Edge connections, in my experience). Chrome nails this experience that I’m looking for, and that’s one of the reasons why Chrome OS excites me so much. Anything not rendering HTML on my screen is just noise. Opera has a lot of noise.      
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