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Twitter didn’t fix itself in 2016 and Wall Street isn’t happy
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Matthew Lynley
| 2,016 | 12 | 22 |
Layoffs, a borked acquisition and continued tepid user growth defined Twitter in 2016. And these are all things that make Twitter’s future uncertain, which we know Wall Street does not like. Jack Dorsey’s one-year tenure as CEO was price and, amid all its attempts to try and re-make the service and make it more palatable, it simply wasn’t successful enough — even to get an acquisition closed from a wide variety of suitors. With the stock price spiking at the acquisition back to where it started on the year and slamming down after the talks fell apart, it seems that a lone bright spot like that didn’t really bode well from Wall Street this year. And even within Twitter it seemed there was a lot of instability, with executives continuing to leave. If you wanted an exclamation point on Twitter’s 2016, just yesterday two top executives — — flew the coop**. Twitter needs to help figure out what the product looks like in 2017 in order to attract new users, get more eyeballs in front of advertisers, and show it can be a strong independent business. It can’t do that without good talent. And the consistent revolving door at the top, with COO Adam Bain also leaving earlier this year, probably also isn’t helping. With all that in mind, Twitter’s most recent earnings report appeared at least an early step to try to get things in line. The company laid off 9% of its staff. Those layoffs The results were a much-needed positive report for Twitter following the collapse of acquisition talks, beating on earnings and user growth in a minor surprise for Wall Street. But even then, the stock didn’t really go anywhere, and it was clear that Wall Street wanted move than just a small beat — it wanted proof that Twitter knew what it was doing and was on the mend. So, to kick things off, let’s just start with the stock price in Jack Dorsey’s first year: [graphiq id=”3snxa2GbiV7″ title=”Twitter Inc. (TWTR) Stock Price – Year to Date” width=”600″ height=”459″ url=”https://sw.graphiq.com/w/3snxa2GbiV7″ link=”http://listings.findthecompany.com/l/445483/Twitter-Inc-in-San-Francisco-CA” link_text=”FindTheCompany | Graphiq” frozen=”true”] Twitter’s shares are down a whopping 29% on the year. When reports surfaced that Salesforce, among others, was looking at acquiring Twitter it offered an olive branch for investors that for a moment had optimism around Twitter. The company’s growth had stalled, so maybe it made more sense as part of a larger empire? And that was enough to not only get a variety of companies interested, but push the company’s stock up quite a bit. It didn’t last long, with even Twitter’s , another suitor, at the least. At a product level, Twitter has not been very successful at curbing that problem, much less figuring out how to make it less confusing and more attractive to newer users. Instead we’ve seen only periodic incremental changes, . These changes are good, but with Twitter’s user growth only creeping along, more needs to be done. [graphiq id=”fZx7lnEmYTP” title=”Twitter Inc. (TWTR) Monthly Active Users Over Time” width=”600″ height=”490″ url=”https://sw.graphiq.com/w/fZx7lnEmYTP” link=”http://listings.findthecompany.com/l/445483/Twitter-Inc-in-San-Francisco-CA” link_text=”FindTheCompany | Graphiq” frozen=”true”] It’s going to be a challenging sell for Wall Street heading into 2017. Twitter said it wasn’t going to report revenue guidance due to the sales restructuring — which reduced sales channels from three to two — as part of the layoffs. The company is clearly looking to rejigger its sales processes in order to figure out what to do with its core advertising business and revenue, which also hasn’t looked all that great in recent quarters compared to its previous growth. Much like its user growth, Twitter needs to show investors that it can have a strong core advertising business (even though it has a small side-stream with its data business). [graphiq id=”dQsviACyzs1″ title=”Twitter Inc. (TWTR) Quarterly Revenue & Growth Rate” width=”650″ height=”529″ url=”https://sw.graphiq.com/w/dQsviACyzs1″ link=”http://listings.findthecompany.com/l/445483/Twitter-Inc-in-San-Francisco-CA” link_text=”FindTheCompany | Graphiq” frozen=”true”] Wall Street simply, at this point, is not going to be giving Twitter any leeway. If the optimism around the sale was to show anything, it showed a very-quickly declining amount of confidence in the direction of the company. Twitter has to hit a partial reset button as it tries to get back to the basics of being a real-time communications platform, which it’s partially tried to do — most-recently by . Facebook, too, has that, but Twitter is still known as one of the first platforms where news breaks. There should be a bit of a halo effect thanks to the election as Twitter heads into its fourth quarter. Big news-y moments like that tend to buffer Twitter’s results, and perhaps the lack of guidance may even be a good thing as it can find a way to surprise investors with a good amount of upside thanks to its rejiggering and its continued dominance on the real-time communication around news. The next quarter is going to be critical for Twitter to show Wall Street that it’s going to be able to capitalize on those kinds of moments and be the go-to place for those conversations. Again, that is still going to have to come down to talent and keeping the right people around. For Wall Street, that’s going to be a challenging pitch. One partial sticking point, going back to the stability and the stock price in general, is Twitter’s heavy usage of stock-based compensation in order to keep employees around. We’ve noted this a couple times, but here’s a recent report that shows just how much we’re talking about: There are some bright spots for Twitter going into 2017. It’s clearly trying to hit the reset button, and if this is the bottom, there’s a lot of room for continued upside. Twitter’s share price continues to decline, but that also offers an opportunity to make the company even more attractive as an acquisition. Perhaps now, with Twitter shaping itself up a little better and making more incremental changes, it looks more attractive to its original acquirers. That’s also a double-edged sword. As the stock price continues to decline, and if Twitter continues to flounder, it could easily start to attract activist investors that will then aggressively jockey for change an restructuring. Twitter didn’t show Wall Street that it would work in 2016, and it may end up paying for it in 2017 if the stock price continues to fall and it becomes more and more vulnerable to influence. But to go its own way, and to keep Wall Street satisfied, it needs to not only fix itself from a business perspective but also from a product perspective. While Facebook and Snapchat continue to rocket ahead with continuous user growth and strong advertising business, Twitter needs to make sure it is the third player in the conversation alongside those in conference rooms where advertisers are discussing budgets (though Snapchat is still nascent). It didn’t really do that in 2016. Wall Street is not satisfied with the direction, and there’s even more uncertainty heading into 2017. Dorsey has a lot of work to do in order to figure out how to keep investors off Twitter’s back. **Sorry, I apologize for the pun. I’ll show myself out.
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Android Wear 2.0 debuts on two partner flagship smartwatches in early 2017
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Darrell Etherington
| 2,016 | 12 | 22 |
Google will debut two “flagship smartwatches” running Android Wear 2.0 in the first quarter of 2017, according to a new report from , citing information direct from Android Wear product manager Jeff Chang. The two new watches won’t be Pixel devices, as some have speculated, but will sainted carry the branding of a company that Google is working with to manufacture the devices – much more like a Nexus launch than what Google did with its Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones this year. The device maker Google is working with for these debut Android Wear 2.0 smartwatches isn’t yet known, as Chang only told that the partner has created Android Wear devices in the past; that’s a fairly long list at this stage, however, including both most major Android smartphone OEMs, and watchmakers including Fossil, Nixon and Casio. Google worked with this unnamed OEM on the hardware and software design of their devices, according to the report, which is again very similar to how the search giant operated the Nexus program for Android in the past. With the Pixel, it opted instead to handle hardware and software design entirely on its own, and partnered with HTC only for final manufacturing and assembly. Android Wear 2.0 will be pushed out to other Android Wear-based smartwatches after it debuts on these new flagship partner devices, with a long list of hardware eligible for the upgrade. The software will add support for standalone apps, Android Pay, Google Assistant and more. Chang was upbeat on wearables in the interview with despite growing signs that the , saying that wearables as “a category of product is here with us to stay.” Independent smartwatch maker and category pioneer Pebble also closed shop this year, as its talent and IP were acquired by Fitbit. Android Wear 2.0 has been in developer preview for some time now, and the feature list doesn’t look to offer anything substantially ground-breaking in terms of proving that smartwatches do indeed have something essential to offer ordinary users. But Google directing hardware direction more closely could produce some more interesting results, so we’ll see what they come up with in 2017.
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Pokémon Go arrives on the Apple Watch
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Sarah Perez
| 2,016 | 12 | 22 |
Following an claiming that Niantic’s plans to bring Pokémon Go to the Apple Watch were canceled, the company today put those rumors to rest with more than a mere : it has now launched the Apple Watch version of its popular game. The new smartwatch app lets you more easily play Pokémon without having to always pull out your phone. Instead, you can tap to find nearby Pokémon, collect items from PokéStops, and even log your gameplay as a “workout.” The AR and GPS-powered game, which has been downloaded 600 million times as of November, offers a unique combination of gameplay and physical activity that makes sense for a platform like the Apple Watch. The new app will take advantage of the watch’s fitness-tracking capabilities, as gameplay counts toward your personal Activity rings. In addition, your Apple Watch sessions will count toward hatching your Pokémon Eggs, too, as well as receiving Candy with your Buddy Pokémon. Regular Pokémon Go players get a lot of exercise, of course. The company recently announced that trainers have walked more than 8.7 billion kilometers in their quest to capture 88 billion Pokémon to date. That’s the equivalent of 200,000 trips around the world, Niantic said. The new game could encourage people to get out and walk even more. In addition to fitness tracking, Pokémon Go will also tie into the Apple Watch’s ability to push notifications to your wrist. The app will send alerts about a variety of important events, including when there are nearby Pokémon to catch, when you’re near a PokéStop, when your Eggs hatch, and when medals are awarded, says Niantic. However, when it comes time to actually catch the Pokémon, you’ll still need to break out your iPhone. The launch of the Apple Watch app comes shortly after the smartphone app was updated with a number of new features, including the ability to originally from the Pokémon Gold and Silver video games, , as well as the ability to that’s wearing a festive holiday hat. The company has also been steadily upgrading standard features like the , while to serve as destinations for Gyms and PokéStops. However, many of Pokémon Go’s moves as of late have focused on re-engaging lapsed users, too – like the , for example, or the Launching on the Apple Watch may give these more casual players a reason to return, as the initial hype around the record-breaking game begins to wear off. Niantic had first announced there would be an Apple Watch app at Apple’s September event, and just this week, to Apple Watch features. However, some have been concerned whether the company would meet its earlier stated deadline of reaching the Apple Watch before year-end. The app is rolling out now in all markets where Pokémon Go is available.
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Privacy is still alive and kicking in the digital age
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Gry Hasselbalch
| 2,016 | 12 | 25 |
Our lives are lived in data. Data crossing borders and connected in virtual space. Most often, it appears, we live in open and too easily accessible data networks. States and corporations are watching us through data, and we are watching each other through data. What does individual mean in this data saturated environment? is like trust and security; much easier to define when you don’t have it. We know exactly what trust and security are when we find ourselves in a precarious situation where we feel threatened, a situation which reveals someone else’s lie or dishonest actions. It’s something that can make us feel angry, insecure and most importantly, disempowered. The same is true of ; it’s hard to put a finger on it before we realize it’s missing. More and more of us are beginning to sense the lack of in our daily lives — and to understand what we are missing and how we feel about it. When we talk about the need for a more human-centric and ethical approach to today’s data-saturated environments, we are first and foremost talking about balancing the powers embedded in society. Individual is not the only societal value under pressure in the current data-saturated infrastructure. The effects of data practices without ethics can be manifold — unjust treatment, discrimination and unequal opportunities. But is at its core. It’s the needle on the gauge of society’s power balance. In a well-functioning democracy, those in power are open and transparent about how they exercise their power. One should not expect transparency from individuals. The more transparent people are, the more vulnerable they become. With the current infrastructure, we are heading in the wrong direction: Individuals are becoming more and more transparent, open to different types of control, manipulation and discrimination, while the powerful — government, industry and organizations — are more and more closed off. Freedom, individual independence and democracy are fundamental reasons why the individual right to is something we should all care about. is a universal human right penned in international conventions, declarations and charters that were formalized at a time in history when private life was the default. There were clear lines and limits between private homes and public streets and buildings, between a private person and the public authorities and spaces. It was the letter in the sealed envelope. But the media’s foothold in the world has, as Professor Joshua Meyrowitz illustrated in 1986 in his book , slowly but steadily been breaking down walls between the public and private spheres. First when radio and television brought the public sphere into the private living room, and later when the internet and mobile phones allowed us to literally feel public life vibrating silently in our pockets. Machines started going through our private emails and conversations. The envelope was opened. We increasingly unfold our identities, our lives, in online social networking spaces and is something we must actively opt in to. At the same time, these online spaces create our identities; they limit us or create opportunities and becomes a tool of empowerment. In reality, is empowerment. The fact that we actively use media and share details about ourselves does not mean that private life has no value, that it’s no longer a social norm, as Facebook’s . It just means that has new conditions. To have a private life, an image or an identity online is about empowerment. Empowerment means you can decide who knows what about you and when — now and in the future — and that you can exercise control over the outcomes springing from this knowledge. is a characteristic unique to the individual. What we choose to disclose or not disclose, and in which contexts, is deeply personal and distinctive to us as separate entities. is unique to cultures and individuals and, exactly for this reason, it matters. It empowers each of us to act in our own specific capacity. is an everyday social practice. Google’s chairman, Eric Schmidt, has that “ ” According to this logic, is only about the secrets, the sultry or even criminal details. But if we turn this logic around and look at what we are missing if we do not have a private life or do not have the basic features that make possible, the argument fades. In a tangible world parallel, we get up every morning and cover our bodies with clothes and close the door to go to the toilet, yet no one would argue we are doing something we shouldn’t. Our everyday practices are in themselves proof that is a principle that allows us to act as independent individuals in a social space. is a democratic value. It is free thought and independence. They seek information less freely, act and express themselves less freely, are afraid to stand out and go against the flow. Trevor Hughes, CEO of the International Association of Professionals, IAPP, has : “As humans, we seek solitude when we feel vulnerable. Sometimes, this is related to physical vulnerability. We seek to exclude ourselves from our societies when we are sick, or in moments of particular risk (think: sleeping, toileting, sex, etc.). But we also seek to exclude ourselves when we feel emotionally vulnerable. We seek private space to explore new identities or ideas.” and the space to think and act without feeling watched is a prerequisite for individuals’ ability to act independently and freely. A private life ensures that each person can create his or her own unique identity and determine his or her life’s direction — the right to fail along the way or to go against the tide. The right to is thus a prerequisite for active democracy. And last but certainly not least, is the prerequisite for free innovation and creativity. As law professor Julie E. Cohen put it:
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The drought is over… a torrent of tech IPOs is expected in 2017
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Sandy Miller
| 2,016 | 12 | 25 |
We’ve just witnessed one of the most surprising tech IPO markets in decades. Wall Street set record upon record throughout 2016, and tech stocks led the way, hitting all-time highs. And yet, we saw a mere 13 IPOs for venture-backed U.S. technology companies during the entire year. I’ve been working in this industry for more than 40 years and I can’t remember anything like it. Several factors contributed to this anomaly. Throughout much of the past two years, startups were more highly valued by private investors than on public exchanges. With mutual funds, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds desperate to get into the game, there was so much late-stage capital chasing startups that many founders simply took the easy money and kicked the IPO can down the road. Market volatility ahead of the election prompted some startups to delay going public, as well. But the reasons to wait are no longer relevant, and I believe we’re poised for a dramatic rebound. Pent-up demand and several other factors will make 2017 the strongest tech IPO market we’ve seen since the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. Don’t be surprised to see as many as 30 to 50 tech startups go public in the next 12 months. Let’s count the reasons. The election has passed, and while the outcome wasn’t quite what many in Silicon Valley expected, the stock market continues to rally. Risk is back in vogue and public markets now offer better prices than private investors. While only 13 U.S. venture-backed tech companies went public in 2016, most proved to be winners, with the entire class of 2016 trading up an average of 56 percent since going public. This aftermarket performance has made technology the best performing IPO sector of 2016, a laudable result that is all-the-more-impressive given that the class of 2016 was headlined by niche players like and rather than unicorns such as Uber or Airbnb. Wall Street is ready for more. The pullback in the private market this year has forced startups to get back to basics with a greater focus on sustainable growth, controlling operating expenses and generating positive cash flow. As a result, the IPO pipeline is chock full of quality tech startups that are perfectly poised to take advantage of the newly receptive public sentiment. I’ll refrain from touting names, but I can think of dozens of quality startups with top teams and leading products that have reached $50-$100 million or more in revenues, are growing at more than 30 percent annually and are on a credible path toward profitability — if not already in the black. All in all, this is the biggest and best class of IPO-ready tech companies that we have ever seen. A few sectors stand out, most notably software-as-a-service, cybersecurity and cloud infrastructure. It might feel as if Silicon Valley has been touting SaaS companies forever, but the numbers show that corporate America’s transition to cloud computing is still very much in the early stages. And as the allegations of Russia’s hacking in the recent election once again highlights, security continues to become a more important focus with each passing day. It’s still too early to know exactly what President-elect Donald Trump intends to do, but he’s spoken repeatedly about easing regulatory burdens on small companies. This would be a welcome step to complement the 2012 JOBS Act, which allows — among other things — emerging growth companies to file confidential prospectuses with the SEC ahead of a planned IPO. The “testing the waters” provision enables startups to quietly gauge potential interest before actually committing to go public. Trump could go further by amending the draconian rules that completely and utterly separate investment bankers from equity research analysts. Easing these rules, which are part of the Global Analysts Research Settlements of 2003 that addressed the abuses of the dot-com bubble era, would breathe new life into tech’s middle market and prime the pump for even more IPOs in the future. That said, the stars on Wall Street are already aligning in a way we haven’t seen in far too long. Public markets are more receptive to tech stocks than at any time since the financial crisis and money managers have tremendous amounts of cash they must invest. IPOs remain a key driver of incremental gains and a means by which money managers can differentiate themselves from competitors. Meanwhile, going public enables startups to provide liquidity for employees, as well as generate much needed publicity and credibility, which in turn bring customers and revenue. Companies of sufficient scale and growth would be foolish not to take advantage of improving market sentiment. The key going forward will be to get pricing right. If the first companies out of the gate do so, and those deals perform well, the floodgates will open. Let’s remember that an IPO is not the end game; most of the great tech companies have made a far greater percentage of their returns after going public. One successful IPO will beget another and I’m optimistic about Silicon Valley’s pipeline. Look for 2017 to be the best year for tech IPOs since the dot-com heyday almost two decades ago.
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Will technology prevent the next food shortage crisis?
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Ben Dickson
| 2,016 | 12 | 25 |
If (CNA) has it right, mankind is inching toward a dystopian future where trigger riots and wars. That might be stretching it a bit, but the upcoming is serious, and the CNA, a federally funded research and development center, believes production permanently fall short of consumption. With the UN estimating by 2050 and , the prospects of preventing the in time look bleak. Meanwhile, with urbanization of life and , there also be a workforce shortage on farms. This is not the first time we humans are dealing with famine and . We’ve been fighting it our entire history. In previous eras, inventions like fertilizers and mechanized farming helped us find ways to tap into more resources and produce more to address our needs. But now, resources are becoming more scarce, and we need breakthroughs that help make more efficient use of whatever we already have at hand. According to scientists, the answer might be found in a new age of digital technologies that have proven their worth in different fields and have the potential to transform agriculture and production and meet the consumption needs of the growing human population before we’re driven to eat cockroaches — or worse, each other. Traditional agriculture is based on performing particular tasks, such as planting and harvesting, based on a predetermined schedule. Under this model, there’s minimal control over damage and waste. However, recent technological advances have gone a long way toward making “precision farming” possible, which involves gathering real-time data and obtaining actionable insights that can specify what exactly needs to be done at each location at any given time. “Precision Agriculture can transform the industry to be more efficient, less costly, and more sustainable,” says Paul Chang, Global Supply Chain Expert at . “By utilizing IoT platforms to gather various sensor data and integrate with predictive analytics, the industry can take actions to maximize yield, minimize losses, and ensure sustainable practices.” “Digital advancements in are able to make agriculture more productive and can help stabilize crops,” says Kai Goerlich, Digital Futures Research Director at . “Sensors and real-time analytics can be used to optimize the planting, growing, harvesting, and transporting of commodities.” One such platform is SAP’s Digital Farming, which connects farmers, agricultural manufacturers and suppliers alike. “Crucial data from across entire farms are now collected and analyzed by a single cloud platform, which makes farming more efficient and sustainable,” Goerlich says. “Today’s large and local farms can leverage IoT to remotely monitor sensors that detect soil moisture, crop growth and livestock feed levels, remotely manage and control their irrigation equipment, and combine operational data with third party information,” says Yapp, vice president of Business Development at , a Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) service provider. The combination, Yapp says, offers new ways to use empirical data to improve operational planning and decision making. Senet’s sensors operate over Low Power, Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) to reduce the costs of deployment and connectivity over long ranges. “[LPWAN sensors] are ideal for gathering data about local agricultural and environmental conditions supporting IoT applications designed to increase the quality, quantity, sustainability and cost effectiveness of agricultural production,” Yapp says. The data generated by these sensors can be used to improve precision farming, such as applying water to areas where the moisture of soil has dropped instead of wasting water in areas that don’t need it, Yapp explains. “An IoT-managed watering system can considerably decrease consumption while at the same time increasing yields,” he says. IBM’s Chang also presents scenarios where emerging technologies can help unlock the power of precision farming, such as the combination of video-capturing drones and cloud-based analytics software that can show the current conditions of crops and assist farmers in taking actions that can impact the growth curve of the crops. Being able to integrate weather forecasts into the farming process is also a vital component of precision farming. “Precisely monitoring incoming weather condition can help ensure that water is only used when necessary,” Chang says. “Ninety percent of all crop losses are due to weather,” adds Carrie Gillespie, Agriculture Lead for , an IBM business. This is especially important as climate change is starting to take its toll on crops and farming in different areas across the world. “By integrating weather forecast models into crop planting and harvesting, better decisions can be made in advance,” Gillespie says. The Weather Company helps farmers be more efficient and profitable in the field by leveraging micro-weather data for predictive modeling in the cloud. The correct use of weather and soil data can give insights into when and how much to irrigate, or how to increase crop yield while reducing the use of pesticide and fertilizer, Gillespie explains. The use of analytics and machine learning can also enable disease and pest prediction and help growers the loss of crops and tune their use of chemicals. This practice is being applied by Seven Springs Farm in Cadiz, Kentucky, which uses cloud-based software systems hosted by tractor manufacturer John Deere to improve its corn crop yield. “The farm uses an app to calibrate fertilizer purchases according to weather predictions, reducing runoff,” says SAP’s Goerlich, whose company is involved in the initiative. “We have also seen an increase of agricultural institutes implement apps to assist with weather predictions that in return create a greater amount of crops that are safe to consume.” “The ‘art of farming’ should be augmented with the ‘science of farming’ where the farmers can use data and predictive analytics to make the best decisions,” Chang says. “These technologies can now be easily consumed by individuals by leveraging mobile devices so that everyone in the world, including those in the developing countries, can have access to the latest technologies available to others.” Integrating weather forecasts into the agriculture process also helps improve the logistics around harvesting and transportation. Weather and soil analytics can predict and specify when fields be least affected by the weight of harvesting equipment and which fields workers should be deployed to. It can also help predict which distribution routes be affected by rain and upcoming weather changes, especially in countries where roads are dirt and heavy rain can cause trucks to get stuck in mud. “A lot of waste happens during distribution, so it’s important to transport the at the right temperature and not hold it for longer than needed,” Gillespie says. Product recalls also contribute to damage and waste — and they happen a lot. As , in many cases, up to 50 percent of recalled items are not contaminated, which ramps up costs and causes a lot of good to go to waste. The reason is that there isn’t enough visibility into the supply chain. Federal regulations mandate that firms have traceability one step up and down the supply chain, but this isn’t sufficient for items and perishable products, which move very quickly across the chain. “In a recall, understanding the origin of the contamination and its reach is critical in helping to untainted product from being wasted and discarded unnecessarily,” says Dean Wiltse, CEO at , a software company that helps promote safety through traceability and sustainability. FoodLogiQ aims to provide increased visibility across the supply chain by capturing and storing data at each step of the journey, and providing customers with an interface that enables them to scan products and gain immediate access to their supply chain history, as opposed to the traditional manual processes and spreadsheets involved with supply chain management. “End-to-end traceability minimizes waste in product recalls by helping companies realize efficiency and uncover visibility across their supply chain,” Wiltse says. “End-to-end traceability can help identify the source of the outbreak, trace back each step in the supply chain — all the way to the exact farm, batch, and container.” The streamlined supply chain management help avoid discarding uncontaminated , Wiltse believes, and also delays that can impact quality. In the near future, we might be producing our in a totally different way, suggests Jordan French, CMO at 3D printing startup . “3D printing constitutes the perfect opportunity to eliminate inefficiencies across the market by dramatically reducing spoilage during the supply chain while bolstering the consumer’s ability to personalize according to her wants and needs,” he says. While printing is often viewed as a luxury , French explains that it has interesting use cases that can help reduce costs and work labor. “Looking towards the future, 3D printing provide the market a direct bridge from production to consumption,” he says. For example, after being harvested, fruits travel through storage units, packaging facilities and lengthy distribution channels before finally arriving at a grocery store. “This process expends an incredible amount of energy to keep the product fresh,” French says, “and still about 16 percent of all fruits and veggies are lost before ever reaching the dinner table.” In a revolutionized supply chain, French explains, fruits are converted into their powdered micronutrient form immediately after harvest, which allows for easy transportation without the risk of decomposition traditionally imposed by fully hydrated pieces of fruit. “From here, the consumer would simply use a 3D printer to reassemble the produce into its original, palatable form — using less energy and producing less waste in the process,” he concludes. The changes overcoming the green planet will impose a new order in the production, distribution and consumption of food in the coming decades. If the past is any indication, emerging technologies will help humanity overcome food shortage just as it did in past cycles. The question is whether it will do so in time to prevent a crisis from developing.
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Dear Air Canada: a systems analysis of a comically colossal cascading failure
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Jon Evans
| 2,016 | 12 | 25 |
I’ll be blunt; I’m here to vent my fury. On your behalf, dear reader! Honest. When a corporation gets things terribly wrong, those of us with platforms need to turn our wrath upon them. It’s the only feedback that actually matters. But there’s a larger issue here: the way that poisonously rigid corporate software, when it meets reality, can cause whole companies to plummet into death spirals. I’m a software developer. I understand that systems have bugs. I can even, if I squint and furrow my brow a , vaguely envision the kind of bug that might cause an airline to send luggage to Korea three days after its owner traveled from San Francisco to his final destination of Toronto, and two days after he, forewarned, expressly told them not to do so. (Yes, that’s actually what happened. Details in tweetstorm triptych , and .) But the real measure of a company, or any organization, is not whether things go wrong. Things always go wrong. The real measure is how they react. Do you quickly recognize it, adapt and mitigate? Or do you set off a staggering cascade of miscommunication, noncommunication, denial, buck-passing and further errors? More importantly: Which of those two approaches do your systems and software incentivize? …Yeah, I think you already know where I’m going here. It has become fashionable to offer customers support via Twitter. Or, in Air Canada’s case, “support,” which consisted of telling me to call a phone number that emanated a busy signal (a I haven’t heard that in ) rather than ringing; then, a phone number for people who informed me they were completely unable to help me; then, endless vague assurances that furthered neither helped the situation nor my understanding of it, along with admonishments that they were not really able to assist me further. There was a web site, of course, which, 30 minutes before the luggage was finally (and miraculously) delivered, it still said “TRACING IN PROGRESS – CHECK BACK LATER.” There was a brief period, midway through the saga, when it actually reported useful information instead, but this was soon corrected. When I did reach phone support, after hours on hold, they called the wrong airports, sent emails and then failed to check the replies, and lied to me that they would call me back. Once I got word that my bag had been sent to Korea — for literally no reason whatsoever — I achieved a kind of Ron Burgundy-esque satori in which I wasn’t even mad any more; I was actually kind of impressed by the dysfunctionality of a system that could fail so totally in so many different ways. I don’t know the inner workings of Air Canada’s “support” software and systems, obviously. But I can tell you from the outside that it robs its employees of any context, nuance, understanding or actual authority. The failure mode of a poisonous system is a death-spiral feedback loop that quickly infects your employees, until they become amoral bureaucrats. Any business process, no matter how automated, always has to leave space for human judgement, nuance and contextual understanding. (Yes, even bitcoin.) In the last ditch this sometimes becomes, de facto, a developer running a handwritten custom SQL statement. Speaking as the guy who has been that developer, I can assure you this is not a good solution. And the more your process interacts with the scary, unpredictable real world, the more space — and the more human beings — you need. The alternative is what happened here; people who vaguely wanted to help — inasmuch as the oppressive nihilism of their automated professional constraints had left them with any sympathy at all — but were completely unable to do so, because their software and business processes gave them no tools, no levers with which they might do their job in any meaningful way. Big businesses don’t have to be this way. (United Airlines, on whose codeshared ticket I flew the Air Canada flight, was terrific about all this from start to finish.) But when they are, in my experience, it tends to be symptomatic of a rot that started at the top.
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WTF is a liquidation preference?
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Connie Loizos
| 2,016 | 12 | 25 |
in the tech industry, you’ve undoubtedly heard the term “liquidation preference” at some point. WTF? Let’s walk through the basics. Broadly, a liquidation preference determines who gets what when a company is liquidated. This can mean when a company is merged, when it’s sold, when there’s a change of control of the company or when there’s a wind-down. In all of these scenarios, a company’s liquidator looks at the company’s secured and unsecured loan agreements, along with who owns preferred versus common stock. (Preferred shares are what VCs typically buy to ensure that they’re repaid ahead of holders of common shares.) Everyone on the company’s cap table is ranked after that, and the liquidator distributes the proceeds of a sale accordingly. Consider the wind-down scenario. Let’s say a company raised both venture capital and venture debt — a loan. Say that as time went on, it began falling behind on its debt payments, and that its VCs decided it was a losing proposition to continue funding the company. If there was any capital remaining — say the company hadn’t burned through every last bit of its funding, or say some money was made from a sell-off of its remaining assets, like its intellectual property — its investors would be paid before anyone at the company saw a nickel. When the outcome is much better, the same thing basically happens — though who gets how much and when grows more complicated with every new round of funding a company raises. The reason: When investors make a liquidation preference a condition for investing in a startup, they do it in order to claim their part of the profits first. But later-stage investors can demand liquidation preferences that ensure they get paid before earlier investors, too. It’s kind of like a layer cake. They can also demand that they get paid back more than the standard of one times their money back. Why would startups agree to these seemingly onerous terms? Well, sometimes, they don’t have any choice. They take the terms, or they go out of business. Sometimes, startups wanting unicorn status will agree to the terms for a richer valuation, thinking it will attract press, customers and employees. Whether it’s worth the gamble takes time to play out. But certainly, things can get ugly when these same companies get sold rather than go public (a process that converts everyone’s shares to common shares). It’s uglier still when they sell for less than expected, the investors take their cut, and there’s little to nothing left for founders and employees. Not every deal involves liquidation preferences. You don’t typically see them in early-stage deals. You don’t seem them in deals where a company has been created by a founder whom VCs trip over themselves to fund. But they do start to appear as a company matures. (For some context, in recent quarters, senior liquidation preferences have been showing up in between 25 and 35 percent of deals, according to the law firm Fenwick & West, which studies these things.) You also see liquidation preferences start to spike when a business cycle turns, and they can get pretty egregious. After the big boom and bust of the late ’90s, for example, investors who’d earlier settled for one times their money back put the screws to founders out of nervousness and began demanding up to 10 times their return before anyone else got paid in an exit event. Today’s deals aren’t quite so extreme, but don’t be fooled. Investors are sophisticated. A published last year by Fenwick & West suggested that, in some cases, unicorn companies’ valuations could fall 80 percent in value, and investors would still get their money back. The harsh reality is that in many cases, liquidation preferences are a necessary evil. VCs have to protect themselves or they, too, will be put out of business by their own investors. If you begrudge them their protections, you shouldn’t. There are plenty of ways that they can still lose out, particularly in a broader downturn. You can read about one way . Note that we’re just scratching the surface here. If you’re interested in learning more about liquidation preferences, which can be both fascinating but insanely complicated, we also suggest by venture capitalist Brad Feld, and by Fred Wilson. Both are a little dated at this point, but they’re as relevant today as when they were written.
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Snapchat has quietly acquired an Israeli startup for a reported $30 million to $40 million
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Connie Loizos
| 2,016 | 12 | 25 |
Snapchat sewed up its first acquisition in Israel this week, according to the outlet . It acquired four-year-old , whose augmented reality platform lets consumers instantly visualize products they want to buy in their intended location, paying what Calcalist says was between $30 million and $40 million. According to its LinkedIn page, Cimagine currently works with brands like Jerome’s, a furniture store franchise in Southern California; the U.K.-based digital retailer Shop Direct; and the global giant Coca-Cola — its cloud-based mobile platform aiming to help these companies augment their sites and mobile apps and boost online conversion rates and in-store sales in the process. Presumably, Snapchat will use the tech to further enhance campaigns like we’ve seen in the past with, say, Starbucks, which launched a Snapchat chilled summer drinks campaign last summer, giving Starbucks drinkers the ability to superimpose a lens over a picture of their icy Frappuccino beverage and send it to their friends. This also looks like a talent grab, with Cimagine’s four co-founders — Ozi Egri, Amiram Avraham, Nir Daube and CEO Yoni Nevo — each specialists in the fields of computer vision and image processing. The move would also seem to give Snapchat a way to begin building out a development center in Israel if it wants. Crunchbase shows that had raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding, including from iVentures Asia, OurCrowd, and PLUS Ventures. Snapchat is meanwhile reportedly moving forward with an IPO that could value the company at between $20 billion and $25 billion and is expected to come as early as March. Snapchat, more recently rebranded as Snap Inc., is known to have made roughly half a dozen smaller acquisitions this year (though others may have flown under the radar of the media). These include an adtech company called (the deal was described as an ); the mobile search app Vurb, for which Snapchat paid a reported ; a computer vision startup called Seene that allowed users to take three-dimensional selfies ( ); and Bitstrips, a maker of personalized emojis known as bitmojis. Snap reportedly paid for the company.
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Insert Ads into Podcasts with Fruitcast
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 3 |
launched today. It’s a service that automatically inserts 15 second sound advertisements directly into a publsiher’s podcast (either at the beginning, or the end, or both). They’ve focused on keeping things ultra simple. You simply publish your podcast through a feed they create for you, and the advertisements are auto-inserted. They already have a signed up for the service. It looks like they are paying out on a per-download basis, and the site suggests that podcasters can $0.25 per listener. That’s a hefty $250 CPM to the advertiser…which is way above what radio stations charge for ads. Fruitcast was created by James Archer’s in Mesa, Arizona. Brian Benzinger has additional information on .
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Google Lunch?
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 4 |
As many people know, Google offers its employees free lunch and free dinner at the campus (Yahoo charges its employees). It’s a lavish affair, with many different types of high quality food, drinks, desert, etc. I like visiting Google for lunch, and accept nearly every offer I get from a Google employee. To get into Google’s internal offices requires a discussion with security, sign in, badge, and escort. However, the dining area has no specific security into or out of it. If you can get past parking security, you can walk right in and eat. Like much on TechCrunch, this is pure rumor. But I’ve heard from multiple independent sources that non-Google employees are making a game out of getting onto the Google campus, without an escort, and eating a free lunch, often taking a second lunch “to-go” for dinner. These people are keeping score to see who can eat the most free, unescorted lunches at Google. And specifically, my understanding is that many or all of these people are Yahoo employees. Yahoo HQ is right down the freeway, a very short drive away. Have other people heard about this, or tried it (anonymous comments are fine)? For research purposes I may be trying this out myself. :-)
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Technorati Extends Search Functionality
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 3 |
at has just informed me that they have quietly updated their with full boolean search functionality. In August, Technorati to tag search. On a search for “apple OR microsoft”, the results would include any posts that included either tag. While useful, this functionality essentially just reduced the number of searches a user needed to perform to find posts with relevant information. They’ve now added AND and NOT functions, which significantly help narrow result sets for specific searches. For instance, a user looking for blog posts on both (89 results) can now easily find those results, instead of sifting manually through a much larger result set for just Microsoft (16,627 results) or Web2.0 (5,717 results). Technorati has in an instant just given the user the 89 results that he or she really cares about. The NOT function is just as useful. Want to refine the result set above even more? Try “ ” to narrow it down to just 66 results. Yes, these are advanced functions, but as the number of blog posts continues to skyrocket and publisher tagging is becoming more ubiquitous, users need tools to quickly refine result sets and find what they are looking for. By adding this functionality, Technorati made tagging more valuable.
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Amazon finally reveals itself as the Matrix
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 4 |
Amazon’s new product is brilliant because it will help application developers overcome certain types of problems (resulting in the possibility for new kinds of applications) and somewhat scary because I can’t get the Matrix-we-are-all-plugged-into-a-machine vision out of my head. The “machine” is a that Amazon is calling “artificial artificial intelligence.” If you need a process completed that only humans can do given current technology (judgment calls, text drafting or editing, etc.), you can simply make a request to the service to complete the process. The machine will then complete the task with volunteers, and return the results to your software. Volunteers are paid different amounts for each task, and money earned is deposited into their Amazon accounts. Amazon keeps a 10% margin on what the requester pays. Today, we build complex software applications based on the things computers do well, such as storing and retrieving large amounts of information or rapidly performing calculations. However, humans still significantly outperform the most powerful computers at completing such simple tasks as identifying objects in photographs – something children can do even before they learn to speak. When we think of interfaces between human beings and computers, we usually assume that the human being is the one requesting that a task be completed, and the computer is completing the task and providing the results. What if this process were reversed and a computer program could ask a human being to perform a task and return the results? What if it could coordinate many human beings to perform a task? Amazon Mechanical Turk provides a web services API for computers to integrate Artificial Artificial Intelligence directly into their processing by making requests of humans. Developers use the Amazon Mechanical Turk web services API to submit tasks to the Amazon Mechanical Turk web site, approve completed tasks, and incorporate the answers into their software applications. To the application, the transaction looks very much like any remote procedure call – the application sends the request, and the service returns the results. In reality, a network of humans fuels this Artificial Artificial Intelligence by coming to the web site, searching for and completing tasks, and receiving payment for their work. All software developers need to do is write normal code. The pseudo code below illustrates how simple this can be. read (photo);
photoContainsHuman = callMechanicalTurk(photo);
if (photoContainsHuman == TRUE){
acceptPhoto;
}
else {
rejectPhoto;
} The name “Mechanical Turk” is a great one because it refers to a machine built in the 18th century that played chess against real people and beat them regularly. However, nearly a hundred years later it was finally revealed that the machine was in fact powered by a human being hidden inside of it. I actually read a about the machine earlier this year – I was on a business trip and it was all I could find. There are an enormous number of tasks that this can be used for. So plug in to the Machine and give it a try. More on this from , and .
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YackPack Joins the Click, Record Crowd
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 5 |
is one of a growing group of companies (see our recent for the list) that is allowing consumers to easily create a quick recording to share with friends. It’s still in private beta, although you can get a good understanding of the service by watching the they’ve created. likes the effort YackPack has put into creating a very simple user interface. I agree that a child could use it, but I don’t think the walled-garded functionality will ultimately be popular. Other minor annoyances with the service: I was forced to give up too much personal information to register (such as my zip code and birth date), you can’t edit a sound file before you send it, and you cannot access the actual sound files you record – they must be listened to at the site. YackPack plans to provide a free, ad supported service along with a premium option for “ “. They are also giving away a limited supply of .
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Zoozio – Hey, Another AJAX Desktop!
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 4 |
It looks like Redwood City-based will be the next horse in the AJAX desktop race. We already have , (our favorite) and (flash-based) . Oh yeah, and . Wait, too. There’s not much info on the site yet. I hope these guys have some interesting features if they want into this already crowded . Thanks for the tip. saw this yesterday as well.
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Odeo Disappoints
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 4 |
My patience with has run out. The first time I wrote about Odeo was on . The service actually launched on , about the time that iTunes 4.9 was released and hit the podcasting world like a ton of bricks. Odeo had tools to listen and sync, and a directory (iTunes, iTunes,and iTunes), but lacked the feature that everyone was looking forward to: the podcast creator. It was the sole feature that made Odeo different from iTunes. Fans eagerly awaited its release. In the 4-5 months since the product was launched, Apple has released yet another version of iTunes and Podshow raised nearly $9m from Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia. Did Odeo release its studio tool? No. Instead, they released a desktop . Last week Odeo did get its out. It’s visually appealing. is very straightforward. Click a button to record. Click another one to stop. It’s built on Flash. You can choose to add a picture to the podcast. It can be made public or just shared with friends, including by email. If you share by email, a link is sent to the recipient (v. directly sending a MP3 file). And…that’s it. Don’t like part of the podcast? You have to start over. No editing tools. No effects. No enhancements. Nothing else whatsoever. All they’ve done is turn on your microphone, turn it off later, and record what happens in between. The guys at built this in two weeks a couple of months ago. did something similar and attached it to Outlook. This has been done already . By the way, if you want a free open source editing tool for podcasts, try . It’s what I use. Odeo is not an innovator. At best they are a follower. I’m hoping they start building new and interesting podcasting features soon. But for now, even in doing interesting things with audio. Odeo: What are you going to do to make your product relevant?
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New Yahoo Maps Shows Power of Flash
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 2 |
An all new at 9 pm PST. I spoke with Paul Levine, the General Manager of Local, Jeremy Kreitler, a Senior Product Manager of Maps and Local, and Diana Vincent, a PR Manager, earlier today about Yahoo Maps. Unlike Google and Microsoft maps, Yahoo has chosen to use Flash over AJAX in building its new service, and they’ve added new features that are not found anywhere else. They’ve also done some things to reduce the hassle of creating, sharing and printing maps online. It’s built with on the new MacroMedia Flex platform for flash, something we’ve been hearing a lot about lately. Because Yahoo Maps is a flash application, it avoids the need for page refreshes changes are made to the page. A simple drag and drop module on the top right lets users move around easily (even easier than the great Google drag method). There are multiple ways to zoom into and out of a map, including using the scroll wheel on the mouse, or the page up/down buttons on the keyboard. The arrow keyboard keys also allow for scrolling off-screen to new areas. There is excellent integration wth Yahoo Local businesses. Once a map is pulled up, a quick search, such as “pizza” pulls up all local restaurants. A click shows more information, and options to add it to the driving directions itinerary. And this is cool – they allow multipoint directions, something Google and Microsoft don’t have.. add as many stops as you need, in the order you want, and Yahoo Maps will calculate driving directions for the whole trip. This could be really useful when house hunting, for instance. Simply add all of the addresses and get an itinerary. And as you edit the map by moving, adding things, etc., the URL in the browser bar self updates so that it can be copied and pasted at any time. This is something that really bugs me about Google Maps – the need to click a link to get a permanent URL. Yahoo’s solved that with some cool javascript coding. Because Yahoo Maps is built on Flash, the “back button” on the browser still works (a problem with AJAX applications). At any time you can back up into older maps and the URL also rewinds. Yahoo Maps requires the installation of Flash 7 or greater. 90% of U.S. and European computers already have it installed. Yahoo has two flavors of . The syndication API is a simple way of bringing Yahoo Maps into a website in either Flash of AJAX. They’ve also launched a richer Building Blocks API for maximum flexibility.
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Office Live Will Be A Huge Productivity Tool
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 2 |
The other product announced yesterday at the Microsoft Preview event in San Francisco was . Office Live will launch in Q1 2006. My raw notes from the event are on , and my went up last night. Rajesh Jha presented the product. Office Live is an online version of Office. Office Live is a set of free, ad-supported productivity tools for businesses that will really help the small guys. The service will also have a premium subscription product that will have “less” ads, according to Bill Gates yesterday. The core tools are a free non-microsoft domain name, website and up to 50 email accounts with 2 GB of storage each. Rajesh created a new website in the demo, adding content and images, in a minute or so. For a small company needing a informational website, it will be great. Given that the domain name, website building, hosting and email will all be free, this will be very attractive to a small business. For customers needing more, Microsoft will offer a suite of additional productivity applications – 22 in all were announced yesterday. They will also support third party applications – ADP’s payroll software was shown integrated into Office Live. A set of APIs will be available for third parties to add their application functionality into Office Live. Among the additional applications was an office document collaboration tool. You can share an office document real time with others, allowing them to view and edit it. Impressive. Office Live should become a starting point for small businesses wanting a web presence and a general platform to run their business operations. If Microsoft can hold on to them as they grow by offering additional services, it will become a lucrative product for them. And the ad inventory they will generate from page views will also be highly valuable to advertisers selling into the small business space. There is a real chance Office Live will be one of the big revenue generators for Microsoft, both from advertising and subscription fees.
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John Mannes
| 2,016 | 12 | 22 | null |
Mindmapping Movies and Music With LivePlasma
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 20 |
I’m a sucker for good looking Flash sites, and Frederic Vavrille’s , based in France, is a great one. He’s mashed up the Amazon recommendation API for music and movies to visually show the relationship between bands/artists/movies. The results are very relevant and there are links to purchase anything you see that you want. Thanks for pointing to this.
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Instantly Hooked on Diggdot.us
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 20 |
Three sites I use often are Digg, Slashdot and del.icio.us/popular. If you want to find out what’s hot right now on the Internet, those sites will tell you (although Memeorandum usually gets the news even before these sites). I saw a on Programmable Web about , which launched yesterday. Diggdot.us combines results from all three of those sites into one very clean interface. Stories have been de-duplicated, and they claim to have additional content as well. Digg, slashdot, and del.icio.us/popular – this is a constant browsing cycle for us. So why not combine them into a unified format without all the extra chrome? We can eliminate dupes and add some extra niceities. If you are a news junkie, this is for you. Or at least, it will be once they have an RSS feed. Shame.
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Skype Video within 30 days
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 18 |
Strong rumors are afoot that Skype version 1.5 with video will be launching before Christmas. They are clearly behind the at VON Boston, which anticipated v 1.5, with video and other features, in October.
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Waxmail Update
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 18 |
is a great productity tool that allows you to attach mp3 audio files to an email. We first when they released their Outlook product. Waxmail just announced that they now have support for Outlook Express. I’m hoping they include other email applications over time – like Mail and Entourage for the Mac. A lot of people overlooked Waxmail as just another audio recording tool. But I’ve found that I use it more and more often. There is just something very cool about recording a quick sound file to accompany certain emails. It’s sometimes easier to say what you think sometimes rather than write it. It’s especially useful when emailing a picture, chart or other visual document that needs commentary. Best of all, it’s completely free. Try it out if you use outlook or outlook express. It’s really easy to use.
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Why I don't like Riffs
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 20 |
, a review site for anything, launched quietly last week. It takes a hybrid wiki/social bookmarking approach. Any user can add a URL to begin a discussion (or just begin a discussion without a URL), and the Riffs community votes on the thing and discusses it in wiki fashion. All pages have RSS and the clean interface has some great Ajax features. Riffs also has tagging, including “common tags”, which I think is interesting. So why don’t I like it? It’s centralized content. All of the content resides on Riff’s servers and they require people to go to the site (in one way or another) to add content to the discussion. And in this case it seems absolutely crazy to architect their service this way. Reviews are everywhere on the web today. And the most exciting place to find reviews in on blogs. Try it – search on “whatever” and “review” and you’ll see thousands upon thousands of high quality reviews on just about anything all over the blogosphere. Riffs approach is to try to get in the middle and generate a centralized discussion by people who want to talk about a subject. They are staying as open as possible by creating RSS feeds for each page, and my understanding is that they may be creating tools to allow people to push the content they create at Riffs out to their blog, like flickr does. And it seems to me this is their core mission – to become the flickr of reviews. Not “flickr” in the joking way that everyone says when something is trying to be the cool new web 2.0 application, but literally, the place people put their review content and then pull it out for their blog if they choose to do so. writes about the service and addresses points similar to those above that I made on and made on his blog. Jeff and my point: Blogs are the place to write content. Microformats and tagging will help people do this. My additional point: And they already are doing it, at massive scale. Fred’s retort:: But as a content creator living on the edge, I am not sure we are ready for microformats and tags and social interaction to do all the work for us. We’ll get there, I am sure of that, but we need an interim step and that step are services that feel centralized but are really application specific edge feeders. I need a better word for these services, but for now I’ll call them the edge feeders. I disagree with Fred on this. Flickr is a useful “edge feeder” because it has tools for managing photos that go way beyond what most bloggers have. And more importantly, they host the pictures for you at no cost. Reviews are different. They are easy to write, easy to publish and cost very little to host. What we need is a service that takes all of this great content out there and pulls it into a centralized place for search and find (and further discussion), but which always points people back to the original post. Back to Riffs, I really do like the wiki/communit aspect of the service. But they need to find a way to grab their data from the edge first and foremost. If they can do interesting things with it, then they can be successful. I know why they aren’t doing this. All that open data out there…anyone can take it. If Riffs is successful with my suggested approach, what stops others from doing the same? My answer? Absolutely nothing. But their current approach doesn’t even put them in the game. I say find a way to aggregate that data and relate it into a discussion somehow, like Memeorandum does on a smaller scale. Then you’ve got a big company. But you better hurry up. .
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Another Tool For Domain Name Nuts
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 20 |
is similar to a site I wrote about a week ago called . Ajaxwhois is similar to Instant Domain Search in that it has a nice Ajax interface. It’s has better functionality, though, because it pulls whois information directly into the results page and allow queries on top level domains beyond .com and .net (it even returned information for .name). While there is no link to register a domain (an easy addition), overall its a better tool for domain professionals. From .
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Advertising on TechCrunch
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 18 |
As many of you know, writing TechCrunch is and has been a hobby/obsession of mine for over 5 months now. To this point, TechCrunch has not generated revenue of any kind, other than a couple of thousand dollars paid by of our to offset party costs. Revenue generation from advertising isn’t and won’t be the primary goal of this site because the value of TechCrunch isn’t in page views, but in networking (I agree with almost entirely on this). However, I’ve had the opportunity to join John Battelle’s along with a number of really great blogs. The main reason I’ve done this is to associate with these other blogs and cross pollinate ideas. Another benefit of the network is that they seek out appropriate advertisers for blogs. As part of my commitment to FM Publishing I’ll be placing some ads on TechCrunch. I’d like to get feedback from TechCrunch readers on how they feel about this. In addition, I’d like to get an understanding of what types of advertisements you may actually find useful. If you have a moment, please also to help FM Publishing better match advertisers to you. So hammer away. Comments are unmoderated and open.
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Intuit's Zipingo Joins Local Business Review Sites
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 27 |
joins the ranks of local business review and ranking services such as , (which just from Mobius Venture Capital, Ignition Partners and Ackerley Partners) and idealab’s . Like the other sites, Zipingo aims to pair yellow page-like contact information for local businesses with user reviews. It was created (and owned) by Intuit. Since all of these sites are well done, have similar feature sets and have financial backing, it will be very hard for any of them to gain enough critical mass to dominate the market. This is certainly an attactive space (combining local advertising with the potential for premium listings). However, it’s my belief that a single, open API (in and out) yellow page service, with consumer ratings, could dominate this market very quickly. As great as these services are, they rely on centralized content and getting users to come to them to both write reviews and find a business. An open service could have an easy way for businesses to insert their listings (and pay for enhancement), and anyone could take the data via an API (enhancing the network effect many fold). I wrote about this very briefly about companies that I’d like to profile but don’t exist yet (no. 7 on the list). Back to Zipingo and the other related services, if there are any dedicated users who’s seen a unique feature or have noticed heavy user participation, please ping me.
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23 is too much like Flickr
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 27 |
is a lot like flickr. Almost a clone, even down to the UI and feature comparisons. The service is free, for up to 15 MB of uploading a month. 29 EUR gets you an unlimited bandwidth account. The things I like best about right now are the “sets” (23 calls them albums) and the which takes the pain out of uploading many pictures at once. 23 needs a similar tool. As to whether another photo sharing site can take reasonable market share now that Flickr is so entrenched – Sure. Maybe. This is still a massive growth market, and since 23 is located in Europe they will have an easier time getting users there, where Flickr does not have the market penetration. has more on 23.
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A Profile of Tagworld
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 11 |
Santa Monica based has been quietly beta testing its product for a few months, and officially opened its doors earlier this week. They now have 75,000 members and are growing by thousands per day. The funny thing is that I had never heard of them before last week when I was contacted by Carmen Hughes of for a preview. Tagworld is a huge project. At its core it is a blogging platform, and at first glance it appeared to be a sort of advanced or – a blogging platform that would ultimately appeal to teens and college students as its core market. But after meeting the founders and getting a first hand look at the deep features, it’s clear that it is more than just the next teen blogging hangout. There are advanced features that will appeal to a much larger audience. The site is still rough and a number of features are buggy. But given their early subscriber growth, it appears that they are on to something interesting. Tagworld was founded by and , two serial entrepreneurs who’ve had a string of successful liquidity events. They’ve self funded Tagworld, which is six months old and has 20 employees. The site is going to try to own just about every web 2.0 experience of its users – blogging, bookmarking, photos and other media files, file storage, and tagging. They say they are going to have open data in and out, meaning if a user is really attached to say, Flickr, they’ll be able to integrate with those photos seemlessly. And they’ll have RSS and APIs to send data out. But their clear goal, as Fred said when we met, is to replace del.icio.us, flickr and blogger (among other services) for its users. All features are free to users (other than extended file storage); Tagworld makes its money from integrated advertising. Tagworld has a solid blogging platform that is based on user-included widgets (posts, pictures, tags, friends, media player, maps, etc.). Designing the site is done through an Ajax interfact that allows dragging and dropping for quick organization. The platform is based on widget objects. There are a bunch of widgets that have already been included (such as those mentioned in the paragraph above), and there is an API for third parties to create their own and share them on Tagworld. Blogs are easily customized by users, and more advanced users can take full control of the html as well. Tagworld has an advanced wysiwyg tool for editing blogs, including adding photos (resizing, positioning) and media files. A social bookmarking feature is included. They do not yet have a bookmarklet but the core functionality is on the site. Tagworld automatically takes a small screen shot of the page as well and includes it with the bookmark metadata. Bookmarks can be tagged, and shared or kept private. They are also building integration tools with other bookmark services such as del.icio.us. Tagworld has a decent tool for uploading photos. There’s a great flash module for showing off photos on the home page. Uploading media files is also easy, and there is a media player module to play video and audio files on the home page. Fred and Evan say that they will also have flickr integration into and out of tagworld for users who do not want to switch. They are still ironing out the details on this feature, but Tagworld is allowing a full gig of file storage. These files can be tagged, searched and integrated into the user’s website very easily. Uploaded media files can be played on the home page/blog by integrating it with the player widget. The first gig is free. They plan to charge “at cost” for additional storage. Everything on Tagworld can be tagged. People, posts, pictures, media files, other files, etc. Combined with search, it’s a very useful way of finding content. There are other nice touches as well. Search is well integrated with personal and community tags. RSS will be available soon. And they’ve done some interesting things with Ajax, such as a slider control to increase or decrease the search results shown on a page. Tagworld is not for everyone, but it may be for the mass consumer that is just starting to jump into web 2.0. I just checked the site. In the time it took me to write this profile, Tagworld added another 1,500 users. In the end, customer acquisition and monetization is all that really matters.
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RSS is Now Integrated into Yahoo Mail and Alerts
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 29 |
Yahoo gathered a small group of bloggers, press and others at Sauce in San Francisco tonight to announce the launch of two new RSS products. They have integrated an RSS reader directly into Beta, and are expanding to include RSS feeds. These are significant new products, aimed squarely at new and mainstream RSS users. The service is not live as of the time I am posting this. I’ve added a screen shot picture from the live demo. Yahoo has deeply integrated RSS into the Yahoo Mail beta experience. Directly below the email folders are “RSS folders”. Clicking on the top folder show all posts in a “river of news” format, meaning all posts for all subscribed feeds are listed in the order they have appeared in feeds. Each feed also has its own folder, allowing the user to read feeds individually (more like bloglines). A post from any feed is treated exactly like an email – any post can be forwarded as an email or dragged into a folder and saved. All of the great AJAX functionality already working in Yahoo’s Mail beta works with the new RSS functionality as well. Adding feeds is straightforward – include the feed URL or choose from a number of popular feeds. Yahoo users can now use Yahoo Alerts to be notified whenever RSS feeds update. Alerts, which include a summary of the updated content, can be configured to be sent via sms, email and/or messenger. This is a great way to monitor small groups of important feeds. Yahoo clearly took the lead for best email application this evening. The ability to “pop in” other email accounts, the ajax functionality and, now, the integrated RSS reader are absolutely stunning features. John Furrier was at the event tonight as well, and as usual has an . RSS in Yahoo Mail is now fully live. As says, My Yahoo and Yahoo Mail syncronize feeds – a long list in email doesn’t work so well in My Yahoo. I spoke to Scott Gatz at Yahoo about this earlier this evening and he says they’ll find a fix for it. There are a few other features which still need to be added, but Yahoo Mail is just an incredibly awesome product.
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More on Songbird
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 29 |
replaced its landing page with a blog and is giving more information on the product (I had next to no details for my earlier this month). The site now has additional and a few posts that begin to talk about the product. I am alpha testing Songbird now and am very impressed, even though they say it is only 30% done (as of November 18). They have asked me not to blog about non public information yet, and I won’t. One thing to clear up is that Songbird is not an online application – it is (among other things) a next generation media player. And it is absolutely turning my head around in the way I think about certain things. They’ll be pushing a preview release in December.
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Is the Gawker-Yahoo Deal Important?
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 16 |
, a blog network similar to Weblogs, Inc., and Yahoo a syndication deal today that brings Gawker content to . Content from the largest Gawker blogs is already included – Wonkette, Gizmodo, Defamer, Lifehacker, and Gawker itself. More may be coming. The financial terms are undisclosed, but here’s what is now on Yahoo: Gawker brands and content are pushed throughout the . Clicking on associated content pulls up a Yahoo page with the Gawker content ( ). It does NOT redirect to Gawker. There is a single link to Gawker on the content page (clicking on the brand name). Otherwise, it’s an all-Yahoo experience. If I was doing the deal, I’d expect a revenue split in Yahoo’s favor on ad revenue generated from the page. Gawker gets that revenue, the branding, and some links directly to the blog. This is purely speculation, but my best guess. Is this an important deal? Yes, in that it shows Yahoo embracing blog content. The guy at Yahoo to get to know is clearly Scott Moore, named by Wired in their last print edition as VP Content Operations. Scott is hiring bloggers (such as Kevin Sites) and doing these kinds of deals with Gawker. These are smart deals for Yahoo – they generate page views where they can put lots of ads. If the deals are revenue share, then it’s a no lose proposition for Yahoo. But what Yahoo is noticeably doing is acquiring Gawker, like That means liquidity events for bloggers are limited – the GYMs (Google-Yahoo-Microsoft) are not yet in content buying moods. So perhaps the networks and very large blogs can cut deals to increase page views on content and generate revenue. Will this model work for the long or medium tail of blog content? My guess is no…the GYMs will want to control quality and that doesn’t scale with more than a small number of blogs. But certainly we’ll see more deals like this, particularly as long as the advertising market is strong and demand for inventory is outstripping supply. The portals need content, and this is a cheap way to get it. A lot of people are focusing on the fact that the deal is incorporating blog content directly into Yahoo news results. While I find this interesting, we’ve already seen Yahoo experiment with this with their . Clearly Yahoo is defining the definition of news to include blogs (as they should), and I applaud this. But back to the title of this post. Is it an interesting deal? Yes, but mostly because of what the deal – it isn’t an aquisition of Gawker. Read more analysis of the deal at , and .
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Hyper-Contextual Search Results with Swicki
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 16 |
Eurekster’s search service officially launches later today (November 16, 2005). Eurekster, a twenty person company located in San Francisco and New Zealand, has a profitable business (called Search Publisher) that provides customized search results to a number of large websites. Steven Marder, Eurekster’s CEO, tells me Eurekster’s current products are generating 25+ million monthly searches. With Swickis, they’ve taken the basic technology and added on a “do it yourself” interface to allow a much larger number of sites, particularly blogs, to also integrate search direclty into their content. Swicki’s are “community powered” in a sense and their website focuses on this. A swicki is new kind of search engine that allows anyone to create deep, focused searches on topics you care about. Unlike other search engines, you and your community have total control over the results and it uses the wisdom of crowds to improve search results. This search engine, or swicki, can be published on your site. Your swicki presents search results that you’re interested in, pulls in new relevant information as it is indexed, and organizes everything for you in a neat little customizable widget you can put on your web site or blog, complete with its very own buzz cloud that constantly updates to show you what are hot search terms in your community. And certainly the community has a role in creating more relevant results. But what really interests me about their technology is that the tweaking by the publisher along with community actions combine to create extremely contextual, or hyper-contextual (my words, not theirs), search results. Two somewhat different examples of live Swickis (they’ve been in private beta for a while): see our (scroll down a bit) and ‘s right sidebar. Swicki’s are based on Yahoo’s search API for base results. The publisher customizes the search engine by adding keywords that are always added to the search results. And, in a similar way to , Swickis allow for the publisher to name specific websites that have content relevant to the search. For instance, a gaming site may include other gaming website URLs as important, and Swicki will put results from those sites on the top. A publisher can also block results from certain blogs. For our , we selected all participating site URLs as the most relevant content. Swicki’s also have a related “buzzcloud”, which is a tagcloud of commonly searched terms. The buzzcould can also be edited by the publisher to add or remove terms, and a spam filter disallows any single IP from influencing the buzzcloud results too heavily. Swickis are completely free. They will soon have contextual advertising served along with normal search results if the publisher chooses, but there will be no penalty or fee if they publisher wishes to keep advertising out. They are also adding analytics to allow publishers to monitor search statistics. A should be out soon and I’ll link to it once it’s available. Check out their as well for a post. posted a long review of Swickis last month when they first went into private beta. Thanks for introducing me to the company.
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The Riya-Google Rumor
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 17 |
Rumors are flying this morning that (a ) has been or is being acquired by Google in the $40 million range. See , and . Even though everyone is blogging about it, this is nothing more than a rumor at this point. It is a rumor, however, that has been confirmed to me by employees of companies that were also apparently in the hunt for Riya but dropped out after the price became too rich. These rumors will certainly make tomorrow night even more interesting. I want to stress that even though I know the Riya folks and even though I am hosting their launch party, I have no direct confirmation of the deal from them (and yes, I’ve tried). They are silent on this, which is understandable whether the rumor is accurate or not. I tested Riya last month and came away very impressed. See my . Riya has solid technology and an impressive team.
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Microsoft "Fremont" to Launch
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 28 |
Microsoft will be beta launching a new web 2.0 service under the Live.com brand in the next few weeks. The final name is TDB, but the current project name is “Fremont” and the URL will redirect once its fully live. I had a chance to see a demo of the product – it’s very cool and will definitely shake things up.
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Fotolia's P2P Photo Sales
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 10 |
Like , New York based is a new, specialized p2p ecommerce site that combines an innovative business model with Ajax, tagging, rss and great design. Fotolia yesterday. Fotolia is a site where photographers can sell their images directly to consumers. They offer only royalty free images ( , for instance, offers a mix of royalty free and rights managed images). Photographers keep up to 80% of fees. Three types of rights may be purchased – web only, print only, and exclusive buyout. The exclusive buyout option results in the image being removed from the site,and no futher sales of the image are made after that. Fotolia has created an innovative pricing system to encourage use by photographers and manage the user experience. Photographers may price photos within certain determined by their . The more sales a photographer has, the higher their rank. Prices start at zero and can be as high as $2,000 for an exclusive buyout. The site is very well designed, and they’ve integrated Ajax previews of images along with photographer tagging of images for easier searching. They have multi-language support (including blogs in four languages) and RSS for all results pages. After a 6 month limited beta, Fotolia now has 100,000 images online.
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TechCrunch Meetup #4 – Riya Launch Party
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 10 |
is holding its launch party here at the TechCrunch house next Friday, November 18, 2005. If you are in the area, make sure to drop by. Our last party/meetup was a and I expect this one to be even bigger. Lots to eat and drink, and Riya will be giving a very cool presentation. The wiki for the party is . Signup page and list of . Please RSVP on this page so that we know how many people will be attending. On a side note, Riya is on a tear right now. People are loving their software – check out the by Kathleen Craig. Our . : November 18, 2005
7-11 pm
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Pandora is Now Free
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 10 |
, the great music disovery service and player, is now offering a free version of its service. Pandora has hired 30 musicians who have spent years analyzing 400 attributes of songs, like melody, rhythm and vocals. They’ve analyzed over 10,000 artists and 300,000 songs to date. Users pick a band or song to get started, and create a “channel” based on that type of music and which you can stream over their site in high quality audio. Over time, by telling Pandora whether or not you like a given song, the channel will evolve. You can share these channels with other Pandora users. For more information, see our profile (one of my more effusive) from .Pandora launched nine weeks ago. Before today, Pandora charged $12/quarter or $36/year after a 10 hour free trial. Now, users can choose between a free, ad supported version of Pandora, or choose to pay for the service without ads. Users who have paid for Pandora previously will have the option of having their money refunded, or an extension added to their subscription. Quarterly subscribers will have a year added to their account, and yearly subscribers will have two years added. Pandora has also added new features, including a favorites list, increased feedback functionality for tailoring stations, better playlist generation and dozens of other minor tweaks. Pandora has 1 million stations based on 70,000 unique artists or songs.
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WordPress.com Out Of Beta
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 21 |
Matthew Mullenweg today that , the hosted (and free) (and extensible) version of is now available without an invite. I’ve created a test blog, and other than the fact that you cannot set additional ping servers (an advanced feature that only matters to some people), its an awesome product. If you are looking for a free, hosted blog, check it out.
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TechCrunch – After 5 Months
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 10 |
Tomorrow, November 11, is ‘s five month anniversary – my (Technorati) was on June 11, 2005. I’ve been blogging personally for some time but this was my first attempt to write for an audience larger than my immediate family and friends. It’s been a wonderful experience – and I have countless new friends (bloggers, readers, entrepreneurs, journalists and venture capitalists) that I’ve met directly or indirectly through writing TechCrunch. If you’d like to know why I started TechCrunch and how it’s evolved, please read on the companion blog I started, (CrunchNotes is where I write about stuff that interests me but that doesn’t strictly belong on TechCrunch). I thought I’d share some TechCrunch stats that I find interesting. Readers have grown at a pretty steady rate. I think this is a reflection of general growth in the blogosphere, and the fact that I am writing about all of the interesting new companies that are popping up on the web. To really understand web 2.0, you have to look at the companies. That’s all I do here. We’ve grown to about 9,000 daily RSS readers. Page views swing wildly from day to day depending on what links are coming in. (from feedburner) I really like seeing where the rss readers are reading my feeds. These also change around a bit, but the current breakdown (rounded up or down) is: (from feedburner) I’ve always found it interesting that Firefox is the most popular browser of TechCrunch readers, even though their total market share is only around 10%. This stuff has to scare Microsoft…blog readers are the early adopters. (from measuremap) These are the ten most popular TechCrunch posts: (from measuremap) I want to thank everyone that reads this blog, has been written about in this blog, and the many people who’ve taken the time to link, comment and give me advice. I’ll keep writing TechCrunch as long as it’s fun, and as long as I love what I’m doing (and yes, I am an ).
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Riya's Launch Party @ TechCrunch
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 19 |
We reached a new milestone in our ongoing experiment to see how many people can fit inside my house before the police come and arrest me: over 250 last night (previous record was ) at the Launch Party. The thing I liked best about this party was that from Riya and from Just Starting Up took care of everything – Fifty something pizzas, , bags and bags of ice, the A/V system for the demo and tons of tshirts and stickers. Tom Conrad from chipped in with a . And it was a great crowd. . Here’s everyone’s tagged “ “. The were neither confimed nor denied by anyone in the know…but there sure is a lot of buzz around this company right now. Things I loved about the event: Things that weren’t as great about the event: That’s it for parties this year. The next one should be in January or February. I can’t say what it is yet but I will say that it involves a launch party again…this time for a book. Other mentions of the party (send me an email or trackback to this post):
.
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New Look At Del.icio.us
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 21 |
just put up a completely new site. Recent bookmarks on the left, popular bookmarks on the right. It’s about time. :-) Nice one, Joshua. Logged In: Logged Out: Thanks for the tip .
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Feedster Enters Podcast Search Market
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 7 |
Scott Johnson announced Feedster Podcast Search tonight . An example is . They’ve also added a “Play Latest Episode” link to episodes to listen or download the podcast directly from Feedster.
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Companies I'd like to Profile (but don't exist)
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 21 |
There are companies I review every day that I don’t write about. Reasons vary – it’s been done already and the product isn’t even as good as what’s been done, its a mostly or totally one-way application, or it isn’t consumer focused (or have implications for consumer focused applications). Even with this filtering, I get flame comments on some of the stuff I do choose to write about as “not worthy”. But there are a number of companies and/or products that I would like to write about but don’t exist. I’ve been keeping a list over the last few months and I am posting it now. Some of these are big ideas, some small. Some could potentially receive venture backing, most wouldn’t. But I believe that a viable business could be built by an entrepreneur around any of these, and I will be happy to profile them if and when someone builds them. In a way, this is number 11 in my previously post “ “, but its also much more than that. And let me know if and where these should fall in . Photos, movies, music and important files take up a ton of hard drive space. I recently purchased a new desktop computer with a 250 GB hard drive, and the hard drive is full from recorded television shows that I haven’t watched yet. Yeah, I can buy a network drive for my house, but they are expensive and if the house burns down I’ve still lost everything. It’s amazing to me that all of us aren’t backing up our important files online regularly. As far as I’m concerned, the only reason is because no product has emerged to fill this tremendous demand, with the right features and at the right price. We need a good product. Something as easy to use as the Flickr uploader on the client side, and easy web access. These tools need to go a generation or two beyond what xdrive is offering. Features I’d like to see: drag and drop file adding and removing, an rss feed for my files, tagging of every file for easy search later, easy sharing, and the ability to publish files to the web with permanent URLs. And off location backups in case building burns down. Pricing needs to be dramatically lower too. Find a way to make this cheap. Include ads or whatever, but this needs to be very low cost (remember that Google offers over 2 gb of mail storage for free). Xdrive is currently for 5 gigs. Even Godaddy, at for 1 gb, is way too costly. I have no idea what the cost economics for a business like this are, but plan for scale and give some amount, at least a gig or two, permanently free. No 15 day free trials – we see right through that. Give me a lot for free and let me scale up to, say 500 GB for $20 per year. People can visit my site, and get the content via RSS, but I know of no quality service to allow people to subscribe to my site via email. I hate to rip on , which is really the only choice right now, but it sucks. It’s orange. Really ORANGE. I want the look and feel to be TechCrunch, not theirs. I want people to have the option of getting an email every post, every day, or every week. I also want to know that I and I alone control these email addresses so that they will not under any circumstances be misused. If I change services, I want to have an easy export feature to take these with me (OPML would be nice). I also want access to real time stats. The number of emails, type of subscription, how often they are opened and what things are being clicked on. And users need a very easy way to stop the emails. I’m willing to pay for this. Probably as much as $20 per month. A free version should be offered too that’s add supported and maybe doesn’t have the analytics. I’m frankly amazed that Feedburner chose to partner with Feedblitz to do this instead of building it themselves. It wouldn’t be that hard to build. And the Feedblitz interface disaster wouldn’t be detracting from the Feedburner brand. eBay’s Feedback system is arguably their biggest asset. Even with its flaws, it is one the biggest drivers of trust between two people buying and selling who’ve never met and never will. But it’s a closed system, usable only within eBay and only for eBay transactions. We need an internet-wide identity and feedback system that any reputable application can tap into, both pulling and pushing data. A couple of companies have taken tentative steps in this direction, but they have until now kept the data in their own silo, demanding people come to their site to provide feedback. , one of these, in October and practically begged them to change their business model. So far they haven’t. is much the same, although they offer partners the opportunity to tap into the data. These centralized data plays have no chance on today’s internet. Why even bother. Here’s what we need – a referee and a scorekeeper. Open (I didn’t say free, mind you) APIs in and out, not just links to feedback scores. Figure out the rules (keep it flexible) and let other applications feed the database. Somebody please build this. Or eBay, open up your Feedback API. I’m not alone in pleading for this. See what and have to say as well. Build a website. Let users give as much or as little demographic and personal information as they wish. Partner with a big sales force that already has access to local businesses (citisearch, yellow pages, whoever). Offer me (via email, website and RSS) special offers from local merchants. $5 off a pizza. Free first time dry cleaning. A cup of coffee. Whatever. I’ll eat it up (and so will everyone else). ‘s gonna do it. Why not you? Music will someday be legally free. There is just no other way. Artists, label and promoters will need to make money in other ways. Limited edition cds and dvds. Concerts. Tshirts. Whatever. Face and do it sooner rather than later. is sort of on the right path, but drop the wiki aspect (as I’ve said before, wiki’s are hammers, but not everything is a nail), add tagging and make it open source. Or at least open APIs in and out. Make money from local ads and premium listings. Podcasters need transciptions. Many people don’t have the time or inclination to listen to every podcast they want to. Search engines can’t index the content. Transctiptions fix both problems. Hire transcribers in a low cost country. Offer podcasters reasonably priced transcriptions (bonus: in multiple languages). I’m thinking $10 per half hour. Partner with the podcast directories, search engines and tool providers. Mint money. There are millions of passionate reviews of every product and thing you can think of sitting out there in the blogosphere. Don’t try to get people to all this stuff. Leverage tagging, RSS and, eventually, microformats to aggregate it and make it searchable/findable. Wonderfully, chaotically decentralized. Ad supported. Figure out before everyone else does and build something beautiful and amazing. adds a few ideas of his own. adds my startups into Nivi’s/Ethan’s matrix, using numsum. Wow, numsum is pretty cool.
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PubSub Launches Community Lists
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 7 |
PubSub launched a new product today called “ “. They’ve taken topic specific feeds from experts and have ranked the feeds according to their . There are four lists currently and my understanding is that they plan to expand the number greatly in the near future. The current Lists: The feeds from each list are availabe in opml format, and they’ve created an aggregate RSS feed for each list as well. This is a great example of – edited, dymanic opml feed lists. It can also be compared to Technorati’s , which ranks related feeds as well. The difference is that Technorati relies on publisher tags to determine content topic for a blog, whereas Pubsub relies on a human expert to determine which feeds should be included. See for more information. Steven Cohen, who writes Library Stuff, is PubSub’s Senior Librarian.
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People Tagging with Tagalag
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 9 |
is a service that lets you tag , via their email address. It’s not a “tribute” site like , because only people who know a person’s email address can add tags for that person. If you create a profile you can add personal and geographical information about yourself. I don’t know if Tagalag is onto a viable business model, but I like the idea of tagging people. This could become interesting as it evolves.
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Tag your books with Library Thing
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 9 |
Writing about got me fired up on tagging again, so I am going to write about at least two tagging sites tonight that I’ve been testing. The first is , which is turning into quite a nice service for tagging your real-world books. Registration is simple – give it a username and a password. No other personal information is requested. Adding books is just as easy. So many people are using Library Thing (they recently accounced they had ) now that a simple search on an author or title will most likely pull the book up, which can be added to your catalog with a single click. You can also input ISBNs if you like. Quickly add tags, a rating and a review if you like. It’s fast and easy to add books and metadata. Library Thing is free for up to 200 books, with a premium service for more books. I love the last sentence in their FAQ for pricing: At present, a free account allows you to catalog up to 200 books. A paid account allows you to catalog any number of books. Paid accounts cost $10 for a year or $25 for a lifetime. I conservatively predict the revenue will enable me to recline all day on an enormous pile of gold. Library Thing also just released a called “tag info pages” which has lots of information on a given tag. Here’s , for example. is another company that does this, although Listal also allows information on dvds, games and music. If you are really into books, go with Library Thing. If you have a big collection of all media, go with Listal. And if you have a mac, use , which lets you scan books in with a digital camera, saving countless hours. I have a lot of books. And I move a lot, often to other countries. Moving books sucks and so I’ve moved most of them to my house in Washington. Since my parents have are retired and have a lot of time on their hands, I’m hoping to get them to do all of the hard work in uploading the initial book data. Dad, how ’bout it? :-)
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Newsvine to Enter Social News Ranks
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 9 |
hasn’t launched yet, but the founder and CEO Mike Davidson has once it does. Newsvine will be a collaborative, social news site. Like other sites, Newsvine will show major news publications. However, readers can comment on news items, allowing for a discussion to ensue. They are also adding tagging. Any user can bookmark a news piece (or any web page) with a tag such as “sports” or “Iraq” and it will become available at Newsvine under the URL newsvine.com/[TAG]. If you are interested in seeing news on a given tag, you can of course go straight to that URL as well. Newsvine will use a voting system, like Digg, to determine how relevant a given news item is. I think these user-determined ranking systems, like Digg and Memeorandum, are a great way to push good content to the top. I’m looking forward to seeing this live. (Via and ).
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New Companies Will Be Built with SSE
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 21 |
Wow, am I excited this morning to see Microsoft announce Simple Sharing Extensions (SSE), which turns RSS bidirectional and which is released under the Creative Commons License. I wrote more about this at , but I want to mention it here because this is an incredibly important technology that will allow . ‘s excited too.
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Backbeat Podcast Network Launches
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 30 |
There’s a ton of podcasting news coming out. I’ll profile a couple of other companies tomorrow but I thought it was worth mentioning that launched a today with three initial participants – , and . My understanding is that Backbeat will provide advertising sponsorships and some operational support to participating podcasters. Press release is .
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Digg is (almost) as big as Slashdot
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 9 |
continues to increase its traffic at an impressive rate, and is clearly set to within a month or so (thanks for the link ). The image, from , shows Digg nearing Slashdot traffic levels after less than a year after launch. Slashdot is red, Digg is blue. Digg allows anyone to submit news stories, and other users vote on how important the news is. More popular stuff moves to the top of the site, eventually gaining front page promotion. It thas recently and saw traffic spike even more as publicity about the site spread from hard core net news junkies to mainstream internet users. See our profiles of Digg and .
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Gtalkr, Flash + Gtalk
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 30 |
, a flash-based website to access Google’s Gtalk, yesterday. It allows you to access your Gtalk instant messaging account without a client, from any computer. Comparisons will inevitably be drawn to , a similar service, although built on Ajax, that allows users to access a variety of instant messaging services (including gtalk). I back in September, and the passionate user comments to that post illustrate the popularity of these services. Gtalkr is taking a different approach by focusing just on Gtalk, and adding in additional features to, I assume, get users to use it more as a home page or dashboard. Gmail emails are pulled in as well as Yahoo maps (Google maps doesn’t have a flash API, Yahoo does). Gtalkr also plans on pulling in addtiional services, such as del.icio.us and flickr. Independent Flash developers can these extensions as well. It’s a useful tool, and like most flash applications I see, very well designed. It does not support gtalk voice (just text IM), and a few bugs are being worked out. See and for more.
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Steve Rubel Highlights Technorati Features
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 8 |
Steve Rubel’s “ ” is outstanding. If you are looking to exploit the deeper features of Technorati, read his post. My favorite features: I’ve been spending a lot of time on Technorati lately. They are doing a much better job indexing blogs quickly and in general posts are appearing in near real-time. Yahoo, Google, Topix and many others have launched blog search to try to knock Technorati out of its top position in real time search. None have succeeded so far, and Technorati’s shows that they are committed to innovating.
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Facebook Users sure are Passionate
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 9 |
is on a tear. There are rumors that their total page views will surpass some of the top internet sites in the next few months. 85%+ of all college students us it and 70% of them log in daily. Somehow a post I wrote on is the number two search result on Google for “ ” and the post is consistently one of the top three traffic generators for TechCrunch. The result is that the comments section of the post continues to attract college students leaving their thougths. An attacked Facebook, saying: I think that the Facebook is worse than pornography. It’s all about sex, swearing and drinking. What kind of example is it setting to college students who’re supposed to be doing their work? Thanks to this nasty website, students now think that you gotta be drinking all the time to be cool. . Interesting stuff going on out there on the internet.
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Gada.be Refines Features
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 30 |
Chris Pirillo’s continues to roll out . They’ve also made a change to the URL structure for tag queries to become better indexed by search engines. This tag based search engine is still somewhat under the radar for many people, but it is quickly becoming one of my most-used sites for research. It’s also the best place I’ve found to do cross-application . My original profile of Gada.be .
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Etsy – P2P Commerce with Tagging
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 8 |
A relatively new company called has recently captured my attention. Etsy is a P2P ecommerce company (like ebay) that currently limits sales to handmade items. It’s smart to focus on a niche to iron things out…and Etsy could easily expand into other categories as well. Etsy does lots of things like ebay – They charge sellers a listing fee and final sale percentage (although at $.10 and 3.5% they are way below what ebay charges), there is an ebay-like feedback system (side note: there is a huge market waiting out there if someone would create an independent third party feedback system with open data and APIs), and they have integrated paypal as a payment option. Unlike ebay, Etsy has architected the buyer experience from the ground up using web 2.0 priciples. First, Etsy has a very flat taxonomy – top level categories such as Bags & Purses, Toys, etc. Everything underneath these top level tags is based on seller tagging. For instance, look at the and note the tags (called subcategories) on the right hand side. Click on anyone of these and you go deeper into the taxonomy…although really it is a folksonomy. Further refine items by clicking on additional tags, or on a different set of tags based on materials used to produce the product. The benefit of this folksonomy is that it is user generated and based on popularity. If a new item gets hot fast, the folksonomy will take that into account. It’s a beautiful use of tags and the first launched product I’ve seen that does this. Etsy also does some amazing things with flash – the geolocator on the home page is a great way to find sellers by location. You can also use their “shop by color” widget…less useful but an interesting feature. Finally, they have a time machine feature, although I can’t figure out what it does. Nice product. It looks like more features are coming, too. .
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Windows Live and Office Live
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 1 |
Microsoft is announcing Windows Live and Office Live, both online services, right now (10 am PST) at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. I am . Windows Live is “live” at .
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Great Search Event this Week
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 6 |
If you are interested in meeting the founders of four of the search engines I’ve profiled here at Techcrunch – , , and , make sure you show up for on Thursday, November 10. Cost? $15. Location? Microsoft Mountain View offices. because the event only holds 270 people. Then carpool with me up to the in San Francisco (rsvp for that on the blog post linked).
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Topix Does What Yahoo Wouldn't
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 6 |
Topix.net into its news engine today. Unlike Yahoo, which took the step of integrating blog search results into the news area but , Topix has integrated blog posts into results in the same manner as their other 12,000 news feeds. The Topix blog post the addition gives great information on how they chose the 15,000 feeds, and how blog coverage differs from traditional news coverage. Good stuff. I’m really happy to see this.
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Windows Live – More than an AJAX Desktop
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 1 |
I blogged my raw, unedited notes from the Microsoft press meeting today . One of the two major announcements was (best viewed on IE of course). Office Live was also announced, which I will be writing about later tonight. Windows Live is a free, ad-supported AJAX virtual desktop. Most of the functionality could be seen in the Microsoft sandbox project called , which we profiled a couple of months ago. However, Microsoft has added plenty of new features that add a lot of value to the product. Among them are email integration, a new instant messaging client, plaxo-like contact management and skype-like features that allow outgoing calls to normal POTS phones. Windows Live is also extensible via “gadgets”. After what I saw today, I despair for many a silicon valley startup. The core features include a (now) standard AJAX desktop, wich a drag and drop interface, options to change the number of columns, ability to save searches, etc. There is a pre-populated feed reader on the left column, and adding new feeds is a one-click affair. The really special stuff, though, are the . These are third party applications that can be added to Windows Live via the Add Content feature on the top left. For current gadgets, check out . One Gadget I added was the Flickr viewer. Adding it takes a couple of steps, and you are able to view Flickr photo’s via tags. Since anyone can create a gadget, I’d expect to see thousand so options in the near future. You can add a mail account directly to the Windows Live page and get Outlook Express-like functionality directly on the browser. This technology looks to come directly from the project, which we have written about several times. This was the coolest thing I saw demo’d today. Windows Live will soon have a new instant messenger client embedded on the site. The IM feature will include the ability to make outbound POTS calls, like Skype. They’ve leapfrogged Google’s Gtalk in this regard. There is also an advanced contact management feature that bakes in plaxo-like features (you control your own contact info and people pull it to keep updated). Blake Irving walked us through a demo that included a search for restaurants near the TransAmerica Building in San Francisco. As he zoomed in and narrowed his choices, he chose a restaurant, and via a click called the resaurants’s normal phone line to make a reservation. I took a picture, which is . The VOIP caller is pictured to the left. The IM functionality will be released in December. That’s all I’m going to profile for now. Additional features are discussed at .
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NumSum
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 23 |
isn’t new, but I hadn’t really played with it until today (it’s actually nice that things are slowing down for Thanksgiving, giving me time to check out stuff I’ve missed). It’s well thought through Ajax spreadsheet application, with very basic functions. They’ve added tagging, and you can generate a permanent URL for any spreadsheet, even without creating an account (non-registered spreadsheets will only be up for seven days, however). There’s also a great tool for importing the spreadsheet into a blog. See this post by for an example. It’s more of an experiment than a truly useful application. I do not believe you can make spreadsheets private, for example. However, seeing stuff like this and make it extremely clear that a full office suite on the web is not only achievable, but should be here already.
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Web 2.0 WorkGroup Now Has 20 Blogs
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 23 |
formed the about a month and a half ago. We’ve now grown to twenty blogs: , Our goal is to provide a list of high quality blogs that are writing about recent trends on the web. We continue to add blogs regularly and are working on a number of ways to make their content more accessible. Today, we’ve broken the blogs down into rough categories, provide RSS feeds for each blog and an aggregated for those of you who’d like to subscribe to all of them. We will be adding more functionality soon. Please continue to recommend good blogs to us. We’re always looking for a way to expand the conversation. Other group members posting today: , , , , , , , .
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Comparing The Flickrs of Video
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 6 |
I’ve been tracking a number of sites that offer flickr-like services for video. I’ve taken a look at as many of these services that I could find. The most well known is , which we and which recently raised venture money from Sequoia. But there are at least eight others worth looking at as well. In addition to YouTube, these are , , , , , , and . Instead of writing individual profiles on each of these, I’ve created a quick chart that give a basic overview of the features. I’ve included only those companies that provide a web-based (v. client) service that hosts the videos on your behalf. Because of these requirements, great services like ( ) are not included. Here’s the chart. I’ll update it as needed. Most of these companies convert video to Flash. This reduces file size significantly and also allows most platforms and browsers to easily view the content. Two, Vimeo and DailyMotion, convert files to quicktime instead. A couple do not convert the files at all. One benefit of those services which do not convert is that the files can be downloaded by others, emailed, etc. QuickTime format can also be downloaded. One service that has a unique feature is Revver. Much like , Revver will auto-insert advertisements directly into your videos and share revenue with you. A couple of additional notes. Grouper has not launched their video publishing product yet. When it does launch there is a good chance it will involve a client download which would remove them from this list. Also, while I’ve noted which services allow tagging of videos, there are a wide variety of tagging options within these services, and many of them also provide comments, rankings, etc. and which are not noted in the chart. Finally, the tools to allow blogging, friends lists and other sharing are varied and more useful in some products than others. Which product is best for you depends on what types of features are most important to you. I’ve updated the chart above with more information. People have left great comments and have included new companies I’ve missed. If you are associated with those companies, please email me relevant information and I’ll include it in the chart. The most interesting comment is from Vinu, who tells us that he heard a rumor that Flickr will be adding video support soon. That would have a significant impact on this market, of course.
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Deep Web Search – Two Approaches
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 24 |
had an interesting article about Palo Alto based yesterday ( ), a product designed to help websites make their content more indexable by search engines. Much, if not most, of the web is considered “dark” because the data is not readily available via a permanent URI. Cookies, forms, javascript and flash can affect what content (or if any content) is shown on a page. Today, this information is not indexable by search engines. dCloak is a product that websites can use to make this content visable to the engines. There are, however, some concerns that the technology could be used by spammers to further promote their content. is another company trying to tackle the Deep Web problem. However, they’re attacking this from the search engine side, which wouldn’t require website changes like dCloak. Glenbrook has developed a suite of proprietary unstructured information retrieval and extraction technology that trawls the Deep Web (see Jeff Clavier’s post ) . The company has built a showcase around (they were actually the first ones to deliver a job/google maps mashup), and is reportedly building an application in the local search space. The interesting thing about the Deep Web problem is that both sides, search engines and websites, want to make the content indexable. It will be interesting to see how this space evolves.
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BLOG-X Award
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 15 |
TechWeb’s Second Annual BLOGX Award is now in the final stage. Vote for your .
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Ajaxed Domain Names Search
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 13 |
is a great, simple Ajax tool for finding available .com and .net domain names. Enter a desired domain, and results appear instantly as you type. There are links to Yahoo and Register.com if a domain is available and you’d like to register it. If the domain is not available there are links to the whois registration information. This is a useful and timesaving tool for people who buy a lot of domains. One thing I’d like to see is a for domains that are already registered.
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Google Base Launched. Yuck.
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 15 |
officially announces the launch of . We previously anticipated the launch of Google Base (along with everyone else) in . : This is not a very interesting application in its current form. says it’s like a 1985 dBASE file with less functionality. It’s ugly. It’s centralized content with less functionality than ebay or craigslist. The content is not integrated directly into Google search results, but “relevance” can bump it up into main and local search (and froogle). is also blase about it. He says “eBay and others may not have much to fear just yet” Additional information and FAQs on Google Base in the . There are two ways to upload data – a web interface for one item at a time and a option to send content in XML. I’ve tested Google Base out. The general idea is that you pick a category for your post. There are suggested categories – course calendars, events and activities, jobs, reviews, wanted ads, etc. You can also create your own category. Each category has its own fields to ease data input. For instance, the “vehicles” category includes fields for vehicle type, year, make, etc. You fill out any or all of these fields, add additional fields (called “attributes”) if you choose, and add a title, description and keywords (tags). You can also upload a picture or point to a picture on the web. I found a few bugs in this form. For instance, adding “techcrunch” as a tag failed because it was “misspelled” and it simply wouldn’t include it. Once I removed the techcrunch tag I was able to add an expiration date and post my test content, which is published after a short delay, along with a (this is just a quick test). Once content is published, it can be edited from a dashboard. Content can also be searched at Google Base. The above screen shot is a . Clicking on a particular item pulls up its (example), where full details can be viewed and the posted contacted via email. Brian Benzinger has a . And check out what (“It’s microcontent without the schemas”).
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Yahoo Shoposphere Just Launched
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 14 |
launches tonight (well, officially at 6 am EST tomorrow, but I’ve gotten permission to write about it tonight). I met with Rob Solomon, Yahoo’s GM of Shopping, and Sabrina Crider, a Yahoo PR Manager, last week to take it for a test drive. Yahoo is making a major push into search personalization and recommendations – the overall project is called “Shoposphere” and the major feature being released is called “ “. Their goal is to move ecommerce towards what they call “me commerce”. Any registered Yahoo user can create a Pick List. Pick Lists let you share the stuff you love and the stuff that matters to you with everyone or your friends… on the Shoposphere, throughout Yahoo! Shopping, by email, and even through RSS feeds. Make a good one and it could even show up as one of the highest rated Pick Lists on the Shoposphere. Yahoo has allowed users to create “uber lists” of bookmarked shopping items for a few weeks now. Items may be saved to a public or private list. Pick Lists are a subset of these uber lists. A user selects any number of items from the 75+ million unique products in the Yahoo Shopping catalog, names the list, adds ratings and comments for each item, and publishes it to a permanent URL. My “Web 2.0 Gadgets” Pick List can be . Like the list? Say yes or no and vote on it. Want to leave a comment? Add it at the bottom. Really like it? Subscribe to the RSS! The more people that vote for a Pick List, the higher it will appear in the Shoposphere. There are a couple of features being added in the near future. The first is tagging – all lists will be able to be tagged by users and the list creator for easier search (compare this to , which I wrote about earlier today). The second upcoming feature is revenue sharing. Yahoo expects many users to promote their Pick Lists and some will generate significant traffic. Yahoo Shopping earns revenue a number of ways from its shopping platform – clicks to vendors, overture ads, etc. They plan to share some of these revenue streams with Pick List publishers, giving publishers a bigger incentive to publicize these on their websites. Yahoo will provide promotion tools for picklists, similar to the flickr badges seen all over the web. Yahoo is also hoping to use Pick Lists to promote more long tail items from Yahoo Shopping. While Yahoo will continue to promote various items throughout shopping, they can rely on user generated Pick Lists to push deeper, less known items as well. Yahoo is also releasing developer APIs to allow mashups with other applications. Rob Solomon says Pick Lists are just the first major feature of the Shoposphere, and that they will be releasing new consumer driven merchandising soon. For another interesting experiment, check out Yahoo’s , an Ajax search interface which allows users to change search results based on whether they are more interested in “research” or “shopping”. It will be interesting to see how all of these features come together.
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Amazon Tags
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 14 |
Amazon is into product pages (see image below). Tags are public by default and can be managed under a “your tags” area that I am failing to find. You must first select a “Real Name” (odd choice of names given the old company called RealNames). Once you’ve signed up and started adding tags, you can delete them or make them private in the management area. Amazon tags will make it easier for you and others to find relevant content. I wonder how they are going to handle spam tagging and other bad content, though?. Another, possibly more interesting feature would be to allow publisher tagging. The tags would likely be more relevant (and spam easier to track). See for more on Amazon Tags.
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So what exactly is Renkoo?
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 25 |
Joyce Park’s looks interesting. give a number of interesting feature hints. It looks to be an event/calendaring application, but it seems to include chat and other features as well. It is the goal of Renkoo to help people plan and remember and share peak experiences. and The Renkoo’s application interface intentionally blurs the lines between “webby”, desktop, and instant messaging. Anyone out there beta testing Renkoo and care to comment?
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Google Analytics Swings at Measure Map
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 14 |
Google took the wrapper off today. It is a rebranding of their Urchin acquisition from earlier this year. It works in much the same way as – using it requires the addition of javascript into a couple of files on your blog. It has deep integration into Adwords as well. Google Analytics is mostly free (up to 5 million page views per month), or completely free if you are an adwords user. Registration for Analytics is currently suspended but I’ll be doing a full side by side review against Measure Map in the next day or two. The screen shot provided by Google (to left) is encouraging. One thing I’d like to understand is whether Google Analytics takes a holistic approach to blog analytics like Measure Map does, or whether it is a more generic application for measuring general website statistics. Measure Map is awesome at monitoring traffic at the post and comment level and has used flash and Ajax integration in a very intelligent way. More on the . The site has been down all day and they have suspended registrations for now. The bigger problem appears to be that Google didn’t notify Urchin’s paid subscribers ($200/month) that the change was going to happen, and those subscribers have no access to their data right now. tells the story and he is . Google isn’t acting like a real business, they are acting like an over-enthusiastic Golden Retriever puppy. Oh, they just knocked the vase off the table with their tail, but aren’t they ? Um, no.
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Songbird
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 14 |
I just heard about , which should be launching in December. I have very little information on it currently. Whatever it is (client? Web app?), it looks like a music/podcast player of some sort and it’s certainly visually appealing. More (perhaps) on this later. You can sign up for Songbird announcements .
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Root.Net's "Lead" Market
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 25 |
I’m intruiged by Seth Goldstein’s , the first commercial application of the platform (see my Attention Trust posts and ). Seth wrote a lengthy and descriptive post outlining the service for all participants on . The core service leverages the Attention Trust Recorder, which can be installed by an internet user (currently firefox only). Root.net calls users “consumers”. The recorder tracks everything you do with your browser (it can be turned off at will, and root.net allows deletion of data you’ve recorded that you want to remove). As a consumer you get two primary benefits – the ability to see your own data (see screen shot), and the ability to trade your data to other parties for some benefit – like more targeted advertising that you will actually find useful. This is something John Battelle writes about extensively , by the way. Publishers can also use the root.net system to generate leads, which can be sold to advertisers. Root.net also has anticipated arbitrage players, which they call “investors”, who will purchase leads from publishers and sell them to advertisers. The goal, of course, is to create a more liquid market. I understand at least part of how it is intended to work. An internet user clicks on an ad and fills out a form, becoming a lead that is owned by the publisher. These leads can be sold to advertisers and investors in a liquid market This is a big idea. It will take a lot of pushing to get it off the ground, but if it works it will redefine online advertising and lead generation.
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Feedster Top 500 Update
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 22 |
. Scott Johnson, Feedster’s CTO, writes about it . The first list was published in August. The new list incorporates recent links and has changed substantially from the previous version. In particular, they’ve added user tagging and a tag cloud to assist in search/find. The tagging interface is in Ajax (with captcha to reduce spam). I spoke with Scott Johnson last night about the new list. They’ve taken big steps to remove spam blogs and links, and will soon be tying authority to links to further refine the list. The Feedster list is very focused on recent links in, looking back only two years and giving additional weight to more recent links. The tagging feature is an interesting way to find blogs in the list. They’ve added a tag cloud on the right sidebar for easy navigation to specific types of blogs. For instance, click on “celebrity” and get that type of blog. Great way to drill down. And finally, Feedster will be adding “Import into Excel for Analysis” and an OPML export of the feeds.
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Keep an eye on CollectiveX
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 25 |
, a new venture backed by serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist , has put up a and is taking requests for people interested in taking part in their early 2006 beta. I’ve known Clarence for years (I used to be his attorney), and I’ve heard his ideas for CollectiveX. It’s going to be an awesome web application for communicating with and managing your relationships with groups of people that you are affiliated with.
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Windows Live Email Service
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 11 | 25 |
Domains.Live.com is a free new email service offered by Microsoft. It’s a simple but very useful tool. And, like , it is disruptive to the existing domain name registrar market (are they even paying attention?). So the basic service is this: Microsoft will host email and instant messaging for you in a domain you own. More details on the . Here are my thoughts: First of all, this is great. Until now, generally only domain name registrars offered this kind of service, and it was both costly and had a very web 1.0 interface. Second, when I look at services like this and Office Live, it seems to me that the industry that needs to be most concerned are the domain name registrars. Many of the services Microsoft is offereing for free are the types of things that reigstrars charge for today. Microsoft is starting to create really impressive productity tools for the small business. And they aren’t charging for these tools. Competitors need to watch out. Thanks and for the tip.
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BrainJam Meetup this Friday
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 3 |
has organized a in San Francisco this Friday, October 7 from 1-5 pm. The nascent wiki is . , so we’ll drop by for the “after party” that begins at 5:30. The cost? $2.80. :-) Since I spent $2k for Web 2.0, this dollar-cost-averages down my per-event cost for the week to about $1k. Nice.
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1-800-Free-411: Free Directory Calls
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 3 |
Directory assistance calls are expensive – $1 and higher – and yet 6 billion of them are made every year in the U.S. is a new and brilliant service from Jingle Networks that provides this service to consumers for free.
The service is made possible by thousands of national and local businesses who sponsor this service with brief valuable audio advertisements that are played to callers who request businesses in their yellow pages category. This advertising model allows businesses to acquire new customers over the phone, cost effectively, with little or no risk. Meanwhile callers get free directory assistance, potentially saving each of them thousand of dollars per year. The company was founded by veteran advertising and technology executives who pioneered some of the most innovative and successful advertising solutions in online media and now they are opening yet another channel for businesses to acquire new customers. This time, it’s over the phone. The service works mostly like normal directory assistance. You dial their phone number and go through an automated system that asks for the location, type of listing and listing name. While you are waiting for the number, you must listen to a 12 second advertisement from a competitor to the service. If you choose to use the competitor instead, you simply dial “1” to redirect your call. Another difference is that if there is no local advertiser for the business type you have requested, the business receiving the call hears a short message at the beginning of the call telling them that the call is via Free-411. A tele-sales group follows up with the business to try to get them to advertise. Free-411 claims a 13% success rate in converting businesses to advertisers. Free-411 gave a presentation at DEMO last week, which is available along with additional company information . As a user I love this, and I would highly consider advertising with them if I owned a small business. Scott Kliger – Founder and CEO
Tom Latinovich – Founder and SVP
Joshua Kopelman – Chairman
Susan S. Bratton – Advisor
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iKarma has Potential to Be Huge
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 3 |
is an online feedback and reputation system that we’ve been kicking the tires on for a few days. While there are many closed, centralized feedback services that are quite useful (ebay’s feedback, for instance), they are a part of the service they support and cannot be leveraged effectively outside of those services. I think they may be on to something really big here, but in my humble opinion they need to embrace the ideas of open services and open data. If they do that, I can see important third party applications being built on the back of iKarma. I expand on this below under “What it Needs”. You can register for iKarma directly at their site or via an email from someone who would like to write about you. Once you’ve registered you get an initial five-star review from the iKarma team and are encouraged to add contacts and begin writing about people. If they aren’t members, you can invite them. A review consists of a star rating (0-5) and a free-text area. Your overall star rating is averaged among all reviews. If , you can leave a comment with an explanation or choose to start a more formal challenge process. You can only leave a review for any given member once; however, you can edit all aspects of a review if you change your mind later. The basic service is free and iKarma to roll out paid premium services in the future. To see our iKarma profile, click the icon below, or . iKarma does one thing, reputation, very well. It has a clean and usable interface and no bugs were found. I also like that comments can be edited later on if the author changes her or his mind. eBay has certainty that two parties have done business because they (eBay) close transactions and know who both parties are. A necessary limitation of the iKarma is that they have no idea if someone posting a review actually knows or has transacted with the person they are writing about. iKarma has mitigated this problem somewhat by creating a formal challenge process to any posted review. I really like the point system in eBay. There is no upper limit on total feedback and I believe people use eBay sometimes simply because they want to increase their overall feedback number. In contrast, the only objective measure of your iKarma is an average star rating. After a certain critical mass is built up, another postive review or two will not noticeably affect your score. I think iKarma (for business reasons) should change their system to create a points system similar to eBay. iKarma has an icon that you can include on a website or email (we’ve put one above). However, the icon would be more useful if it also told viewers your total iKarma score. Lastly, and most importantly, there are many new web 2.0 and other online applications that could deeply embrace a third party reputation system like iKarma’s. But for that embrace to happen, they are going to have to . I’m betting iKarma is hard at work building premium features to generate revenue. If I was running the company, I’d raise capital now (I don’t think they have), stop building premium features and focus entirely on opening up the APIs and data for third party applications. Good things will happen. Paul Williams, Chief Executive Officer
Scott Pitchford, President
Andrew Mayer, Chief Architect
Lori Leach, Creative Director
Robert Warren, Marketing and Communications
Tyler Pitchford, Special Projects
Robert Lieblein, Multimedia Coordinator
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Google Office – WTF?
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 4 |
, which was . And as far as we could tell, the never worked. Overall, a big disappointment. People wasted an yesterday on this non story, which basically boils down to people being given the option of downloading Google’s toolbar in addition to JRE or Open Office. snooooooooooooze.
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24 Hour Laundry Launches as Ning
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 4 |
24 Hour Laundry launched moments ago as . We’re profiling now.
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The Companies of Web 2.0, Part 2
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 5 |
Here’s the second set of companies that presented at the Launchpad workshop. See . My friend Ethan Stock showed off , which launched last night. We’ve written about here and . In a nutshell, Zvents helps you create and locate the tens of thousands of monthly local events and has tons of awesome ajax, tagging and other web2.0 stuff. Ron Rasmussen talked about KnowNow, an interesting RSS-based alert system (they call it “elerts”). I’d like to understand this one better and am hoping to sit down with Ron this week. Ian McCarthy gave us a tantalizing presentation on , which allows you to stream content from your home computer to any wifi device without the need for any hardware. It works well for video, photos, etc. He even pulled up a video cam in his living room and used Orb to turn the light on. Cool. It’s PC only right now though. Michael Tanne took the password protections off today so we could finally get a look. Wink is “people powered search” and methinks they are on to something powerful. They take basic search results and allow people to tag and rank them to create a much better result set. They’ve called their technology “tagrank”. Damnit, Michael, answer my emails and give me an interview tomorrow. :-) Matthew Gertner presented on , an open platform to develop applications on firefox. Allpeers is in private beta currently. Bart Decrem gave a Flock demo. can about Flock? I love it in a way that isn’t natural. If they could find a way to integrate direclty into the Flock browser, I’d never leave my computer again. But seriously, I’ve got my hands on the new version and will do a full profile this week. Founder Bob Wyman spoke about PubSub, and their new product, which we . More on PubSub, our favorite prospective search engine, .
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AOL Acquires Weblogs, Inc.
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 5 |
that AOL has acquired . and will officially announce it later this week. The acquisition price, including earnouts, is reported to be $20-35 million. Weblogs, Inc., founded by and was launched just two years ago and is funded by Mark Cuban. Calacanis has reported a revenue run rate of about $2 million. Congratulations to all of the bloggers and employees of Weblogs, Inc. There are a number of additional public/private acquisition deals that will be announced this month as well.
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More Details on Attention Trust
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 5 |
I’m sitting in the Attention Trust public board meeting at the Web 2.0 conference and getting more details on their . Everything is centered around the Attention Trust Recorder Firefox extension (they’re calling it ATX). Once installed, if you turn it on, it monitors your click stream. ATX also tells you if the site you are on is Attention Trust approved, and has controls to turn the recorder on and off. The data can be stored locally and/or shared with any number of trusted parties if you so choose. Attention Trust insists that companies using the data . This information is incredibly valuable, of course, particularly when aggregated with others. Virtually any online company will be interested in this data, and will invent creative ways to incentivize customers to share their attention data with them. Search engines are the obvious example…knowing what sitex you’ve been to, and how long you’ve stayed, is extraordinarily useful in creating more relevant search results. So once again, the basic flow:
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Attention Trust Recorder
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 5 |
( ) announced a number of updates to its service today. The underlying philosophy of this nonprofit corporation is described in Seth GoldStein and Greg Yardley’s post . In addition to a new look and feel to the site, AttentionTrust has also releaseed the , a Firefox extension that records your browsing history and saves it both to your desktop and to the Attention Trust service, where you can choose to share parts of it with trusted service providers. From the : A: For each web page you visit, the Attention Recorder will save the web page’s URL, the web page’s title, the HTTP response code, and whether that web page read or wrote any cookies to were cookies. (The contents of those cookies we don’t record.) You can see exactly what the Attention Recorder sends by selecting Tools > Attention Recorder Options, selecting the Approved Services tab, and then selecting ‘Local Storage’ as an Attention Service. The same information the Attention Recorder sends will then be written to your hard drive. For a more technical discussion of the Attention Recorder, see .
A: Your initial selection can be made from this page – by selecting an Approved Service from the list and downloading the extension from that Approved Service’s Attention Trust page, you’ll automatically begin sending your information to that service. In the future, you can edit which Attention Banks receive your information by going to Tools > Attention Recorder Options, selecting the Approved Services tab, and then changing your selections. Steve Gillmor will be talking more about Attention Trust today at a 1:30 Web 2.0 Conference session. Updates then.
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Flock Expanding Beta Today
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 5 |
I met with and at headquarters in Palo Alto yesterday to see the new Flock browser. Flock is expanding the beta group from a hundred or so individuals to a couple of thousand today. We begged a beta invitation to Flock a while back and wrote about it in There have been significant improvements since then. The blogging tool is even slicker than it was before, with incredibly easy flickr integration, blog editing (dual pane with code/wysiwyg viewers) and other features. Bookmarks are now integrated with del.icio.us, which just makes so much more sense than their original idea of creating a separate social bookmarking product. Flock is looking like a very powerful and very beautiful product. The Flock offices are literally in a garage off of University Ave in Palo Alto. Most people were awake and coding when we stopped by in the early afternoon. , pictured left, was the lone exception. Garage, sleeping engineers, cases of Red Bull…a true startup is a wonderful thing. . It’s…very complete. :-)
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The Companies of Web 2.0, Part 1
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 5 |
The kicked off today with a number of great . The highlights for us were the Attention Trust board meeting ( ) and, , the Launchpad workshop where a dozen companies presented in an hour and a half. My notes on each company are below. Many of these have been profiled here before, and we hope to get full profiles of the rest up as soon as we can schedule interviews with the teams (if you’d like to talk to me, I’m the guy with a huge TechCrunch sticker on my laptop) ( also has a TechCrunch sticker on his laptop, but I’m not French, so you’ll know its not me :-) ). I’m breaking this down into two posts to keep it manageable. Here’s Part 1. . Ross Mayfield spoke about , the first wysiwyg editor for wikis. He says its much more than a tool for wikis, however. It’s and “open source synchronous editor for the web” and his vision is that it will be used on many web applications . Want to try out for free? Mention web2con at socialtext and get a free five-user wiki for a year. Dave Pell presented Rollyo, the roll-your-own search engine ( ). You can create a mini-search engine from only those sites you trust or feel have relevant content, and then search against that personal search. He used a travel search example that was quite compelling – searching against just fodors, travelpost and frommers. Saved searches can be private, or public and shared with others. David Young talked about , a compelling network suite for small groups and companies that includes mail, calendar, contacts, files, etc., and allows developers to mash up systems on their data. Lots of tagging and “smart filters”. Open APIs to allow third party apps. Take the tour . Rajat Paharia showed off his super-cool flash platform . Rajat was also nice enough to give me a personal presentation earlier in the day. Rajat talked about how developers need both infrastructure and distribution to get applications out. BunchBall provides both – a slick flash platform (Flash 8 is required for some applications) along with open APIs, and new third party applications are automatically distributed accross the platform. Current applications include a number of games and photo-sharing. Rajar also says that Metaliq is creating a multi user texas holdem game, to be released soon. Check this one out. And contrary to rumors, Rajat did NOT beat me at tic-tac-toe while giving me the demo. He lies. :-) Ken Leeder talked about his new company, . It’s centralized :-( user content with some really sweet tagging and search/find capabilities :-) . The idea is to leverage user content and social networking to create a personalized experience for travel shoppers and a more effective venue for travel industry marketeres. THus, hopefully, breaking the death spiral that the online travel industry is now in: a race to the lowest price. Satish Dharmara gave an absolutely stellar presentation of ( ), although to be honest Zimbra is so damn cool and full of AJax awesomeness that he could have stood there and babbled and the audience would still have cheered. Zimbra is an “open source enterprise-scalable collaboration server with intelligent online backup and single mailbox restore. It has hierarchical storage management”. What does this mean? You can’t run it from the Zimbra website, but you can install it on your own server. It’s Outlook as it’s supposed to be. Read our . It (Zimbra, not our profile) rocks. Demo .
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Web 2.0 This Week (Sept 25 – Oct 1)
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 2 |
The excitement is building over this week’s upcoming (October 5-7) in San Francisco. The event is sold out. It’s clear that a number of companies intend to launch this week, and so I expect we’ll be kept quite busy checking them all out. , , , , , , , , (update), , , Richard MacManus this week’s evolution on the web 2.0 definitional thinking, inlcuding important essay on the subject. I also agree with – John Furrier may have said it perfectly in his : Come on this is so simple.. Web 2.0 is the next version of the Web 1.0 (second generation) – it’s simply a better version than the previous version. says Yahoo will launch blog search this week. highlights new data released by Forrester Research last week. Ten percent of consumers now read blogs at least once per week: Participation in three of the technologies highest on the Internet’s buzz list — blogging, reading RSS feeds, and engaging in social networking — is climbing, a research firm said Wednesday, but two of the three haven’t cracked the 1-in-10 barrier. Ten percent of consumers read blogs once a week or more, said Forrester Research at the opening of its annual Consumer Forum. That’s double the 5 percent who browsed blogs in 2004. Real Simple Syndication (RSS) use tripled in the same period, from 2 percent in 2004 to 6 percent this year, while use of social network sites such as Friendster.com and MySpace.com increased from 4 percent last year to 6 percent in 2005. Via . John Musser creates a great on Programmable Web. Let’s see how long he can keep it updated before it is simply too complicated to be usable. Great stuff. says ( ) is launching a Recorder this week. On Tuesday the organization will launch the AttentionTrust Recorder, a royalty-free, open sourced downloadable piece of code that keeps track of an individual’s behavior online. You can get the details in a that features AttentionTrust Chairman Seth Goldstein and fellow ZDNet blogger and President of the organization, Steve Gillmor. We’re big supporters of AttentionTrust and it’s ideals. on all kinds of stuff: NASA and Google have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that
outlines plans for cooperation on a variety of areas, including
large-scale data management, massively distributed computing,
bio-info-nano convergence, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial
space industry. The MOU also highlights plans for Google to develop up
to one million square feet within the NASA Research Park at Moffett
Field. The best commentary I’ve seen so far is from , who writes:
I’m not installing the Google Implant until it’s out of beta, though. :-) Me either. about , the cool new location-aware instant messaging service. We profiled . Digg the story . I earlier this evening. It’s very much like , and Zoho has another product out that is very much like 37Signal’s . An interesting discussion sprang up almost immediately in the comments section, led by Jason Fried at 37Signals and Sam Schillace at Writely. Both comment that TechCrunch loses credibility by writing about companies that largely copy existing applications. Jason writes: I’d think twice about covering such blatant rips like this — it hurts your credibility to support these sorts of businesses and ventures. Sam writes: I love this blog, but it would be nice to get a little deeper review of competitors than this. I think a more accurate characterization of zoho writer right now would be a ’skin’ that looks like Writely, and is strictly following along right now. These are two individuals that I respect greatly for their contributions to the web and so I do not take their comments lightly. I’m still thinking through what our policies should be in this area…and I appreciate any feedback. , Barry asks Yisha to marry him via . This may be only slightly better than doing it at a baseball game, but she said yes, so…Congratulations!!!
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zvents Launches Today
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 5 |
The took the wrapper off their social event manager/calendar today. The timing of the announcement couldn’t be better, as Upcoming.org (a competitor) by Yahoo yesterday. Ethan Stock posted about the launch on the . Key features include best of breed event search, tagging of events, easy blogging and blog/website widgets to promote your event. zvents uses ajax intelligently and the site feels very stable. Zvents is also opening up a number of APIs to grab their data, encouraging mashups. We applaud them and look forward to developments.
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Ojos is now Riya
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 20 |
, which never owned ojos.com (they used ojos-inc.com) has found a permanent name – . More on this on the and . Riya has a facial and text recognition technology that automatically tags photos with who’s in them. We . Riya is preparing to start their private alpha and will hopefull launch within a couple of months. If you are interested in participating in the alpha, email [email protected]. During the alpha they will only support IE6.
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Zoho Writer – Another Ajax Word Processor
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 2 |
We’ve been looking at a lot of Ajax Office applications (see and on this as well) and lately. Quite frankly, it’s many people’s opinion (ours included) that , , , and others are ultimately addressing the same customer pool – those who want to create, share, and group-edit documents online. Zoho Writer is the newest entrant and is as good as the rest. Think Word + Group Editing + Ajax. It’s a rich ajax application that allows sharing and group editing, and, like Writely, has a great wysiwyg editing interface and excellent image import and manipulation features. In fact, it’s pretty much exactly like Writely, except they do not yet support Word format import/export or tagging (coming soon). Check out Zoho’s BackPack-like product too. Can’t wait to see Google’s (rumored) full Ajax suite that is (rumored to be) coming out this year.
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Flock has Launched
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 20 |
I just heard from Geoffrey Arone at that they will be launching it to the general public within 3 hours (by 5 pm PST). Feedback to their recent has been so positive, Geoffrey tells me, that there is no reason to delay any longer. Congratulations Flock! I imagine tens of thousands of people will be downloading and using their product by end of day. Make sure you upload your del.icio.us bookmarks and try out the blogging tool. : is now live: Flock Developer Preview is now available. Our code couldn’t wait any longer to be free! But! This preview ain’t for the faint of heart! If you’re the bleeding-edge type and don’t mind a few scrapes and busted knees from time to time, feel free to give it a whirl. We’ve got interesting ideas in this thing. We want to know what we’ve done right how we could improve. And we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us! So if a bucket of source code and developer binaries sound enticing, head over to our page now.
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Writeboard Launches But Needs Feature Upgrades
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 2 |
37signals (creators of , , etc.) , an application to build sharable text documents online, today (Jason Fried’s post is ). It’s a nice collaboration tool, but recently released products such as and have much richer feature sets. Writeboard, which is free, allows a user to create a new document very quickly, password protect it, and add users who can edit the document. Unlike competitive solutions, you must use a special markup language to format text (no wysiwyg), you cannot upload images, and there is no ajax or other functionality to move content around on the page. It is also a little buggy – comments are not showing up at all on our test page. Frankly, if it wasn’t 37signals, who generally create awesome applications, we would not be profiling it yet. However, our guess is that they will be adding functionality quickly. We are also looking forward to the launch of . has posted a thorough review of Writeboard.
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Want to Buy A Search Engine?
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 18 |
The founders of , a great metasearch engine, put it up yesterday. wrote about this yesterday as well. Aaref Hilaly, one of the founders (and a friend) emailed to tell me about it, saying that the founders just don’t have enough time to put into the project and deal with growth. Starting price? $0.01, with no reserve. Current price? $26,100 with 7 days left. Jux2 won Search Engine Watch’s earlier this year. It’s an excellent way to view the big search engine results side-be-side, and has a very clean and usable interface.
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TechCrunch Party This Friday
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 18 |
We are having our next TechCrunch party in Atherton this Friday (October 21) afternoon and evening. . Our drew about 100 entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, bloggers and beer drinkers, and I am hoping this one will draw at least that number. We are changing to a socialtext wiki and it will be up later today along with a confirmation post. Please if you would like to demo your product. We have 8 slots. We are also taking up to two additional corporate sponsors – this allows us to keep this event free. if you are interested. Package includes right to put up a banner, a toast/speech of up to 2 minutes and your logo on an event tshirt. Plus the happiness of knowing that people will love you and your company. :-) . We need two additional sponsors to the two we have already. If you want your logo on the tshirts (free to everyone), we need to get confirmation of sponsorship by end of day today. Sorry for the complete lack of notice. The cost is $250 and will defray tshirt and catering costs. Sponsors include , and . THANK YOU very much. One spot left. I need help with tshirt logistics (company, timing, etc.).
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Web2.0 or Not?
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 18 |
This is too good not to post. is the tongue-in-cheek, hugely sarcastic and quite funny creation of and . Yeah, its for Web 2.0 companies. These two guys, who by the way are brilliant engineers (Ryan consults with Technorati, Eran works at Jeteye), have been keeping things lively with their various projects, another of which is , which describes itself as “social social tagging site tagging”. The top tag is “tagging”. Yeah, they’re making fun of the rest of us. Read their on the Slide party last weekend as well. All I can hope is that these guys continue to do what they are doing. And yes, we’ve added TechCrunch to Web2.0OrNot to see what people think. :-)
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CircleOne Rumored to Launch Soon
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 27 |
February 5, 2006: CircleOne is now called . Rumors are flying that a super-stealth backed company called CircleOne (also known as p2pcredit) will be launching as soon as this weekend. The domain name, , is not yet live. If the rumors are correct, the company will be similar to , a London based company that we . Zopa syndicates small loans out to many people, taking a fee.. Whois information on the domain (registered at register.com) shows the company is located in San Francisco. Something about the rumor must be wrong…Benchmark has also in Zopa, which has announced that they will be launching in the U.S. at some point. An ebay employee has joined circleone and has a profile on LinkedIn (I am not going to point to it). This person describes CircleOne in the profile as follows: CircleOne is a consumer loan platform through which people can borrow money by setting their own interest rates, like an eBay for personal loans. CircleOne’s founding principle is that people from close communities act more responsibly towards each other. CircleOne leverages this powerful concept of group responsibility and applies it to person-to-person lending – resulting in better interest rates for people that borrow and lend.
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More Web 2.0 Humor
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 27 |
I came across two very funny web 2.0 satires today. is a site that will generate . My company is “zVodidoo” and my product is “rss-based collaborative document editing via ajax”. I like ‘s too – Blinonorati, a “tag-based wiki via flash”. And finally categorizes all of these new companies in an intelligent way. “Scrape Engines” kills me. I love that some of the comments seem quite offended.
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Flickr Photo Printing
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 27 |
that they are now supporting photo printing. They are giving away 10 free 4×6 prints to each user to start. Only people with U.S. credit card addresses can participate for now. Photos can be delivered, or picked up at any Target store with one hour processing. The costs are very reasonable, too. See the . On a separate note, I’ve been using the recently to upload photos. I know its been around for a while, but it sure does make uploading pictures (and tagging them) a lot easier. By the way, take the “beta” off the logo, guys. You’ve arrived. :-)
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TechWeb BLOG-X Awards
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Michael Arrington
| 2,005 | 10 | 27 |
TechWeb has . All technology blogs that are published independently of a major publishing company are eligible, and the ten blogs that receive the most nominations by December 9, 2005 will have the chance to win the award. You can nominate up to five blogs. Please if it is one of your favorites.
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