Category: Tech news

In a must-read post for the tech industry, Twitter experience designer and serial startup founder Paul Stamatiou writes: “Android is Better.” His op-ed serves as something of a wake-up call for the industry, where developers building the next generation of mobile applications still heavily prefer the iPhone, not only as their personal smartphone of choice, but also as the launch platform for their latest creations.

Many who have already heeded Android’s siren song found themselves nodding along to nearly every point Stamatiou made, ranging from the minor details, like how Android handles notifications, to broader statements about Android’s “magical user experience,” which involves the use of a global back button, Google Now integration and Android intents for app-to-app interoperability and communication. While obviously an opinion piece, Stamatiou’s thoughts came across as reasoned and well-argued, and didn’t at all resemble the fanboy-ish op-eds often published to incite religious wars between the iPhone and Android zealots for website traffic’s sake.

Most Tech Companies Are Still iOS-First

Having recently made the switch from the iPhone 5 to the Nexus 4 and then back to the iPhone 5 myself, the pro-Android argument struck a personal chord. It’s at least the third time I’ve attempted to leave the iPhone. For all the same reasons, I too had found myself again falling in love with the Android operating system. But there’s one thing that keeps pulling me back to iPhone: the apps.

As an early adopter, and technology enthusiast in general — a mindset TechCrunch readers probably share — being solely on Android can be a frustrating experience. Today’s tech companies are still launching their mobile applications on iOS first. This includes apps from the smallest of startups to some of the largest, like Twitter, which launched its video-sharing app Vine as well as Twitter Music on iPhone first (the latter of which is not yet on Android, four months after its debut).

The iOS-first mentality is so ingrained in the culture of the tech and startup scene, in fact, that Facebook had once plastered large signs around its offices begging employees to switch to Android. Later, the company released its own take on what Android users supposedly want with “Facebook Home,” an Android launcher that quickly tanked. Had Facebookers understood the true ethos of Android, they would have perhaps realized that Android users favor the customization and personalization aspects of the platform. Meanwhile, Facebook Home was a full-on takeover of the entire Android interface and experience, with little wiggle room to change much of anything about its behavior.

If you look at Android’s top charts, you’ll find they’re continually filled with apps that let users tweak, customize, and better control their Android devices. For instance, in July of this year, the top five paid Android apps included a keyboard replacement (Swiftkey) in the No. 1 position, a fairly geeky utility for users who had rooted their phones (Titanium Backup) in the No. 2 position, and an alternative launcher (Nova) as No. 4, according to analytics firm Distimo.

The constant tweaking and customizing is fun, but at some point, it becomes just another way to pass the time while waiting for the latest and greatest new application to make its way to Android. You know – eventually.

This is not the story you’ll hear from headstrong Android devotees who point to the sheer number of Android apps available today. Of course, it’s true that the Apple and Android app stores are roughly close in terms of the numbers of applications offered, and have been for some time. There are over 900,000 iOS applications, while analysts estimated as of May there are over 800,000 Android apps available. It’s not that there aren’t enough Android apps out there. There just aren’t the brand-new ones early adopters might want — those from startups you may read about here on TechCrunch, for example. Those almost invariably go iOS-first.

It’s hard to even think of tech companies that launched on Android first in recent months, but there are a few. Any.DO, a mobile task list app was on Android before iPhone; mobile messenger Invi bet on Android, too. Imgur launched on Android before iPhone, but only because it had to clean itself up a bit, in order to be approved for distribution through iTunes. And Zillow, with what feels like an awkward nod to the demographics of Android users, launched its Rentals app on Android first last fall. (These are off the top of my head. I asked on Twitter, and a few responses trickled in, including Smoopa and … um, does Google Now count?)

To be clear, there are certainly many, many Android applications that aren’t on iOS, but this is mainly the result of developers taking advantage of the Android platform in ways that Apple would not allow. This includes the tweakers and customizers, but also the suite of Google apps that are better baked into Android, such as Google Now. (On iPhone, “Now” is more like a feature within the Google app — a standalone experience.)

iOS Apps Still Missing An Android Counterpart

Ignoring games or children’s apps, which are also too often iOS-only, I took a look at my iPhone to see what apps I would have to give up to make the switch to Android today. As it turns out, there are still quite a few. Here’s a short list of iOS-only apps broken down by category:

Contacts: Brewster, Cobook, LinkedIn’s Contacts, LinkedIn’s CardMunch (though seemingly abandoned), Addappt

Work Tools: Younity, FindIt, Chartbeat, a couple of AngelList apps like aWings, Simplr (but Angie replaces)

Messaging: Rithm, Hubble, Tweekaboo, Blink, Talkz, Facebook Poke

Music: Twitter Music, Musicplayr, Band of the Day, Splyce

News: Digg (soon!), Circa, Thirst, Prismatic, Reeder, Ruby (Reddit), Antenna (news clips)

Social: Tweetbot, Potluck, Slim

Smart Assistants/Stuff: IFTTT, Cal, Sunrise, Tempo, Cue, Donna, Fantastical, Winston, Dollarbird, Dark Sky (smart weather)

Family: Moonfrye, Disney’s Story

Photos: Tumblr’s Photoset, Cluster, Albumatic, Everpix, Photoful, Facebook Camera, Pic Stitch, Pic Lab, Camera Plus, Sincerely Ink, Simple Prints, Mosaic, Oggl, Loom, Stilly, Groupshot

Entertainment: Telecast, Yidio, Fan, Buddy TV, Mixbit, Calendo, Weotta

TV Channels: NBC, Bravo Go, (Max Go incompatible), USA app, ABC Family (Kindle only), Disney Channel, Disney HD, Disney Junior

Shopping: Larky, Arro, ModCloth, Decide, Boomerang, Poshmark, Threadflip, Earmark, Svpply’s Want, Wantworthy’s Fresh, Polyvore, Sincerely’s Sesame

Dining: Ness, Drync, Dish.fm, HealthyOut

I can live without most of them, sure, but a couple are painful to give up. A caveat here is that the list includes companies that have already promised Android is in their future. It also includes some well-known iOS-only publishers who will likely never come to Android. But a good chunk of it includes the tech companies who, with limited resources, just decided to pick iOS first.

Why Apple? Revenue. Development. (And Everyone Else Is Doing It.)

There are a number of reasons for that choice, of course. Tech companies are often lacking in in-house Android expertise, or are influenced by the fact that they and everyone they know uses an iPhone. Plus, according to Vision Mobile’s most recent report, 44 percent of more experienced developers (3-5 years experience) choose iOS, while 31 percent pick Android. These are the folks building startups.

Companies also like to say that most of their users prefer iOS devices, citing mobile web statistics. This seems to be true – iPhone users spend more minutes on their devices than Android users.

But most importantly, there’s the revenue situation. Apple’s App Store still earns roughly double that of Google Play. (Depending on who you ask, it could be two times or as high as 2.6 times.).

Android’s Time Is Coming?

That being said, Google Play’s revenue capabilities are growing, having climbed by 67 percent in the past six months, per Distimo’s estimates. At some point, as Android market share grows (Android now leads by a wide margin, outside of the U.S.), the revenue possibilities may begin to shift in favor of Android. The large install base will start to matter. And it’s easier to reach the top 250 on Android than on iOS.

The startups that “make it” to Android will have acquired developers with the chops to code for the platform, and perhaps one day, they’ll take those skills to a startup of their own. Today, 40 percent of new developers choose Android, and only 21 percent pick iOS. In other words, there’s still the potential for the market to change.

And there is some indication that Android users are hungry for great apps. A year after Instagram arrived on Android, for example, half of its users came from that platform.

In late 2011, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt once proclaimed that a wave of Android-first apps was on the near horizon. Over a year and a half later, that hasn’t happened yet. That’s not to say it never will. Here’s hoping.

In this week’s episode of Ask A VC, Floodgate’s co-founding partner Ann Miura-Ko joined us in the studio.

Miura-Ko and I chatted about her role at Stanford, where she is a lecturer in the school of engineering, and where she received a Ph.D. focused on mathematical modeling of computer security. Miura-Ko recalled how impactful and important the late Rajeev Motwani, a Stanford professor of computer science, was to Ph.D. students who wanted to found companies based on their research. As she explains in the video above, Motwani served as a mentor and advisor for Larry Page and Sergey Brin during the formative years of Google.

Miura-Ko, who serves on the boards of Modcloth, Refinery29, Chloe and Isabel, Wanelo, Lyft, and others, also tackled reader questions around what’s next in mobile commerce and more.

Tune in above.

I’ll just throw this out there right now: I am known around TechCrunch for making, let’s say, unwise purchasing decisions. Whereas my problem stems mostly from making those choices without much forethought, others suffer from the reverse. Some people will do research until they’re blue in the face, and they still can’t make a decision.

That’s where Amir Elaguizy, Alex Morse and Paul DeVay come in. The trio has formed a Y Combinator-backed startup called Toutpost that wants to make it easier to figure out what you should buy. How? By basically harnessing the passion and ire of fanboy throwdowns in order to give people actual, valuable purchasing advice.

“We want to remove merchants from the review process,” co-founder Amir Elaguizy told me. “Those other review aggregators are telling a story about stuff; we’re trying to tell a story about people.”

Here’s the Toutpost formula in a nutshell. If you’re the sort of person who has opinions on products and gadgetry, you can sign up for the service and either create what’s called a “bout” (a direct comparison between two similar products) or pop into one of said bouts to lay down some informed opinions. From there, fellow users can rank the usefulness or insightfulness of your thoughts, add their own musings, and vote for whichever product they think should come out on top. And since there are bound to be multiple bouts involving the same product, the top points made in each bout are displayed on the product’s page so would-be purchasers can skim through what the community thought was most important.

Don’t think you need to be a technical expert to enter the fray, either. People have (for whatever reason) started to debate the superiority of Oreos vs. Skittles, Home Depot vs. Lowes, and a perennial winter favorite, Snowboards vs. Skis.

Granted, it may seem a little rudimentary for people to focus so intently on just two products when there are usually countless options to weigh, but that’s exactly how the three co-founders want it. As far as they’re concerned, most purchasing decisions ultimately come down to a choice between two things anyway, and these Toutpost bouts are meant to give people the information they need to pull the trigger.

As you might expect from a team made up mostly of former Zyngites, there’s a sort of gamified angle here, too — thoughtful, popular responses earn you merit points, and you get a neat little badge whenever one of your arguments is upvoted the most.

Elaguizy says that sort of ego-stroking appeal has played a big part in the company’s growth strategy, since users who make interesting points can share them on their Facebook wall to show off how clever they are. It seems to be working pretty well so far, too: The team hasn’t spent much energy on marketing, but the site has picked up some 5,000 users since it quietly went online a month ago, and the biggest source of traffic has been referrals from existing users.

That’s not to say Toutpost doesn’t have its hurdles to clear. What’s to stop, say, a dedicated PR flack from logging in and trying to artificially inflate a client product’s status in a given bout? Well, there’s the community for one. The redditesque upvote and downvote mechanism means the quality of any given bout depends on the people engaged in it.

The team is also mulling a switch in the service’s onboarding scheme that would see every new user logging in with a social account. Sure, the move could theoretically stymie user-base growth, but about 90 percent of Toutpost’s current users have already connected that way so there’s a decent enough argument for it.

And then there’s the lingering question of money. Despite wanting to keep bouts as pure as possible, Toutpost isn’t indifferent to brands and the sort of interactions they can bring to the table. Elaguizy says they’re open to the possibility of running ads and monetizing brand experiences if they can figure out how to do it without being “incentivized to sell products.” At this point though, the team isn’t worried so much about making money as it is growing Toutpost into what Elaguizy calls a “take-over-the-world” site — easier said than done, sure, but they may just be onto something there.

Timed contrition has a certain air of the false. Today Rep. Pelosi of California stated that she found a report on the National Security Agency’s history of massive, continuing privacy infractions to be “disturbing.”

As quoted by Politico, Rep. Pelosi states that “Congress must conduct rigorous oversight to ensure that all incidents of noncompliance are reported to the oversight committees and the FISA court in a timely and comprehensive manner.” She also noted that the NSA’s lack of reportage to Congress concerning its infractions are troubling.

Let’s contextualize this. Here’s the Washington Post, which broke the story that the NSA had racked up an impressive 2,776 privacy “incidents” in a 12-month period, and that the rate that the NSA was breaking the law was increasing:

The documents, provided earlier this summer to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, include a level of detail and analysis that is not routinely shared with Congress or the special court that oversees surveillance.

Given this, I would argue that simply stating that the NSA should be subject to increased oversight is a flat claim. It means nothing, given that the NSA refuses to tell those that oversee it what it is doing, something akin to the petulant child who breaks a lamp and hides the pieces before his parents find out.

So for Rep. Pelosi to state that the NSA should report its “incidents of noncompliance” is somewhat laughable. From the Post:

In another case, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has authority over some NSA operations, did not learn about a new collection method until it had been in operation for many months.

So, there’s that.

However, we have a case of irony that we should open, and drink from, because in this situation it is too rich a vantage point to abstain from. The Post — if you haven’t read its full report, do so now – states that the NSA committed “serial telephonic data collection” that broke the law. One such case “involved the unlawful retention of 3,032 files that the surveillance court had ordered the NSA to destroy.” Those were kept, with each file containing “an undisclosed number of telephone call records.”

That this is the sort of revelation that Pelosi finds troubling is humorous, as she was the key voice in the House for keeping the NSA’s phone metadata program in place. The Amash amendment would have passed if she had not thrown her weight behind it. So her efforts to save a key piece of the NSA are circling back and troubling her.

In fact, I don’t think that the good Representative is troubled at all. I think that her statement is nothing more than padding for her left flank. By dressing down the NSA publicly, Rep. Pelosi can claim to be on the side of civil liberties. Yet she’s doing so while protecting those violate them.

If Rep. Pelosi is as disturbed as she now claims to be, let’s see what sort of legislation she moves forward to curtail the NSA’s programs that are breaking privacy laws daily.

Top Image Credit: Curtis Fry

It’s almost here.

In less than a month, our Disrupt conference returns to San Francisco — and with it, one of our legendary Hackathons.

We’ve released two big batches of Disrupt SF Hackathons tickets so far. Both of them sold out so fast that it was almost scary.

Here. Have another batch.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: If you’ve never been to one of our Hackathons, it’s tough to explain just what you’re missing. Take a gym-sized room and cram it full of incredibly talented developers. Give’m 24 hours to build their craziest ideas, with thousands of dollars in prizes and an opportunity to present their hacks to the entire Disrupt audience on the line. Give’m enough pizza to feed an army. We close the doors, cross our fingers.. and what we end up with on the other side is always something incredible.

There’ve been sudden, late-night NERF wars. There’ve been impromptu (and dangerously competitive) 50-person dodgeball games. We’ve seen people build everything from apps that teach teens to drive to a robot that wants to stab you. We’ve had founders meet each other here, and we’ve seen Hackathon projects later spun into full-fledged companies go on to be acquired for millions.

If you’re going to build it somewhere, you really should be building it here.

(Shout out to the guy who mined the ticket widget to figure out when our previous ticket batch was scheduled to be released. That’s the spirit! Note to self: don’t pre-schedule ticket releases anymore.)

Here’s what you need to know:

• As long as you’re building something, participating in the Hackathon is free. Interested sponsors, give us a shout.
• After 24 hours of building, hackers present their projects to their peers and a panel of all-star judges (we’ll announce those judges in an upcoming post).
• Every hacker who finishes their project and presents onstage gets a free pass to the entire conference, normally valued at around $2,000. Why? Because you’re awesome and we love you.
• The team behind the best hack of the day takes home a cool $5,000, and the top three teams all get to present their projects to the Disrupt audience. There will also be a bunch of prizes awarded by the Hackathon sponsors — more news on those in a few days.

The Disrupt SF 2013 Hackathon runs from September 7th to the 8th, and we’ve just released a big batch of tickets. Don’t delay, though — these things go fast.

Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our sponsorship team here [email protected].

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Detroit’s startup row just got a new tenant. Housed in the recently renovated Broderick Tower, Grand Circus just set up shop with the stated goal of elevating the Detroit tech community. The 15,000-square-foot space will soon house tech training, events, and co-working space for up to 49 entrepreneurs — something that will go a long way in Detroit’s nascent startup scene.

“The Detroit tech scene is booming and the supply of talent simply can’t keep up – a characteristic of tech markets everywhere,” Grand Circus CEO and co-founder Damien Rocchi said. “Unlike other markets, however, Detroit has a vibe and hustle that’s unique, and there’s the opportunity to have a huge impact. We both have a personal connection to the area and are thrilled to be part of creating something that’s really making an impact in the city.”

Detroit’s companies and learning institutions have dabbled in tech training in the past. And then there are of course a handful of for-profit learning centers in the area that will award a buyer with a useless certification in PowerPoint or Lotus Notes. But Grand Circus is something totally new to Detroit. Following in the footsteps of NYC’s General Assembly and Chicago’s 1871, Grand Circus has lofty ambitions.

Rocchi tells me “the real difference is we plan on playing a real prominent role in the city — more so than General Assembly in New York. We’re very focused on Detroit and the surrounding metro region.”

Rocchi and co-founder Bradley Hoos both have ties to the Michigan area. Rocchi is a native Australian and Brad a boomerang Michigander who’s spent the last seven years in Chicago working with startups. Prior to forming Grand Circus, Rocchi worked at Fairfax Business Media in Australia where he managed a group of digital businesses dealing in research & data, professional education, and digital news.

Located across from Detroit’s historic Grand Circus Park (hence the name), Grand Circus takes up three stories of the Broderick Tower. The building stood vacant for decades, rotting like so many other looming skyscrapers left over from Detroit’s glory days. Just last November the tower opened its doors. According to Mlive.com, all 126 new apartments were claimed in just five days.

Grand Circus’s location is key. The Broderick Tower is located right next to the Madison Building — the much-publicized building housing DVP, Bizdom and dozens of startups and even a sales office for Twitter. The Madison is the heart of Detroit’s startup revival.

Grand Circus is funded in part by Detroit Venture Partners and is housed in Dan Gilbert’s corner of downtown Detroit.

As Josh Linkner, DVP’s managing partner, explained to me, the Madison was always designed to be an up-and-out workspace. DVP and Bizdom, both located in the Madison, help young companies get their footing, and then like a mother bird, eventually push them out of the nest when they’re ready to fly.

Grand Circus will no doubt absorb a lot of the overflow and allow even more young companies to relocate to downtown. There is co-working space for up to 49 entrepreneurs with space already filling up. Apply for space on the website here. Doors open on September 16.

At launch the depth of the training isn’t as complex as that offered by General Assembly. Thirty classes will be offered this fall, and the subjects are broad and basic. Think “Build an Android App,” “become a Salesforce developer,” and, for the community-ed crowd, a seminar called “Introduction to the Internet.”

“Our curriculum is designed to appeal to a variety of backgrounds and experiences,” Rocchi said. “We largely focus on cutting-edge technology, but also offer beginner offerings designed to remove the ‘wall of intimidation’ associated with technology newbies. The seminar ‘Intro to the Internet,’ for example, is a beginner course for people who want to get into tech but don’t know where to start.”

Grand Circus tapped Michigan talent to teach these courses, most notably Terry Cross, a beloved Detroit angel investor and Wayne State University’s first and current Executive in Residence for Entrepreneurship. His three-hour seminar on creating a business plan is only $30. Most classes are 10-12 week programs that cost $3,400 and are taught by local professionals from Detroit Labs, Adobe, Apigee and more.

Right now, at launch, Grand Circus seems rather simplistic. The courses are basic and there are only a few to choose from. Worse yet, they’re not proven as a trusted educator or startup partner. But that will come in time. Downtown Detroit needs a space like this if it is to be the startup destination it aims to be.

Detroit is hungry for web startups and Dan Gilbert’s venture arm is seemingly willing to give them the cash and resources needed.

“There’s a big gap that’s slowing down Michigan’s recovery,” said Linkner. “Startups are trying to hire specific people with tech skills. Then there are underemployed people who lack the skills needed. Grand Circus is a modern training tech academy.

“There are other tech training schools.” he added. “This is a relevant modern practical approach. The people who come out of here will get the best high-paying jobs. The instructors are actual industry leaders currently working and not some instructors hiding in academia.”

Michigan’s startup community is quickly maturing. Venture funding in the state is exploding, as well. 2011 saw a record year for venture fundraising, and in 2012, firms invested $232 million over 47 deals. It was a dramatic increase over 2011 levels where less than $100 million was invested. This spike caused the state’s national ranking to jump 10 spots, making it the 15th most prolific state in terms of capital investments.

Barred from talking specifics, the founders tell me that DVP is Grand Circus’s lead investor. The startup is also funded by Invest Detroit and received funds from the area’s Creative Corridor Incentive Fund.

Detroit’s startup culture is hungry. And Grand Circus should go a long way to satisfy the craving. But its success is not guaranteed. Like the struggling city it calls home, Grand Circus’s future will be determined solely on the tenacity of its leaders. The startup isn’t just making an app or creating a service. They’ve set out to reinvent education and co-working in one of the most unlikely places. And we wish them nothing but the best.

It’s the best-looking is the best-looking car in the mid-size sedan segment. But is showroom appeal — and some good sense on the road — enough to elevate the Mazda6 to the head of its class?

Tipbit is a smart mobile email inbox launching in the next few weeks that surfaces social networks, calendars and documents related to the topic or person who is the subject of the correspondence.

In a phone call yesterday, CEO Gordon Mangione said the service is designed to integrate with calendars and email clients. With permissions, it queries Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and will also ping Dropbox if you have an account. More services will be added in the future. For now, the focus is on the major providers for purposes of robustness.

Mangione said Tipbit indexes data according to the name of the person, the topic, keywords in the email and other related information. He calls it a form of gravitational search. Email data has significant mass so moving it does not make sense. Instead, Tipbit finds the data, analyzes it and returns relevant results.

Tipbit will initially be available as an iPhone app. An Android app is in development. The website has a sign-up for people who want to join the beta.

Email apps are popping up more often as the methods for visualizing and organizing data gets easier to develop. Dropbox acquired Mailbox for $100 million and Yahoo! acquired Xobni for $30 million. There are email clients that turn your email into art or give it a product management edge. Streak is a CRM app that embeds GMail. There are many more.

What I like about Tipbit is what it does in the background. It knows what data to surface. Here’s the problem, though. The email user interface was awesome for 1997, but today it is just awkward with all the information that people manage. Mangione said developing a UI for filtering is a challenge and something Tipbit is still developing. That’s the common problem with email. Everyone uses it but the system is also a trap that often smothers the information we really need.

Twilio, a company that helps developers build voice calling and SMS functionality into their apps, just hired up one of the people who helped make Skype huge. Tomorrow morning, Twilio will announce that Skype’s former Head Of Engineering, Ott Kaukver, is their new VP of Engineering.

I usually tend to stay away from all of this “X hired Y” stuff because… well, I dont care — but strategically, this one is pretty interesting.

According to Skype’s old exec bio page for Ott (which has been taken down, but is still visible here), he joined Skype when it was still a lil’ 30-man team out of Estonia. He began as their Director of Operations in 2004, then got bumped up to Head Of Engineering in 2005, first focusing on their core technology then shifting over to lead the consumer products team in 2008.

On the business side, he helped grow Skype’s engineering team from a few dozen people up to a few hundred. On the engineering side, he helped build and scale Skype’s technology into.. well, into Skype, as we know it.

Ott stayed with Skype after it was acquired by eBay in 2005 — but after finding himself with about a hundred thousand new colleagues after Skype was in turn acquired by Microsoft in 2011, he decided to move onto something new. He parted ways with the company at the end of 2012.

If nothing else, it’s an interesting move from a competitive standpoint. While Twilio isn’t a direct competitor with Skype (Skype builds a consumer facing communications product, Twilio builds APIs that let others build communications products) they’re certainly not ever going to be best friends. Twilio’s APIs let developers build telephony/VoIP stuff into their own products — and when people spend time talking on those products, it means less time spent talking on Skype. In some sense, Ott is taking on the very product he spent much of the last decade building.

With that said: Twilio has done a good job evangelizing with developers, is hiring like mad, and just raised a mountain of cash to keep things moving smoothly. At that point, the challenge becomes one of scaling — and if there’s anyone who can help scale a cloud telephony company, it’s probably the dude who already did it for Skype.

Over the past several years, Los Angeles-based startup ZEFR has made a name for itself by working with content creators to make money off their videos on YouTube. Founded as Movieclips.com, the startup began by licensing short movie clips, distributing them, and monetizing them on its own site. It wasn’t until it was able to put them on YouTube, though, that it started to really hit it big.

The team also had an epiphany when it found a clip from Dirty Dancing uploaded by a fan on the video site. Usually, those videos would have been taken down by the content owner, but the guys at Movieclips had a better idea — what if it could claim fan-uploaded videos for its movie studio partners and help to monetize them?

The shift to identifying content helped open up whole new doors for the company, as it began partnering with content creators outside of the Hollywood studio realm — for instance, music labels and sports programmers. It was then able to help them find videos that fans have uploaded from their content. With that change in focus, the company also decided to rebrand as ZEFR.

In the last couple of years, it’s expanded from about 30 employees to 230, which meant leasing space in a huge former art studio next to its Venice, Calif. office. And now it is expanding its services to also include tools to help brands and advertisers identify videos being uploaded by their fans, and to connect with them.

For every brand-produced video that is uploaded to YouTube, there are hundreds put up by regular users. Using the same technology that it developed for content owners, ZEFR is also able to find user-generated videos and analyze how different brands stack up.

Check out the video above to get a better idea of ZEFR’s technology and how it helps content owners and brands. And come back on Monday and Wednesday next week for the final two parts of our series on new digital media companies in L.A. Be sure also to check out the whole series of videos below:

• Get Ready For TechCrunch TV’s Tour Of The New Hollywood
• Inside Machinima, The New Video Network For Gamers And Fanboys
• Fullscreen Gives Video Creators The Tools To Collaborate And Make More Money On YouTube
• Meet Tastemade, The YouTube Network For Food Lovers
• Check Out YouTube Space LA, The Company’s Huge Production Space For Local Video Creators
• How YouTube Network Big Frame Focuses On Big Stars With Four Vertical Brands
• How ZEFR Brings Content ID To Content Creators, Media Companies… And Now Brands

It’s late afternoon on a Wednesday, and you know what that means (bonus points if you didn’t cheat by looking at the headline)! That’s right: It’s time for another edition of the TechCrunch Droidcast featuring myself and hirsute wunderkind Darrell Etherington. But this time we’ve roped in a special guest to join the fun.

Dan Bader (of MobileSyrup and Betakit fame) stops by to help us unpack a pretty hefty docket: the nuances of HTC’s kooky new advertising strategy and Samsung’s curious Android-powered, dual-screen flip phone. And we couldn’t resist the temptation to dig into Twitter designer Paul Stamatiou’s lengthy love letter to Android since people have been spreading it around like crazy lately … along with some of the responses it’s already elicited.

Strap in, folks, and let’s get nerdy.

We invite you to enjoy weekly Android podcasts every Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. Eastern and 2:30 p.m. Pacific, in addition to our weekly Gadgets podcast at 3 p.m. Eastern and noon Pacific on Fridays. Subscribe to the TechCrunch Droidcast in iTunes, too, if that’s your fancy.

Intro music by Kris Keyser.

Newark Mayor and Silicon Valley white knight Cory Booker trounced his competitors in last night’s primary election. He raked in four times as many votes as his closest Democratic competitor, Congressman Rush Holt, and more than 100,000 people turned out to vote just for him, compared to the last non-presidential race in 2006.

For Booker’s innovative use of technology, he made friends fast with the Silicon Valley elite, ultimately leading to millions of dollars in investments in his video startup, #waywire. But with celebrity supporters and consulting firm 270 Strategies – which was launched by veterans of President Obama’s campaign — Booker has come under the watchful eye of a political press suspicious of anyone who rubs shoulders with the social elite. This did matter in the primary, as he sailed to victory.

He Got A Lot Of Votes

Source, Politico (98% of precincts reporting)

Booker, Alone, May Have Caused The Surge In Turnout

For the last 20 years of non-presidential elections, New Jersey primary turnout has hovered around 250,000 votes for the Democrat of choice. Booker snagged 353,000 votes. The total votes for Steve Lonegan, who won the Republican primary and will face Booker in a special election on October 10, did not experience a similar bump in turnout over 2006.

Source: New Jersey Department of State (seriously, New Jersey, lose the PDFs and offer XML format)

His Campaign Has Money

According to transparency watchdog group The Sunlight Foundation, Booker raised 60 percent more than all of his competitors combined ($8.6 million vs. $5.1 million).

Of course, $8.6 million might not even be close to enough, since Booker is a likely presidential contender, and Republicans would be wise to spend a lot of money to try to beat him before he gains momentum.

Divesting in #waywire

As is standard for a federal official, Booker has agreed to put his stake in #waywire into a blind trust if he becomes a U.S. Senator. The $1 million to $5 million worth of investment Booker has in #waywire wouldn’t be as troubling as the financial relationship with the investors. Google and its Chairman, Eric Schmidt, for instance, are under constant scrutiny from the federal government for anti-trust and other issues. It would make it more difficult for Booker to have oversight over Schmidt and his other tech investors if he were financially tied to them (one could argue, it will be difficult whether or not he divests from #waywire).

If I were a betting man, I would say Booker is going to win the Senate race handily.

Nary a soul on the Internet can resist a good GIF, but Flipboard browsers on iOS devices have been deprived until now. Today Flipboard has hooked up iOS users with GIF support, a feature Android users have long enjoyed.

The update includes support for GIFs within the news feed, as well as some new GIF-centric magazines such as “Just GIF It” (lots of cats and things related to cats), “GIF Pop” (slightly terrifying but pretty awesome), and “GIF Me A Break” (a beautiful collection of artsy GIFs).

The update also brings with it a number of new features, most notably Top Stories, which automatically surfaces new and popular content to the top of each Category, such as News, Sports, Tech, and Business.

Other update additions include an auto-prompt to share a magazine after flipping through more than 10 pages, as well as an auto-profile page for anyone who creates three or more magazines. The additions are more subtle than GIF support, but certainly bring a nice (albeit slightly pushy) touch.

The popularity of GIFs right now is undeniable. It’s not just big guys like Tumblr, Cinemagram, and (questionably) Vine getting in on the looping, animated fun — a whole slew of startups have recently launched GIF-flavored (the file type, not the peanut butter) ventures.

For example, Stilly is a one-button GIF maker that launched in May. Tumblr began letting users create GIFs with their webcams in July, the same month that Coub raised $1 million for its GIF-like music video making service.

Plus, Viber and WhatsApp competitor Pinger launched support for GIF messaging just a few days ago.

Obviously, Flipboard is right on time in terms of delivering the types of content users are looking for in this crazy place called the Internet.

You can check out the update here.

Microsoft confirmed today that it has hired Jason Holtman to help lead its PC gaming efforts. Holtman left Valve in February for unknown reasons. As Neowin reported, he was known in that role for his work on Steam, the exceedingly popular PC game sale and delivery platform.

Microsoft has a similar effort, Games for Windows, that is generally regarded as lesser than Steam by gamers. By hiring Holtman Microsoft could be signaling that it isn’t willing to allow Steam and its corporate parent Valve hegemony over the PC gaming market. That would make sense, as the PC gaming market is heavily concentrated on the Windows platform, which is Microsoft territory.

Holtman provided a statement to GamesIndustry about his move: “Yes, I have joined Microsoft where I will be focusing on making Windows a great platform for gaming and interactive entertainment. I think there is a lot of opportunity for Microsoft to deliver the games and entertainment customers want and to work with developers to make that happen, so I’m excited to be here.”

That’s boilerplate, but his role at Microsoft could be interesting, given that Microsoft now has two discrete game-delivery systems: Games for Windows and the Windows 8 Store. This is both a boon — higher surface area to vend gaming titles — and confusing for consumers who may want a more unified system.

That said, Holtman’s own note on his role at Microsoft, PC Gaming and Entertainment Strategy according to his LinkedIn profile, could have wide latitude inside the company. The key takeaway to this is that even though the Xbox One is a driving gravity force in the gaming space, the PC remains a key and large market for Microsoft and other software publishers.

Physical distribution of gaming content, like all forms of software, is present and future. Boxes are over. And Holtman is famous for his vigor in that exact space. Microsoft, which is currently racing to refract its business to reflect that reality, appears to have made a timely hire.

Update: Microsoft confirmed with TechCrunch that Holtman has been hired.

Top Image Credit: Mike Mozart

Enterprise is sexier than ever. As Andreessen Horowitz partner Scott Weiss aptly predicted in his brilliant guest post titled “30 New Franchises,” there is an unprecedented opportunity to create new multi-billion-dollar enterprise franchises despite incumbents throwing massive amounts of money to acquire these franchises. Weiss’ post created such an engaging conversation around the future of enterprise software that we decided to build a panel at Disrupt SF around the thesis, featuring Weiss himself, Box CEO and founder Aaron Levie, Zendesk CEO and founder Mikkel Svane, and Chris Kemp, the CEO of Nebula.

Weiss believes that the next franchises will be built around three areas: mobile, SaaS and cloud infrastructure. Cloud storage giant Box has been doubling down on mobile, acquiring HTML5 document embedding service Crocodoc in its efforts to allow businesses to store and manage documents anywhere. As Levie has told us in the past, Box is trying to invent what real-time collaboration looks like in the mobile era, and could be eying a public offering as early as next year.

Zendesk’s SaaS help desk/support ticketing application has seen tremendous success as the key to service efficiency for any customer-facing company. As of last year, monthly recurring revenue has grown five-fold since 2010 for the company. While Zendesk’s bread and butter has been catering to small to medium-sized businesses, of late, Svane and the company has been pulling major enterprise deals, including L’Oreal, Groupon and many others.

In terms of cloud infrastructure, there may be no better person to disrupt this sector than Nebula’s Kemp, who was the former CTO of NASA and the co-founder of OpenStack. With Nebula, Kemp and his team are building an infrastructure that allows businesses to deploy large private cloud computing infrastructures.

Together, Weiss, Levie, Svane and Kemp are going to talk about how they are building their own franchises and attempting to build lasting institutions in the enterprise world.

The conference starts September 7 and runs until the 11th at our favorite location, the San Francisco Design Concourse. Stay tuned for more speaker announcements and a few surprises to be announced soon.

General-admission tickets and exhibitor packages are currently available. Buy tickets here.

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