Category: Tech news

Snapchat is aggressively recruiting sales people from Stanford as well as USC for its impending debut of a monetization scheme, we’ve discovered. Meanwhile it’s raising $100 million at a valuation as high as $1 billion to pay them, as well as buy more servers and hire other talent to power its rapidly growing self-destructing messaging app, sources say.

Earlier this week Om Malik of GigaOm reported Snapchat was raising $100 million but at a valuation “in excess of a half a billion dollars”, that one source pegged at $700 million post-money. Many of us at TechCrunch had heard rumors of the round, particularly tied to a push in the company’s hiring and monetization. Malik reports that the “founders have settled on an unnamed non-tradition investors (read: hedge-fund)” for this round.

However, we’ve heard that’s not totally accurate. Several sources have told us Snapchat co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy are shooting for an even more ambitious valuation near $1 billion. That matches speculation of a higher valuation from Fortune’s Dan Primack. We’ve also heard the company may be in talks with its $13.5 million Series A round leader Benchmark Capital about joining the Series B. We’ve also heard that this round has already closed, but can’t confirm that yet.

Some might call the valuation too high, but it’s fueled by Snapchat’s surging popularity and intense engagement, especially amongst young people. Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker’s latest Internet Trends report said that Snapchat has eclipsed Instagram in volume of photos shared.

While Facebook’s acquired photos app sees people share the occasional photo publicly and browse its feed, Snapchat hosts incredible time-in-app as users privately send photo after photo while carrying on multiple conversations with friends. These photos (and videos) delete themselves less than 10-seconds after being viewed, encouraging users to create and send more “Snaps”. The push notifications these ephemeral messages generate lead to frequent return visits. Curiosity about what funny face, current surroundings, or racy imagery their friends have just sent them creates goads people to check Snapchat as soon as their pinged, keeping conversations moving along briskly.

Selling Self-Destructing Photos

All that engagement creates an enormous opportunity for monetization. Snapchat sees this, which is why the Stanford-schooled co-founders of the Los Angeles-based startup have been recruiting at their alma mater, and to a lesser extent their LA neighbor the University Of Southern California. And we’re not talking about just a few salespeople. Perhaps the most interesting tidbit we’ve heard is that the company has been hiring a veritable army of ad sellers. Snapchat is currently at a lean headcount of 12, but has outgrown its Venice beachfront office and will move to a larger office, still in the Los Angeles area.

Spiegel told us in our very first interview that the company had plans for monetization, and told us in December that the company was prototyping monetization features. And at the D11 conference, Spiegel said “There will eventually be several revenue streams. He didn’t go into more detail but noted that he thinks ads can “work very well on mobile” and Snapchat’s been playing around with early prototypes. Now, with new funding and new hires, revenue can’t be far behind for the young company.

Snapchat has had a strong, loyal user base among high school and college students. I (Billy) remember watching friends at Stanford beta test the app and thinking what a novelty it was that it spread beyond snapping pictures of Palm Drive and Cardinal football tailgates. Now, I look at the “Find Friends” feature of the site and its filled with older family friends, friends’ moms (thankfully not my mom…yet), and more.

The explosion in growth the app has seen–users now send 150 million images per day–cannot simply be high school and college students. Snapchat has tipped and is seeing adoption in other age brackets. Josh confirms a recent spike in older, late twenty-something users getting into the irreverent spirit of the app. Meanwhile, after a short honeymoon for Facebook’s ephemeral messaging app Poke, usage of the Snapchat-clone has dried up to mostly just the Facebook employees in his network.

Spiegel and co-founder Murphy have carefully selected their media outreach, from exclusives in The New York Times to appearing on The Colbert Report, to reach beyond the classroom types. They want their app to become a household name.

While many wrote off Snapchat as just a novelty, it’s becoming more and more clear that it’s actually an important new medium for communication. Posting to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter can seem like stale pandering for Likes and favorites, or a vain declaration of accomplishment. “I was there then.” But Snapchat feels like a shared moment in time, an urgent window from one person’s life into another. Snapchat means “Be With Me Now.”

More TechCrunch coverage of Snapchat:

Snapchat Launches v5.0 With Revamped UI, Swipe Navigation, And In-App Profiles

Snapchat Accounts For More Photo Shares Than Instagram As Pic Sharing Set To Double In 2013

Taco Bell Asks Twitter Followers To Add Them On Snapchat, Users May Soon See Snaps From Brands

The Snapchat Lawsuit, Or How To Lose Your Best Friend Over $70 Million

Snapchat Raises $13.5M Series A Led By Benchmark, Now Sees 60M Snaps Sent Per Day

Snapchat Releases Video Sharing, Is Prototyping Monetization Features (Oh, And It’s Still Not For Sexting)

No, Snapchat Isn’t About Sexting, Says Co-Founder Evan Spiegel

The “Smart” EX2F camera from Samsung provides the tactile experience DSLR users cherish, but fails to fully deliver on the software features.

The “Smart” EX2F camera from Samsung provides the tactile experience DSLR users cherish, but fails to fully deliver on the software features.

What do you do if you want to drink a single glass of wine but not throw away the other 4/5 of the bottle? You turn to a wine preservation system.

What do you do if you want to drink a single glass of wine but not throw away the other 4/5 of the bottle? You turn to a wine preservation system.

The Washington Post today reported that Google, Apple, Facebook, Dropbox, Microsoft, Paltalk, AOL (TechCrunch’s parent company) and Yahoo participated in the so-called PRISM program which provided the NSA with what looks like virtually direct access to their servers and their users’ data.

We have now reached out to all of these companies and so far, Facebook, Google and Apple have denied that they are participating. We have not received statements from the other companies yet, but will update this post as we learn more.

Here is what we got so far:

Facebook

“We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers. When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law.”

Google

“Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a backdoor for the government to access private user data.”

Apple

We haven’t heard back from Apple yet, but a company spokesman gave this is the statement the company gave this statement to AllThingsD:

“We have never heard of PRISM. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order.”

We will update this post as we hear from the other companies named in the documents.

London-based roboticist Evangelos Georgiou wants to offer an open-source platform for helping Arduino hobbyists take their projects mobile, thanks to a remote controlled robot called the RK-1 that combines a programmable Arduino microcontroller with apps for iPhone or Android, tank tracks, DC motors and Wi-Fi connectivity. It’s a project that could really help out with home hobbyists, or with education workshops and classes to get people young and old more interested in robotics.

The apps for the RK-1 will be free to download from the App Store and Google Play, according to Georgiou, and they use swipe touch gestures to manage changes in direction and forward/backward movement. It’s simple, and intuitive, but does look like it could be a very cool way for people to add an extra dimension to their product. And since Georgiou is following the example of other open source hardware hobbyist gadget sellers like Adafruit, there’s ample opportunity for cross-pollination with other similar projects, with built-in support in the ultimate companion app for sensors and breakout boards favored by the Arduino community.

Georgiou is a PhD student at King’s College London, and is also working full-time as a software developer at the school. His area of expertise is the impressive sounding “autonomous non-holonomic mobile robots implementing computer vision and advanced machine learning methods,” which basically translates to him really knowing what he’s talking about when it comes to building bots. His co-founder in the project Reetu Kansal is an experience assurance manager, and has been helping with project design and operation management as the RK-1 has developed.

Georgiou is seeking just £5,000 (7,800 U.S.), but already has stretch goals in place for £15,000 on up to £50,000, in a fit of optimism. Pre-orders of RK-1 kits start at £150 ($234 U.S.). It’s an ambitious product, but its founder has both the software and hardware know-how to make it happen, and this could be a very welcome component for robotics home hobbyists and educators.

The Washington Post is reporting a top-secret National Security Administration data-mining program that taps directly into the Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple servers among others. ”The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time,” reports the Post.

Details about the highly classified program, Project PRISM, are somewhat vague, but it appears that the NSA allows the Attorney General and Director of National of National Intelligence “to open their servers to the FBI’s Data Intercept Technology Unit, which handles liaison to U.S. companies from the NSA.”

“With a few clicks and an affirmation that the subject is believed to be engaged in terrorism, espionage or nuclear proliferation, an analyst obtains full access to Facebook’s ‘extensive search and surveillance capabilities against the variety of online social networking services,’” explains The Post.

From there, the NSA mines the data for suspects, then “hops” to their potential contacts, exponentially increasing the number of Americans that the NSA can spy on (by mandate, the NSA is supposed to monitor foreigners).

We reached out to Facebook for comment and they replied: ”We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers. When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law.”

In a statement, Google said: “Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a backdoor for the government to access private user data.”

And Apple gave a statement to CNBC:

Apple to @CNBC: "We have never heard of PRISM. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers.."

—
  (@CNBC) June 06, 2013

According to the Post’s slides (below), the number of PRISM partners has steadily grown over the years. Microsoft, the first partner, began in 2007, Yahoo in 2008; Google, Facebook and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and Aol in 2011; and finally Apple, which joined the program in 2012,” explains the Guardian.

This revelation follows yesterday’s exposé by the Guardian on the NSA’s program to monitor phone data of every single U.S. call on the Verizon network.

The Post notes that resistance seems possible, given Twitter’s conspicuous absence from the list of companies.

This is an ongoing story and we will update readers as more information comes in.

It’s been just under a year since Y Combinator-backed Kamcord officially launched, and the young team has spent its time raising funding and quietly fleshing out its SDK for iOS games.

The team had seen its in-game screen recording tech implemented in over 100 games, and gamers have recorded 500 million videos since those very early days, but now the team has been working on a pair of new features they hope will get even more mobile gamers sharing videos of their exploits. Starting today, Kamcord has provided tools to let players trim down their videos on the fly and add their own vocal tracks into the mix… if game developers enable them, anyway.

The ability to edit game recordings is straightforward enough — the meaty bits of your video may come out to a total of 30 or 40 seconds, so why share the whole multi-minute clip? It’s the voice overlay feature that seems the more compelling of the two, since it demonstrates a pretty solid understanding of the kinds of game videos that get spread around most often.

Here’s the idea: once the feature has been enabled, your device fires up its microphone when the gaming session begins and records your fevered mutterings as you furiously paw at your touchscreen. It seems like a problematic way to go at first — I would’ve though the game’s sounds would drown out any input from microphone — but Kamcord CEO Matt Zitzmann noted that there’s a distinct lack of echoing or audio issues (though he still thinks users should use a separate microphone anyway).

But why even go this route in the first place? A quick look at the gameplay videos that populate YouTube and Twitch reveal that many of them lean on narration — after all, there’s only so much entertainment to be had while watching straight, untampered game recordings. There’s something very compelling about listening to someone as they submit themselves to the experience of a game, which perhaps explains the phenomenal popularity of the Let’s Play video genre.

“They’re just a lot more watchable,” Zitzmann noted in a phone conversation. The sort of human quality that adding voice tracks to a game recording is exactly what Kamcord needs if it wants developers to take the SDK seriously as a potential marketing tool. What better way is there for a would-be player to make up their mind about a game they haven’t taken the plunge on than by watching (and hearing) someone have a blast with it. In the end it’s up to developers to decide whether or not they want either of features enabled, but the team has already been in talks with a handful of interested parties and is slowly staffing up to tackle more challenges.

Mark Zuckerberg and Joe Green’s controversial political advocacy group FWD.us started getting the public involved today with its new Speak Up campaign that calls you and connects you to your senator to show your support for immigration reform. Until now, the only way people could participate in FWD.us was by signing up to volunteer later or sharing the group’s messages.

Backed by an A-List cast of liberal-leaning tech CEOs and investors, FWD.us has come under heavy scrutiny. Its purchase of ads advocating for the Keystone XL pipeline and drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge seemed incongruous to the group’s intentions. The scandal has soured public opinion and driven away some early supporters, including Elon Musk and David Sachs. The group still managed to sign on YouTube co-founder Steve Chen and media mogul Barry Diller as funders this week, though.

Getting citizens to push for immigration and education reform, whether or not they believe in FWD.us’ grease-the-wheels political strategy, will be crucial to its success. Money goes a long way, but the group needs grassroots support, too. The Speak Up campaign intends to harness that support with as little friction as possible.

Today FWD.us sent emails to those who’d previously signed up on its site asking them to call their senators and state their preference for immigration reform. Signed by Joe Green, the president of FWD.us, the email explains “Recently the Senate Judiciary Committee took a major step forward when it voted for comprehensive immigration reform. The next step is for the full Senate to vote on the proposal, which is likely to occur later this month. Between now and then, we have to show our representatives that a majority of Americans supports reform.”

But instead of making people search for their senators’ phone numbers or even dial them themselves, the group is going a little more high-tech. Those who click through the email are prompted to enter their ZIP codes and phone numbers. FWD.us then automatically calls their phone, gives them instructions, and patches them in to Washington. I just tried it, and was greeted with a woman’s voice telling me once I’m connected to “just provide your name and address and then say why you support comprehensive immigration reform.” A robot voice then stated “we’re connecting you to Senator Dianne Feinstein.”

If the Senate approves the proposal, it could be seen as FWD.us’ first win, even if its campaigns only make a small difference. It could still go a long way towards people giving its pragmatic approach more credit. Sure, most people don’t want to see techies or their money funding the political favor economy. But if it gets immigration reform passed, allowing more skilled immigrants into the country to create jobs, citizens might cut FWD.us some slack.

Mirantis has raised another $10 million from Red Hat, Ericsson and SAP Ventures to fuel the growing demand for the build out of OpenStack systems for private and public cloud environments. The financing came in a second round of Series A funding.

Mirantis raised $10 million in December from Dell Ventures, Intel Capital, and West Summit Capital, which also participated in this current round. Mirantis CEO Adrian Ionel said in an email that when Mirantis did the first part of the round, some investors wanted to put in more money.

We didn’t want to take it at that valuation (we were profitable and $10m was plenty for us). Instead we agreed to do a future closing at a completely different valuation if we achieve certain business milestones. We delivered and so we got to the second closing.

Mirantis, one of the founding members of OpenStack, has prospered by piecing together the different parts of the compute, storage and network that comprise an OpenStack infrastructure. OpenStack has had seven releases, the latest being Grizzly. Development is done by the community, with different companies offering their own technology as integration pieces for OpenStack.

Red Hat has become one of the power players in OpenStack, so it makes sense they participated in the round. The company recently emerged as the one making the most commits to the OpenStack project.

The skill sets to build out an OpenStack infrastructure are in high demand. SAP, for example, has worked with OpenStack for building out its own infrastructure.

Mirantis has also updated Fuel, its do-it-yourself kit for OpenStack, which developed out of a Mirantis library that consisted of frameworks that integrate different capabilities. For example, Mirantis implemented a Puppet library for automating infrastructure. It previously did not give access to the library.

The new version is available for free under an Apache 2.0 license. It has a visual user interface, a single control plane, new automation features and support for Grizzly, the latest OpenStack release. Later this year, the company plans to release Fuel Enterprise, a commercial-grade distribution of Fuel that will be available to its subscription customers.

Mirantis has become one of the most recognized players in OpenStack. Fuel will be critical to its future, as OpenStack becomes more accessible to the larger market. But in that they will face a growing number of companies offering their own turnkey implementations. Cloudscaling and Piston Cloud are two of the better known startups in the space.

Ionel said the difference is that Fuel doesn’t lock the customer into a specific distribution or very narrow hardware and network configuration.

“And we open sourced it,” Ionel said.

With more commerce moving online every day, the shipping industry is in need of innovation. And one of the bigger pain points developers face when trying to integrate postage and shipping into their applications involves the antiquated technology major carriers like FedEx, UPS and USPS provide – complex SOAP or XML APIs that most developers would say are a nightmare to work with. San Francisco-based EasyPost is trying to solve that problem by offering a simpler, RESTful JSON API instead. Today, the company is announcing $850,000 in seed funding to help with those efforts.

Investors in the new round, which just now closed, include Y Combinator, SV Angel, Start Fund, CrunchFund*, Mesa+, Andreas Resch, Kevin Barenblat, Lars Kamp, Ullas Naik, Shawn Bercuson, and Rahul Vohra. (* Disclosure: CrunchFund founder Michael Arrington also founded TechCrunch.)

EasyPost co-founder Jarrett Streebin says he came up with the idea for the service based on his own experiences with having to integrate shipping into some of the websites he had worked on in the past. These were generally just weekend projects he played with on the side while analyzing venture deals for a private investment fund at his day job.

But he also spoke to other startup founders through his work, and found that they, too, had the same struggles with shipping. He would ask them about it, and routinely, the answer would be one of frustration. “Oh my god, it’s a nightmare,” they would tell him.

Explains Streebin, “if you go to Twilio, you can get an API key immediately. But if you go to Endicia or some of their competitors, you have to email them and they send you 400-page documentation, and then you have to sign a legal doc…It’s really a big mess,” he says.

“We need a Stripe for this,” Streebin realized.

Founded alongside ex-Googler Jon Calhoun, EasyPost first launched into beta this September and immediately saw around 500 sign-ups, indicating the need for the service it provides. Today, the company has double that in terms of users, and after its public debut in January, it has been seeing numbers double every single month in terms of users, revenue, and number of packages, Streebin says.

To use the service, developers come to the site, enter in their account information for UPS, FedEx, or USPS, and then get an API key they can use to access all the functions provided. E-commerce sites can then call the API to verify addresses during checkout, let customers choose from all the different possible shipping options, and even purchase that shipping label as part of the fulfillment process.

Because of the complexity of the carriers’ own APIs, most e-commerce sites don’t allow for this kind of thing today – instead, they often pick a flat rate that seems reasonable. This is not only a problem for them, as sometimes shipping charges are higher than that flat rate, but it can also be a problem for the consumer who misses out on savings when rates should be lower.

This same problem has led to a number of new developments in the shipping and logistics industry, including the launch of EasyPost’s direct competitor Postmaster (with $600,000 in seed funding), as well as consumer-facing TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 audience choice winner ShipHawk, and more broadly, moves from big-name brands like Amazon, eBay, Walmart and Google, all of whom who are now trying to figure out how to make same-day shipping sustainable.

Where EasyPost wants to differentiate itself from other developer-facing tools is with its level of support. “My belief from the start is that if you’re selling SaaS, PaaS, infrastructure-as-a-service – any of those – the support is the product. Our support times are 10 minutes or less,” Streebin claims.

Currently EasyPost charges 5 cents per shipment, but offers discounted rates for larger shippers. It plans to add more long tail U.S. carriers as well as Canada Post within the next few months, then work on Europe afterwards.

Interested developers can sign up here.

Mobile e-commerce startup Shopgate announced its Series B funding round today, which it revealed to TechCrunch totals $7 million in an interview. The Germany and Palo Alto-based company offers retailers custom native app and mobile web development for their online stores, which Shopgate co-founder Andrea Anderheggen says can help retailers increase their sell-through rates on mobile by between 5 and 15 percent on average, depending on whether they’re starting with responsive design-based websites or just traditional web commerce pages.

Where Shopgate differs from other solutions is that it integrates with popular web-based e-commerce platform provider APIs, like Magento, which means that they’re pretty much plug-and-play with most of the online store backends that retailers are already using. And unlike some other solutions, Shopgate isn’t taking sides in the debate of mobile web vs. mobile apps; it offers both native apps for iOS and Android, as well as mobile-optimized websites, which Anderheggen says is crucial because while mobile browsing is leading to higher mobile conversion rates for online stores, shoppers are still pretty choosy about how they prefer to shop.

“What we’ve seen is that mobile commerce will become a huge reality,” he said. “The simple fact that people are visiting the Internet on a mobile device leads to the fact that they’ll also be buying on a mobile device, like they buy online. That wasn’t so clear when we founded Shopgate three years ago, but it has become very clear now. There’s no doubt about that anymore.”

“What we saw is that consumers have different preferences,” Anderheggen explained further. “A large percent of users prefer to browse the web using Safari or other mobile browsers, then there’s another group, a large group, that prefers using native apps… and what we saw is that the merchants, apart from a few huge players like eBay or Amazon that can afford to pay an agency or in-house developer to program iOS apps or Android apps, largely cannot afford to invest $500,000 to over $1 million in a mobile store, in native apps.”

To further capitalize on the growth of mobile commerce, which a recent IDC report suggested will reach $1 trillion by 2017, Shopgate is planning to hire more staff with this round, as well as invest in continued expansion, specifically in the U.S. market. Anderheggen also shed some light on some of the company’s upcoming product plans, which include building a worldwide affiliate network that would allow any app int the App Store can sell the product with an in-app store provided by Shopgate and earn a commission, as well as plans to help brick-and-mortar retailers leverage their e-commerce presence to bring more shoppers in-store.

Shopgate’s funding round was led by Danish firm Northcap and Creathor Ventures out of Germany. Creathor has been an investor from the start, and Anderheggen said that Shopgate chose Creathor to come on board because of the company’s extensive expertise m- and e-commerce services, as well as its experience helping European startups expand aggressively on a global scale.

Good news for New Yorkers who don’t want to walk outside and raise their hands in an effort to attract the attention of a yellow cab passing by: The New York State Supreme Court has issued a ruling blocking a temporary restraining order, which had put into question the legality of taxi e-hail providers like Uber and Hailo operating in New York City.

The ruling is yet another victory for technology and innovation over the evil forces of inertia and bureaucracy in New York City. More literally, it’s a defeat for the black car and limo lobby, which had threatened the city’s proposed e-hail program with a temporary restraining order issued earlier this year.

Actually, this is just the latest in a string of launches, and re-launches, victories, and defeats for the likes of Uber and Hailo since the e-hail program was first announced in December. It was supposed to begin in February, but got held up due to a lawsuit filed just before launch. That lawsuit was dismissed by a judge in April, and it seemed like all things were a go… Until an appellate judge resurrected the case and issued an emergency injunction against the program.

Ok, now that that’s all over, what can we look forward to? The most recent ruling has blocked the temporary restraining order, but the case lives on. So! There’s the possibility that this whole mess could be started all over again and that New Yorkers might have to hail a cab the old-fashioned way. But for now, New Yorkers, e-hail away.

Oh, also a lot of people had stuff to say about it.

In a statement, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said:

In New York City in 2013, common sense and the free market say that you should be able to use your smart phone to get a cab, and that’s why we created a pilot program to allow users to do just that. This decision will allow our e-hail program to move forward, and give New Yorkers another way to hail a cab. Some in the industry want to protect their business interests by blocking the use of new technology – but innovation is good for customers, and we will continue to encourage it.

In a statement, New York TLC Commissioner David Yassky said:

Lifting the TRO was a good decision for all New Yorkers. The positive feedback we’ve had from the short time our pilot program was up says loudly and clearly that riders want the e-hail option, and I am even more confident today that it will ultimately be available to them.

In a statement, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said:

It’s pretty rare that the transportation sector sees so much progress and justice on the same day. UberTAXI is fully up and running for yellow cabs and we look forward to helping New Yorkers hail green cabs too.

In a statement, Taxi Magic president Sanders Partee said:

As of today, New Yorkers can finally do what so many people around the country have done for years — use a smartphone app like Taxi Magic to request a taxi. At Taxi Magic, we are partnering with New York City’s best drivers to provide an enhanced taxi experience for our customers, and we’ve worked closely with the TLC to gain the proper approvals and ensure a safe and reliable ride for New Yorkers. With today’s landmark decision, Taxi Magic has officially launched in New York City, and getting a ride will be faster and easier than ever – for riders and taxi drivers alike. Taxi Magic is thrilled to be pioneering this service within New York City, and to deliver game-changing mobile taxi payment in the coming weeks. New Yorkers, get your smartphones ready!

In a statement, Hailo CEO Jay Bregman said a whole lot of stuff:

We won, hands down! Hailo and the TLC banded together, standing shoulder to shoulder in court, to ensure that the future stays on the streets and New York’s riding public and Yellow Taxi drivers will continue to enjoy the latest taxi technology. During our 12-month partnership with the City of New York, Hailo and NYC consistently maintained e-hailing and e-payment were inevitable and went to court together to make sure that New Yorkers didn’t have to wait any longer.

Hailo was the only app provider to intervene in the case to support the City and the largest association of medallion owners to protect the future of the cab industry and the mantle of NYC as the home of innovation and the new economy.

Hailo’s Founding Passengers started using e-hailing after the Supreme Court threw out the case and made it very clear that the Pilot was legal and legitimate, and there are no restrictions or laws preventing e-hailing.

We are not looking back. After a few weeks of Beta operation, we are seeing triple-digit growth in passenger demand and drivers signing up in droves. In addition, New Yorkers living in the outer boroughs are five times more likely to get a cab with Hailo than before – more than 14% of Hailo trips originated in the outer boroughs (and not at the airports!) The magic of e–hailing is here and open to all New Yorkers and Yellow Cab drivers.

We want to thank our partners Mayor Bloomberg, Commissioner Yassky and the TLC for the opportunity to realize their vision of a new andinnovative taxi experience in our iconic yellow cabs and bring this proven technology to New York.”

Facebook is wrapping up a press session at its Menlo Park headquarters where it talked about the progress that it’s making with advertisers and announced it will be eliminating and consolidating a number of ad units.

The big vision, according to Product Manager Fidji Simo, is to simplify the general process of running ads on Facebook. She said that when Facebook looked at its 27 different ad products, it found that “every single product is really good on its own,” but “the whole is less than the sum of its parts.” The process is too complicated right now, she said (which could potentially scare businesses away or mean that they run less effective campaigns). Ultimately, advertisers should just tell Facebook “who you are, what your message is, and what your objective is,” then they should be able to run the kind of campaign that works for them without any “guesswork.”

Somewhat confusingly, given that vision, it sounds like Facebook actually isn’t announcing changes to the ad-buying workflow. When one of the reporters asked about this, Facebook’s Andrew Bosworth said that the bidding process isn’t changing at all. Simo said the announced changes fall into three different categories — streamlining the number of ad formats, “really bringing the best of Sponsored Stories to all ads,” and increasing the consistency in how ads are displayed. Basically, it sounds like Facebook is eliminating and consolidating of a number of different ad products. Simo argued that this gets Facebook closer to its vision “by reducing the possibility of choosing the wrong thing.”

For example, Facebook is eliminating the Questions product and instead adding the ability to ask Questions within a regular Page Post. It’s also eliminating the product for online offers, because advertisers are just promote a link that points users to an offers on their website. (It’s keeping the product to promote in-store offers.) And it’s also eliminating Sponsored Story units and instead integrating Sponsored Story into a number of other ad units — instead of allowing advertisers to buy a Sponsored Story, Facebook will automatically add “social context” to an ad whenever such context exists. (You can see an example of an ad with social context below.)

Most of these changes won’t happen until the third or fourth quarter of this year, Simo said, although some of them may come sooner.

There are more details in a just-published Facebook blog post. The company says, “In the next six months, we plan to streamline the number of ad units from 27 to fewer than half of that while mapping all of our ads to the business objectives marketers care about — be it in-store sales, online conversions, app installs, etc.”