Category: Tech news

Facebook says that there are no plans for now to add advertising to Instagram, even though advertisers are approaching them, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today during the company’s Q1 earnings call. Adding ads could end up stunting Instagram’s rapid growth. He said, more than once during the call, that Instagram is currently growing at a faster rate than FB did at the same age, and it now has 100 million users.

“They’re really doing well and growing quickly and that is the right focus for them,” Zuckerberg said. “They have the opportunity to…build community. I am really optimistic about the business and the opportunities.” But he also noted that “big brands are approaching us” about doing more on the platform — perhaps commercializing more, is the implication here. Instagram is already a pretty substantial marketing platform.

Facebook faced an outcry last year when Instagram updated its terms of service, with many concerned about how Instagram would get commercialized, specifically around selling ads against users’ photos. The company ended up reverting back to its original terms. At the time, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom noted,

“Going forward, rather than obtain permission from you to introduce possible advertising products we have not yet developed, we are going to take the time to complete our plans, and then come back to our users and explain how we would like for our advertising business to work.

On one hand, the decision to hold off on adds on Instagram runs counter to how Facebook has been running the rest of its mobile business. The company has been focusing a lot on mobile advertising, which now makes up 30%, or $375 million, of all of its advertising revenue. For now, Facebook seems happy instead for Instagram to provide a complement to the increasing commercialisation on Facebook’s main platform, which includes lucrative app install ads.

On the other, there’s still a lot of evidence here that points to Instagram still lacking the scale to be an effective ad platform for the company. While Instagram now has 100 million users, mobile active users for Facebook are now at 751 million.

Take The H.E.L.M. 2.0 is a competition from the New York City Economic Development Corporation that is designed to encourage tech startups and other fledgling companies to move their offices to lower Manhattan. They’re accepting applications today, and eventually the applicant pool will be narrowed down to 20 finalists that will compete for one of four grand prizes of $250,000 to assist them in moving their offices into the city.

The first stage of the competition runs until July 15, 2013, after which time 20 finalists will be selected to compete in the second round. These finalists will be given opportunities to present a detailed pitch as to why a move to lower Manhattan would boost their growth as a company. Each of the 20 finalists is guaranteed $10,000 in prize money, while the four runner-ups are presented with a prize of $50,000 each. The four grand prize winners will be presented with $250,000 in prize money to seek out or expand their office space in a location south of Chambers Street.

This competition is the second round of Take The H.E.L.M., which ran for the very first time last year, where the pool of finalists included a number of notable tech startups: Booker, STELLAService, Grapeshot, Paperless Post and The Flatiron School. The contest isn’t exclusive to tech startups, but the large majority of the applicant pool are young tech startups looking to get a boost with NYC office space.

So why is being based in New York City so important? “The power of branding in New York City is really about convening and talking about the right things,” says Kyle Kimball, executive director of NYCEDC in his interview with TechCrunch. ”Our role is to try to solve some of the systemic problems in New York City to try and make it easier for tech companies to grow and be here.”

You can apply for NYCEDC’s Take The H.E.L.M 2.0 competition here. The deadline for applicants is July 15th.

Microsoft has released WebMatrix 3, the latest version of its free web development tool. The new version now comes with deeper Windows Azure integration and support for GitHub.

WebMatrix users can now sign in through Windows Azure and create up to 10 sites for free. The capability means users can manage their sites locally or in Windows Azure.

In WebMatrix 3, developers can do remote editing of their sites. It has a new visual site gallery that allows the user to open existing sites on their local machines, or to remotely edit sites that are hosted in Windows Azure.

According to the Windows Azure blog, one of the most requested features users wanted improved upon from WebMatrix 2 was support for version control software:

Following the TFS and Visual Studio announcements to support Git version control, WebMatrix 3 supports both Git and TFS. The source control experience is extensible, and we’ve worked with a few partners to include rich support for CodePlex and GitHub:

The Windows Azure blog also notes that the Git tooling will work with a user’s urgent repositories, configuration, and existing tools. It includes support for commits, branching, multiple remotes and publishing web sites to Windows Azure.

WebMatrix, first introduced in 2010, offers support for ASP.NET, PHP and Node.js. Its deeper fit with Windows Azure follows a pattern. Microsoft is pulling in more of its tools into Windows Azure. For example, last month Microsoft announced general availability for Active Directory in Windows Azure.

Facebook  app install ads were the star of Facebook’s earnings call today. Sheryl Sandberg said 3800 developers used the ads to drive over 25 million installs. 40% of the top 100 iOS and Android app developers bought these ads in the last week of Q1 alone. Mark Zuckerberg meanwhile said, “We’re starting to see real revenue from selling mobile app installs.”

As I detailed yesterday, the app stores are becoming increasingly overloaded as every type of business goes mobile. Developers need a way to get their apps discovered, creating a massive opportunity of for Facebook’s app install ads which launched in October. These lets developers promote their apps in the mobile news feed with a large image, description, and “install now” button that opens the app’s page in appropriate app store. By combining Facebook’s massive mobile user base with its app install ads, Facebook is becoming the paid gateway to app traction.

Zuckerberg noted that with the rise of iOS and Android which it doesn’t own, it wasn’t clear how Facebook would add value to developers. But now Facebook has settled into helping developers build and growth their apps.

In terms of building apps Facebook already offers free SDKs that make it easier for developers to build in Facebook login and sharing options. Then just last week, Facebook acquired mobile app backend platform Parse, which handles servers, data storage, and more for developers so they can focus on creating enjoyable mobile app user experiences. While a relatively small business now, Parse subscription fees could contribute a few million dollars per quarter to Facebook in the future.

Where Facebook really stands to earn money is app discovery. Sandberg said “We’re uniquely positioned to offer developers massive reach”, alluding to its 751 million monthly users. Regarding app install ads, Zuckerberg explained that “Even if every recommendation isn’t one you take….we think [app discovery] is good for the community.”

Facebook’s CEO went on to note that the ads work well because they’re mobile by design. “Most ads make you visit website”, said Zuckerberg, while app install ads just open the app stores which users are already used to visiting. And since people already have their payment info loaded into these stores, the commerce experience is quick and easy.

App install ads also a good bang for developers’ buck, as Sandberg said “Our costs per install are highly competitive.” Meanwhile, CFO David Ebersman said this ad format is”early in its development but really doing quite well. We’re pleased with the experience we’re providing and the revenue we’ve seen.” They’re getting new businesses hooked on Facebook too, as Ebersman detailed, “A lot of the mobile app ads purchasers are new advertisers.”

Zuckerberg sees the app ecosystem continuing to get larger and more competitive, which will make Facebook’s app install ads increasingly more crucial. They helped Facebook boost its mobile ad revenue to $375 million, or 30% of its total ad revenue, up from 23% last quarter. Zuckerberg concluded that “this market is already big and I expect it to grow quickly.”

The only issue is that others see this too. Twitter just launched app install cards, which show big visual app previews and links to the app stores when people tweet about the download pages of apps. Meanwhile, some including Hunter Walk suggest that Apple might start offering its own native app install ads within the App Store.

Apps are proliferating, and developers need a way to rise above the crowd. Considering the amount they stand to make off of downloads, they could growing increasingly willing to put dollars directly into the pockets of Facebook and others if it gets them discovered.

A lot of people don’t carry cameras anymore, now that they have smartphones. But that means that you could miss opportunities to capture great moments, especially when you’re missing out on the great optical zoom available on some more expensive or specialized dedicated camera devices. That’s what Snapzoom hopes to fix with its binocular mount for smartphone cameras, and the best part is that it’s completely universal, meaning it fits a wide variety of both phones and binoculars.

The project got started when Hawaii-based co-founders Daniel Fujikake and Mac Nguyen started using their own smartphones to film their surf escapades via a completely DIY, garage-made mounting device that they hacked together. They saw the utility, and other surfers asked them about it every time they went out, so they partnered up with a professional designer to form HI Resolution Enterprises and build a proper prototype using 3D-printed materials.

The duo took to Kickstarter to fund a production run for Snapzoom, and has already blown past its $55,000 goal in just over a week. The funding will help the two turn the 3D printed prototype into a glass-filled nylon injection molded retail product, which the company hopes to manufacture both in the U.S. and overseas.

“It’s going to be extremely tough, since it’s something that’s meant to be used outdoors,” Fujikake told me. “You can put it in your bag, you don’t have to worry about babying it, you can get it wet, you can drop it, it’s very very tough.”

Already, before even closing its Kickstarter funding, Snapzoom has had a lot of interest from well-placed retail partners, including U.S. camera equipment and accessory retailer B&H Photo. Based on funding interest and prospective retail partner enthusiasm, the team seems to have tapped a strong, unaddressed consumer desire, even if it is a bit niche. And it’s not just voyeurs who are interested; this is great for nature photography and action sports, too.

Snapzoom is looking to ship in September, and retail price for the mount is expected to be around $79.99, but currently pre-order backers on Kickstarter can get one for just $70. The team is working on stretch goals now, since it has already earned almost $10,000 more than its original goal.

Recently we’ve seen a lot of news articles about the potential for chat apps to take over the role of SMS. Analysts Informa recently published research suggesting that 2012 was the tipping point, with nearly 19 billion messages sent globally over chat apps daily, versus 17.6 billion SMS messages.

In 2014 some 21 billion SMS messages are predicted compared with 50 billion app-based messages. And while the user numbers of chat apps are significantly lower right now when set against chat apps (3.5 billion SMS users in 2012, against 586.3 million users of WhatsApp, BlackBerry Messenger, Viber, Nimbuzz, Apple’s iMessage and KakaoTalk), those ratios are changing. Given that SMS is 20 years old and chat apps have been going for only five years, the trend is on the minds of mobile operators. That is, if they don’t start thinking about the apps and maybe partnering.

Clearly a few apps are trying to be simply disruptive to operators, especially WhatsApp and Viber. Others are taking a different tack. Today Pakistan telecom giant Mobilink announced it is partnering with Nimbuzz, a big messaging player in emerging markets run out of India. Mobilink will now give its 35 million subscribers access to the platform at a minimum flat cost irrespective of the data consumed. The deal mirrors one that India’s Aircel has done with Nimbuzz.

The move means that it will be technically cheaper to use Nimbuzz than other apps. It remains to be seen whether this proves much of an advantage to Nimbuzz or not, but it does provide a significant, though difficult-to-monetize, distribution platform.

The growing user base of these chat applications is affecting SMS revenue for telecom operators in markets like India, Singapore, Indonesia and Pakistan. They need new ideas.

Nimbuzz, whose investors include Mangrove and Naspers, has 150 million users and plans to roll out this model of partnering with telecoms operators.

Vikas Saxena, CEO of Nimbuzz thinks operator partnerships “help them to drive data usage among subscribers but also allow us access to users which we may not have had previously.”

Where this convergence of operators and app startups leads its hard to say. The disruptors are holding a gun to the heads of the operators. Others are offering a way out. But in emerging markets where access to mobile data is still emerging and SMS remains a big staple, this dualistic approach might be the right one to take.

Apple’s iOS 7 will arrive “on time,” according to a couple of well-placed sources following a report from Bloomberg this morning that suggests it was risking delays in the face of major software changes. Apple blogger and noted beard-wearer Jim Dalrymple gave one of his famous one-word confirms today on his blog, agreeing with a source which told AllThingsD that while Apple has had to shift engineering resources away from OS X to iOS to make sure things proceed on schedule, the update will arrive on time.

Apple says on its WWDC landing page that we’ll see “what’s next in iOS and OS X,” but it hasn’t spelled out that we’ll see new versions of either its Mac desktop OS, or the mobile platform that powers iPhones and iPads. Still, the focus at WWDC is on software, and it’s more than reasonable to expect given the teaser on the information page as well as references to the future of iOS and OS X made in the official press release noting when tickets for WWDC would go on sale this year.

iOS 7 delay rumors have been making the rounds since John Gruber noted that Apple was “running behind” on the next version of its OS, and they cropped up again today thanks to Bloomberg’s report. But while Apple is apparently having to devote more engineering resources than normal to helping with the redesign process, which is rumored to be headed up by Jony Ive and involves a big visual refresh, which will embrace “flat” design (favoring solid colors and doing away with optical effect that mimic the textures and reflections of physical materials) and bring big changes to the calendar and email tools built-in to iOS.

The changes coming in iOS 7 are about modernizing the UI, likely to inject some fresh energy into a mobile operating system that has retained a fairly stable aesthetic style throughout the course of its six year existence. A significant change to the basic functionality of some apps and the look and feel of the entire OS would be quite difficult on its own, but Bloomberg says that the management shift that took place at the end of last year with Scott Forstall’s departure ended up causing a pause and refocus in the direction of overall development.

WWDC is just over a month away, so we’ll see exactly how extensive the modification really is with a likely introduction of a public developer preview version at that time, if Apple continues doing the same thing it has in the past around the iOS development process.

It appears that as people switch from the desktop where Facebook shows multiple ads per page to mobile, Facebook is earning less ad revenue per user in its most important markets. While user growth helped total revenue increase, in the US and Canada Facebook earned $2.85 on ads per user (ads ARPU) in Q1, down from $3.30 in the holiday Q4 2012, but also down from $2.87 in Q3.

Another important stat is that Facebook’s monthly active and daily active users in the US and Canada increased, despite erroneous recent claims from third-party data providers and critics that Facebook had lost users in US. That’s critical because the US and Canada are where Facebook earns the most money per user.

One graph we wish Facebook would release is mobile user counts by geography. This could show whether developing markets coming online mobile-first are responsible for its huge surge to 751 million mobile monthly users from 680 million in Q4 2012.

Check out the rest of these graphs for detailed stats on Facebook’s user growth, income, expenses, and more.

ANd here are our own Bryce Durbin’s graphs that sum up Facebook’s earnings:

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Dogs, drones, and digital controllers, oh my! This year’s Disrupt conference in New York was full of amazing webs services and software, but Hardware Alley brought out the best in hardware startups and showed the world that hardware is finally serious business.

Darrell Etherington and I wandered the halls of Hardware Alley today to meet some amazing companies. We met with Fitbark, a way to see how happy your dog is and Thermovape, a way to smoke without taking in harmful carcinogens. We saw Extreme Flyers zip and zoom around the room with their brand new mini drone and Social Bicycles with their new system for bike sharing.

We’ll call out individual hardware alley companies over the next few days but until then enjoy this quick look at the coolness that is Disrupt.

Almost one-third of Facebook’s advertising revenue is now coming from mobile platforms, according to the company’s latest earnings release. About $375 million of Facebook’s $1.25 billion in advertising revenue came from products like the company’s new mobile app install ads.

That’s up from last quarter, when Facebook said it made 23 percent, or $305.9 million, from mobile ads. So this is a nice 22.5 percent quarter-over-quarter increase in mobile advertising revenue.

Because Facebook now sees about three quarters of a billion users per month on mobile devices, the company has to make a commensurate amount from these platforms. Analysts and investors are closely watching to see how well Facebook makes this leap from desktop-based ads to mobile ones.

Unlike Apple and Google, Facebook doesn’t own its own smartphone OS or sell its own hardware. It doesn’t have a way to earn a cut of app sales or in-app purchases like it does with games and apps on the Facebook platform.

Advertising is the key way that Facebook will monetize its mobile users. Up until the middle of last year, Facebook didn’t really have a program to earn revenues from mobile devices. But then it aggressively stepped up ads for apps in the mobile news feed. It’s well-positioned to do this as app discovery and user acquisition is still a hairy problem for mobile developers across the board.

Yesterday, Facebook’s product director of advertising Gokul Rajaram said at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York that mobile install ads were “performing well, and we’re seeing them deliver really high quality users that take actions.”

Yelp, the local online business and restaurant guide that first launched in the U.S. in 2004 and now lives in 21 countries and 12 languages, and has more than 100 million monthly unique visitors as of January this year, launched in New Zealand this morning. On the heels of bringing its review data to Kiwis and continuing its international expansion, Yelp announced its first quarter earnings at market close today.

In the fourth quarter, Yelp missed earnings expectations, with net revenue coming in at $41.2 million in Q4 of 2012, a 65 percent growth in new revenue from 2011, while it saw a net loss of $5.3 million, or $0.08 per share. Today, Yelp turned things around, as it announced net revenue jumped to $46.1 million in Q1, reflecting a 68 percent growth from Q1 2012, while cumulative reviews grew 42 percent year-over-year to more than 39 million, average unique visitors grew 43 percent y/y and local business accounts grew 63 percent.

Wall Street’s consensus estimates were that Yelp would see $44.5 million in revenue for the quarter, and $1.5 million EBITDA. Yelp hurdled over the bar, in fact, seeing a net loss in the first quarter of 2013 of $4.8 million, or $0.08 per share. This means that while net losses only fell slightly from Q4 2012, it saw a more significant reduction in losses year-over year, $9.8 million, or $0.31 per share, over the first quarter of 2012.

In addition, compared to Wall Street estimates, Yelp said that adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of 2013 was $3.2 million, in comparison with an adjusted EBITDA loss of approximately $1 million for the first quarter of 2012.

In the quarterly earnings release today, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman trumped up Yelp’s milestones in the last quarter, namely its hitting a record 102 million unique users over the last quarter, while touching on its plans to improve on its mobile experience. Something that should be music to the ears of anyone with a smartphone.

“We had a great start to the year and are excited about the large opportunity in front of us,” Stoppelman said. “This quarter we achieved many milestones including a record 102 million unique visitors on a monthly average basis, demonstrating the strength of our content and the trust we have earned from consumers. We provide valuable leads to local businesses because consumers turn to Yelp at the critical point when they are making purchase decisions. Looking to the rest of the year, we will continue to focus our product innovation around the mobile experience and new features to better serve the consumer and local business owners, and we will continue integrating Qype into the Yelp platform.”

Other business highlights?

Yelp mobile saw 36 percent of local ads shown on mobile devices in the first quarter, while the app was used on 10 million unique devices over the quarter, building on the company’s launch of display ads on mobile for the first time in Q1.

In terms of guidance, Yelp expects revenue in the second quarter of 2013 to be in the range of $52.5 million to $53.5 million, which would represent a growth of around 62 percent compared to the second quarter 2012. Adjusted EBITDA is forecasted to fall in the range of $4.5 million to $5 million. For the full year 2013, net revenue is expected to be in between $216 million and $218 million, representing a 58 percent growth year-over-year.

In Q4 of last year, Facebook’s mobile MAUs surpassed desktop for the first time in its history. That trend continued in Q1 2013 with 751M MAUs. This is what we learned with today’s release of Facebook’s Q1 results.

Despite claims earlier this month, Facebook didn’t lose users, but gained 2M. Asia continues to be the largest area of user growth, according to the slides provided by Facebook today. During the earnings call, COO Sherly Sandberg mentioned that mobile ads are performing well particularly in Asia.

Here’s a full rundown for Q1 year-over-year user growth:

– Daily active users (DAUs) were 665 million on average for March 2013, an increase of 26% year-over-year.
– Monthly active users (MAUs) were 1.11 billion as of March 31, 2013, an increase of 23% year-over-year.
– Mobile MAUs were 751 million as of March 31, 2013, an increase of 54% year-over-year.

As you can see, the overall growth of monthly active users is incremental from the past quarter:

Something we’d like to find out is if certain age groups are growing faster than others. Some feel that even though the social network is an essential utility for many all over the world, the younger crowd might be starting to spend time socializing on other platforms. This was of course one of the reasons that Facebook acquired photo-sharing app Instagram last year, since the younger crowd had flocked to it as their sole social network. CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that Instagram’s community is growing faster than Facebook did when it was at a similar size. There’s another reason.

The mobile user growth kicked up its ad revenue numbers as well, accounting for 30%, or $375M. As our own Josh Constine predicted, mobile app install ads certainly helped.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

Facebook has just posted its earnings for the quarter that ended March 31, 2013. Facebook hit $1.46 billion in revenue up 38% from Q1 2012, beating Wall Street estimates of sales of $1.44 billion. Facebook reported earnings of $1.06 billion for the same quarter a year ago. Earnings per shared missed estimates, staying flat at $0.12 (analysts had expected earnings per share of $0.13.

Net income was up 7% to $219 million, versus $205 million a year ago (GAAP figures).

While revenue only grew slightly, the amount of its 1.11 billion monthly users that returned daily, 665 million, was slightly better than last quarter. For more details on user growth, read our post by Drew Olanoff.

Facebook also noted in an SEC filing issued today that Chief Accounting Officer David Spillane is leaving the company. Spillane had been the company’s revenue controller since 2008, overseeing growth and IPO. He is getting replaced by Jas Athwal effective May 10.

Initial reactions from the stock market were mildly positive, with the Facebook’s share price increasing slightly in after-hours trading just after the earnings were released, though the price had fallen 1.22% and closed at $27.43.

The percentage of Facebook’s total ad revenue that came from mobile surged to 30%, up from 23% last quarter. Read more on Facebook’s mobile progress from Kim-Mai Cutler.

Last quarter, Facebook posted earnings of $1.59 billion, a rise of 40% year-over-year. Last quarter the company had 1.1 billion monthly users, 618 million daily users, and 680 mobile monthly million, up 57% year-over-year.

In the lead-up to today’s earnings, there were a lot of expectations about how Facebook would perform performing around some key metrics.

User numbers. As noted in the WSJ, one area where Facebook will be scrutinized will be in its proportion of daily to monthly active users. In Q4 the figure was 58.5% globally. Mark Mahaney of RBC Capital Markets told the newspaper that he expects that to go up to 59% but “anything less than 58% would be a negative for Facebook.” Elsewhere, there have been some reports of user attrition. However, Facebook hit a 60% daily to monthly users, showing slightly better engagement.

The fact that Facebook saw a higher DAU/MAU ratio means that Facebook was more engaging this quarter than last, a strong sign rebuking critics who claim people are using the site less. However, Facebook’s user growth is currently coming predominantly from developing markets that don’t earn it nearly as much money as users in first-world markets like the United States.

Advertising and payments. Last quarter Facebook’s ad revenue was $1.33 billion, up 41% on the year before, and payments revenue came in at $256 million. Facebook’s payments revenue in Q1 was $213 million, it’s biggest payment three-month quarter yet. [Correction: We original said payments revenue fell, but that’s because Q4 2013 was a four-month quarter, irregularly boosting its revenue on the books.]

Mobile. Last quarter mobile revenues revenues grew to make up 23 percent of the company’s total sales. Mobile revenues effectively equals mobile advertising, since gifts, also sold on mobile, are negligible. Next quarter, however, Facebook will start making another revenue stream in mobile by way of Parse, the mobile development platform. Parse has around 60,000 developers, and offers a freemium model based on usage, with the cheapest paid version priced at around $199 per month. This was still a relatively small business when it was acquired last month for a price believed to be around $85 million so it’s not likely to grow and become a significant revenue source for another couple of years. Another specific area proving to be a significant driver within Facebook’s mobile ads business are app install ads, where app publishers pay a fee for an add to appear in a person’s mobile news feed.

Facebook Home; Graph Search. This past quarter saw the launch of two major initiatives for the company, Facebook Home on mobile and Graph Search, the “third pillar” after News Feed and Timeline, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook Home saw a little surge of interest with 500,000 downloads in its first five days across a limited amount of devices that currently support it.

The earnings call is at 2pm PT; we’ll be listening in and reporting on that.

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2013 NY today, Tumblr founder David Karp and Sequoia partner Roelof Botha took the stage with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington to discuss Tumblr’s history, the relationship between Karp as an entrepreneur and Botha as his investor and why New York is such a great city for a startup. The discussion really only got heated once Arrington started asking about New York, though.

Karp clearly doesn’t have much love for Silicon Valley. He noted how University Avenue is perfectly pleasant and “smells great,” but he also feels he can’t be there for more than a few days. In New York, he said, at least “not everyone you run into is wearing a fucking Dropbox or Airbnb Shirt.” In New York, he believes, people can still appreciate a good idea from the users’ perspective and – because not everybody already works for a startup – from a startup perspective.

Asked why that’s the case, Botha argued that New York has a real advantage because it is “one of the densest urban environments in the U.S. If you are in Mountain View, you don’t resonate with the needs of urban dwellers,” he said – and the demographics are shifting toward these dense environments. “Tumblr couldn’t have emerged in Sunnyvale,” Botha noted, though he sadly didn’t quite explain what exactly it is that makes Tumblr a service for the urban jungle of New York.

Karp – always the optimist – believes that Tumblr can be an iconic New York startup and play the role Amazon and Microsoft currently play in Seattle and that some of the early Silicon Valley companies obviously played for the whole Bay Area ecosystem.

(Disclosure: CrunchFund has invested in Tumblr)

Brian Pokorny, who recently rejoined SV Angel as a general partner, weighed in this afternoon on the future of a number of high-profile companies — Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo.

Pokorny was interviewed at Disrupt NY, where he was joined onstage by his partners David Lee and Ron Conway. When TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington asked them how they felt about Facebook and whether it was going to “pull a Myspace,” Conway and Lee deferred to Pokorny as the youngest of the three of them.

In response, he acknowledged that a lot of the fun social behavior from younger users like high schoolers may have moved elsewhere: “New mobile social apps like Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, things like that are where those behaviors are persisting.” Not that he thinks that means Facebook is in trouble, because it has become something we all use and depend on.

“It’s a utility,” Pokorny said. “It’s not going anywhere.”

He also said that Facebook won’t suffer Myspace’s fate. Myspace failed due to a lack of product innovation, while Facebook continues to innovate.

“Plus, Myspace didn’t have identity,” Conway said, later adding, “Facebook did it right when it authenticated people’s identity.”

Arrington then asked about Twitter, and Pokorny said, “It’s becoming the place you go to look for real-time information. It’s just going to grow and grow and grow in its importance.”

The last company they discussed was Yahoo. Arrington said that he spoke to CEO Marissa Mayer backstage at Disrupt and she showed him a cool mobile app, but his response was, “Okay, what else you got?” So he wondered: Is there really a chance to turn Yahoo around? Lee said the answer is yes, pointing specifically to Mayer’s experience as a computer scientist and background at Google, which should help her attract good engineers.

“There aren’t many precedents [for a turnaround] but there are a few,” Lee said. “But I do think it starts with the talent.”

The SV Angel partners also discussed the state of startup innovation, which we covered in a separate post.