Category: Tech news

Gillmor Gang – Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor. Recording has concluded.

What do you do after you spend years working on very serious, infrastructure problems supporting Gmail and literally hundreds of millions of users globally?

You build a drawing app. Or at least that’s what Gabor Cselle did after he stopped being an Android and Gmail product manager, following an acquisition into Google two years ago. He and co-founder Jeremy Orlow had been working on Gmail and Chrome respectively.

“We just wanted to do something fun. Something that would make our friends smile and feel really lightweight,” Cselle said. “This is the simplest idea that we could come up with. We literally were just like: What is something that will delight people?”

So they created DrawChat.

In DrawChat, you can send friends silly sketches or even draw all over existing photos from your camera. It’s goofy, and a bit reminiscent of DrawSomething, the game that was acquired by Zynga earlier this year in the $180 million OMGPOP deal. But it also feels a bit like Pair as well, since you have these long very, visual records of conversation with friends and family.

Most of my drawings look pretty terrible given the limited screen size and well, the limitations of drawing with your finger. There are different colors to choose from and plenty of backgrounds like photos on the moon and people looking angry or surprised.

The app spreads virally through text messages (not through Facebook yet, since they’re waiting on the social network’s deep integration into iOS 6). If you send a drawing to a friend who doesn’t have the app, they’ll see a preview of the picture and be prompted to download the app.

Cselle has a specialty in mail and messaging after working on Gmail, then enterprise-focused mail startup Xobni, and then his own mail search startup Remail, which was bought by Google. But he’s clearly taking a break from e-mail.

“If you want to build something in e-mail or a new way to handle task management, it’s going to take you a year,” he said. “We wanted to do something quick and fun.”

Indeed. Cselle, Orlow and another co-founder Chloe Bregman built the app in about five weeks from start to finish.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Facebook officially launched its Sponsored Results program, which allows advertisers to place sponsored links in the social network’s search results — and the early results are impressive, according to social advertising and analytics startup Optimal.

Optimal has been running Sponsored Results campaigns for its own customers, but it also tracks brand activity and fan value on Facebook through its Optimal Index (viewable on the company’s home page). So CEO Rob Leathern used the data to answer two questions: Do these units help advertisers target a new audience? And are they actually effective? (Spoiler: Yes and yes, at least so far.)

On the question of reaching a new audience, Optimal looked at the number of people who would have been reachable by targeting a given search term, and then compared that to a brand’s Facebook fans (or others who could have been targeted with existing Facebook ad units). For example, during the seven-day period that Optimal measured, “Facebook” showed up in 24,800 US searches (yes, apparently people are searching for Facebook while on Facebook), and only 21.9 percent of those searchers were fans. The percentages are similar or lower for the other top brands on Facebook, like YouTube (20.8 percent), Coca-Cola (2.7 percent), Disney (22.3 percent) and MTV (17.4 percent).

In other words, if YouTube had placed an ad on the search term “YouTube”, it could have reached 24,620 US searchers, and nearly 80 percent of them would have been a new audience, or at least people who weren’t already Facebook fans. Among all the brands that Leathern looked at, he says there was a weighted average of 7 percent overlap between fans and searchers.

On the question of effectiveness, Leathern isn’t taking a comprehensive look at big brand data, but instead providing anecdotal evidence from Optimal’s campaigns. Those campaigns covered a variety of categories, including political, entertainment, and consumer packaged goods. The clickthrough rates ranged from 0.7 percent to 4.1 percent. Leathern says that on the low-end, the campaigns performed at least 10x better than normal Facebook Marketplace ads. Over time, those numbers will “normalize” and go down, but he says they’re still “very promising.”

Looking at the data, Leathern also suggests that the new Sponsored Results aren’t a replacement for normal search advertising or for normal Facebook ads. Instead, it’s “a new way of reaching people” that can grow brand’s audience in an “incremental” way.

Current Kickstarter-du-jour Instacube just announced new planned Facebook integration, which will allow it to stream photos from that social network as well as its newly-acquired subsidiary Instagram. The company decided to add Facebook as a stretch goal incentive, and will offer it up when it hits $500,000 in its campaign. Which likely won’t take long, given that it’s at nearly $440,000 as of this writing and still has two weeks to go in its funding campaign.

Instacube started with a relatively lofty goal for its Android-powered digital photo frame at $250,000, but hit that mark pretty quickly (it took less than a week). Since then, the project’s creators have set two stretch goals including the Facebook one announced today. The first were black and white versions, which were unlocked when the project hit $400,000. Then, earlier this week, Instacube announced a partnership with SmartThings, which will allow the cube to display notifications for things like visitors arriving or leaving the lights on. It’ll also be able to control home automation systems that SmartThings can operating, making it much more than just a pretty face.

Facebook integration is a logical addition, especially since despite Instagram’s success, it’s still far and away the more popular venue for sharing photos with likely over 200 billion shared at this point. For users, that means that the Instacube becomes a much more broadly useful tool, which is likely exactly why the company behind it is using it to see if it can’t stretch out its funding even further beyond the original goal.

It would appear that Siri is down. We’ve tested five iPhone 4S models, all of which are running iOS 5.1. One of the iPhones in the TechCrunch office is running iOS 6, and Siri seems to be working fine on the newer OS.

Twitter confirms, and there are some pretty funny tweets coming out of this very serious crisis.

To be fair, Siri doesn’t work that well anyway, even when she’s not down. There’s a lot of confusion when using unusual names, and without WiFi there’s a pretty good chance you won’t get an answer at all. Perhaps, iOS 6 will fix that.

For the moment, she doesn’t seem able to even transcribe requests. She simply responds with “I’m sorry, I’m having a bit of trouble with that” or “Uh oh, there’s a problem. Can you try again?”

She won’t even search the web.

It’s unclear why this problem has occurred, but according to the various languages in which people are complaining on Twitter, it isn’t contained to a certain geographical location. As it sits right now, Siri is even less useful than she usually is.

We’ve reached out to Apple and we’ll update as soon as we know more.

I hate when Siri starts acting stupid

— DesireeDawson (@SunnyDBeauty) September 7, 2012

Wolfram Alpha just announced a useful new feature if you plan to follow Disrupt San Francisco closely. It has added CrunchBase data to its computational engine. You can now learn more about a specific startup, compare them or do any other computation with other Wolfram Alpha data.

Adding CrunchBase to its data sources is part of Wolfram Alpha’s ongoing effort to make everything computable. Usually, scientific data comes first, but the company announced personal analytics report for Facebook in August and now CrunchBase integration.

CrunchBase will complete the information on private companies in search results. These days, they are focusing on tech startups and that is why they chose to use TechCrunch’s database and API. The algorithmic part of the integration still needs some fine-tuning.

They focused first on previous Disrupt finalists. For example, you can now compare the funding history of Ark, DataSift and Firespotter Labs — developers of Disrupt NYC 2012′s winner service UberConference. You could imagine any sort of computation, with macroeconomic data or any other data available in Wolfram Alpha. For example, Facebook market cap is 2257 times Firespotter Labs’ funding — but this number is slowly going down.

Finally, here are a few words from C. Alan Joyce on Wolfram Alpha’s blog: “Good luck to this year’s competitors! If we don’t cover them already, we’ll make an effort to get them into Wolfram|Alpha as soon as possible after the conference.”

 

The data scientist in me has a new crush: Google Surveys. Last night, Google’s consumer marketing division released a deliciously rich dataset of citizen reaction to the Democratic National Convention speeches with a rapid response survey. Unlike the notoriously young, liberal bias of social media sites, nearly everyone with an internet connection uses Google (it is a verb, after all). Downloadable data can be sliced and diced by age, gender, and income, and has already revealed some intriguing insights. Bill Clinton’s speech, in seems, was a bipartisan bananza: both young hipsters and old money-bags agreed with him that no president could turn around the economy in 4 years. It also seems that both men and women equally prioritize the issue of women’s rights. Data experts and stat lovers can play around with the slick interactive user interface here.

Of course, self-reported surveys do have their limitations. For instance, research shows that people are dreadfully bad at predicting whether they will vote. But, users do know how they feel about issues, especially if asked right away. So, rapid response surveys, combined with Google Politics’ new search trend monitor, makes the search titan a welcome source of near realtime and (relatively) unbiased data on the impact of political campaigns.

When @barackobama‘s #DNC2012 speech ended at 11:03 p.m. ET, @google searches for “register to vote” doubled nationwide. #googlepolitics

— Google Politics (@googlepolitics) September 7, 2012

However, we politely beg the Google Survey team to work on their question methodology. For instance, the question, “Do you agree with Bill Clinton’s claim that no president could have repaired the economy in four years?” is a survey no-no: so-called “double barrel” questions make it hard to distinguish respondents who agree with Bill Clinton, his opinion, or both. Nor is giving respondents 27 different ways of characterizing his speech particularly useful (is there a difference between “good”, “positive,” and “rousing”?). But, methodological belly-aching aside, this is a wonderful tool that we hope to make use of in our articles soon.

San Francisco-based Dijit first launched with an app that was mainly used to control different devices connected to the TV, and allowed users to check out various video services available, for instance, through their Roku or other connected devices. Then it got big into social, letting users “check in” to shows that they’re watching and see what shows their friends were getting into as well. But this new evolution of Dijit, and the launch of the NextGuide iPad app, is all about personalization of the TV experience, and allowing users to find and browse shows on TV and online that are relevant to their interests.

Dijit’s NextGuide wants to be the go-to place for video discovery of all types, and sets itself apart with a beautiful, unified view of all your favorite movies, TV shows, and other interests. It does away with the typical programming guide grid and displays content a user might be interested in with rich box art and the ability to customize the experience by cutting out shows or episodes you don’t want to see.

A lot of “personalized TV guide apps” just display shows that users have already watched or shown an interest in, which, frankly, is a little boring. I mean, you already know that you want to watch those things, right? NextGuide seeks to differentiate itself by connecting users to shows or TV episodes that they might not have known about or might not have been on their radar. By connecting with Facebook and taking a look at users’ interest graphs, it can make suggestions that other apps might not have.

Take, for instance, a user who lives in San Francisco.* A nextGuide user might not be a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations,” but he might be interested in seeing an episode highlighting the best restaurants in his hometown.** Or, let’s say you’re a fan of Bill Murray. You probably know that Lost In Translation is on Netflix, but you probably didn’t know that Murray will be the featured guest on Conan O’Brien’s show this week — that is, unless you’re also a huge fan of Conan O’Brien. NextGuide will highlight those live events when it sees them.

Which brings us to another key differentiator — NextGuide isn’t just about live TV, nor is it just about online services. It blends both live and online video and movies pretty seamlessly, providing a way to discover all sorts of new content through both. For users with Netflix and Hulu Plus, the app has deep linking into those services, enabling users who just discovered a new show or episode to link directly to it.

On the live TV side, NextGuide has integrated with DirecTV set-top boxes to enable users to use the app as a control and to jump to shows that they want to watch. It’s working with other pay TV providers to enable similar capabilities with their set-top boxes, and is also looking to add DVR record functionality in future releases. And NextGuide will alert users whenever their favorite shows are on or an actor or band they like is set to have a TV appearance.

We sat down with Dijit CEO Jeremy Toeman to demo the app; be sure to check out the video above for a closer look at everything NextGuide is capable of.

==
* I know, I’m going way outside the box on this one.
** It’s actually a really good episode.

It’s still a hairy problem for every mobile app developer: how do you attract new users in a hopelessly crowded app store?

Last year, video trailers for apps emerged as one popular for developers (and particularly game developers) to acquire users as Apple cracked down on other methods.

Several companies including San Francisco’s Flurry, which is also a popular mobile analytics provider, effectively became mobile video ad networks. Now the company is saying that a year later, it’s now seeing 100 million completed video ad views for mobile apps in its network. It’s also bringing its video ad network to Android.

Flurry’s product, called AppCircle Clips, lets mobile app users watch movie-style trailers for apps and other brands. At the end of the ad, the user can click over to the app store and download the app. All of the natural targeting capabilities for geography, device, and demographics are provided.

One game developer, Gaia Interactive, stepped forward as a case study. They crossed over from Facebook to iOS with their hit Monster Galaxy earlier this year and used Flurry as one of their acquisition channels. (Most developers rely on a mix of methods of get users into their apps or games.)

Gaia says that with Flurry, they got to a #3 ranking on the top free and grossing lists. They added that users coming through Flurry had 43 percent more sessions than the average and that those sessions lasted 23 percent longer. The company had tried other methods like banner ad campaigns earlier in the fall, but those led to a #15 ranking in the games category and the title quickly fell out of the top 100 after six days. Gaia re-oriented their marketing strategy toward video, with an action-style movie trailer that was published in Flurry’s network.

Advertisers in Flurry’s network pay per completed video view. Flurry didn’t say what the average publisher in the network earns except to say that eCPMs (or the effective cost-per-1,000-impressions) often tops $10. Several other rivals like Tapjoy, Sponsorpay and Vungle have veered down the in-app video advertising route over the past year as Apple put pressure on bots and offer walls as ways for developers to get new users.

VirusTotal, an online malware and virus scanner, was just acquired by Google. The company already used a number of Google services ahead of the acquisition, including App Engine and Google Storage. VirusTotal will continue to operate independently and maintain its existing partnerships with other antivirus companies and security experts. The two companies did not disclose the details of the announcement. It is worth noting, however, that VirusTotal describes itself as a “small resource-constrained company.” The company was founded in 2004 and uses a large number of antivirus engines from third-party providers to offer thorough checks of files that users can upload to its service.

In addition to checking files, VirusTotal also allows users to enter a URL and check web sites for potential malware threats. The service also offers browser plugins for Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Google just confirmed this acquisition to us and a spokesperson provided us with the following statement:

“Security is incredibly important to our users and we’ve invested many millions of dollars to help keep them safe online. VirusTotal also has a strong track record in web security, and we’re delighted to be able to provide them with the infrastructure they need to ensure that their service continues to improve.”

It’s not clear how (or if) Google plans to use VirusTotal’s technology in its own products, but given that the service will continue to operate independently, this is likely not an acqui-hire. It’s possible, however, that Chrome could soon get an improved built-in virus scanner for downloads courtesy of VirusTotal, for example, or that parts of Google Search’s or Gmail’s malware detection could use some of VirusTotal’s assets.

Here is the full announcement from VirusTotal (via Mikka Hypponen and TNW):

An update from VirusTotal

Our goal is simple: to help keep you safe on the web. And we’ve worked hard to ensure that the services we offer continually improve. But as a small, resource-constrained company, that can sometimes be challenging. So we’re delighted that Google, a long-time partner, has acquired VirusTotal. This is great news for you, and bad news for malware generators, because:

• The quality and power of our malware research tools will keep improving, most likely faster; and
• Google’s infrastructure will ensure that our tools are always ready, right when you need them.

VirusTotal will continue to operate independently, maintaining our partnerships with other antivirus companies and security experts. This is an exciting step forward. Google has a long track record working to keep people safe online and we look forward to fighting the good fight together with them.

VirusTotal Team

Are you dying to tell your friends about all the new startups you read about on TechCrunch? A newly launched iOS application called Just Because is now making that possible. With Just Because, you can offer your friends a free gift from a startup – like $20 at Uber, for example, or a free lip gloss at Birchbox or a free t-shirt at JackThreads. And what’s even better is that each gift only costs a dollar to send. Why only a dollar? Because startups are more than happy to give away some freebies here and there with the hopes of converting those first-time users into lifetime customers. They can factor in the costs of doing so into their customer acquisition budgets.

Already, several companies are on board to give Just Because a shot, including Uber, BirchBox, TaskRabbit, Warby Parker, Trunk Club, Jack Threads, BetaBrand, MoxieJean, Bespoke Post, and Cheeky Chicago.

Just Because co-founder Matt Hartman, a biz school grad and ex-Hot Potato intern who stayed with the company through the Facebook acquisition, says the idea was spun out from his first startup, ReferBoost, a social lead gen operation for apartment referrals. “One of the things we were doing was giving out gift cards to residents for posting about the building and writing reviews,” he explains. “As were doing that, Uber was doing customer acquisition in Chicago. So I thought to myself, we’re paying for Starbucks gift cards, why don’t we do Uber gift cards?”

Uber thought that sounded interesting and gave him some cards. However, Hartman was constrained by the number of buildings he had on his system, which is what led to the idea of the iPhone app. But now, instead of rewarding people for their activities, the app simply offers them the opportunity to send these virtual gifts.

Of course, there are a lot of “gifting” apps out there, including the Facebook-acquired Karma, the newly launched Giftly, Wrapp, Giftiki, and others. But the focus for Just Because is slightly different. It’s not about sending a friend a real “gift” on a special occasion, like their birthday – it’s about just sharing something you like with a friend. ”We’re trying to change the economics of what it means to send somebody a gift,” says Hartman. “The use cases [for the app] are not just attached to special events, they’re more about the people and the brands: ‘this made me think of you – this brand – just because.’”

To keep the app from getting too spammy, Just Because has editorial oversight into the startups accepted, and the goal moving forward is to only include those where there’s a real, tangible gift involved – not just a coupon or discount. Users can only receive a gift once, and the gift codes provided only work for new, first-time customers. The app requires a Facebook login, and the gifts are shared by having the sender post to a friend’s Facebook wall. In the future, plans to offer sharing via SMS may come into play.

For the participating companies, it’s a bit of a no-brainer for them. While Hartman won’t talk specifics about the cost to the startups, it’s a function of having the recipient sign up and become a customer who places their first order, or it’s a dollar amount per acquired user. Startups don’t pay if it doesn’t work. And the system also lets these companies identify their top evangelists, which could translate into some type of reward further on. That’s something to be careful about, Hartman says, because you don’t want people only participating for the incentives.

The Chicago-based company is a bootstrapped team of two and is already talking to other startups to expand its current lineup. You can download Just Because on your iPhone here.

If you’re into all of this political hoopla and you gauge the interest of America from the number of tweets during political events, then Michelle Obama has put the Democrats into the driver’s seat with her speech tonight. Well, if the sentiment sways towards her party along with the numbers.

On my train ride home from the TCHQ, my entire feed was filled with nothing but nice things to say about the speech from the first lady.  Twitter shared some stats from the night, and it wasn’t just my feed that blew up:

At the #DNC2012, @michelleobama‘s speech peaked at 28,003 TPM. Read more in our blog post: blog.twitter.com/2012/09/dnc201…

— Twitter (@twitter) September 5, 2012

These impressive numbers put the Democratic National Convention way ahead of its Republican counterpart in just its first night:

Although it’s just the first night at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, people have already posted more than 3 million Tweets, including #DNC2012 and related terms. In comparison, there were 4 million Tweets sent throughout the three days of last week’s Republican National Convention (#RNC2012).

Among tonight’s keynotes, First Lady Michelle Obama’s (@MichelleObama) primetime speech peaked at 28,003 Tweets per minute (TPM) at its conclusion — nearly double Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s (@MittRomney) 14,289 peak. One line in her speech this evening — “we’ve got so much more to do” — saw 22,004 TPM.

If Kal Penn talks to an empty sofa, expect these numbers to skyrocket. The next step though is for a sentiment analysis company to step in and tell us what all of these tweets mean for each party. That’s not my bag, though.

If you missed the speech, give it a watch:

[Image Source: Flickr]

The rise and fall of Facebook’s stock has been one of the most-covered topics of the summer, and for good reason. Everyone wants to know what will happen next, so we asked investors, CEOs and media pundits about when they think the best time to buy will be.

Because of its 950 million users, an Oscar winning movie based on its founding story and an ecosystem of other companies built off of it, Facebook enjoyed one of the most anticipated IPOs ever. Since then, watching the stock falter has been “painful” for Facebook, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg puts it.

Analysts for Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan Chase cut their price targets for Facebook on Friday, pushing shares to $18.06, less than half its IPO price. Today, the stock fell even further, closing at $17.73, a new all-time closing low.

What will the stock do in the coming weeks, months and years? And, more importantly, what should you do? As in, should you buy it?

We asked some experts for their take on the matter. Angel investor Peter Shankman, TechCrunch contributor and EIR at Javelin Venture Partners Semil Shah, co-founder and CEO of Stockr Vinny Jindal, co-founder of Ampush Media and former investor at Goldman Sachs Jesse Pujji and TechCrunch’s own Facebook expert Josh Constine shared their thoughts with us.

Here are our major takeaways:

There Are A Ton Of Moving Pieces

“There are some macroeconomic factors at play in the market, as well micro (specific to Facebook),” Shah tells me. “It’s important to keep in mind that even if Facebook didn’t exist as a [public] company right now, the market would be jittery overall given the country’s deficit and political uncertainty (in election years) and concerns about defaults in the Eurozone, among other issues. On a micro-level, Facebook went public at a multiple 25x its annual revenue run rate.”

“It was priced at a very high earnings multiple, leaving little upside for investors in the short term,” Constine says. “Once people realized there was no easy pop to slurp up, those who didn’t believe in the mission dumped their shares. Investors may be holding off not just for signs that its mobile news feed ads get seen and clicked (there’s already some evidence of that), but until Facebook can show them at a scale to replace its web ad business over time.”

Silicon Valley And Wall Street Are Separated By More Than Just Miles

“Wall Street is terrible at thinking long term,” Pujji says, noting his time at Goldman. “All the best investors…the only thing they do that’s better than other people is think in ten year increments not quarter to quarter…Wall Street doesn’t think more than two years out. They’re incapable of it based on the way they’re incentivized.”

“This all has to do with the mechanics of Wall Street and very little to do with Facebook,” he adds. “Think about it—if a company’s stock goes down 20% in a day, did anything really change in that company? Wall Street is as emotional as they come.”

“Facebook is more of a stored-value company than most,” Constine says. “I don’t think Wall Street has adjusted to properly valuing companies that not only are doing well now, but are poised to shut out disrupters and monetize subtle data goldmines.”

A Magic “Buy It Now” Share Price Is Difficult To Pinpoint

“Multiple dot com realities have shown that every time we say it can’t get any worse, it finds a way to get worse,” Shankman tells me, explaining that he wouldn’t buy yet.

Shankman says he would buy if it went down to $10-$12, “just to say I have a lot of it.” He recalls buying Apple stock at $9 and holding on to it despite everyone disparaging the stock at the time.

“I could see myself buying in the mid-teens, but not for a short flip. For the long term,” Jindal says, explaining that the stock is still currently overvalued.

“Facebook creates too much value for the world and has too much ad-targetable data for it to stay this far down for long,” Constine claims. “I’d recommend buying soon or right when the last big lockup expires.”

Remember, Remember, $FB In November

“People are looking for the first indication that [mobile advertising and sponsored stories] are working, and then you’ll see a pop in the stock,” Jindal says. “It’s proven to be a lot more volatile than other similar, mature companies.”

“I think the stock will continue to waver, and possibly dip again when the employee lockups expire,” Constine says. “A brilliant, popular new product or a new ad unit with huge potential and strong endorsements from the advertising industry could boost it, though.”

The expiration of the last lockup period put a good deal of pressure on the stock; in mid-August, 271 million shares were released and the stock slid over 4%. After today’s 8-K filing with the SEC, Facebook won’t face quite as much downward pressure this fall as they would have.

On October 29th, up to 234 million shares will be available for sale. On November 14, 777 million shares will be freed up for public sale. Before this filing, the company could have had 1.2 billion shares becoming available for sale on November 14.

“I think a lot of employees will sell a little bit of stock, which will add up and cause a dip,” Constine posits.

If You Buy, Be In For The Long Haul

The most consistent thing that all five interviewees agreed on was that if you buy Facebook stock, you’ll need to hold on to it for a long, long time.

“Personally, I’m ‘long’ on Facebook because I believe they will grow into their promise and be more than just an “ad company” but actually leverage their graphs to power some of the web’s and mobile’s best applications,” Shah says. “But, it will take a while to get there, as Twitter poses a threat and Google and Apple currently hold key real estate. I don’t see the value in trying to analyze Facebook’s stock price per hour. In eight years, they’ve created roughly $50b in value, a global brand, and massive network effects. Usually when a property has those characteristics, money will follow.”

Jindal says he believes Facebook will continue to be our dominant social network for the long run, but could suffer as social advertising becomes an increasingly fractured market.

Constine recommends waiting “a long time” to sell: “Until television as an advertising medium truly falters as mainstreamers watch less broadcast content and budgets shift online. At that point, there will be a flood of ad dollars moving to wherever the most accurate targeting is, and that’s Facebook.”

“If you’re willing to put it in a lockbox and not worry about it for five years, then buy it now,” Pujji tells me. “But if you worry about it over the next few years, you’ll go crazy.”

The Bottom Line: Buy This Fall

The experts were generally able to agree that it would be great to be able to buy at $10 or $12. But you don’t want to turn your nose up at $13 or $14 a share and miss the boat in the long-run. If you were looking to buy $FB, keep an eye on two fall time periods to purchase: late October and mid-November. Specifically, between October 23rd, when Facebook reports its Q3 numbers and the October 29th lock-up expiration, and right on or after the big Nov. 14 lock-up expiration. The stock should be fluctuating, and towards the lower end at both times.

Either way, the stock will continue to be watched intensely in both the short and long terms. As Shankman says, “This is proving to be hands-down the number one business case study for every B-school for the next fifteen years.”

Shankman says he owns “around 50 shares” of Facebook from his broker. The others do not own Facebook stock.

Heads up: I am not a professional financial analyst. You have to make decisions that are right for your portfolio, and don’t come suing me if things don’t go your way.

It turns out we may have been over-thinking it.

If the invite sent out this morning by Apple is any indication, the next iPhone is likely to be called the “iPhone 5″. No, it doesn’t technically make sense — it is the sixth iteration of the iPhone — and yet, at the same time, it makes all the sense in the world. It’s the iPhone 5 because that’s what everyone is calling it. Sometimes it is that simple.

Sometimes.

Horace Dediu dove into Apple’s naming conventions earlier and lays out an argument that Apple may stick with the generational naming because there will be no iPhone sub-brand. This is in contrast to the iPad, which started out with generational naming — hence, “iPad 2″ — and then reverted back to simply “the new iPad” with the latest iteration. The thinking there is that because Apple is gearing up to release another version of the iPad, the so-called “iPad mini”, there was a need to streamline the top-level product.

Maybe.

I’m just not sure it’s that complicated. It seems to me that Apple is less calculated when it comes to these decisions — which itself is a bit odd because Apple seems calculated in just about everything else it does. I believe that sometimes the company simply goes with what sounds right at the time. Sometimes at the last minute. Remember the iPhone 3GS? Remember how it started as the “iPhone 3G S” — yes, with the space — before Apple later changed it?

And while it’s speculation at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some debate quite recently as to whether or not to call this next iPhone the “iPhone 5″ or follow in the iPad’s footsteps and simply go with “the new iPhone”. With only a week until the unveiling, I’m sure they’ve made the call by now, but a few sources still weren’t sure which way it would go.

“The new iPhone” has been the sexy pick for months amongst those who closely watch Apple. And again, given Apple’s other product lines and the new iPad, it makes sense. And it certainly seems to make more sense than “iPhone 5″, because of the generational misalignment. But I’m just not sure Apple is looking at it that deeply.

The move to “the new iPad” has been confusing. I’ve been asked more than a few times by friends and relatives who don’t follow technology as closely if the iPad 2 is actually newer than the new iPad. Numbers don’t lie, after all — except when they do. “2″ is greater than no number, but the $399 price of the iPad 2 directly contradicts this notion since the new iPad starts at $499. For the average consumer, this is confusing.

Yes, it’s a temporary confusion, since it only matters until the iPad 2 goes out of circulation (which could be as soon as this fall with the launch of the iPad mini). But I’m not sure it’s something Apple wants to deal with again, to a much larger extent, with the iPhone — the product responsible for just about half of its revenue.

You can imagine the conversations: Yes, the “new iPhone” is better than the iPhone 4S, which is better than the iPhone 4. Yes, even though it doesn’t have a number.

“Just look at the price” is not a good argument.

Meanwhile, amongst average consumers, the “iPhone 5″ would be a natural transition. It has been the presumed name for two years now, since Apple threw a not-so-curveball with the “iPhone 4S” last year. Some people have been waiting for this mythical “iPhone 5″ all this time.

Further, it is certainly possible that Apple intends to follow the “iPhone X” and “iPhone XS” (“X” being some number) naming strategy going forward. This was the rational argument made in a MacRumors forum posting a few weeks ago. I’m still not completely sold, since Apple seems to change what the “S” stands for over time and depending on who you talk to. But it’s possible.

At the end of the day, the name Apple ultimately chooses is purely for marketing purposes. Look at the back of your current iPhone. What does it say? “iPhone”. That’s it. The same will be true with the next iPhone, I’m told.

The only time you see the actual name is when you plug it in to sync with iTunes (which you no longer have to do), and on the product box. (By the way, the box circulating around with “the new iPhone” engraving is clearly a fake: notice the since-excommunicated YouTube icon? Yeah. Also, the new iPad box simply reads “iPad”.) And, of course, in the commercials.

It’s marketing. As far as 99 percent of the rest of the company is concerned, it’s simply the iPhone.

So where does that leave us? Well, again, it seems clear from the invitation that Apple intends to call the device the “iPhone 5″. The “12″ indicating the date of the event casting a “5″ shadow is clever. But I still believe there is some wiggle room for Apple to hint at what’s coming without being stuck with the name necessarily (and I’m not the only one). We’ll see.

The point is that we’ve all been arguing semantics on something that ultimately comes down to marketing. Remember Ocean’s Twelve? It wasn’t the 12th film in the series, it simply followed Ocean’s Eleven. Maybe it’s best to think of it that way.

As an aside, while speaking of “11″ — I’m perhaps most interested in the in-the-works for sometime now iTunes 11. Whispers have a team from Facebook in Cupertino, actively engaged in the ongoing development. That clearly seems to confirm the end of Ping, but also — hopefully — a completely reworked experience. Be warned: there have been many false-starts here. So it’s not clear if we’ll hear more next week, next month, or alas, next year.

Over the last two years, there’s been a significant increase in the amount of educational media available to the world’s learners, but teachers and parents are hard pressed today to navigate the education content jungle. As a result, curators, algorithms and content analyzers like Learning Registry have popped up to help educators find the best and most effective learning media from the 100K apps on the App Store and the long-list of educational tools available on the Web.

Chalkable, a 500 Startups grad that officially launches today, is offering its own solution to the education content shuffle with a platform that’s part app store and part learning management system. And to help support its launch in 50+ schools at the beginning of the school year, Chalkable is also announcing that it has raised $1.3 million in seed funding from 500 Startups, Expansion Venture Capital, Great Oaks Venture Capital, former Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly, former Facebook mobile platform lead Luke Shepard and a handful of other VCs and angels.

What is Chalkable? We recently covered the funding announcement of eSpark Learning, a startup that crawls curates the 100K+ apps and eBooks available on the App Store into custom learning profiles and playlists for K-8 students, based on their individual needs. Essentially, it’s a curated, Pandora-like discovery approach to native (iOS) apps. Luke Shepard, who just joined eSpark as CTO, has (beyond investing) also been a mentor to Chalkable.

So, you could think of Chalkable as a web apps-focused sister to eSpark. In other words, ask yourself this question: Where would you go to find one resource on the best Web-based learning tools? The options are few. So, through a web apps store, Chalkable is offering one, aggregated resource for teachers and parents to find web-based learning apps and tools. While the App Store and Google Play offer you the ability to filter by category, purely by offering one place to bring together ed apps already starts to solve a big pain point for the wild, fast-growing world of online education content.

Chalkable’s app store, as with those before it, lists the top education apps from other stores and resources across the Web in one place, allowing users to browse by category (History, Math, Science, etc.) and click-to-buy. The app store offers pre-existing reviews, star-ratings, and lets users chime in with their own.

Now, the chances are that most people are likely far more familiar with education-related native (mobile) apps and while it’s true that schools are adopting iPads in droves, focusing on web apps expands the playing field and gives educators and students access to tools that are accessible across platforms (and devices). It’s a lesson Chalkable learned from Facebook and Google, and talk to the Chalkable founders and they’ll tell you that HTML5-based web apps are the future.

Unfortunately, as it is in the sphere beyond education, web apps just aren’t the same quality as their native bretheren, and a big challenge facing Chalkable going forward is assuring quality in a wide selection of apps. That being said, through a more universal focus on web apps, Chalkable is trying to address some of the limitations mobile devices and their native apps present during use in the classroom.

For example, while schools may be adopting iPads fast and furiously, the fact is many students don’t have their own iPads, so schools distribute them in-class and most content is locked into the device for security, privacy and a number of other reasons. That means kids have to go back to the same iPad every day, but obviously schools may not have an app or device for every student — a problem easily solved by offering web apps.

What’s more, simply building an education-focused web app store only goes so far and ignores a lot of the problems inherent to the way teachers and students use, access and pay for learning tools. So, Chalkable is building a platform around its web app store, a basic learning management system that offers teachers, students, admins and parents a number of the same features one might find in the dreaded Blackboard. (Which, along with many other university-focused LMSes, is beginning to turn its attention to offering a only-slightly-moderated alternative to K-12 schools.)

As such (and it’s pretty basic), the platform offers its own, built-in news feed, calendar, grade book, attendance tracking, reporting tools and integration with 10 of the most-uses school information systems (or SISes). [More about student information systems and the startups that love them / are making them better in our coverage of Clever and LearnSprout.]

Obviously, education systems are complicated — and archaic — but students and teachers produce a wealth of data using online and mobile learning tools that developers want to access in order to build better apps and more personal, customizable experiences. Tapping into student information systems (which hold a wealth of essential student data, like class lists, etc) is no easy feat. But Chalkable is starting to do so for its own benefit, and it’s also released an API of its own that allows developers to more easily authenticate their student users and let teachers embed parts of web apps in homework assignments, or help teachers assign grades, for example.

To that point, buying native apps for multiple users can be tricky on iPads, so Chalkable is working with schools to integrate their existing payment mechanisms, allowing them to pay for apps with purchase orders (a big must-have for K-12 schools), credit cards, bank transfer or checks.

In terms of cost, Chalkable starts at $10/year for a student account (which includes $5 worth of app purchases built-in to the cost) and varies based on use case: Separate accounts are available for admins, teachers and parents, etc.

Chalkable has a long road ahead in fighting off app stores and other LMS players, but with a low cost, ease of use, APIs, and some basic LMS tools built around making online education content available in one place with focused search and discovery tools, it’s off to a pretty good start.