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Over A Year After Its Acquisition, Is Mint Still Fresh?

Here at TechCrunch, we’ve long been fans of personal finance site Mint, which won our first TechCrunch40 conference in 2007 and was acquired two years later by Intuit for an impressive $170 million.

But things may not be going gangbusters at the company these days. We’ve learned that in the next month, three key employees from the original, pre-acquisition team will be leaving, including Director of Marketing Stewart Langille, lead designer Justin Maxwell, and head software engineer Daryl Puryear. One Mint insider estimated that around 40% or more of the pre-acquisition team has left since Intuit bought the company in September 2009, some of whom have left substantial amounts of unvested stock on the table. Most of the executive team remains, but many employees have gone on to work at or launch their own startups.

Granted, it isn’t unusual for personnel to leave after an acquisition. Startups thrive on being nimble, and the umbrella of a large company and a new corporate infrastructure can slow things down. We’ve heard from one insider that Intuit has handled the acquisition quite well in terms of giving the company resources. The issue, it seems, has been in the execution — Mint just hasn’t pushed out many projects in the last year.

The big ones were an Android application, a launch in Canada, and a ‘Goals’ feature that helps you budget your income so that you can save up for that vacation or big-screen TV. Those aren’t bad features, mind you, but they don’t seem too groundbreaking. “Momentum has slowed down,” is how one insider put it.

It seems that some Mint users aren’t pleased with the way things are going, either. As a litmus test Mint polled its Facebook audience in November to ask what they thought of the post-acquisition Mint. Most responses have been negative, with numerous comments complaining of bugs and slow sync times between a user’s financial institutions and their Mint accounts.

Reached for comment, a company spokesperson said that there is “definetly no glut of departures”, explaining that the team has grown much more than it’s shrunk, and attributing any “key shifts” to long-time Mint employees taking advantage of the hot job market. The spokesperson added that Mint has been doing a lot of work behind the scenes to support international growth, and will be increasing its presence by adding two new countries next year. The company also plans to launch an iPad application and other mobile apps.

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Mint.com

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Q: What Does Quora Mean For The Future Of Blogging? A: Business As Usual

As many of you have noticed, we (and by “we”, I mainly mean “me”) have been using Quora a lot as a source of inspiration for story ideas. Some people seem to think this is a great idea. Others seem to think it’s the end of TechCrunch, blogging, and the world — perhaps not in that exact order. But here’s what it really is: business as usual.

One reader, Elias Bizannes, tweeted the following yesterday, “Blogging 3.0 according to @parislemon 1) Follow the founders of Quora 2) Spend all day on Quora 3) Rehash voted-up Quora posts on TechCrunch“. My response to this was as follows, “@EliasBiz so was blogging 2.0 doing the same thing on twitter? and blogging 1.0 doing the same thing on blogs?“

My point, again, is that Quora is simply a new medium for what’s been going on since the beginning of blogging. And, to an extent, you could argue since the beginning of writing in general. That is, there needs to be a nugget of information that sparks a story. For the past 10+ years, many people have relied on other blog posts for this. For the past three years or so, many people have used Twitter for this. And now people are starting to use Quora for this purpose.

This process usually starts with blogs (like TechCrunch) and then eventually moves to the mainstream media. The same thing will happen here. In a year, CNN will be reporting information coming from Quora. Why? Because it’s a great source of information.

On it, you’ll find people like high-profile executives Steve Case and Reed Hastings candidly answering questions about the companies they are (or were) involved with. You’ll also find former employees of companies giving insightful nuggets of information about those companies. It’s really no different than if they each blogged about these things. But they aren’t doing that, likely because it’s the question itself that sparks them to answer. And the fact that all of these answers are connected in a centralized, filtered location makes it much more powerful.

That Quora answers can be lengthy (unlike tweets, which are limited to 140 characters) has brought up some unease as well. Aggregators, like Techmeme, have started linking directly to threads there. Other sites, such as Silicon Alley Insider, have started republishing entire Quora answers. But again, that’s no different from the norm. That site also regularly republishes full blog posts found elsewhere.

We don’t do that type of full republishing, not because we think it’s bad, it’s just not what we do. Instead, when an interesting Quora thread pops onto my radar, I like to think it over and write it up in a way that I would any other story. That is to say, I like to inject my own words and opinions and expand on the thought.

The other day, Robert Scoble wrote a post wondering if Quora was the biggest blogging innovation in 10 years? I still would definitely give the edge to tools like WordPress and Blogger, and then to Twitter (which serves as both a source of information and a means to distribute content), but Quora, at least as it stands right now, is the next step in the evolution.

It’s not just that it’s Yahoo Answers reborn, it’s that it’s Yahoo Answer done right. It utilizes several things that other social services have implemented over the years and ties them all together in a way the surfaces excellent information.

There’s always been a concern that as Quora expands its user base, it will get less useful, but all indications are that it has been expanding rapidly in recent weeks — and guess what? It’s actually getting better.

In other words, expect more posts based on information found on Quora, not less. And expect that trend to spread across the web. Just like it did with Twitter. Just like it did with blogs. It’s all about the information, not the medium.

[image: Disney]

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Suit Against Apple Alleges Privacy Breaches By Apps

Here’s a bit of a sticky situation: Apple is facing a class-action lawsuit alleging that they are allowing apps and ad partners to identify specific users — a breach of Apple’s privacy policy and supposedly of privacy itself.

Apple’s privacy policy touches on this directly, yet leaves plenty of room for movement on their side, which is really what the suit is all about, though Apple is simply the biggest target at the moment. The lawsuit alleges that the “non-personal information” collected by likes of Pandora and The Weather Channel can easily be collated and used to identify individuals.

It’s beyond a doubt that given a few key pieces of information, one could be positively identified; studies have shown (Paul Ohm credits Latanya Sweeney) that given birth date, gender, and ZIP code, one can identify a vast majority of Americans. How many times a day do you think you give out one or more of those things?

I was tempted to take the cynical side here and say “what did you expect?” However, the truth is that despite the changing nature of privacy and what your personal information is worth, there appear to be shenanigans in play here.

It’s not clear to the end user just what is being collected and used, and by whom. To be sure, the privacy policy says:

“We may collect information such as occupation, language, zip code, area code, unique device identifier, location, and the time zone where an Apple product is used so that we can better understand customer behavior and improve our products, services, and advertising.”

But are apps restricted in some or all of the same ways? Is “our advertising” the same as “advertising on our devices”? Does Pandora consider your music choices “personal” or “non-personal,” and how do they make that distinction? How far must something be anonymized before it can be called sufficiently so?

The fact is that a huge amount of potentially personal or private information is being sent out by millions of users who not only have no idea it’s being sent out (which, as far as I’m concerned, is for them to find out at their own pace and peril), but also have no way of controlling it or opting out — other than not using a given service. Some say that’s as much of an opt-out as something like The Weather Channel is required to provide, but that puts a lot of power in the hands of the largest players.

The lawsuit targets Apple currently, but the spirit behind it could easily have been directed at Google or a number of other companies that make a business out of creating individuals out of scraps of information. A compromise will have to be achieved here, but I doubt we’ll have a satisfactory one for a couple years, since all these potentially invasive services are at a very early stage. This lawsuit is a symptom of a growing problem, but I doubt it will result in any serious advances.

Marketing companies themselves may in fact be the correct object for users’ frustration, and policy changes might have to be made specifically concerning them — though that may be putting too fine a point on that kind of legislation, which should be decisive and encompass as much as possible. As it is, these companies are having a grand time floating through the loopholes and gaping omissions of current privacy policy and law.

Update: I should have included the relevant portion from the developers’ agreement:

In addition, the use of any personal information should be limited solely as necessary to provide services or functionality for Your Application (e.g., the use of collected personal information for telemarketing purposes is prohibited (unless expressly consented to by the user)). You and the Application must also take appropriate steps to protect any such location data or personal information from unauthorized disclosure or access.

Similar but more specific to the other stuff. Still leaves a lot to interpretation, though.

Groupon Closing $950 Million Round, Valued At $4.75 Billion

Lots of excitement today about Groupon’s intention to raise a new monster round of financing, with speculation that the valuation of the still-young startup reaching nearly $8 billion. That speculation is only partially right, says a source with knowledge of the financing.

The company is raising big money – around $950 million. And the valuation is an impressive $4.75 billion valuation. Just not quite as impressive as the earlier figure being thrown around. A separate source says Allen & Co. is advising Groupon on the deal.

The company, which just recently turned down an acquisition offer from Google, has raised $171 million to date, much of it taken off the table by founders and execs. Our expectation is that much of this new round of financing, if not all of it, will also be used to cash out existing investors.

The deal should be closed in a few weeks, says our source.

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Groupon

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Groupon’s Valuation Could Be As High As $7.8 Billion [Update: We Have The Document And The Actual Valuation]

Note: A source is now telling us that Groupon’s actual valuation is $4.75 Billion on a $950 Million Raise.

According to a VC Experts report, Groupon gave the State of Delaware a heads up on its new funding on December 17th with an Amended/Restated Certificate of Incorporation. The document showed the authorization of an up to $950 million round of Series G preferred stock says VC Experts.

While this doesn’t necessarily mean the company will be raising that amount, it does give it the capacity to do so. The report says to expect a SEC Form D with the exact amount of financing to be filed next week.

From the VC Expert Blog:

“There are a few key differences in terms and pricing between the Series G and its Series F, raised in April. The $135 million Series F, led by Digital Sky Technologies, was priced at $32.12 per share and was junior in liquidation preferences to all preferred shares. This round is priced $.53 less, at $31.59 per share and is senior to all.

The latest filing also increased the authorized shares of voting common to 250 million shares, and if all of them are issued, Groupon’s valuation could be as high as $7.8 billion. The financing comes just weeks after Groupon’s rejection of Google’s $6 billion buyout offer. Groupon gave no official reason for the rejection, though reports speculated pricing, strategy and anti-trust issues were to blame.”

According to VC Experts’ estimate, the new round gives Groupon a “best estimate” valuation of $6.4 Billion. The filing has reportedly also increased Groupon’s authorized voting common shares to 250 million and if all of them are issued at $31.59 per share could mean that the company is valued at over $7.8 billion.

VC Experts says it will release the Amended Certificate of Incorporation filing tomorrow morning to its email distribution list. We are currently looking into it and have contacted Groupon for more information as well.

Updates:

The entire document is now available for download on the VC Experts site. PDF below.

Fortune’s Dan Primack is reporting that Groupon was talking to a Boston-based equity firm before the Google acquisition talks and that the same firm might also be leading this round, which he posits at way lower than the reported $950 million.

Groupon CEO Andrew Mason confirms that Groupon is indeed in the middle of a financing round with, what else, a tweet.

View this document on Scribd

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More On AOL’s Disc Strategy: $1.19 Floppies, 50% Of All CDs Made, And Precision Bombing

Yesterday, our post about AOL’s promotional discs by way of an excellent thread on Quora invoked quite a bit of feedback. That’s hardly surprising given that every man, woman, and child (at least in the United States) probably had their hands on one of the discs at some point in the 1990s. In fact, Jan Brandt, AOL’s former Chief Marketing Officer, dropped a huge knowledge bomb in the Quora thread after we published our original post: “At one point, 50% of the CD’s produced worldwide had an AOL logo on it,” she wrote. Wow.

And she followed up today in a new thread with even more interesting information about the program. Specifically, someone asked: What was the Conversion Rate of AOL CDs in the 1990′s? Given how widespread the discs were, you might think AOL wasn’t (or wasn’t able to) monitor the rates so closely. But they were, according to Brandt. “The profitability of each and every disk and promotion effort was tracked and analyzed. We conducted approximately 2000 different tests each year and used these results to develop future programs. Despite the label ‘carpet bombing,’ there was actually a very high level of marketing sophistication and almost all decisions were data and results driven,” she writes.

While she didn’t have any singular statistic to share, she does say that the first large mailing program began in the Spring/Summer of 1993, with about 200,000 discs (technically, still 3.5-inch floppy disks at the time) and other non-disk mailing being sent out at that time. “The average response to that mailing was a staggering 10%– unheard of in direct marketing– or any marketing circle,” she notes.

Incredibly, each floppy disk cost AOL $1.19 to make at first. And that’s just for the disk. That doesn’t include any of the other packaging they were sent in. “Part of the success of the marketing program was also dependent on dramatically driving down the costs of producing and mailing the disks and packages,” Brandt writes. As former AOL CEO Steve Case noted yesterday, they were able to do just that. And that’s why we saw so many of those disks (and eventually discs).

“At the time of the initial tests there were no machines that could assemble these packages automatically. We worked with vendors to develop automated equipment and could not have scaled the marketing programs without first developing this equipment,” Brandt writes. The strategy worked as AOL perfected the system enough that it was cost-effective. Soon, they were signing up a new user every six seconds. A few years later, they were a $150 billion company.

Brandt also humorously notes that the (annoying) disc image we used yesterday in our post wasn’t actually one AOL widely sent out. Instead, it was one of the many test discs AOL was trying at the time.

I actually remember the floppy disks better than the CDs because I was actually excited to get the floppies back in the day to try out the latest version of AOL. A few years ago, CrunchGear noted an AOL 1.0 disk selling for $5,000 on eBay. Which is awesome.

Just in case you’re new to TechCrunch, yes, AOL now owns us. Clearly, that has nothing to do with why we’re posting this. Or does it? You’ll never know.

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Turn Your iPhone Into An IR Remote

By using Bluetooth technology, the UnityRemote box takes orders from your iPhone and transmits those commands via IR to any IR device in view including your TV, cable box or satellite reciever.

The app that your install on your iPhone to control IR devices not only allows you to send single commands but allows you to create macros (called “actions”) that will follow a set of pre-programmed commands to your device. For example, you can set an action to turn on your TV, change it’s input to your Blu-ray, turn on your Blu-ray player and start playing a disk.

Since the iPhone doesn’t come with a built in IR transmitter this add-on adds more functionality to your already multi-functional device. Reminds me of the old days of IR Commander on my Palm.

The UnityRemote box will you about $100

Turn Your iPhone Into An IR Remote originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/12/29.

iPhone To HDMI Dongle

Apple is really picky about what type of connectors it offers. Sure you can get a composite or component cable for your iPhone and hook it up to a TV but why hasn’t Apple moved into the 20th century and offered something a bit more modern like HDMI?

Sanwa has just announced that it will do just that, offer an HDMI adapter that will let iPhone and iPad users output 720p video to an external display like a TV. You will be able to output video, pictures and presentations (via Keynote).

The adapter should be out soon in Japan and will cost you about $75. No indication as to when or if this will hit the North American market yet.

[Sanwa]

iPhone To HDMI Dongle originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/12/29.

iPhone To HDMI Dongle

The adapter should be out soon in Japan and will cost you about $75. No indication as to when or if this will hit the North American market yet.

[Sanwa]

iPhone To HDMI Dongle originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/12/29.

Top 10 Of 2010

Another year is almost behind us and thanks to our dedicated and loyal readers our 3rd successful year bringing you the latest in gadgets, gaming, technology and the bizarre.

We have brought the monkeys in (by monkeys we mean a crafty worded perl script) and have compiled the the most viewed posts here on tech.nocr.at. This list doesn’t just contain posts from 2010, it contains the top ten most viewed posts this year regardless of when they were created.

Without further ado, tech.nocr.at’s top 10 posts of 2010:

Let us know in the comments what were your favorite posts of 2010.

Top 10 Of 2010 originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/12/29.

iPod Nano Hack

By booting up his iPod Nano with a modified SpringBoard.plist file hacker James Whelton was able to remove an app from his screen and replace it with a blank space (Video after the break).

Now this isn’t quite a jailbreak like hack, but it is a small start in the right direction. Today we can remove an app, tomorrow we might be able to add a new one and a week from now we might be able to write our own iPod Nano apps and cause Apple to open a whole new app store dedicated to the nano. Alright so maybe that’s pushing it a bit far, but just think if we could modify the sleep settings of the unit. Yes, we could finally have that iPod Nano watch we have all been waiting for.

iPod Nano Hack originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/12/28.

PSP Phone This Spring

We have been hearing about Sony’s Playstation Phone for quite a while now, and today Asahi Shimbun which is one of the largest newspapers in Japan reported that the device which is supposedly based on the PSPgo will be released in the coming spring.

If you believe the report the units will hit the US and European markets first. The phone is also reported to have a smaller form factor than the PSPgo and will be build by Sony Ericsson.

I hope that it’s gaming capabilities won’t be based on the PSPgo. Only being able to download really sucks.

PSP Phone This Spring originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/12/29.

VLC For Android

The one app I use the most on my iPhone and iPad is VLC. It makes watching video on my portable devices a lot easier to do since I don’t have to spend a bunch of time converting video and soon all you Android fans will enjoy it as well.

Sure there are other video playing options for all you Android users but has there ever been a better video player than VLC? It will play anything you throw at it, at least on the PC side.

Keep an eye out for it in the Android Marketplace.

VLC For Android originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/12/28.

Skype Video On Your iPhone

Sure you have facetime on your iPhone, but wouldn’t it be cool to have video support for Skype on your iPhone? After all, there are only 6 facetime users in the world and billion of Skype users.

Seems that a document that was released a bit too early points to Skype’s CES announcement as being video support for iOS devices with cameras. I’d be willing to bet that the supposed upcoming iPad 2 will also have a front facing camera.

I wonder if the mobile carries will allow these video calls to cross their network or if it will be wifi only, never-the-less this will be a great way to make a video call when your on the go.

Skype Video On Your iPhone originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/12/28.

Android On Your iPhone

I love my iPhone 4, don’t get me wrong, but the old additive of the grass is always greener on the other side alway creeps up. Both the iPhone and an Android based device have their pros and their cons and unless you can justify dishing out some big bucks monthly for both an iPhone Android based phone your stuck with one or the other.

But, if you own an iPhone, you might be able to dual boot both the iPhone IOS and Android. Lifehacker has put together some easy steps to dual boot IOS and Android on your jailbroken iPhone.

Much like any time you try to put a square peg in a round hole it comes with it’s drawbacks. A few critical things don’t work and it runs quite slow, but as time goes on I’m sure they will work out the kinks and when that happens you might be able to run Android as smoothly on your iPhone as you can run Windows on your Mac.

Android On Your iPhone originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/12/27.