Category: Tech news

Online reputation and privacy management company ReputationDefender has acquired Ziggs.com, a social networking site for business professionals and people who would like to ‘market themselves on the Web’.

According to the release, ReputationDefender will introduce Ziggs users to its range of reputation and privacy management services, enabling them to better manage and maintain their online identities. The purchase price was not disclosed but likely on the low side.

Effective today, Ziggs.com customers can tap ReputationDefender’s products, in particular MyEdge, to enhance their online professional reputation management strategy. Ziggs.com customers will be able to continue enjoying the features and benefits offered by its platform.

ReputationDefender, founded in 2006, recently raised $8.65 million from Bessemer Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins. A total of $11.7 million has now been pumped into the company.

Hitwise, the web analytics firm, has a report out today that claims that social networks now receive more UK Internet visits than search engines.

Which, if the case, would imply that Google should be considerably worried about its future battle with the likes of Facebook and Twitter, as online marketing spend will surely follow Internet foot-through. Or does it?

According to Hitwise, during May, social networks accounted for 11.88% of UK Internet visits and search engines accounted for 11.33%, representing the first ever month that social networks have been more popular than search engines in the UK.

Something crazy happened in the last 36 hours. Literally three tech startup events happened in London, each with multiple startups attempting to get real product out into the marketplace. However, while Launch48 and London Startup Weekend happened over the last weekend (and more of them in posts to follow), The Difference Engine, a UK seed accelerator program has spent the last few months, not days, nurturing some early stage startups. Yesterday they debuted nine new start-ups which were presented to VCs and angel investors in London for the first time. Here’s a run-down about each one and our brief take:

Seattle startup BigDoor Media has raised $5 million in venture funding as it’s readying the launch of its automated platform that allows website and mobile application publishers to add game-like mechanics and loyalty programs to their sites and apps.

The fresh capital injection comes from Foundry Group, the early-stage investment firm that has backed up and coming companies such as Zynga, Gist, SimpleGeo, Gnip and MediaLets. Foundry Group’s Brad Feld will join the startup’s board of directors as a result of the financing.

BigDoor essentially helps companies build game-like mechanics and loyalty programs into their sites or apps by enabling points, badges, levels, leaderboards, virtual currency and virtual goods – all which are becoming increasingly popular in the Web these days.

Its platform allows publishers to create and manage their own virtual economy and game mechanics through an open RESTful API. The platform can be accessed via the BigDoor website, and provides the API, some sample code and analytics and administrative tools for non-developer types.

Founders Co-op (and others) have been seed-funding the company with just over $700,000 in funding since its founding in 2009, so this round brings the total invested in the company to a healthy $5,715,000.

BigDoor Media was founded by CEO Keith Smith and Jeff Malek. Notably, the pair previously started Zango (formerly ePIPO, 180solutions and Hotbar) back in the nineties, a venture that was and still is associated heavily with spyware and adware. The company ran into trouble with the FTC, and was forced to close its doors mainly because of those issues. The story is neatly chronicled here by Computerworld and on Xbiz.

Both founders openly acknowledge these negative associations in this lengthy but read-worthy blog post, published back in October 2009.

Yesterday, I had lunch with one of the top people in the Chinese Internet scene who said, “We have a saying here, ‘Internet multinationals all fail in China, Google was just the last one to go.’”

As sayings go, that’s not especially catchy. But it is devastating. And true even if you count Google’s recent actions as a China morally-based forfeit. The stark truth is there are already more Chinese than Americans online and China is only at about 20% Internet penetration. And yet, so far, Yahoo is the only one to play this market well, by swapping its local assets and $1 billion for a 40% stake in Alibaba back in 2005.

But a funny thing has happened between my last trip to China in October of last year and my current trip. The Silicon Valley Web 2.0 gang has invaded. OK, “invaded” is the wrong word, it’s more like gingerly “waded into the pool.” Most of the entrants are being very cautious, staying below the radar with limited, hedged plans. But there is a clear trend of Web 2.0 testing the Chinese waters—and hoping it doesn’t make the mistake the first generation made.

The picture above– snapped at a Beijing newsstand where Scarlett Johansson and Sarah Jessica Parker were the only other faces I recognized– is a good metaphor for the kind of hey!-don’t-look-at-us!, easing-into-the-market approach the Web 2.0 generation is taking. (Note the word “metaphor.” I’m not implying Facebook planted this or even pitched the story to what I understand is an English language learning magazine.)

There is Playfish’s office, the Zynga acquisition of XPD Media and Hulu CEO Jason Killar’s recent visit to Beijing where he announced an impending China launch. Just last weekend Max Levchin of Slide hosted a developer day at the company’s Shanghai office. Who even knew Slide had a Shanghai office? (It’s interesting that Levchin grew up in Soviet Russia just like Google founder Sergey Brin but apparently doesn’t have the same hang up with the Chinese government.) Facebook is reportedly opening an office next and I spoke with several people over the last week who said they had gotten calls from headhunters.

Will Silicon Valley Web 2.0 companies do better than the 1.0 generation? It depends on what the community has learned from such abject failure. A few lessons seem obvious, judging by the new, more cautious approach.

Lesson #1: The Valley learned it can’t be cocky. No one is making bold statements about taking over the Chinese market the way Web 1.0 leaders did. I remember a keynote by Meg Whitman in the early 2000s where she boasted that the “Sun never sets on eBay,” so assured of its future in China. Yeah, that didn’t go so well. No one is swaggering into China with the same bravado today. China has developed more $1 billion-plus Internet companies than any other market and most of them started out as US copycats on features, where they excelled was in process, execution and business models. Today, Web entrepreneurs get that.

Lesson #2: It’s China’s house, you have to play by China’s rules. A lot of people hate this one, but it’s just reality. You know that scene in “Jerry Maguire” where Tom Cruise storms out of the office and says “WHO IS COMING WITH ME?” and pretty much only Renee Zellweger joins him? That’s pretty much what Google’s pull out of the China market in March was. Since that date, Web 2.0 companies have only upped their China hires.

Lesson #3: Hire first, launch later. Most of these offices are just development offices, taking advantage of local talent. But make no mistake: This is a savvy way to asses the market and build connections. Talent isn’t that cheap in Beijing and Shanghai relative to the rest of the emerging world and the price is escalating. Call it the Hulu model– the company had an R&D division in Bejing long before it announced its recent intention to actually launch service in China.

All-in-all these three lessons make for a smart strategy. China is the only country outside the United States that’s given birth to several billion-dollar-plus Internet companies and there’s some $20 billion in venture capital sloshing around this country, by some estimates, that’s anxious to find the next local crop. There’s no question there’s a lot of momentum investing here and a lot of these startups will fail. But whenever you have this much activity and 400 million people online, there will be more big hits too. This is simply not our market for the taking.

But where the Web 1.0 generation was too cocky, the question is whether the Web 2.0 generation is being too cautious. Online games and virtual goods are already big markets in China—bigger than in the US in fact. And there are already big local iterations of things like Facebook and Twitter. Is it already too late for some of these companies?

Clearly, the Valley is still trying to figure out how it plays in China. At least this generation is trying to learn, listen and make friends first and colonize later.

Yahoo is partnering with iconic football star David Beckham to offer exclusive content for its coverage of the upcoming World Cup as well as the 2010/11 football season, we’ve just learned.

Beckham will also be featured in the second phase of the company’s global integrated marketing campaign, which focuses on showcasing specific Yahoo products and services, throughout the duration of the World Cup in select markets.

The goal of the campaign, according to the press release, is “to drive more people to search, use and talk about Yahoo! through exciting and experiential demonstrations of our unique ability to bring my world and the world together”.

Always delighted to see savvy entrepreneurs and investors in Europe launch initiatives that can help young tech startups, wherever they’re located, go from idea to product without going bankrupt and disillusioned even before making it to the prototype phase.

Hence, I am completely in love with what XING founder Lars Hinrichs is doing with HackFwd, a new-style, product-oriented startup investment and advisory venture.

You can read all about the details of the project in Mike Butcher’s post on the introduction of HackFwd on TechCrunch Europe, but make sure you also watch the video at the end of the post, which does an amazing job at explaining what it’s all about in just 3 and a half minutes (with actor Stephen Fry doing the voice-over, no less).

And how about this awesome infographic I found on their website, the ‘HackFwd Blueprint’, which I just spent about half an hour dissecting. Click the full screen (or better yet, the download) button and see what startup life can be like, as neatly visualized by people with a sense of design … and humor.

(Tip: not sure where to start? Try “Is the universal answer 42 or 23?”)

Inspired Instruments, makers of a portable, real-string digital guitar dubbed the You Rock Guitar, has raised $1.25 million from a number of private investors in preparation for the launch of the You Rock Guitar platform and to move forward with a line of accessories and software solutions.

The company’s flagship product, the You Rock Guitar, is a mobile digital guitar and game controller that plays nice with the Wii, PlayStation 3, your computer, iPod / iPhone, iPad, your amplifier or stereo and with popular games like Guitar Hero and RockBand.

The round of funding, Inspired Instruments’ first, was led by co-founder and CEO Kevin Kent and Executive Vice President JR deSouza. Says co-founder and president Cliff Elion:

“We are ready to take Inspired Instruments to the next level by expanding the distribution, infrastructure and product development team. By securing capital for this venture, we are right on track to truly bridge the gap between playing games and playing real instruments. In fact, Kevin and I did our first MIDI guitar more than 25 years ago and sold that to Gibson – this guitar leaves that technology in the dust.”

You can’t buy one straight away, though – the company says they’re currently back-ordered. According to the website, the product will set you back $219.99 (list price).

It’s an interesting idea for sure – check out the video below for more.

We first wrote about Israeli startup eToro way back in 2007 when it launched. Since then investors have put more than $8 million into the company. Today they’ll announce that Social Leverage has led a third round, adding $2.4 million more.

What is eToro? It’s commodity, currency and index trading made fun and social. Yes, you read that correctly. eToro puts the sexy into silver trading. Users make trades via a ridiculously easy (maybe too easy) interface. Start off with fake money and see what you’re made of. Yesterday, for example, I quickly lost about 5% of my fake capital on foolhardy and highly leveraged oil and silver trades when I lost my nerve and bailed out a few minutes after jumping in. Maybe when I abandon my day job and start trading full time I’ll learn to do a little research first.

But I can’t deny that it’s a total blast to use eToro. The service makes buying and selling extremely easy to understand, and users seem to agree. CEO Jonathan Assia tells me that users have traded over $100 billion on eToro to date. The average transaction size, before leverage, is $50. Trades made on the site are public for others to view, and successful traders can get quite a following on the service.

If you forget for a minute that you’re using real money and actually buying and selling stuff you might think you’re in the middle of an online game. In fact, Howard Lindzon, the founder of new investor Social Leverage, calls eToro “Zynga for real men,” referring to the fact that there’s actual money being made and lost while you’re playing the “game.”

Lindzon’s interest is worth noting. The eToro model is much like Lindzon’s StockTwits, which shows stock buys and sells in a Twitter-like stream. Assia won’t comment on whether a partnership with StockTwits is coming, but it isn’t hard to bet that some sort of strategic relationship is coming.

The company, which has 1.5 million registered users, has 120 employees in Israel, New York, Australia and Cyprus.

Like a Klingon starship de-cloaking in the middle of Europe, Lars Hinrichs the founder of LinkedIn competitor XING who exited for $58 million last year is putting his efforts onto a new startup investment vehicle dubbed HackFwd. But although the web site for the new venture is packed with advisors and mentors, HackFwd will take 27% of a company it invests in – that’s a sizeable chunk. In the US, Ycombinator takes around 6% but can do anywhere from 2%-10% while TechStars take around 6-10%, whereas the London-based Seedcamp takes 8-10%. However, those latter programmes only last months, while HackFwd’s backing will be designed to last a year, a model that is probably going to suit Europe’s slower-burn markets.

Today, I had lunch with AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui just before he went onstage at the CM Summit in New York City. The FTC finally approved Google’s $750 miillion acquisition of his mobile ad startup on May 27. He told me about the long ordeal of going through that approval process, turning Apple into a competitor, and how AdMob will fit in with Google’s other advertising businesses. Hamoui will be running all of mobile advertising for Google. In the video above, which I shot outside the conference, he touches upon these topics.

I asked him about Apple’s new policies as written in their licensing agreement for the iPhone 4.0 OS and its restrictions on sending phone data to third party providers. Hamoui is taking a wait and see approach, but told me it could be potnetially devastating to AdMob’s iPhone business. John Battelle asked him the same question on stage, “Are you concerned Steve will take his toys and go home?”

Hamoui response: “They haven’t enforced that yet. If enforced as written, it would be complicated or near-impossible to serve relevant advertising on the iPhone platform.”

And what if IAds became the only functioning advertising network on the iPhone? Hamoui feels strongly that Apple should let AdMob and other ad networks compete: “It is not good for developers to have only one choice. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t think it even benefits them [Apple]. They should want developers to make more money. Having more advertising providers is better than having less.”

Another tidbit Hamoui told me: about 30 to 40 percent of iPhone AdMob ads are cross-promoting other apps, which explains why Apple is aggressively going after that market.

Despite all the recent hand-wringing about Facebook’s privacy failures and the company’s attempts to simplify privacy controls in response to the uproar over the past month and a half, there has been no visible impact on Facebook itself. In fact, the mont of May was one of the strongest ones ever for Facebook, as measured by net new visitors.

According to comScore, Facebook attracted 130 million unique U.S. visitors in May, 2010, an increase of 8.6 million people. That jump represents the third largest single-month increase in unique visitors since comScore started measuring. Pageviews were up 11 percent in May to 55.5 billion.

Maybe all of those people were flocking to Facebook to change their privacy settings. Or maybe all of those Like buttons and other social plugins spreading all over the Web are increasing sharing and driving more traffic back to Facebook. More than 100,000 sites have installed Facebook’s social plugins.

So, yes, Facebook is pushing its culture of oversharing across the Web and that does raise serious privacy concerns. But are people quitting Facebook over the privacy issue? The data suggests the opposite. They are relying on Facebook even more than before.

The Android vs iPhone fight is officially on. The EVO 4G fired the first shot last Friday when it launched nationwide on Sprint. The Android nation rallied behind the 4G super phone, which finally gave the Android nation a reason to be proud of their mobile platform of choice. They loudly pointed out all the EVO 4G’s iPhone-killing specs: huge 4.3-inch screen, 4G hotspot mode, dual cameras, and cheap mobile plans.

But the new iPhone is finally official after months of leaks and it’s ready to fight although it’s not exactly fair. The fourth generation iPhone isn’t just going up against one phone. Nope, the EVO 4G is just Android’s flavor of the month. A more powerful and sexy Android handset will likely steal its attention by the end of the summer and the iPhone 4 will have to stand against with that model as well.

Here we are anyway, though. It’s time to let the two hottest phones on the planet stand toe-to-toe on specs and capabilities. Forget the user experience and all that nonsense. This is about screen resolution, network access, megapixels and all the fun stuff that forum users will be spouting-off for months.

A year ago, I did a post highlighting Apple’s awesome-looking App Wall. The wall was a series of Apple monitors set up to show the App Store in a Matrix-like way. Arranged by color, each time an app was purchased, it would pulse. Of course, there were “only” 50,000 apps at the time, and Apple still couldn’t show them all on the display. Now there are over 225,000 apps, so Apple had to switch things up this year.

As you can see in the pictures and video below, the new App Wall is perhaps even a little prettier than last year’s model. It shows the top 50,000 apps in the App Store across 30 24-inch LED Cinema Displays. As each app is downloaded it falls into a stack (still color-coordinated) across the displays. Once the display hits 10,800 apps, it resets and starts over with app downloads.

Check out the video below, and pictures below that.

The future has officially arrived, ladies and gentlemen: El Steve just made a video call to Jony Ive as part of his famous “One more thing” sequence of the Apple WWDC.