Category: Tech news

Despite a lot of attempts over the years, Yahoo’s embrace of social feeds has been slow and painful. Yahoo doesn’t want to become another social network. It couldn’t if it tried (and it has tried). But it is beginning to appreciate the power of social sharing to drive traffic to its content.

Cody Simms, who heads up what is left of Yahoo’s Open Strategy, tells me that early data suggests social links spread through Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo’s own status updates “can drive an order of magnitude more sharing on Yahoo.” And those visitors are more engaged also. For instance, when people click through from a status update to Yahoo News, Sports, Finance or another Yahoo property, they end up spending at least twice as much time there than the average visitor. For Yahoo, tapping into social traffic is what it’s all about.

A year ago, Yahoo introduced its own status updates to Yahoo Mail and Messenger, and followed up with limited integrations into Facebook and Twitter.

Yahoo users can now update their status messages on both of those services without leaving Yahoo. However, they cannot yet read their Facebook streams inside Yahoo.

“By end of the quarter, you will be able to consume your Facebook feed in Yahoo Mail and throughout Yahoo,” promises Simms. And what about adding Facebook’s “Like” buttons on Yahoo? You can imagine every story on Yahoo News having a Like button which would drive traffic from Facebook to those pages. “We are looking at it heavily,” he says, “it makes a lot of sense.” However, he cautions no decision has been made one way or the other on the Like buttons.

The bigger play for Yahoo is to combine social feeds and content in more intuitive ways. “Think about news articles with associated tweets and updates,” says Simms, “and combining the feed next to the content from your network or the Web at large. Or, if you are looking at the feed, bringing content into the feed.” In the latter case, if someone sends out an update about an upcoming movie, Yahoo could embed the trailer within the social feed. Something along those lines could potentially be rolled out “later this year,” he says.

What is clear from my discussion with Simms is that Yahoo is thinking about social feeds first and foremost as a publisher. It wants to drive traffic and pageviews from Facebook, Twitter, and its own status updates to Yahoo’s various sites. And on the advertising side, it is exploring ways to get consumers to share ads via their streams. It’s all very reactive to the underlying changes in online consumption patterns, but if social sharing can boost Yahoo’s already-sizeable traffic numbers, these simple moves could have a large impact on Yahoo’s bottom line.

Last Friday, we wrote about 4chan founder Christopher “Moot” Poole’s stealthy startup, Canvas Networks, which just raised $625,000 in funding. Poole has revealed the names of the investors in the round, which are impressive to say the least. The investors are Ron Conway, Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Kenneth Lerer, and Joshua Schachter. Lerer led the round.

Poole is still remaining tight-lipped on the exact details of Canvas, but he did tell us that it is “a re-imagination of the online community– a look at what forums might be if they were invented today.” A few months ago, Poole told The New York Times’ Nick Bilton that he was “working on a new project to reimagine what an image board should be today using the current technologies available.” It also appears Poole has bought the domain “Canv.as” for the project.

Poole is best known for founding 4chan, an online bulletin board where anyone can post comments, expound on topics and share images. Poole was featured as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world last year. As of March, 4chan was receiving around 8.2 million unique visitors per month and receives an average of 800,000 new posts a day.

Whatever Canvas really as, it has to be fairly innovative, considering that some of tech’s most notable and astute investors are betting on the product. Poole may share more details on the stealth project at TechCrunch Disrupt next week, where he will be speaking at the conference. Poole will be sitting on the “Digital Crowds Into Dollars” panel along with Judy Hu, Global Executive Director – Advertising & Branding, GE;
Brian Pokorny, CEO, dailybooth; and Andrey Ternovskiy, CEO, Chatroulette.

[crunchbase url=”http://www.crunchbase.com/company/4chan” name=”4chan”]

I have just about every song by The Beatles in my iTunes collection. As the best-selling artists of all time, I suspect a lot of people do. Of course, not one of those songs was actually bought through iTunes, because none of them are available through the iTunes Store. Instead, they’ve magically landed on my computer through other means. I’m not going to say how, but let’s just say that record label EMI wouldn’t be too happy. Too bad. It’s their own damn fault.

Paul McCartney gave an interview on Friday to BBC Radio’s Newsbeat program. In it, he clarifies the situation a bit. “To tell you the truth I don’t actually understand how it’s got so crazy,” he starts out. ”It’s been business hassles. Not with us, or iTunes. It’s the people in the middle, the record label. There have been all sorts of reasons why they don’t want to do it,” McCartney says. While he doesn’t specifically name them, that record label is EMI.

Assuming McCartney is both well aware of the details of the situation, and that he’s telling the truth (and we’re going to assume that’s the case with both), this is pathetic. It has been over seven years — let me repeat, 7 years (!) — since the iTunes Store first launched. Ever since then, there’s been no shortage of rumors that The Beatles’ catalog would be available on the platform soon. This is both because Apple CEO Steve Jobs (like everyone else) loves them, and because it just makes sense to have the most-popular recording artists of all time on what is now the most popular store (both online and retail) for getting music. But EMI apparently doesn’t care about making sense. And, it seems, they care even less about making money.

Okay, that last bit obviously isn’t completely true. But it sort of is. Think about the lost sales The Beatles have seen by not being available on iTunes over these past 7 years? The number of albums and songs that would have been downloaded legally would definitely be in the tens of millions range. Again, the key word is legally. People would have been paying for this music. Tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars has likely been lost because of EMI’s odd decision to stay out of the online marketplace.

And that’s another key. This isn’t just iTunes. The Beatles music isn’t available anywhere legally online. That means that the only way to get it onto your computer legally is to buy the CDs and rip the songs. People were likely doing this quite a bit in 2003 when the iTunes Store first launched. But now, I would bet that the other way of getting digital versions of these songs has far, far surpassed the legal means. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if The Beatles were the most pirated act of all time thanks to EMI’s stubbornness and/or stupidity.

Of course, EMI doesn’t think they’re being stupid. Their comment to Newsbeat reads as follow, “Discussions are ongoing. We would love to see The Beatles’ music available for sale digitally.” So yes, they’re negotiating, and have been this whole time. It’s one thing to negotiate for a few months — maybe even a year to ensure you get the best deal possible. But seven years? Again, we’re talking maybe hundreds of million of dollars in lost sales.

If EMI’s stance (and I’m not saying it is, just thinking out loud here) is that putting The Beatles catalog online would just lead to even more piracy and a decrease in CD sales, well then, I’m afraid they’re hopeless at this point.

What’s odd about all of this is that it would have seemed Apple and EMI see eye-to-eye on things. After all, EMI was the first label to offer DRM-free music on the iTunes Store after Steve Jobs’ “Thoughts on Music” rant in 2007. Of course, back then, the lack of Beatles music on iTunes may have had just as much to do with the trademark lawsuit between Apple and Apple Corps (the corporation in charge of The Beatles’ music). But that was settled around the same time, in 2007. Three years later, still no Beatles on iTunes (or again, anywhere else on the web).

This Fall, there will undoubtedly be an Apple iPod/iTunes event just as there is every year. And just as there is every year, there will be rumors of a Beatles launch on the iTunes Store. And just as with every year, publications will use a name of a Beatles song to title their posts of the rumors. And just as every other year, there will be no Beatles announcement. And why? Because EMI is the fool on the hill.

[via MacRumors]

On the heels of Gilt Groupe’s $35 million round last week, Brazilian private sales site Brandsclub has raised $17 million in funding from South African media conglomerate Naspers and European fund Trayas. Naspers put in the bulk of the funding, investing $15 million in the e-commerce company.Founded in March 2009, BrandsClub has been riding the flash sale site wave. The site now has over 1.1 million users in Brazil and is also operating in Mexico. The funding will be used to fuel growth and expansion in other areas of Latin America. The online private sample sale was originally brought to market in Europe by Vente-Privee in 2001 and since US companies like Gilt have been able to capitalize on the model’s considerable success.

According to a release, Naspers is using the investment to build out its presence in Brazil. Naspers has previously invested in Brazilian tech companies Grupo Abril, Movile and Buscapé. You may remember Naspers as a potential buyer of AOL’s ICQ (which was eventually acquired by Russian form DST).

Joost’s former CEO Matt Zelesko is announcing a new role today at Inform Technologies, a company that helps media companies sort and tag content on their sites. Zelesko will be taking on the role of Chief Technology Officer, overseeing all technology development and operations for the company.

Prior to joining Inform, Zelesko was CEO of video aggregator Joost. The failed video venture was started by Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström and was eventually acquired by Adconion Media Group for an undisclosed sum. Though the video network has had a tumultuous past, the video network seems to be driving impressive amounts of traffic. Prior to joining Joost, Zelesko was VP of engineering for Comcast Interactive Media where he was responsible for the development and delivery of all CIM web properties, including the Comcast portal and Fancast.

Inform Technologies provides a simple yet crucial task for media companies. Inform processes the millions of pages of content on media sites, and automatically identifies people, companies, places, organizations and products as they appear in the news. The product’s semantic technology is able to tag data and establish relationships between different data and news content. To date, the company has raised close to $30 million in funding.

Techcrunch is hosting a free, open Hack Day, before its Disrupt conference in NYC. Create, build, collaborate and present to an audience of peers and pros. Enjoy free hacker food (this is the pizza capital of the world, right?), meet a diverse group of attendees and hack! This is the city that never sleeps, so burn the midnight oil and build a mashup that blows everyone at the event away. Three winners will have a chance to present onstage to over 2,000 people at the main Disrupt conference on Wednesday. Register Now!.

The TechCrunch Disrupt Hack Day is being organized by Chad Dickerson (who held the first Hack Days at Yahoo, now CTO of Etsy), Daniel Raffel (Yahoo) and Tarikh Korula (Uncommon Projects) and Jonah Brucker-Cohen (Scrapyard Challenge). We expect 200 – 300 attendees at the Hack Day on Saturday and Sunday. The main conference, which starts on Monday, May 24, will draw more than 1,500 attendees.

Where and When
2pm Saturday, May 22 to 2pm Sunday, May 23rd
(Registration begins at 1pm, Saturday, May 22)
570 Washington Street (between Houston and Clarkson Streets)
2nd floor, New York, NY 10014
Schedule of Events and more info

What’s a Hack Day?
Simple — form a team of 1 or more and spend 24 hours building a new software/hardware idea using publicly-available data and APIs. Working code (no matter how rough) is the order of the day — no PowerPoint, Keynote, or slideware. Those who brave the night to build and make their dreams real get 90 seconds to present their work in front of a live audience. A variety of awards will be given. Everyone who builds something is a winner — if you finish something and present you’ll get a ticket to Disrupt (worth $3,000). All the top hackers and projects will be covered by Techcrunch and attending media. This is an awesome opportunity.
Collaborate on Hack Day Wiki

Who’s invited?
There will be a diverse melting pot of artists, designers, students, dreamers, software developers, hobbyists, hardware hackers, and industry thought leaders all looking to turn their ideas into something real! Join them in making something sublime, simple, interesting, useful, silly, or all of the above. Expect some surprises.

What companies will be there?
Etsy, Facebook, Foursquare, Simple Geo, Yahoo and many more companies will have developers on hand to talk about their APIs and help support you in building your projects! We’re grateful to sponsor Facebook for helping us make it happen, and to Media Temple (mt) for hosting the servers.

What’s in it for you?
We’re creating a free stage for creative technologists to meet, greet, and build. Maybe you’re looking for the inspiration to build something you keep putting off, or maybe you just want to connect with other technologists in NYC. You might be looking for new career opportunities and want to show off your skills. No matter why you’re attending, there’s something for anyone who cares about building cool things. Bring your ideas and we’ll supply the pizza. Everyone who finishes a project will get into the main Disrupt conference for free.

Sign up! Hack Day promises to be a great time for everyone involved. We’ll provide the audience, hacking peers to inspire you, and the promise of fame. Deliver the hack and all eyes will be on you for a minute and a half. Make it happen!

Here in Europe we’re a little preoccupied with the volcanic ash cloud but apparently there was a major oil spill over in The Gulf of Mexico. Once again, social media is coming to the rescue.

As we discovered recently, a group of a dozen or so organizations including BP, the EPA, the U.S. Department of Interior, the Department of Defense, and OSHA have set up Deepwater Horizon Response, a “Unified Command” established to “manage response operations.” This also involves several social media accounts.

And now there’s a theory that if enough people tweet information using the hashtag #gulfspill the environmental mess will clear itself up. OK, perhaps not, but the newly launched Gulf Coast Spill Coalition thinks that using social media to record and share information related to the oil spill can make a difference. And that’s exactly what Gulfcoastspill.com has been setup to do.

Yesterday, while he was visiting his father and working beside a Colorado stream, Kevin Rose sent out a seemingly bland, lazy Sunday Tweet:

Working on @digg stuff while relaxing with my dad in evergreen, co. Home tomorrow #lifeisgood http://twitpic.com/1ofwqh

But the payload of that Tweet, a link to picture showing a glimpse of Rose’s computer screen, is much more interesting. The laptop is angled, but if you squint through the glare you can spot some features of what may be the long-awaited new Digg design. I’ve blown up the photo above and annotated it. The image is clearly different than the one on the new Digg sign-up page.

I was able to spot at least three new features. The first one that struck me is that each item now has two icons: the familiar Digg counter and a second social icon which looks like a Digg avatar. The second is that underneath the headline and action links, there is a third line with what appears to be a realtime status update, perhaps a Tweet, about that story. And third, the page Rose is on is a personalized tab along with what looks like a list of personalized topics along the left-hand column. Can you find any more new features in the pic? You can see the original and a bigger annotation-free blow-up below (along with a screenshot of what Digg looks like today, for comparison purposes).

Of course, this could just be a customized view that Rose uses for himself or maybe he is testing out new features which may or may not make it into the final design. But Rose keeps hinting that the new design is around the corner. Rose recently took over as CEO of Digg from his longtime business spartner Jay Adelson left, and cut 10 percent of Digg’s staff. Rose has a lot riding on this redesign. Hopefully, there is a lot more than what we see here. Our advice to Rose: don’t listen to Digg’s hardcore users and go with your gut instead.

Update: A somewhat clearer picture has emerged (courtesy of X64bit).

The Groupon acquisition of CityDeal is being hailed by many across Europe as a good exit for the German-based clone (yes, there is no point in saying it is anything else but a Groupon clone). But luckily there are more than just clones in Germany. The burgeoning cluster in Mitte, central Berlin, is producing startups such as Soundcloud, hiogi, Babbel, Twinity, SongBeat and aka-aki. Nokia bought Dopplr and with it set up an innovation lab amongst the beating heart of Berlin’s startups. Hamburg has spawned many others include Qype, Europe’s Yelp, and more recently the interesting Apprupt. VCs in Hamburg and Munich vie over raw engineering talent out of German universities, and our TechCrunch Europe Munich and Berlin events last year were buzzing. As US-born Germany-based VC Paul Josefak recently guest posted for us, he’s coming across “multiple companies who recently closed either initial or follow-on rounds.”

Berlin is now vying with London as the second tier cluster in Europe with a decent critical mass.

But there are clouds on the horizon, and they come in the shape of an attack of the clones, if you will, or more accurately, Pollution of the Clones.

While the market for copycat businesses aping the latest startups form the Valley is well known, it’s been a component, but never the only aspect, of the German scene. With Groupon’s acquisition of CityDeal the Clone Scene could now threaten to overtake it’s younger brother, the Innovation Scene. Here’s why.

Online video management software company KIT digital has agreed to acquire privately-held Benchmark Broadcast Systems, based in Singapore, for approximately $10 million.

KIT digital’s chairman and CEO, Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, in a statement says they’ve been working on the acquisition for quite some time, and that the deal is testament to the company’s ambition to become leader in video asset management in the BRIC markets.

Benchmark is a video asset management provider and broadcast video systems integrator with six regional offices throughout Asia, where it employs about 100 people.

The company serves clients in 12+ countries and expects to generate at least $10 million in revenues during the next 12 months. Its clients include companies like CNBC, Express News, ESPN Star, ETV, MediaCorp and NDTV.

In consideration for 100% of Benchmark’s shares, the transaction includes guaranteed payments of approximately $9.5 million directly to the company over time ($4.5 million in cash plus $5 million in KIT digital common stock) plus approximately $1.1 million paid to employees over the next two years.

The transaction also includes corporate performance-based contingent considerations at the first and second anniversary of the transaction.

KIT digital has acquired quite a number of smaller rivals in a variety of countries so far, most recently picking up competitor Multicast Media for net consideration of approximately $18 million.

The company has itself raised $20 million in venture funding from KCP Capital and now trades on NASDAQ under the KITD symbol.

Discussion forums are broken and threaded comments found on blogs don’t cut it either. Too much of the conversation gets lost and any lasting knowledge is buried. That’s the view taken by yoomoot, a new startup just out of private beta.

The standalone site aims to make public online discussions more productive and useful, although in the future yoomoot is planning a subscription-based version for organisations who want to hold private discussions and a plugin for other publishing platforms, such as WordPress.

The FT reports that Google, Intel and Sony will announce a “significant breakthrough into consumer electronics and the broadcast industry” later this week with the launch of a so-called “Smart TV” platform.

In case that sounds familiar, that’s because Bloomberg and the WSJ reported as much on April 29, apart from the apparent name of the Web TV platform that would be making its debut at Google I/O.

Google’s developer conference will be held May 19 – 20 in San Francisco.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini last week at the company’s analyst meeting said that it was looking to boost use of Atom processors in the mobile and digital home device segments. The company stated that its latest chip, named Dragonpoint, offers better audio and video performance, wider and open software support and is cheaper than the competition.

France Telecom and Telecom Italia are said to be among the list of customers lined up to put the chips in set-top boxes.

According to the FT, Google is expected to call on its Android developer community this week to create custom applications for Sony, which is looking to web-enable its televisions and Blu-ray DVD players, and likely other manufacturers in the future.

We’ll see how it goes – Google has been looking to extend its reach to TVs since 2007.

Are you waiting for Google search, native support for YouTube videos and maybe even an iteration of the Chrome browser on your next TV screen? Or do you want them to make advances in the field just so Apple would wake up and maximize the potential of Apple TV?

Right now entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and Google executives are milling around in a swanky hotel outside of London at Google Zeitgeist.

Last year we were there too and managed to even break some news.

But this year we’re not allowed in. Why? There’s not enough room.

Here’s my email exchange with their PR people.

Vision Solutions, a portfolio company of PE firm Thoma Bravo, has agreed to acquire Southborough, Massachusetts-based Double-Take Software, a provider of backup and recovery solutions.

Under the terms of the agreement, Double-Take stockholders will receive $10.55 in cash for each share of common stock they hold, a premium of approximately 39% and 21% to Double-Take’s enterprise value and closing share price of $8.71, respectively, on the last business day prior to Double-Take’s announcement that its BOD was considering indications of interest to be acquired.

The deal, which was announced today, values Double-Take Software at approximately $242 million.

Booyah is the not-so-little location based engine that could. The company behind MyTown has raised $20 million in new funding from a group of investors led by Accel (current investors, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and DAG Ventures, also participated in this round). Accel’s Jim Breyer, a board member of Wal-Mart, Dell and Facebook, will join Booyah’s board. (According to a source close to the deal, the valuation was sizable but definitely under $120 million.)

For months, the location based market has been dominated by Foursquare drama, as Dennis Crowley’s “well-oiled machine” (his words), attracts buyers, adds users and snaps up high-profile partnerships, like its recent deal with NBC. In terms of hype, Booyah has taken a backseat to Foursquare’s billion-dollar-shine but Booyah is chugging along quite nicely.

The company has now raised $29.5 million since 2008 and MyTown has more than 2.1 million users, according to CEO Keith Lee. While Foursquare has yet to reach that milestone, Booyah is preparing for serious acceleration. Lee says Booyah will hit 6 million users by the end of this summer across MyTown and its future products(!).

It’s not exactly fair to compare Foursquare and Booyah, Foursquare focuses on social utility, Booyah focuses on gaming, but both are trying to unlock the power of the check-in and create a massive user base. Booyah, via MyTown, is trying to merge a virtual gaming world with the real world. Users can check-in to real world locations to unlock virtual rewards, they can also “purchase” their favorite properties, collect rent from others and update their properties. Like Foursquare, you can see where your friends are checking-in and pick up local deals.

Lee says MyTown and its unnamed, new products (he was tight-lipped on details but expect major announcements in the next few weeks) will build on that base with a host of new features that will increase the value of the check-in experience. Lee talked in abstracts, but he is interested in adding layers of information on top of the basic GPS check-in: “it’s about validating the activity you do in the real world— a check-in only takes you 70% there.” Booyah is interested in unlocking the information surrounding a check-in through QR codes, bar code scanning, the Facebook Open Graph, etc. For example, instead of just checking into your gym, imagine if you could easily transmit information about your workout, or if you’re at a store, automatically telling your friends what items you like. It’s not clear how these new tools will be implemented but they obviously represent a huge opportunity for Booyah and others, if properly executed. If MyTown, or one of Booyah’s mystery projects, became a popular retail/shopping tool, Booyah would amass valuable consumer data and possibly new monetization opportunities.

On the subject of monetization, Lee would not disclose whether Booyah was in the black, but revenues are indeed rising. Earlier this month, MyTown was averaging 6.7 million virtual item impressions per day, now it’s averaging 8.3 million a day (or 250 million a month). Why does that matter? The popularity of paid virtual goods, which account for 1/3 of MyTown’s revenues, is fueling growth— although the MyTown iPhone app is free it’s a frequent member of Apple’s Top 50 grossing list thanks to the large volume of virtual purchases. Booyah is also making money from paid partnerships with large clients like H&M and the Travel Channel.  Lee says he’s quickly shoveling money back into the company, to expand their product, prepare for the move into foreign markets and to grow the staff. He says a major portion of the new funds will be used to hire the right talent— expect Booyah to nearly double its staff from 24 to 40 by the end of this year.