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Quora is a great place to find answers about products from prominent people involved with them. It’s also a great place for those prominent people to disagree, publicly. That’s what’s happening right now in a thread about the future of Firefox.

Someone posted the following question to Quora recently: Will Firefox have double-digit market share in 3 to 5 years? Straightforward enough. Yes, says (outgoing) Mozilla CEO John Lilly. No, says Firefox co-founder Blake Ross. So far, Ross is winning the argument, according to the votes from Quora users.

Here’s what Ross had to say:

I’m pretty skeptical. I think the Mozilla Organization has gradually reverted back to its old ways of being too timid, passive and consensus-driven to release breakthrough products quickly.

Lilly, meanwhile, offered up this:

I’m hardly an unbiased observer, but am confident that it will. Product is getting better all the time, and especially with 4.0 approaching in the fall. We’ve got 400M users and are growing that number. And we have a huge community of committed people around the world working on making it better. It’s more competitive than ever, but I feel pretty good about our chances, not only on the desktop, but also on Android, which is already looking good.

Ross, who is currently a Director of Product at Facebook (coincidentally working on a Quora competitor), has an argument that seems inline with his Facebook colleague (and former Parakey co-founder) Joe Hewitt. That is, governing bodies (in this case, Mozilla — in Hewitt’s case, W3C) are slowing down the development process on the web, and making it harder to innovate. Both Ross and Hewitt have a long history in the space, as both worked on Netscape, before moving on to create Firefox.

Clearly, both are annoyed at what has happened to their former renegade web browser. Firefox came around at a time when Microsoft’s Internet Explorer had complete control of the market, with over 90% share. Over the past 5+ years, IE’s share has dropped to below 60%, thanks largely to Firefox which now stands between 25%-30% of the market. But, by many accounts, Firefox is no longer considered to be the light, open alternative it once was. That includes the person who asked the question on Quora, who put in the description: “Seems like they are going to start to see massive erosion in share as Chrome/Safari and IE9 continue pushing forward.“

Certainly, Google Chrome is now growing at a much faster pace than Firefox is. Apple’s Safari, meanwhile, has seen slower, but steady growth over the past few years. Both of those browsers are based on the WebKit engine, which seems to be the layout engine of choice these days. Firefox doesn’t use WebKit. Instead, it relies on Mozilla’s Gecko engine.

Lilly is right when he implies that the key to this argument may well be in the mobile space. The problem there is that the WebKit browsers are starting to dominate thanks to the popularity of Google’s Android platform, and Apple’s iPhone (and BlackBerry will soon have a WebKit browser as well). An early build of Firefox for Android is out in the wild, but it will take something really impressive for people to use it instead of Android’s built-in WebKit browser. Apple, meanwhile, has started to let on alternative browsers as well — notably, Opera. But again, it will be hard for any browser to beat the tightly integrated built-in browsers (and who knows if Apple would even let a mobile version of Firefox in the App Store).

Some at Google disagree with Hewitt’s assessment of the slow-moving web. But again, that’s at Google, where they do seem to be pushing things faster than Mozilla currently is. Can Hewitt’s and now Ross’ criticism shake them out of the malaise?

Start-up Tsavo Media, an online media network started by UserPlane founder and MySpace co-president Mike Jones has been sold to Canadian online advertising and marketing company Cyberplex for $75 million.

Tsavo operates over 300 media properties, including Twirlit, which includes content showcasing celebrity gossip, fashion, food and beauty; and Manolith, which features posts on gadgets, style and men’s health; and a Twitter-based search engine called Twithority.

Funded by deep-pocketed private equity firm American Capital, Tsavo has made several acquisitions since its birth, including the publishing assets of Canadian digital media network MoxyMedia and the online marketing and search engine optimization firm Better.

Cyberplex plans to match Tsavo’s media properties and search marketing capabilities with its own network of over 10,000 publishing and advertising partners. The acquisition makes Cyberplex one of the largest ad companies in Canada.

Remember the “megapixel myth” that has driven camera specs for the last decade or so? Yeah, it’s still here; it’s called the “HD hoax” now. I just made that up. But seriously. The idea behind the megapixel myth was that simply increasing the size of the output image didn’t usually result in a better picture in any way. In fact, in addition to filling up the memory card faster, this megapixel bloat led to images that were noticeably less sharp and true to life. Similarly, so-called HD cameras and sensors are now being sold strictly on numbers and not on features or performance. But more data for the image is always better, right? Not quite.

What set this post off was that yesterday, Omnivision announced that they were packing 1080p onto a 1/6″ sensor. An admirable feat of miniaturization. But the reality is that this “high definition” is anything but.

Continue reading…

This morning brought news of Zynga and Facebook’s five year commitment to keeping social gaming on the network. As we wrote earlier today, the deal was surprising considering Zynga’s recent frustrations with Facebook. Some of these frustrations stemmed from last year’s limitations on messaging users. But the more significant concern was Facebook’s push of Facebook Credits as the only payment platform that Zynga and others can use. And clearly, the Credits angle of the deal was a definitely part of the negotiations for this partnership.

The issue that Zynga has is that Facebook takes a massive fee – 30% – for Credits (that is standard for all publishers). For Zynga, which is a cash cow for virtual currency and goods, this cut can amount to some serious dough. Last year, Zynga founder Mark Pincus told The New York Times that direct purchases of virtual currency and goods would account for most of its more than $100 million in revenue in 2009. Last week. Cake Financial founder and CEO Stephen Carpenter estimated that Zynga is bringing in $15 million in profit per month, and would stand to take a significant loss from the 30 percent cut. Now, with the new deal, Zynga will expand the use of Facebook Credits, the social network’s virtual currency, to more games in the developers’ family.

Zynga and Facebook most recently sparred over Facebook’s Credits initiative. Zynga was of course trying to negotiate to lower Facebook’s cut and in these earlier negotiations, things got heated. Facebook was even threatening to shut down Zynga games altogether.

Facebook’s director of communications Larry Yu tells us that the 30 percent fee has remained the same for this deal. But according to a source, Zynga was able to win some concessions and the company walked away pleased with the deal. These concessions could have been made in the form of ad money, as Zynga is one of the largest advertisers on the social network.

And if Facebook is willing to make concessions for Zynga, what does this mean for the other game developers and publishers who are using Credits? For instance, it would make sense for Playdom, the second most popular game publisher on Facebook, to try to sort out a deal as well.

The other angle to the virtual currency agreement is whether Facebook credits will be able to be used on Zynga games off the Facebook platform. Zynga’s recent plans to move off the platform, i.e. Zynga Live, is sure to play a hand in this matter. Zynga wouldn’t comment on any specifics of whether Facebook Credits will integrate off platform.

That being said, virtual currency withstanding, Zynga reportedly spends between $5 million and $8 million a month on Facebook advertising. The fact is that Zynga can afford to play hardball.

Amazon’s cloud storage services are going to be getting another major competitor this week: Google. We hear that this week during its I/O conference, Google will be announcing a new service that is a direct competitor with Amazon’s S3 cloud storage. Google’s service will be called Google Storage for Developers, or ‘GS’. We believe it will be available in a private beta initially. We also hear that the service will be positioned to make it very easy for existing S3 customers to make the switch to Google Storage.

Features will include a REST API, the ability to use Google accounts to offer authenticated downloads, and data redundancy. Developers will be able to use a command line tool to manage their data, and there will be a web interface as well.

We’d previously reported that Google was looking to expand its cloud service offerings, but that it would primarily be focused on ‘value-added’ services that took advantage of technology Google has been using internally, like its translation tools and video processing. We’re hearing that such value-added services will not be part of this launch, but it is highly likely that they will be coming in the future. And that’s the key here — competitors will have a hard time matching the array of technologies and infrastructure Google has spent years developing.

There are a number of group messaging applications that are catered towards business users, such as Yammer or Socialtext. Today, Micromobs is launching a web-based group messaging app aimed towards communication within social groups among friends and family.

On the site users can create and join groups or “mobs” and create a stream of messages uniquely relevant to each user. Users are able to post messages, photos and files and respond in stream to threads, keeping their conversations organized in an ongoing discussion. Users can also push their messages to Twitter and Facebook and make groups private.

Micromobs, which was incubated at the Founder Institute, is designed to fill the gap for a simple group application for the masses. that connects family, volunteer organizations, poker groups, sports teams etc. Micromobs also could be ideal for group communication when planning a next trip, or organizing an event. Ajay Kamat, founder of Micromobs, says that he sees his biggest competitor as email, which is the most common threaded communication for among families and friends. Of course, people use Facebook and other social networking applications for group communications, but the application is hoping Facebook Connect will entice users to be able to use the platform and publish to Facebook at the same time. The startup is also planning to launch mobile apps in the near future.

Facebook and Zynga have just announced a five year partnership and the expansion of use of Facebook Credits in Zynga games.

After months of discord, Zynga and Facebook have made peace– at least for now. Despite Zynga’s earlier frustrations and reports that it was ready to abandon Facebook, the two companies were able to agree to a “five-year strategic relationship.” “Facebook was a pioneer in opening their platform in 2007 and in just three years tens of millions of Facebook users play our games every day, from FarmVille and Café World to Treasure Isle and Mafia Wars,” Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said in the press release. “We are excited about Facebook’s long-term commitment to social gaming and Zynga, and look forward to working with them and other platform providers to bring the best social gaming experience to users worldwide.”

Although Zynga and Facebook are now tied together for at least the next five years, don’t expect Zynga to abandon its Zynga Live project and other avenues that will help it grow more independent of the social networking site. We hear that the game developer is still ramping up for its independent projects.

Another interesting part of the announcement is the expansion of Zynga’s use of Facebook Credits, the social network’s virtual currency. Zynga and Facebook most recently sparred over Facebook’s Credits initiative. As the only payment platform on the site, Facebook would slice 30% off publisher revenues (which is the standard cut for Facebook). Zynga was of course trying to negotiate to lower Facebook’s cut. Negotiations between the two were “intense,” according to our sources, with Facebook threatening to shut down Zynga games altogether. It’s unclear what the breakdown is for the new agreement and if Zynga managed to lower Facebook’s percentage but surely this new partnership should bring in more revenue for Facebook, considering that Zynga is a cash cow for virtual goods. According to a source, Zynga was able to win some concessions, the company walked away pleased with the deal.

See the release below:

Facebook and Zynga announced today that they have entered into a five-year strategic relationship that increases their shared commitment to social gaming on Facebook and expands use of Facebook Credits in Zynga’s games. The agreement provides a solid foundation for both companies to continue to work together to provide millions of people with a compelling user experience for social games.

“Facebook was a pioneer in opening their platform in 2007 and in just three years tens of millions of Facebook users play our games everyday, from FarmVille and Cafe World to Treasure Isle and Mafia Wars,” said Mark Pincus, founder and chief executive officer at Zynga. “We are excited about Facebook’s long-term commitment to social gaming and Zynga, and look forward to working with them and other platform providers to bring the best social gaming experience to users worldwide.”

“We are pleased to enter into a new agreement with Zynga to enhance the experience for Facebook users who play Zynga games,” said Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook. “We look forward to continuing our work with Zynga and all of our developers to increase the opportunities on our platform.”

Zynga is currently testing Facebook Credits in select games and will expand to more titles over the coming months. Terms of the agreement between Facebook and Zynga were not disclosed.

We are now less than a week away from TechCrunch Disrupt in New York City, May 24-26. The speaker lineup is complete, the Disrupt Agenda is now posted (see below), and the Battlefield Startups have been selected and are at this very moment preparing for battle. There are still a few tickets left (get them now because the discount rate expires tomorrow).

Kicking off the program, Charlie Rose will interview John Doerr, the fabled Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist who backed Amazon, Netscape, and Google. Now he thinks the iPad is the next big thing (he’s a big believer in clean tech too, but that’s another story). Doerr has made billions of dollars by spotting disruption early on. It’s what all venture capitalists try to do, and part of the culture of Silicon Valley. But what happens when the dynamics of the technology industry begin to pervade the media industry? Whether it’s print, music, TV, games, or advertising, the media industry is taking on the characteristics of the technology industry with its accelerated rate of creative destruction.

Where there is disruption, there is also opportunity, and we’ve organized Disrupt to explore where the puck is going. On Monday, Funny Or Die CEO Dick Glover will tell us how the Web is changing his approach to TV production and distribution. Boxee CEO Avner Ronen and Comcast Interactive executive VP Sam Schwartz will debate what TV Everywhere actually means. Bloomberg’s editorial chief Norm Pearlstine, Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau, and New York Times media writer David Carr will discuss whether the iPad will really change the game for print media or whether the bigger ongoing disruption is the Web itself.

On Tuesday, we’ve got Google engineering VP Vic Gundotra, Facebook product VP Chris Cox, and Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley talking about how the mobile Web is a new beast and how to tame it. (Facebook alone has 100 million mobile users, Google is pushing hard to get Android adopted everywhere, and Foursquare has figured out how to get people to voluntarily broadcast their location, which may be the key to local geo advertising). Tim Armstrong will tell us how his transformation of AOL is coming along, and later we will ask AOL founder Steve Case what he thinks of Armstrong’s strategy. Then we are going to put 4Chan founder Christopher Poole, Chatroulette’s Andrey Ternovskiy and Dailybooth CEO Brian Pokorny together on a panel with GE’s global executive director of advertising and branding Judy Hu so that they can try to explain why she should ever entrust her brand to them. Finally, VCs Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz will have an actual debate about whether and under what circumstances itr’s better for startups to go lean versus fat.

On Wednesday, Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey will give us a special demo. We’ll have panels on social commerce (with Gilt Groupe CEO Susan Lynne and Etsy founder Rob Kalin) and advertising technology. Chris Hughes and Scott Heiferman will talk about social change. John Borthwick and Chris Dixon will tackle the challenges and rewards of seed funding in New York City.

All of this agenda is just in the mornings. The afternoons will be jam packed with new startup launches in our Startup Battlefield competition. This is our new format since we are no longer doing TechCrunch 50. It will be about half as many companies, with more feedback from our expert panelists, and elimination rounds until we get a winner, who will receive a $50,000 prize. I’ve seen these companies in rehearsals and all I can say at this point is that they will not disappoint. And if you are an engineer/hacker, join our awesome and free Hack Day the weekend before the event—the best projects get stage time in front of the full conference audience. Watch this video interview I did with Beet.TV for more info.

We also plan to add an audience member to each panel, so you can be a part of the discussion, too.

If you want to attend Disrupt, now is the time to buy your ticket.

Disrupt Agenda

Monday, May 24: “What’s Going On?”
A high-level look at societal changes in how we consume and share information, and why. The following days will focus on how these changes are influencing platform development and business strategy in media, advertising and technology.

9:00am	Opening Remarks Mike Arrington, Editor, TechCrunch
9:15am	The Big Picture: Tectonic Shifts in Technology, Special Series with Charlie Rose Charlie Rose, Host, Charlie Rose Show John Doerr, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
9:40am	Charlie Rose, Host, Charlie Rose Show Yuri Milner, CEO & Founding Partner, Digital Sky Technologies
10:05am	Real-Time Demo: TweetUp The real-time stream from Twitter, Facebook, and other sharing platforms is influencing communications, advertising and content. Advertisers see real-time data as key to sending the right message to the right people –and avoiding disaster. What’s now in real-time technology? Bill Gross, CEO idealab, debuts TweetUp
10:15am	Hollywood-Flavored Fireside: Funny or Die Gets Disruptive Made-for-web content doesn’t always stay online. And TV obviously isn’t all about the static squawk box. Professional producers and comedians from the hit Funny or Die discussion how content creation is evolving — and how it’s affecting the talent industry, Hollywood and Beyond. Dick Glover, CEO, Funny Or Die Chris Henchy, Comedian & Actor, Co-Head Gary Sanchez Productions Mark Kvamme, Partner, Sequoia Capital Andrew Steele, Executive Producer, Funny or Die
10:55am	Coffee break
11:10am	TV Everywhere: Who Profits from Entertainment On Every Screen, All the Time? As content like SNL or the NBA becomes available on any screen, any time, the “windowing” techniques on which TV networks and other content owners used to rely for advertising and other business models no longer pertain. What’s the future of multi-channel entertainment? Who’s going to profit? Moderator: Michael Wolf, Founder & Managing Director, Activate Avner Ronen, CEO, Boxee Samuel Schwartz, EVP, Comcast Interactive Quincy Smith, Founding Partner, CODE Advisors
11:40am	Entertainment Content Demo: Tunerfish Comcast is about to launch a new service, developed as a secret, skunk-works project by some of the Silicon Valley team they obtained in 2008 (via the acquisition of Plaxo). What does the cable, entertainment, and communications giant have up its sleeve? John McCrea, Founder, Tunerfish & VP Marketing, Plaxo
11:50am	Products into Services: Music, Gaming, and Publishing Entertainment content is evolving from discrete 3D products into streaming digital services with ancillary revenue streams. A book is now more than bound paper; it’s also a digital download with add-ons such as author interviews or footage. Music is no longer a static CD; it’s a chance to interact with a musician a social network or meet others fans online. How will these trends continue to impact the content industries and business models? Sarah Chubb, President, CondeNet Fred Davis, Founding Partner, CODE Advisors John Hagel, Co-Chairman, Center for the Edge, Deloitte Neil Young, CEO, ngmoco
12:40pm	LUNCH
1:55pm	Fireside: Social Networks & Online Content: Where’s it Going? Mike Arrington, Editor, TechCrunch Jason Hirschhorn, Co-President, MySpace Mike Jones, Co-President, MySpace
2:15pm	Startup Battlefield Begins–Session 1: Disruptive Ideas & Marketplaces Companies TBA May 24, on special URL Disrupt.co Selected from hundreds of applicants worldwide, these fresh products will show new ways of thinking for mobile, iPad, Hollywood, e-commerce, finance and more.
3:45pm	Coffee Break
4:00pm	Startup Battlefield Resumes–Session 2: Disruptive Apps & Services
5:30pm	Does The IPad Change Everything For News, Or Is It Still All About The Web? David Carr, Writer, New York Times Ron Conway, Angel Investor, SV Angel Eric Hippeau, CEO, Huffington Post Norm Pearlstine, Chief Content Officer, Bloomberg

Tuesday, May 25: “How are Platforms and Content Evolving?”

9:30am	The Mobile Disruption–What’s Next? Moderator: Mike Arrington, Editor, TechCrunch Chris Cox, VP, Facebook Dennis Crowley, CEO, FourSquare Vic Gundotra, VP, Google
10:00am	Social & Local Demo Howard Lerman, CEO, Yext launches a brand-new product for small biz everywhere
10:10am	Fireside: Local Content, Local Ads, and Everything in Between. How is AOL Changing? Mike Arrington, Editor, TechCrunch Tim Armstrong, CEO, AOL
10:30am	Coffee Break
10:50am	The Lean vs Fat Startup Debate The funders behind Twitter, Skype and other digital greats debate strategy for growing strong companies Ben Horowitz, Co-founder, Andreessen Horowitz Fred Wilson, Partner, Union Square Ventures
11:30am	Fireside Chat Mike Arrington, Editor, TechCrunch Steve Case, CEO, Revolution
11:50am	Digital Crowds into Dollars Traditional print media is experiencing fragmentation while online media are experiencing the opposite; coalescing of audience around addictive digital platforms. How can brands effectively meet audiences where they? And how can technologists amassing these audiences work best with brands? Judy Hu, Global Executive Director – Advertising & Branding, GE Brian Pokorny, CEO, dailybooth Christopher Poole, founder, 4chan Andrey Ternovskiy, CEO, Chatroulette
12:30pm	LUNCH Optional lunchtime meet & greet with Knight Foundation: News and media startups are invited to lunch and learn about participating in the “Knight News Challenge,” which offers $25M in grant money for news innovation.
2:00pm	Exits: The 2010 Outlook TechCrunch talks with legendary investor and tech banker Frank Quattrone on the liquidity outlook as the recession recedes. Co-presented by SecondMarket. Mike Arrington, Editor, TechCrunch Frank Quattrone, Founder, Qatalyst
2:30pm	Startup Battlefield–Session Three: Disruptive Streams Inspired entrepreneurs serve up a third round of amazing product launches
4:00pm	Coffee Break
4:15pm	Startup Battlefield–Session Four: Disruptive Entertainment
6:15pm	VC / Startup Speed Meeting & Reception Presented by Zoosk in the Networking Lounge and in Startup Alley. Cocktail reception is open to all attendees; speed meeting for pre-registered startups.
	After-party Hosted by MailChimp at Tribeca Rooftop

Wednesday, May 26: “How do You Find Your Audience –and Make Money?”
Content creation and distribution change, so must business models. How can artists, brands, advertisers and other merchants reach the right audience, with the right message, at the right time?

9:00am	Success Strategies for Musicians in the Digital Era Troy Carter, Founder & CEO, Coalition Media Group, worldwide Manager to Lady Gaga
9:20am	Mobile & Commerce Demo Jack Dorsey, Founder & CEO, Square
9:40am	The Future of the Market is Social. How Do You Find Your People? Finding customers in 2010 is not as simple as mailing out the Sears Catalog was in 1910. A fragmented consumer base with varied tastes combined with unlimited Web competition make e-commerce easy to initiate but challenging to excel within. These executives have successfully identified their marketplaces and created services with social functions that adapt to different mini-niches therein. What’s their strategy? How can other companies learn to “monetize” the old-fashioned way — by selling products that people want, to the people who want them? John Caplan, CEO, OpenSky Rob Kalin, CEO, Etsy Susan Lyne, CEO, Gilt Groupe Dan Porter, CEO, OMGPOP
10:25am	Social Advertising Demo David Kidder, CEO, Clickable
10:35am	Fireside Chat: Online Advertising Mike Arrington, Editor, TechCrunch Nikesh Arora, President, Global Sales Operations and Business Development, Google
10:55am	Coffee Break
11:10am	Social Networking & Social Change How can online connections create offline change? As digital tools create communities, how will they meet society and the larger world? Scott Heiferman, CEO, Meetup Chris Hughes, Executive Director, Jumo Reshma Saujani, Congressional Candidate, New York
11:40am	The Big Brand Story How to Make Experiences that Matter for Online & Social Audiences Frank Cooper, SVP and Chief Consumer Engagement Officer, Pepsi
12:00pm	How Will AdTech Deliver the Audience? In an era of media fragmentation, how can ad-tech experts help brands reach fans on new platforms, such as mobile devices and the iPad? especially now that brand budgets are moving more money to online, what’s now in real-time and social-graph strategy? This line-up of top brains discusses where it’s all going—and who stands to make $$. Samir Arora, Founder, Glam Media Zaw Thet, CEO, 4INFO Eric Wheeler, CEO, 33Across
12:30pm	LUNCH
2:00pm	Getting it Built John Biggs, Editor, CrunchGear Adam Hocherman, Founder & President, American Innovative Bre Pettis, Founder, Makerbot Liam Casey, CEO, PCH International
2:30pm	Getting Funded A How-To Workshop
3:00pm	The Facebook Effect David Kirkpatrick, Senior Editor, Technology & Internet, Fortune Sean Parker>, Managing Partner, Founders Fund
3:20pm	Measurement Demo Eric Bosco, Chief Product Officer, ComScore
3:30pm	What’s Behind the NYC Seed-Funding Hotspot? The city has the population density –and proudly local, niche communities — that drive growth of social, mobile and e-commerce startups. The instant laboratory creates a network effect that then helps services grow in value. How will these startups scale beyond the five boroughs and how can upcoming teams take advantage of NY’s unique environment? John Borthwick, CEO, betaworks Chris Dixon, CEO, Hunch & Angel Investor
4:00pm	Hack Day Finalists Present
4:15pm	Startup Battlefield Finale Four Amazing Finalists Face Off in a Final Round
5:30pm	Disrupt Cocktail Reception Hosted by Zecco
7:00pm	Winners Announced with contributions from: David Sacks, CEO, Yammer, former honoree Custom Award from Yahoo and Lowenstein Sandler
9:00pm	After-party Hosted by Media Temple (mt) at element

SoundCloud has just announced they have hit a million users. It followers their deal earlier this year with The Hype Machine, but it’s clear this is a startup that is scaling globally now from its base in Berlin.

The audio sharing site that’s geared towards those who work in the music industry is an online audio platform which lets musicians collaborate, promote and distribute their music via widgets and apps. It’s been variously described as a “Flickr for audio” or a “Vimeo for audio”, but whatever it is, it’s clearly got the kinds of tools and distribution platform which is winning both the hearts and business of artists.

The web measurement firm Quantcast has appointed ex-Yahoo! MD Philip Macauley to lead the company’s operations and expansion into the UK market.

Macauley spent ten years at Yahoo!, where he was most recently Director of Business Development and Commercial Relations.

His tenor at the Internet giant saw him take on various “senior roles” including “driving media agency relationships as Agency Sales Director and leading the company’s publisher efforts as Head of Publisher Partnerships.” All of which would appear to make Macauley a very good fit for Quantcast.

We’re all for startups trying to make money, but we also recognize a good old ‘bait and switch’ tactic when we see one. Case in point: on-demand help desk software maker Zendesk, which has just emailed its customers to let them know they’re raising their prices – resulting in a 300+ percent increase in monthly fees for some.

The announcement, which was also posted on the company’s forums, comes in the form of an introduction of new product features, with the new pricing scheme mentioned underneath (never a good sign).

The startup claims the new pricing plans are being offered in response to “customer requests for different packaging and features”. But judging from the commentary on the forum entry and on Twitter, we’re not so sure that’s really the case.

Coincidentally, we just reported on Zendesk crossing the 5,000 business customer mark.

Here’s what’s changing for them:

Before:

Solo package: $9/month per agent, 1 agent only
Regular package: $19/month per agent, minimum of 3 agents
Plus+ package: $39/month per agent, minimum of 5 agents

Now:

Starter plan: $9/month per agent, 1 to 3 agents
Regular plan: $29 per month, 3 to 20 agents
Plus+ plan: $59/month, 5 to 100 agents

For what it’s worth, Zendesk is trying to appease outraged customers with ‘grandfathering terms’, but that forces many to switch to annual billing rather than monthly or quarterly, which a lot of them appear unwilling to do. Besides, it’s not a long-term solution.

Some of the reactions on the forum post speak volumes about how Zendesk customers feel about the changes:

So, with 19 agents, our monthly bill goes from 645 USD to 1121 USD? An increase of 74% ? Seriously??!!!

We pay $99 for 5 users, now its 5 x 59 = $295 per month.. This cannot be for real, we have been supporting zendesk since the early days, how can this be justified…If I pulled a stunt like this on my clients I am sure we would lose..Especially as the option to stay on your current price range involved stumping up a years fees.. come on guys, give us a fair go, this is outrageous!!!!

I’m with David, our account is going from $153 per month (9 agents) to $261 per month, a 58% increase. Using a huge price increase to force people into an annual billing plan is going to leave a bitter taste in a lot of mouths.

We currently have 41 agents and would have been up to 50 by mid-June. Not anymore. Our monthly bill is going to increase from $1503 to $2419. That is an annual increase of approx $11,000. A roughly %62 increase.

This seems extortionate, we are facing a 100%+ increase ,what are you playing at Zen Desk?

I’ve also managed to find someone who was actually happy with the transparency Zendesk displayed in its email to customers, so maybe we’re just hearing the voices of the angry here.

Again, it’s fine for startups to make money, even if it means they need to change their pricing plans and hike fees at some point. But in this case, perhaps Zendesk would have been better off checking exactly how profoundly these changes would affect the bills of their early customers.

How can you explain a price increase of more than 300% for a service that you’re far from the only one to provide? Zendesk doesn’t even really do that, they’ve just communicated the new fees and keep pointing customer who complain to the grandfathering terms, which do not explain the rationale behind the price hikes either.

We’ve contacted Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane for more insight and hope to hear back soon.

UPDATE: Svane responded to us with this statement:

Yes, we are raising our prices on two of our plans. We now have three plans at three different price points (starting at $9). This is the first time EVER that we have increased pricing. But we have added new functionality to the service for every week for the last two and a half years.

And today we’re launching a lot more functionality for knowledge base and community support. Zendesk has gone from a traditional ticket management system to a complete customer engagement platform, supporting 1-to-1, 1-to-many and many-to-many customer conversations and support interactions. Zendesk is investing heavily in new features and our customers will continue to experience great things with Zendesk.

We will deliver on our promise. Are we the cheapest show in town? No. But we do think that we have an excellent offering for almost every budget starting at $9 per agent seat. And we do offer to grandfather our existing customers for one additional year at their current price point with all of their current functionality grandfathered indefinitely.

The price per agent has gone up with $10 and $20 on the Regular and Plus+ plans respectively. That’s a 50% increase. Some customers may experience disproportional price hikes due to earlier introductory discounts, and we will look into these accounts on a case-by-case basis.

Let me finally point out, that we have been completely open and transparent about the price changes. We don’t try to sneak it in.

Almost exactly one year ago, we first wrote about former Digg lead architect, Joe Stump, and former Social Thing founder, Matt Galligan, teaming up to form Crash Corp., an “alternate reality mobile gaming” startup. A lot can change in a year.

Today, Stump and Galligan are well into building out SimpleGeo, the location platform company that Crash Corp. turned into. That transformation started only a little over 6 months ago — and it may turn out to be one of the smartest pivots for a startup in years. SimpleGeo has just closed a new $8.14 million round of funding. And they’re announcing five new hires to go along with it.

The company’s Series A round pushes their total funding to just about $10 million (their $1.5 million seed round happened at the end of last November). This round was led by former backer Redpoint Ventures, with previous investors First Round Capital, Lowercase Capital (Chris Sacca’s fund), and Ravi Narasimhan also participating. SimpleGeo also picked up new backer, Foundry Group, in the latest round.

The money will be used to build out datasets, improve the API, and continue work on a new product they’re working on (for the API), Galligan tells us. The funds will also give the fast-growing company two years of burn — and that’s factoring in significant headcount increases, Galligan says. That’s good planning, considering how quickly the startup is adding new team members.

The immediate thing that sticks out about the five new hires announced today is that four of them come from the same place: Digg. As we mentioned, Stump used to work at Digg, but there was no funny business going on here, as three of them were a part of Digg’s layoffs earlier this month (a fourth left on his own). Included in this group is well-known designer Jeffrey Kalmikoff, who will now be heading up product development and design for SimpleGeo.

The others coming over from Digg include engineer Ian Eure, who will be working on Python infrastructure. Paul Lathrop, who will be a part of the Systems team. And Nicole Williams who will serve as the “Ambassador” of SimpleGeo — basically, taking care of all the logistics, facilities, and office management of the company.

SimpleGeo’s other big hire is Rob Bailey, who will be joining as the Vice President of Business Development. No, Bailey didn’t work at Digg, he comes from a company he co-founded called Delicious Brands. Alongside BD, Bailey will be in charge of sales as well, we’re told.

Two months ago, SimpleGeo hired 5 people to bring their total headcount to 13. Now, as they’re pushing 20, it’s time for another office. The startup has just signed a lease for a second office that will open in mid-June in San Francisco to go along with their headquarters in Boulder, CO. The team will be evenly split between the two cities for now, but Galligan foresees the San Francisco office quickly becoming the larger one.

With seemingly everyone in the technology space interested in location-based services right now, SimpleGeo finds itself in a very good position. Ever since Twitter acquired Mixer Labs (makers of GeoAPI) back in December, SimpleGeo hasn’t had a lot of competition in its space. They now have over a terabyte of geodata at their disposal to serve up to other startups who wish to use their plug-and-play packages.

“The new version of the API will scale better, work faster, and include more redundancy and servers around the world,” Galligan says. There will also be a new pricing model with this new API to fit different business models. This should make the service cheaper as well, Galligan says.

Not bad for what should have been an alternate reality gaming startup celebrating its first birthday.

E-commerce company Merchant Focus Processing and Inner Fence have acquired AppNinjas, creator of Swipe Credit Card Terminal for iPhone (formerly iSwipe). Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Inner Fence, which is actually a competitor of AppNinjas, develops a credit card processor for the iPhone and Mac computer. Both Inner Fence and AppNinjas will be rolling out integrated retail hardware to allow for retail-based swiped transactions for processing on both iPhone and iPod touch. The plan is to offer the hardware free of charge to new merchants that enroll with either Inner Fence or AppNinjas.

Of course, AppNinjas and Inner Fence will face competition from Jack Dorsey’s Square, which just debuted in the app store and has been receiving rave reviews. Square works by way of a tiny card reader that plugs into the headphone jack on the device. It takes finger signatures on the touchscreen, generates email or SMS receipts, calculates sales tax, and comes with an online accounting dashboard to keep track of sales.

Unlike Square, however, AppNinjas’ app does not come with a actual swiping device. You input a credit card’s information into the app to process the transaction.

We’ve shown you the summer cell phone lineup from KDDI (Japan’s No. 2 carrier) yesterday. Today, Japan’s third largest carrier, SoftBank Mobile, showed its own summer lineup during a special press conference, and all of their 13 new models have one thing in common: they all come with Twitter pre-installed.

The buyers of these cell phones will be able to access Twitter either via a pre-installed app or through a pre-installed widget on the homescreen. The background is that SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son himself is a huge Twitter fan (he has almost 300,000 followers) and believes Japan is set to become Twitter country. And in fact, by some measures it’s already No. 2.

Photo gallery of all the 13 new Twitter-powered cell phones over at MobileCrunch.

Professional social network LinkedIn is adding another member to its board, Netflix Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Kilgore. LinkedIn, which has 65 million members, recently named former Ask.com CEO Skip Battle to its board, joining founder and chairman Reid Hoffman, current CEO Jeff Weiner, Greylock’s David Sze, and Sequoia’s Marc Kvamme.

Kilgore joined Netflix in 2000 and has helped the company grow its subscriber base from fewer than 100,000 to more than 13 million subscribers. Prior to joining Netflix, Kilgore was director of marketing for Amazon.com, and also held positions at Procter & Gamble and Booz, Allen and Hamilton.

Of course, the appointment of Kilgore and Battle to the board is interesting when you consider that both executives have significant experience in advising technology companies through the IPO process. Kilgore, of course, has helped Netflix go public and Battle serves on the board of OpenTable, Expedia and Netflix.

Is an IPO in LinkedIn’s future? CEO Jeff Weiner isn’t ruling out any possibilities, but the idea has certainly been bandied about quit a bit. While LinkedIn is a strong IPO candidate, LinkedIn co-founder and Chairman Reid Hoffman told us at TechCrunch50 last fall that he’s not in any rush to go public. Later, Hoffman told Reuters that the company plans to pursue an IPO at some point, but not any time soon.The company was valued at around $1 billion in its last round of financing in 2008, and has been profitable since 2007.