Tag | crunch-disrupt
TweetUp Teams Up With Business.com, Netvibes And TheFreeDictionary.com
Fresh off the heels of announcing the acquisition of Android Twitter client Twidroyd and popurls , Twitter search and advertising platform operator TweetUp has signed up several new distribution partners. TweetUp will be powering its search results with four new publishers, namely Business.com , Netvibes , Farlex’s online reference sites including TheFreeDictionary.com and TheFreeLibrary.com , as well as a number of (unnamed) newspapers. Thanks to these agreements and previous ones, the Idealab -owned startup claims it can now serve over 250 million impressions via TweetUp search results, with a potential total reach of some 100 million unique users on a monthly basis. In April, TweetUp opened registration for its bidded marketplace for real-time search , and in May the company launched its search capabilities on a number of sites at the TechCrunch Disrupt event, including here at TechCrunch, Topix.com, and Businessinsider.com. TweetUp’s search algorithms and marketplace aim to address the needs of both users and tweeters in a single search mechanism. In addition to algorithms that combine a variety of factors to determine relevance, tweeters will soon be able to bid on keywords in a marketplace very similar to what now occurs at search engines. It’ll be interesting to see if Gross can make even half the impact he did with GoTo / Overture ( acquired by Yahoo 7 years ago almost to the day), which pretty much invented the sponsored search model. Sure enough, these distribution partnerships are an essential part of the TweetUp road map. CrunchBase Information TweetUp Information provided by CrunchBase
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TweetUp Teams Up With Business.com, Netvibes And TheFreeDictionary.com
Calling All Startups For TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, September 27-29
Please join us at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco on September 27-29 2010. It started as an experiment in New York this past May. We sensed a fundamental shift taking place with technology and media—a shift in platforms, applications, revenue models and consumer behavior—and we wanted to talk about it. Appropriately, we found an old Merrill-Lynch office building and took it over for three days to test a new event format, TechCrunch Disrupt. We had 3 objectives: (1) gather the best minds to debate what’s changing now and what to do about it; (2) showcase the hottest new startups we could find and (3) have fun and meet a ton of new people. The response was more than we could have hoped for. Charlie Rose opened the show. Mayor Bloomberg stopped by for a surprise visit . Carol Bartz even made me blush (sort of). Twenty five new startups launched on stage. Over 100 other startups demo’ed their services in the wings. 1,700 tech enthusiasts showed up—rivaling our biggest events to date in San Francisco. So we’re going to keep blowing it out, and we hope you’ll join us for TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, September 27-29 at the San Francisco Design Center Concourse . The main agenda will run 9 am – 6 pm, but save your evenings for after-parties and lots more networking fun. Disrupt SF will explore the Third Wave , a phrase coined by John Doerr in his interview with Charlie Rose. If the First Wave was the PC, and the Second Wave was the Internet, now the Third Wave is a combination of the social and mobile layers accelerating everything on the Internet once again from geo apps and tablet computing to social commerce. Disrupt SF will also feature our new startup competition, the Startup Battlefield , where approximately 25 new startups will participate in a tournament-style launch competition to demonstrate their technology, business and marketing disruptions. One lucky company will take home the grand prize Disrupt Cup trophy (passed on from last May’s winners, Soluto ) and a $50,000 check, and others will receive special awards and accolades. So let the disruption begin. Startup applications are open today, hosted by Producteev , through midnight PST, August 8. We review applications on a rolling basis, so please apply as soon as you are ready for consideration. You can read all the fine print for rules and eligibility here . Just remember our motto: Create, Destroy, Repeat. The Disrupt SF list of speakers and agenda will be announced on over the coming months, but grab our extra early bird tickets asap (best prices through July 31 via Eventbrite .)
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Calling All Startups For TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, September 27-29
Scribd’s Decision To Dump Flash Pays Off, User Engagement Triples
You could call it the perfect storm. Over the last few months, user engagement on Scribd has surged, according to CEO Trip Adler, thanks to its transition to HTML5, the introduction of the iPad, and Scribd’s Facebook integration. Of these three factors, Adler says the conversion from Flash to HTML5 was by far the greatest driver for his document sharing company. According to Scribd’s numbers, time on the site has tripled in the last three months. In early May, Scribd announced its plans to ditch Adobe’s Flash and began the arduous process of converting every document (of its “tens of millions”) to native, HTML5 pages. “We are scrapping three years of Flash development and betting the company on HTML5 because we believe HTML5 is a dramatically better reading experience than Flash, “co-founder and CTO, Jared Friedman, told Erick Schonfeld. Although many documents on the web are still boxed into Flash players, the HTML5 format turns them into rich, interactive web pages. That gamble has paid off handsomely for Scribd. Although the number of unique visitors still stands at roughly 50 million per month, those users are spending significantly more time perusing documents and sharing with friends.That growth in user engagement has rapidly accelerated in the past month. On May 25, at TechCrunch Disrupt, Friedman said user engagement had doubled — implying strong acceleration in the last three weeks. The HTML5 play has also made Scribd’s product very iPad friendly and iPad users are responding in kind. According to Adler, although iPhones clearly outnumber iPads in the wild by a large margin, the number of users accessing Scribd through the iPad is now roughly equivalent with the number of users who are using their iPhone. Now that the company has its HTML5 and iPad strategy in place, Adler says they are focusing on making Scribd more social and less reliant on search engines. Today, the majority of their traffic comes from Google, but Scribd is putting a greater emphasis on the social by closely integrating with Facebook. Earlier this year, Scribd revamped its Facebook Connect option (enhanced content sharing and added an activity feed plug-in) and introduced Readcasting, which automatically tells your social networks, like Twitter and Facebook what you’re reading. According to Adler, those initiatives are growing: the number of people who are auto-Readcasting is increasing by roughly 10% each day and daily subscriptions to other users is up 15x (in the last three months). Quick video with Adler above. CrunchBase Information Scribd Information provided by CrunchBase
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Scribd’s Decision To Dump Flash Pays Off, User Engagement Triples
The Poor, Pilloried, Tech IPO
A decade ago, tech IPOs ruled the stock markets and Silicon Valley. They were the end-all and be-all for ambitious entrepreneurs and venture capitalists looking to become instant billionaires, or at least millionaires. That was many booms and busts ago. The IPO market never came back, and the multiple financial meltdowns which brought on Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulations made going public even less appealing to shoot-from-the-hip entrepreneurs. The founders of the most successful tech companies today—Facebook, Skype, LinkedIn—are pushing off the inevitable IPO for as long as possible. And for smaller tech companies, IPOs seem hardly worth the bother. And those companies which are going public simply are not the cream of the crop. IPO returns across all sectors this year are down 3 percent, according to Renaissance Capital . And over the past three years, IPO returns are basically tracking the S&P 500 , which hardly justifies the added risk of investing in them. Even venture capitalists are souring on IPOs. In a post this morning titled “IPOs Just Aren’t What They Used To Be,” Fred Wilson laments: The cost is just too high and the benefits are just too low for most companies these days. Wilson shares two anecdotes. One was of a startup which prepared to go public, but couldn’t and was still stuck with a $3.5 million bill it couldn’t afford. The other was of a “successful” tech IPO which raised $75 million, but gave the company a lower valuation than it might have gotten in a “late stage private financing.” (He doesn’t name either company). In his opinion, “only the very best companies” should attempt an IPO: The exit of choice for most startups, he suggests, is selling to a larger company. And that describes exactly the market today, where the best possible exit for most startups is to be acquired by Google, Microsoft, or (more recently) Apple. And instead of going public, the best tech startups like Facebook, Zynga, and Groupn are getting early payouts for founders and employees via late-stage, private DST-type financings . But limiting exits to M&A might not be the best thing for venture returns. At TechCrunch Disrupt, technology banker Frank Quattrone argued : “For the VC market to produce above average returns you need there to be an IPO market.” An important part of venture returns come from holding onto some shares after an IPO and riding the public markets a while. “If you lose those longtail returns you lose a lot of the returns,” he concluded. Quattrone seems to think this problem will be solved when the new standard bearers of the Web decide to go public, as opposed to the lackluster offerings so far: There are probably 40 to 45 IPOs on file. They are not the category-defining, earthshaking companies the market wants to see. The market wants to see Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, LinkedIn, Skype. They want to see the companies that are changing the way we live. I’m not sure a few iconic IPOs will bring back the Netscape years. First of all, it might still be a couple years before we see a Facebook IPO, and even longer for a Twitter IPO. But even if and when those kinds of tech companies do go public, the IPO option for lesser startups will remain limited for the reasons Wilson outlines. Unless, of course, a Facebook IPO makes public investors irrational once again and we get another bubble. But nobody wants that, or do they? CrunchBase Information Fred Wilson Frank Quattrone Information provided by CrunchBase
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The Poor, Pilloried, Tech IPO
Andreessen Horowitz To Win The Foursquare Investor Badge
A months long fundraising process for Foursquare is in its last stages, we’ve heard from multiple sources, and Andreessen Horowitz looks to be preparing to check-in to Foursquare to take an investor badge. The company has delayed committing to new venture capital as they considered buyout offers – negotiations went deep with both Yahoo and Facebook , and possibly Microsoft. The Yahoo discussions ended weeks ago , and Facebook passed on an acquisition earlier this week, we’ve heard. That means the company is raising that big new round of financing. And a slew of venture capitalists, including Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Spark Capital and First Round Capital were all rumored to competing heavily for inclusion despite the $80 million or so valuation, say our sources. Andreessen Horowitz, despite rumors that they were pulling out of discussions with the company weeks ago over concerns that too much information was leaking to the press, is the last venture capitalist standing. The fact that founding partner Marc Andreessen is on the board of directors of Facebook, a key partner or competitor of Foursquare, may be the factor that put them over the top. Existing investors OATV and Union Square Ventures will also participate heavily in the new round, we’ve heard. In the meantime they’ve likely already loaned additional capital to the company. It’s not clear if the final terms of the round have been set, or who’s putting in how much money. We sat down with Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley two weeks ago at TechCrunch Disrupt to talk about his vision for the company. Watch that interview here . CrunchBase Information Foursquare Andreessen Horowitz Dennis Crowley Information provided by CrunchBase
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Andreessen Horowitz To Win The Foursquare Investor Badge
Google Does The Hard Sell On Security For Its Enterprise Apps
It’s no secret that Google has ambitions of becoming an Enterprise productivity suite powerhouse; perhaps one day taking over the top spot from Microsoft. As Google’s President, Global Sales Operations and Business Development Nikesh Arora told us at TechCrunch Disrupt a last week, Google hopes for Apps to be a billion dollar revenue stream in three to four years. But one challenge has been convincing businesses that a move to the cloud promises security. And some early Apps users have even questioned the security of the suite, which includes e-mail, calendaring, document sharing and chat applications. To mitigate these concerns, Google has released a white paper to give enterprise customers greater transparency into Google’s security practices, policies, and technology involving Google Apps. And of course, the white paper is also intended to also assure current and potential clients of its “strong and extensive security infrastructure.” Google has even created a special portal about privacy and security for the educational institutions that use Apps.
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Google Does The Hard Sell On Security For Its Enterprise Apps
Yahoo Chief Architect Raymie Stata Promoted To CTO
Raymie Stata, Chief Architect at Yahoo has been promoted to the role of CTO and Senior Vice President, according to a post on Yahoo’s corporate blog. Stata will replace former CTO Ari Balogh, who left the company in April. Stata joined Yahoo in 2004, and has led a number of significant tech initiatives across the company from re-imaging its technology stack, to spearheading search and advertising development work and architecting the company’s private cloud. Prior to joining Yahoo, he founded Stata Laboratories, which he sold to Yahoo in October 2004. Prior to founding Stata Labs, Raymie worked at the Digital Equipment Corporation’s Systems Research Center, where he contributed to the AltaVista search engine. He was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz, and has collaborated with the Internet Archive. Stata will report to chief product officer Blake Irving. Stata recently participated in TechCrunch Disrupt, where he served as a panelist and awarded Art.sy with the Rookie Disruptor Award. It’s nice to see talent actually staying at Yahoo, considering the growing number of executives and early employees have left over the past few months. CrunchBase Information Raymie Stata Information provided by CrunchBase
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Yahoo Chief Architect Raymie Stata Promoted To CTO
Yext Signs Up Superpages To Distribute Its Dashboard To 300,000 Local Businesses
Fresh on the heels of the launch of Yext Rep last week at TechCrunch Disrupt, Yext just signed up its first major distribution partner. Superpages will make an online, co-branded Dashboard which includes Yext Rep available to its 300,000 local business advertisers across the country. The Superpages Dashboard will roll out in the coming weeks. Yext Rep is a way for local merchants to manage their reputations online. In one central place, it shows them how to claim their business on sites like Yelp, Citysearch, Foursquare, Twitter, or Facebook, and what consumers are saying about them on the Web. All of this gets shown in a feed, along with local advertising data from Yext’s main pay-per-call advertising product , Yext Listings. With the new Dashboard, Yext Rep and Yext Listings are treated as enterprise apps for small businesses, and Superpages now also has an app in the Dashboard for managing Superpages ads, which can also be added to the main feed. “Our vision is to ultimately be the UI for all local businesses,” says Yext CEO Howard Lerman. In fact, one of the tabs on the Dashboard is a Store where businesses can add different apps. Yext Rep is free, but Yext Listings, Superpages, and email marketing tool iContact are available for a monthly subscription. Yext wants to create a platform for simple business apps targeted at local merchants. It is pursuing very much a Salesforce model, where business owners can pick and choose whichever apps they want to use, and then the resulting data gets published as events to their feed, much in the way Salesforce Chatte r is attempting to mix CRM and other enterprise data along with Twitter streams for mid-tier and larger businesses. Salesforce Chatter has its own Chatter Exchange for third-party apps, but Yext is going after smaller, local businesses which a much simpler product. Lerman is modeling his store more after iTunes: a central place where local business can find and buy all of their online business apps. Yext is working on other apps as well, such as a Yext Sites, all targeted at local businesses. Yext Rep is the free anchor app which Lerman hopes will entice small businesses to sign up and expose them to all the other apps in the Dashboard. “We woud allow a competitive reputation management product into the platform,” he says. Yext collects a commission on every paid app sold, and distribution partners such as Superpages also get a cut of the revenues for apps purchased by their customers through the co-branded sites. Below is a video of the Yext Rep launch demo at Disrupt Watch live streaming video from disrupt at livestream.com CrunchBase Information Yext SuperMedia Information provided by CrunchBase
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Yext Signs Up Superpages To Distribute Its Dashboard To 300,000 Local Businesses
Producteev Two: The Task Management Service I’ve Been Longing For
I’m one of the worst ‘task managers’ you’ll ever meet. There are thousands of services out there that would make my life way easier, that I either don’t know about or that are too complex or too simple for my taste and needs. So when I got pitched by an entrepreneur in between sessions at the recent TechCrunch Disrupt conference about a “new breakthrough cross-platform task management product”, I was skeptical. Five minutes later, I was sold . Enter Producteev , which is launching said new product – dubbed Producteev Two – today. Here’s what I love about it: Producteev Two lets users capture tasks, email-based action items or schedule deadlines using whatever communication channel they prefer . The product, which is free for up to 3 individual users, connects to a myriad of popular communication tools, including IM services like Google Talk, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger as well as Twitter and Facebook. No longer need I feel forced to visit a web application to save and manage tasks, unless I choose to do so. I can simply send a custom message to a dedicated email address, or quickly open a Gtalk IM window inside my Gmail account to create or assign tasks, and get notifications back through the channels of my choosing. Better yet, a proper Gmail Gadget plugs directly into Producteev Two so I can now quickly check and manage important tasks straight from my Gmail interface, which I tend to have open at all times anyway. There’s also one for iGoogle. Just great. There’s even some sort of social gaming aspect to the product. One feature, Producteev Academy, enables users to win badges for different activities, such as completing the most tasks. Don’t worry: it can be turned off. In addition, the company this morning announced the launch of Producteev Two for the iPhone, which is also free. The mobile app works offline, syncs in the background when the user goes back online and supports push notifications. It’s currently being reviewed by Apple’s team of app scrutinizers, but should be available soon (screenshots below). On Producteev’s roadmap: a desktop client for Mac, which will be available later this month, and an API. Amazing stuff for a company that’s raised less than $1 million in early-stage funding. CrunchBase Information Producteev Information provided by CrunchBase
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Producteev Two: The Task Management Service I’ve Been Longing For
We Love You Too: 250+ TechCrunch Anniversary Meetups And Counting
On June 11, it will be exactly five years since Michael Arrington hit the ‘Publish’ button and introduced the Interwebz to the very first TechCrunch post (which was a brief profile of blog search engine Technorati , which Mike apparently labeled a real-time search engine at the time – what’s old is new again, right?). We want to celebrate our fifth anniversary with as many people as we can, across the globe. So we are using the new Meetup Everywhere platform that Scott Heiferman announced on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt last week to organize TechCrunch Meetups on June 11 all around the world. We’re not only celebrating TechCrunch, but the last five years of the Web in general. A lot has happened since June 2005, but the wheel keeps on turning, faster than ever. Sometimes, it’s good to take a breather, look back and celebrate, and then move on. Either way, we were pleasantly surprised to see how many people jumped on this. On May 28, we counted nearly 150 meetups planned in places like New York City , San Francisco , London , Hyderabad , Bangalore , Seoul , Tel Aviv , Jakarta and Sophia . Just three days later, another 100 were organized by readers and fans all over the world, so we’re at 252 and counting . We see meetups are being organized from ad Dasma’, Kuwait to Rio De Janeiro, Brazil and St. Petersburg, Russia . Amazing, and humbling. Yes, we realize you probably just needed yet another excuse to party, but we’re all in awe that you’re willing to do under our banner anyway. Have fun on our fifth birthday bash for us, will you? And don’t forget to send in pictures. CrunchBase Information TechCrunch Meetup Information provided by CrunchBase
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We Love You Too: 250+ TechCrunch Anniversary Meetups And Counting
