Crocodoc Closes Angel Round, Launches Revamped Document Collaboration Tools

I’ve said it before , and I’ll say it again: I detest Adobe Acrobat. Scarred by years of wrangling with bloated software that requires premium upgrades for some basic features, I’m happy to try out any other solution. YC-funded Crocodoc is one promising startup that offers a very straightforward alternative: it makes it dead-simple to upload and start marking up a PDF file (and a variety of other document formats) using a web-based editor. And today it’s launching an overhauled site that makes it much easier to start marking up documents in tandem with a team of friends or coworkers. The company is also announcing that it has closed an angel funding round, with a strong roster of participants including Dave McClure, Joshua Schachter, Paul Buchheit, Steve Chen, and XG Ventures. Crocodoc CEO Ryan Damico says that the earlier version of Crocodoc had some issues, namely when it came to document collaboration, which has been a popular use case. Crocodoc has allowed users to annotate their documents for some time, but this typically involved using virtual sticky notes. That works well enough if you only need to leave a comment or two, but people would wind up covering their documents in these sticky notes to get their point across, leading to a big mess. The new version of Crocodoc axes stickies in favor of a system that lets users comment and respond to each other’s comments in the document’s margins, which should work much better. Damico says that the new version of Crocodoc includes plenty of other changes as well. The UI has been overhauled, as have most of the editing tools. Document exporting works better than it did before. And the site has also built out its API and embedding features.  The site offers some premium features, like SSL encryption and password protected documents, but Damico says that Crocodoc is currently focused on making sure it is addressing the major pain points for users with its free product, with other plans to monetize down the road. Crocodoc isn’t disclosing the size of their round, other than to say that ”it falls into the category of typical angel rounds in terms of size”. CrunchBase Information Crocodoc Information provided by CrunchBase

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Crocodoc Closes Angel Round, Launches Revamped Document Collaboration Tools

Woot’s Deal Of The Day: Woot! — Amazon Buys It

Woot has been acquired by Amazon, as they briefly note on their blog today with a big “woot!” Well, okay, their exact words were “Holy crap!” This is a great deal for daily online bargin service as, similar to Zappos and Audible, they’ll continue to be run autonomously under the Amazon banner. The company will remain in Texas. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed. Woot shot to popularity with their “one deal per day” idea. Similar timed deal ideas have since become very popular for sites like Gilt (for fashion) and Groupon (for food and activities). The company also has always had an interesting sense of humor and has not shied away from having deals on things as diverse as handguns . Update : Here’s the full letter from Woot CEO Matt Rutledge to employees: Date: Weds, 30 June 2010 From: Matt Rutledge (CEO – Woot.com) To: All Woot Employees Subject: Woot and Amazon I know I say this every time I find a picture of an adorable kitten, but please set aside 20 minutes to carefully read this entire email. Today is a big day in Woot history. This morning, I woke up to find Jeff Bezos the Mighty had seized our magic sword. Using the Arthurian model as a corporate structure was something our CFO had warned against from the very beginning, but now that’s water under the bridge. What is important is that our company is on the verge of becoming a part of the Amazon.com dynasty. And our plans for Grail.Woot are on indefinite hold. Over the next few days, you will probably read headlines that say “Matt Rutledge revealed to be monstrous pseudo-human creation of Jeff Bezos.” You might even see this photo making the rounds. Rest assured that these rumors have nothing to do with our final decision. We think now is the right time to join with Amazon because, quite simply, every company that becomes a subsidiary gets two free downloads until the end of July, and we very much need that new thing with Trent Reznor’s wife on our iPods. Other than that, we plan to continue to run Woot the way we have always run Woot – with a wall of ideas and a dartboard. From a practical point of view, it will be as if we are simply adding one person to the organizational hierarchy, except that one person will just happen to be a billion-dollar company that could buy and sell each and every one of you like you were office furniture. Nevertheless, don’t worry that our culture will suddenly take a leap forward and become cutting-edge. We’re still going to be the same old bottom-feeders our customers and readers have come to know and love, and each and every one of their pre-written insult macros will still be just as valid in a week, two weeks, or even next year. For Woot, our vision remains the same: somehow earning a living on snarky commentary and junk. We are excited about doing this for all sorts of reasons. One, our business model is so vague that there’s no way Amazon can possibly change what it is we’re truly doing: preparing the way for the rise of the Lava Men in 2012. Also, our deal means that Jason Toon will finally be released from that Mexican jail owned by Zappos honcho Tony Hsieh. No, don’t lie, Tony, we’ve seen the paperwork. And we need a powerful ally in case Steve Jobs finally breaks down and comes after us for all our Apple jokes over the years. Don’t think of it as a buyout; think of it as NATO! I will go through each of the above points in more detail later, but first, let me get to the top 5 burning questions that I’m guessing many of you will have. TOP 5 BURNING QUESTIONS: Q: F1RST!!!! A: Okay, that’s not a question, but it is a good place to mention that our forums will still be policed by a team of moderators, as before. And also, Woot’s previous and always-in-effect privacy policy will still be just as always-in-effect, so don’t worry, there are no plans to suddenly give up or merge your forum data. Q: Is Snapster leaving? A: Are you kidding? He’s out the door about ten seconds after that check clea- that is to say, Snapster will continue as Woot.com CEO, just like before, and the rest of our staff’s not going anywhere either. Woot and all our various sites will continue to be an independently operated company full of horrible, useless products and an untalented jerkface writing staff, same as it ever was. Q: Will the Woot culture change? A: Amazon is interested in us because they recognize the value of our people, our brand, and our unique style of deep-tissue, toxin-releasing massage. And they don’t want to start changing things now. Amazon’s hoping our nutty Woot steez continues to grow and develop (and perhaps even rubs off on them a little). They’re not looking to have their folks come in and run Woot unless we ask them to, which incidentally you can do by turning off the bathroom lights and saying the word “Kindle” three times; a helpful Amazon employee will appear in the mirror. That said, Amazon clearly knows what they’re doing in a lot of areas, so we’re geeked about the opportunities to tap into that knowledge and those resources, especially on the technology side. This is about making the Woot brand, culture, and business even stronger than it is today, and we expect that any changes will be for the better or we wouldn’t bother with this endless paperwork. Q: Where can I get one of those vuvuzelas? A: Are you even paying attention? Several months ago, when we were all sitting on Jeff Bezos’s bumper drinking orange Mad Dog and trying not to be noticed, we heard a voice in the distance yelling “You kids better not scratch my Mercedes or I’m calling the cops!” We ran. It was later that night when Amazon came by the house and said they liked our style and also wanted to get that money we owed them for messing up the chrome. We like to think that our relationship with Amazon will continue at this level for many, many, many years to come. But we here at Woot are still a thoughtful company, so, at the end of the day, I watched the sunset, and its golden-hued glory made me think about two questions: 1) Is there really a universal deity? 2) Does such a thing preclude free will or are we humans in control of our own destiny? After spending a lot of time falling asleep at the library while facing the philosophy books, I determined that the concept of destiny is a construct that allows man a gentle release from facing the terror of his existence, and that a Hyundai full of twenties would pretty much offer the same benefits. And so, I ultimately said YES! This is definitely an emotional day for me. The feelings I’m experiencing are similar to what I felt in college on graduation day: excitement about getting a check from my folks combined with nausea from a hellacious bender the night before. I remember fondly that time when an RA turned on the lights and yelled “WHO OWNS THESE PANTS?” Except this time, the pants are a company, and the RA is you, and the sixty five hours of community service is a deal that will ensure the Woot.com experience can continue to grow for years and years and years, like a black mold behind the Gold Box. Join us, because together, we can rule the galaxy as father and son. Also, there will be six muffins waiting in the company break room, courtesy of the nice folks at Amazon.com. Welcome to the family! Matt Rutledge CEO, Woot CrunchBase Information Woot Amazon Information provided by CrunchBase

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Woot’s Deal Of The Day: Woot! — Amazon Buys It

Product Guru Eckart Walther Goes Free Agent As EIR At Accel Partners

One thing Silicon Valley doesn’t have enough of are solid product visionaries. The problem is the really good ones tend of start their own companies. Or whoever they work for locks them up so tight that no one can pry them loose. But there’s one guy I’ve kept my eye on for the last few years, Eckart Walther , who seems to be in play. I wonder for how long. I first met Eckart when he was at Yahoo as a group vice president of product management for search – that was back in the day when Yahoo was still the no. 2 search engine behind Google and had no plans to relinquish that title. Prior to Yahoo he was at Tellme ( acquired by Microsoft ). And way back in the day, at Netscape. Most recently he parked himself at LiveOps doing God-knows-what. He’s left LiveOps and has quietly taken a position at Accel Partners as an entrepreneur in residence. That means he’s being paid to sit around and think a lot, and occasionally join a meeting or two. I randomly saw this on his Facebook feed this evening and haven’t had a chance to talk to him about his plans. But he’s likely to either be starting a new company or looking for his next job at a startup. Keep an eye on whatever he does next, it’s likely to be something worth watching. Follow him on Twitter at @eckartwalther . CrunchBase Information Accel Partners Eckart Walther Information provided by CrunchBase

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Product Guru Eckart Walther Goes Free Agent As EIR At Accel Partners

Guy Who Copied Digg Slams Digg For Copying Twitter

One of the founders of Reddit , a Digg-clone, openly criticized Digg founder Kevin Rose yesterday for his plans to implement “me-too” features into the new version of the service. We consider this to be absurd and rather impolite. Yesterday we discovered a video showing some of the features of the upcoming relaunch of Digg . In a nutshell, Digg has been trying to find a way to leverage social sharing to make the site more relevant, and users will soon see links to interesting things based on the what people and entities they choose to follow are voting on. That goal isn’t anything new, founder Kevin Rose has been talking openly about it for more than a year now. Will it help save Digg, which has been stuck in a no-growth cycle for years now as services like Twitter and Facebook have surged? I have no idea. I do know that Digg will now become much more personally relevant to me, and TechCrunch will certainly be auto-publishing to Digg and adding a Digg button to posts. I love nothing more than shouting my opinion on things, and I’ve been particularly harsh on Rose and Digg over the last several months. But opinions are one thing. Rewriting history is another. Hypocrisy Alert Reddit, a site for discovering and sharing new things, was launched in mid-2005, more than six months after Digg. There were very few differences between Reddit and Digg then, and they haven’t diverged all that much since then, either. Both sites allow users to vote on submitted stories/links, and the most popular stories are on the home page. Reddit ripped off the core Digg idea when it launched. Which is totally fine in my opinion, since the Internet has evolved in this way from the beginning. You take someone else’s ideas and you try to improve on them. But Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian says Digg needs new ideas. From his post : …this new version of digg reeks of VC meddling. It’s cobbling together features from more popular sites and departing from the core of digg, which was to “give the power back to the people.” Those are your words from that aforementioned 2004 video segment. Now what matters is how many followers & influence a user has and how many followers & influence they’ve got. Where have we heard this before: Twitter? Facebook? GoogleBuzz? Kevin, you absolutely deserve all the credit for starting the movement — fascinating things happen when online communities can efficiently share content. Whales get silly names and we can expose the tragedies our fellow man endures faster than ever before. It’s a damned shame to see digg just re-implementing features from other websites. Is it reasonable criticism? Absolutely (although I disagree with it). And when it’s being said by someone who cloned the site that he is now complaining is copying features from others, it becomes absurd. But hold on just one minute – Ohanian says he never even knew about Digg when he decided to build Reddit half a year after Digg launched: Funded by Y Combinator, Steve Huffman and I started work on reddit in June 2005, which we launched a month later. A month after that, we learned about digg and realized this was going to be an interesting new space — we had some catching up to do. Is that possible? Did they really invent the Digg idea completely independently from Digg six months after Digg launched? And no one at Y Combinator pointed out that there were similarities? Paul Carr put this best when we were discussing this post internally on Yammer: “So at best they did zero research before they launched Reddit into a space that kinda relies on the founders knowing where to find cool new stuff online.” At worst of course he’s simply lying. Everyone knows that Digg needs to do something to find relevance again. This new version looks as good to me as anything else I’ve heard suggested, and it certainly doesn’t smell like something the venture capitalists forced down their throat. Kevin returned to a full time role at Digg earlier this year and clearly wants to prove that he can bring this company back to life. He’s excited about Digg, clearly. He may succeed. He may fail. But at least he’s in the arena and fighting valiantly . CrunchBase Information Alexis Ohanian Kevin Rose Digg Reddit Information provided by CrunchBase

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Guy Who Copied Digg Slams Digg For Copying Twitter

Fabulis Launches Social Network For Gay Men – Built On Top Of Facebook

Today sees the public beta launch of Fabulis , a fresh community and lifestyle (and explicitly not dating) website for homosexual men. We’ve covered the company before – and not its product, unfortunately – when Citibank got itself in a PR firestorm after abruptly freezing the startup’s bank account over allegedly posting – inexistent – “objectionable content” on its blog (the institution later changed its Internet Business Policy because of the incident). Starting today, the website is free to sign up for everyone, so we took a look. First thing you’ll notice is that the site is very Facebook-centric; upon first visit there’s little else you can do but use Facebook Connect to identify yourself and set up a profile – which you can do both as a gay or heterosexual man or woman. Fabulis users who are already your friends on Facebook will automatically be added to your list of friends there, so that it taps into your existing social graph instead of making you start from scratch. The Plans page is filled with events from Facebook user accounts and algorithmically filtered down to a list of happenings that gay men in particular should enjoy attending. You can RSVP to these events (either on Fabulis only or synced to Facebook) – indicating that you’re planning to attend an event is in many ways similar to what Plancast is all about. Finally, users can vote for other users based on their profiles, and Fabulis has even invented its own virtual currency that lets members use so-called Fabulis Bits to vote for people and engage in other activities on the site. Fabulis founder and CEO Jason Goldberg tells me Facebook, the dominant social networking service, is a great service for everyone including gay men, but that he identified an apparent need for a separate community and lifestyle website where homosexual men can aggregate, engage in conversations, meet new people and make plans together. Up until today, the site was open on a user invitation base only, and already counts some 14,000 registered members. The list includes gay celebrities like director Dustin Lance Black , actors Alan Cumming and Chris Colfer . Goldberg had stints at the White House, AOL and T-Mobile under his belt before founding Jobster back in 2005 (and raising more than $50 million for the startup) and after that socialmedian (which he sold to Xing in December 2008). Fabulis has raised $625k in seed funding from the likes of Washington Post and Venture Partner at Mayfield Fund Allen Morgan . Curious to see how far this one can travel. CrunchBase Information Fabulis Information provided by CrunchBase

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Fabulis Launches Social Network For Gay Men – Built On Top Of Facebook

Why Doesn’t Facebook Look Like This?

As you may be aware, tomorrow, Facebook kicks off its big f8 developer conference in San Francisco. We’ll be there to cover what’s going on, but it looks like a lot of the information is already out there — Inside Facebook ,  All Facebook , and  GigaOM have good write-ups of what we can likely expect. We’ve previously reported on a bunch of these possible announcements such as the Meebo Bar-clone , the “Like” button for the Internet, and auto-logins for Facebook Connect. Obviously, I’m interested in any location announcements the company may make tomorrow — but it’s not clear if Facebook will actually announce anything yet as their plans have been fluid , and possibly still aren’t solidified. I’m also pretty interested in the Open Graph stuff Facebook plans to talk about. When this was first vaguely previewed back in October, Facebook’s intention seemed pretty clear to me at the time: to make the entire web its tributary system . It’s likely to either be huge — or another huge privacy disaster for the network. These grandiose plans are great and all, but as I sit here the night before f8, I find myself wondering something very simple: why does using Facebook frustrate the hell out of me? As I noted earlier in my farewell to Facebook Lite , I think it’s just because I find the service too cluttered, and confusing. The various options menus are a nightmare. All the privacy settings are beyond confusing. And while the overall site navigation has improved greatly over the past year (goodbye weird bottom nav bar), I still find myself lost quite often. And then I see something like this . From 2006 to 2007, the design group, iA, was in touch with Facebook about doing a redesign. Facebook didn’t end up using their stuff, but iA recently decided to take what they had done and update it to work with the way Facebook is currently laid out. The results are excellent — much better than the way Facebook actually currently looks. Look at these mock-ups, but be sure to go to their site to see them in full resolution, to see how they would actually look in full size. Sure, it’s a bit Outlook-inspired, but wow do I wish I could navigate Facebook this way. The stream? Nice and clean, most elements are the same size (like Twitter) because comments are shoved into a new column on the right (and collapsed to show only 2 by default). And that comment column looks much, much better because it’s not surrounded by those ugly blue square backgrounds that currently make a complete mess of the stream. And there are in-line replies. Ads are still there, they’re just in this third column. The search box has been moved from that odd no-mans-land middle off-center to the left column. And the nav makes it very clear which stream you’re currently viewing. As iA notes: Our basic idea: To create an mail-application like interface with an elastic three-column layout that clearly separates filter, information-stream, and reaction: Filter: The left side column works as a sorting instrument Information-Stream: The center column shows the filtered results Reaction: The right side column is used for discussing the individual feed items. It just seems to make sense. More importantly, when you look at it, it seems to make sense. Sure, it’s hard to argue with 400 million users — and most would undoubtedly hate such a massive change. But Facebook, perhaps more than any other web company, is good at knowing when to when to ignore user complaints and push forward, to improve the product. I think they should take another look at iA’s work. Or at the very least, use the ideas of those FriendFeed guys more . Also, where the hell is Facebook’s iPad app? CrunchBase Information Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase

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Why Doesn’t Facebook Look Like This?

Ning’s Bubble Bursts: No More Free Networks, Cuts 40% Of Staff

One month after long-time Ning CEO Gina Bianchini was replaced by COO Jason Rosenthal , the company is making some major changes: It has just announced that it is killing off its free product, forcing existing free networks to either make the change to premium accounts or migrate their networks elsewhere. Rosenthal has also just announced that the company has cut nearly 70 people — over 40% of its staff. Here’s the email Rosenthal just sent out to the company: Team, When I became CEO 30 days ago, I told you I would take a hard look at our business. This process has brought real clarity to what’s working, what’s not, and what we need to do now to make Ning a big success. My main conclusion is that we need to double down on our premium services business. Our Premium Ning Networks like Friends or Enemies, Linkin Park, Shred or Die, Pickens Plan, and tens of thousands of others both drive 75% of our monthly US traffic, and those Network Creators need and will pay for many more services and features from us. So, we are going to change our strategy to devote 100% of our resources to building the winning product to capture this big opportunity. We will phase out our free service. Existing free networks will have the opportunity to either convert to paying for premium services, or transition off of Ning. We will judge ourselves by our ability to enable and power Premium Ning Networks at huge scale. And all of our product development capability will be devoted to making paying Network Creators extremely happy. As a consequence of this change, I have also made the very tough decision to reduce the size of our team from 167 people to 98 people. As hard as this is to do, I am confident that this is the right decision for our company, our business, and our customers. Marc and I will work diligently with everyone affected by this to help them find great opportunities at other companies. I’ve never seen a more talented and devoted team, and it has been my privilege to get to know and work with each and every one of you over the last 18 months. We’ll use today to say goodbye to our friends and teammates who will be leaving the company. Tomorrow, I will take you through, in detail, our plans for the next three months and our new focus. Thanks, Jason Rosenthal Ning’s announcement also says that it will be giving network creators more details in the next two weeks. While the email talks about Free versus Premium paid networks, Ning actually has a variety of different premium upgrades. Currently, Ning’s premium options include support (which has a $10/month and $100/month options for different service levels); Custom domains ($5 a month); Extra storage and bandwidth ($10 a month); Ad removal ($25 a month) and the ability to hide any trace that you’re running on Ning ($25 a month). As a result of today’s news I suspect we’ll see quite a few active networks jump to whatever the cheapest premium option is; I don’t expect Ning to make it especially easy to port their data to a different service. There will also certainly be a backlash from Ning’s vocal community of Network Creators, many of whom have invested quite of bit of time building out their niche networks. While the massive layoffs are obviously a big hit to the company, it isn’t all bad news for Ning: the service is still seeing its traffic grow according to comScore (see graph below). But traffic growth is no longer good enough for the company — it needs to start generating some serious revenue, and advertising clearly isn’t cutting it. Ning has raised around $120 million , getting valuations of a half-billion dollars in April 2008 and a reported $750 million last summer. CrunchBase Information Ning Information provided by CrunchBase

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Ning’s Bubble Bursts: No More Free Networks, Cuts 40% Of Staff

Twitter Will Have An Official Android App

At Twitter’s Chirp conference today, Evan Williams announced that the microblogging network would be launching an Android app. It’s unclear whether Twitter will acquire an existing app (like it just did with Tweetie ), if the company will partner with a developer or mobile device maker (as it did with RIM for the BlackBerry Twitter app ) or if it will develop the app themselves. Last Saturday, Twitter acquired Tweetie , the very popular and highly polished Twitter application for the iPhone. The application will now be called “Twitter for iPhone, ” and will be free. And on Friday, Twitter announced that RIM’s new BlackBerry app would be an “official Twitter app” for the device. These announcements came after investor Fred Wilson wrote a post telling Twitter start-ups to stop filling holes in Twitter’s products and to instead look to launch killer apps that start entirely new businesses. That led some third party developers to question if Wilson was hinting that Twitter may start filling in these holes itself, displacing third party apps with official ones (he later said that while he was on the Twitter board, he didn’t know their plans). Twitdroid and Seesmic’s Android app are among the most popular Twitter clients for the device. CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase

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Twitter Will Have An Official Android App

Cooking Up Great SEO: An Analogy in Photos

Posted by randfish I’ve long opined to friends and co-workers that two of my personal passions, cooking & SEO, are deeply related in some mystical, cosmic way. Cooking is familiar to everyone. There’s a process for each recipe, a uniqueness to each dish and both an art and a science to coaxing perfection out of raw ingredients to make them better than the sum of their parts. So too it is with SEO. SEO, however, is incredibly difficult to understand and to explain. It’s a thorn in the side of nearly everyone I talk to in our industry that they can’t easily explain the concept and process of their work outside the web marketing and development communities. That’s why I’m creating this post. If someone in your personal or professional life simply doesn’t understand SEO, send them here. Hopefully, the silly pictures of me cooking up some pasta on a sunny Sunday can help to inspire that missing connection. Sunday night’s dinner tasted even better than it looked… And for the SEOs reading this post who already know this process intimately, perhaps you can find some nuggets of information, or at least work up an appetite. The Planning Process:

Twitter Fills Its First Hole With An Official BlackBerry App

That didn’t take long. Two days ago, well known VC (and early Twitter investor) Fred Wilson wrote a post telling Twitter startups to stop filling holes in Twitter’s products and to instead look to launch killer apps that start entirely new businesses. That led some third party developers to question if Wilson was hinting that Twitter may start filling in these holes itself, displacing third party apps with official ones (he later said that while he was on the Twitter board, he didn’t know their plans). It looks like the concerned developers may have been right: today, Twitter has announced the launch of the “Official Twitter for BlackBerry App”, which can be downloaded at blackberry.com/twitter . Now, we’ve known that this application was coming for a long time — we gave out beta keys and reviewed it in Feburary. But looking back, all of the language around this was that it was RIM’s application — RIM was the one pitching us on the news, and there wasn’t any mention that this was endorsed by Twitter. That’s no longer the case. In its blog post, Twitter says that it has been “working closely with RIM to deliver the official Twitter app…”. This is important, because Twitter has long thrived on its developer community. Third party applications like Tweetie, Seesmic, TweetDeck, Twitterific, and many, many others have brought the service to the desktop and mobile platforms. And myriad Twitter-oriented image and link shortening services have taken off as well. If Twitter is going to start endorsing offical versions of these applications, you can expect some signficant backlash. Other BlackBerry Twitter apps included UberTwitter and Seesmic . We’ve reached out to Twitter to ask if they have plans to endorse applications on other platforms.

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Twitter Fills Its First Hole With An Official BlackBerry App