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Shopping Rewards App CheckPoints Launches On Android
Dec 04, 4:14AM
TechCrunch Disrupt finalist CheckPoints is a mobile shopping rewards app that lets consumers choose their own rewards. Despite not being available for OS3 users until recently, CheckPoints is currently the fastest growing mobile shopping application (in the same space as Shopkick and Barcode Hero), amassing its first 100K users in one month and its last 100K users in the past two weeks. The app is free to download and use, and lets shoppers earn CheckPoints by checking into over a million participating locations and scanning the barcodes of a number of featured products including Belkin, Tyson, Energizer, Kmart and more. You can redeem CheckPoints for prizes like cash, gift cards, airline miles and gadgets.
Why Big Web Companies Don't Come out of Europe, Plus More Spotify Promises (TCTV)
Dec 04, 2:23AM
Why don't more big Web companies come out of Europe? According to European investor Klaus Hommels, it's not the usual excuses we hear like un-start-up-friendly labor laws or a culture against taking business risk. It's that the European Union is just too fragmented of a market no matter what continent boosters would have us believe. Hommels explains in the video below-- realizing full-well he's another German likely getting some hate mail from our readers. While I had Hommels on Skype, which he invested in, I had to ask him about his other notorious Swedish investment, Spotify. Rumors are swirling for the countless time in last two years that the company has finally gotten the labels on board and a US launch is imminent. I'll believe it when I see it, but kudos to them if they've finally pulled it.
Confirmed: The Groupon/Google Deal Is Off
Dec 04, 1:10AM
Google's much-rumored acquisition of Groupon is off, we've confirmed with a source with knowledge of the deal. The news was reported earlier by Chicago Breaking Business, and we've verified that the deal is indeed off. The two companies have been in serious negotiations for at least the last week, with reports stating that Google was bidding as much as $6 billion for the red-hot local deals company. Our source has also verified that Groupon's annual revenues are now at a $2 billion run rate, which is much higher than the figures that had previously been circulating (this number was reported by AllThingsD a few minutes ago). The $2B figure is the total value of Groupons sold — half of the cost of the Groupon goes back to the merchant.
Did Groupon Just Spurn Google's $6 Billion In Favor Of An IPO?
Dec 04, 1:07AM
Chicago Breaking Business News is reporting that Groupon has walked away from $5-$6 billion dollars offered by Google in widely covered deals talks. Citing two sources, the report says that the deal did not go through and that the company might still elect to IPO in 2011. If these reports are true, than this will be the second time Google will have failed to go into local, with Yelp talks also falling through. And walking away from that amount of money is pretty incredible. However the situation could very well still be fluid and the companies could continue to flirt until Groupon either goes public or takes perhaps even more money. 
Feds Finally Closing the Net on America's Most Wanted Barbie (since Klaus)
Dec 03, 11:32PM
Remember a few months back when I warned John Biggs that spycam Barbie was child abuse waiting to happen? Well guess what, America? I freaking CALLED IT. The FBI - avid TechCrunch TV readers to a man - just made the plastic doll the subject of an official FBI memo, with agents warned that she might be implicated in sex crimes. Like a plastic Julian Assange. Says the Huffington Post... 'Beware of Barbie. That seems to be the message from the FBI after an internal memo reportedly leaked from the agency's Sacramento field office this week. The memo (PDF) warns that Barbie Video Girl, a doll with a built-in video camera capable of recording for about 30 minutes, is a "possible child pornography production method... The FBI memo, dated November 30, seems to be a few months behind TechCrunch, where reviewer Paul Carr called the product "child abuse waiting to happen" during a review at the time of the product's release. He described it as "creepy," then read from a press release from the PR firm that sent Tech Crunch the toy: "Unsuspecting subjects won't know that Barbie is watching their every move."
Ask a VC: Jeremy Liew on Suits, Marijuana, and his most Underrated Investment (TCTV)
Dec 03, 11:07PM
I'm hearing rumors that Ask a VC is getting big in pockets of Harvard Business School, which explains an increasingly sophisticated caliber of email questions over the last few weeks. Appropriately, we had the only suited VC in Silicon Valley on this week to answer them. (Ok, not in that picture. That was taken before his "MadMen" phase.) Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Capital joined me this week, and we talked about how important engineering is to a startup, what you should do after you get your MBA, and whether the social games game is over and Zynga is the default winner. At the end, we dive into Liew's portfolio a bit: He talks up ShoeDazzle, and I grill him about the future of RockYou.
The Biggest Gilt/Groupon Knockoff Network You've Never Heard Of (TCTV)
Dec 03, 10:41PM
We all know that the early success and insta-revenues of companies like Gilt Group and Groupon have inspired more clones than Jango Fett. But while profitable and growing, my impression was that most of them are one-off rounding errors compared to Groupon's swelling revenue estimates - numbers that seem to go up in the press by $100 million every time they don't have any real news on this story. So imagine my surprise when I learned that Klaus Hommels was running a network of nine Gilt Group-style and seven Groupon-style companies that together makes up the third largest player in the market. The Gilt Group-esque network, called Globalsquare AG, started in less than two years ago and has a $400 million revenue run rate; the Groupon-ish network, called Group Buying Global AG, was layered on top of it and already has a $200 million revenue run rate-- in less than six months.
BaubleBar Raises $1.1 Million From Accel, Founder Collective, And Lerer Ventures
Dec 03, 10:33PM
Today, jewelry flash-sale site BaubleBar officially launched. Previously known as Eight1six, BaubleBar offers fashion jewelry at deep discounts for limited periods of time. The company was founded by Daniella Yacobovsky and Amy Jain, two recent Harvard Business School grads who previously worked in investment banking. The New York City startup also raised $1.1 million in a series A financing led by Accel Partners. Founder Collective, Lerer Ventures, and hedge fund "fashion maven" Julie Macklowe. It competes with other flash-sale sites like Gilt, ideeli, and HauteLook, which sell a broader array of apparel and accessories, including jewelry. But by focusing only on jewelry, BaubleBar hopes to distinguish itself. (Last year, Ideeli raised $20 million and HauteLook raised $31 million earlier this year).
Google Buys On Demand Video Service Widevine To Bolster Its Own TV Efforts
Dec 03, 10:17PM
Apparently on acquiring tear today, Google just bought video delivery company Widevine, it has announced on its corporate blog: "So we're pleased to announce that we've agreed to acquire Widevine. The Widevine team has worked to provide a better video delivery experience for businesses of all kinds: from the studios that create your favorite shows and movies, to the cable systems and channels that broadcast them online and on TV, to the hardware manufacturers that let you watch that content on a variety of devices. By forging partnerships across the entire ecosystem, Widevine has made on demand services more efficient and secure for media companies, and ultimately more available and convenient for users."
Time Warner Leads $6 Million Round For Media Check-In App Maker AdaptiveBlue
Dec 03, 10:13PM
AdaptiveBlue, the developer of social recommendations app GetGlue, has just raised $6 million in new funding, according to an SEC filing. From the looks of the filing, it appears that Time Warner, RRE and Union Square Ventures all participated in the round. GetGlue allows users to check-in to their favorite shows, music, movies and books, and see what their friends are enjoying in real-time. With each check-in, users earn points and stickers from GetGlue and other major brands. The app also allows users to rate their favorite shows, movies, music and books and receive personalized suggestions. 
Nook Color SDK Released, Go Get Your Develop On
Dec 03, 9:23PM
The Nook Color is starting to make minor waves (in spite of my prejudice) as it's really quite a lot of machine for $250. And now the SDK has been opened up, which should allow the usual suspects to adapt their existing Android apps to the Nook's hardware. It's not like the Nook Color is some undiscovered country, though, filled with exotic future tech. It's just a mid-range tablet with a nice shell and some custom stacks. And it's already been hacked to pieces.
YouTube's Community Police Blow Up Another Innocent Victim
Dec 03, 8:45PM
Call me cynical, but after experiencing a YouTube shutdown firsthand, I've come to realize that it is near impossible to build a stable brand or presence on YouTube. The gatekeepers are far too antsy with the big red ban button and, after facing this problem once when CrunchGear's entire video archive was shut down I'm loathe to recommend the service to those trying to post anything other than the occasional video of baby ducklings being blown over. WatchReport, a watch website I used to frequent, started posting watch reviews on YouTube in 2005. Over the past five years they racked up two million views and 2000 subscribers on 50 reviews. Then all of the videos were gone. 
Google Begins Emailing Extension Developers To Get Ready For Chrome Web Store
Dec 03, 8:33PM
Earlier today, we were tipped about this thread in the Chromium Google Groups area. Gregor Hochmuth, the Product Manager for the Chrome Web Store, responded to a question wondering if Google would be giving developers advanced notice before the store goes live. Hochmuth said that yes, there would be reminders sent out before the launch to let developers get edits and updates in before it rolls live. Well, the first such message was sent out today. Specifically, Google is starting to notify current Chrome extension developers about the upcoming Chrome Web Store launch. The reason is that extensions (and themes) will be wrapped into the Web Store alongside apps. In the email, Google will only say that the store is launching "later this year", but this email seems to be the first indications that it's coming sooner rather than later.
Angry Birds On Android Projected To Generate $1 Million Per Month In Advertising
Dec 03, 8:06PM
One of the most successful mobile games right now is Angry Birds, which has been downloaded more than 30 million times across different mobile platforms, with 12 million of those being paid downloads on iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches. But on Android, the game is free, and is supported by advertising. Angry Birds has been downloaded more than 5 million times on Android since that version launched in October. "By end of year, we project earnings of over $1 million per month with the ad-supported version of Angry Birds," says Peter Vesterbacka, the "Mighty Eagle" behind the game at Rovio Mobile. (Video after the jump).
The Daily Show Tears Into Sarah Palin's Tweets [Video]
Dec 03, 8:05PM
Last time we checked in Former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin was using Twitter to contest Gawker over the leaks of her book "America By Heart" bypassing the "lamestream" media. And she's managed to catapult herself into the Internet spotlight yet again by using 140 characters to glom off all the attention heaped onto the Wikileaks story, see below. The Daily Show's John Stewart calls her out on this, her tweeting and the media's extensive coverage of her tweeting in general in the video above, "Like a teenage boy with a crush on the stuck up girl who hates him, the media is fascinated by everything Sarah Palin tweets."
For $27 This Kid Will Do Whatever You Want in Antarctica on Tuesday
Dec 03, 7:14PM
If you want to feel lazy, spend about ten minutes with Travis Kiefer. He'll start out by telling you how he spent every waking moment of his teenage years in low-income South Dakota, studying and scheming over how he could be the first one in his family to go to college, and the first kid in his highschool's history to go to an Ivy League school. His dream school: Stanford. As a kid from a low-income family, he knew the biggest way to change his family's economic reality was a Silicon Valley startup. Ok, so he's an impressive kid. But that sounds like a lot of Silicon Valley rags-to-riches stories, right?
eBay Saw Over 2 Billion U.S. Product Searches In Q3; Amazon Saw Only 847 Million
Dec 03, 7:11PM
Yesterday brought the news that eBay acquired in-store product inventory search startup Milo for $75 million. eBay said that it plans to integrate Milo into both its online marketplace and its mobile applications, including barcode scanning app RedLaser. But tucked away in the press release eBay issued about the acquisition were a few surprising stats about the number of product searches eBay and its competitors are handling. According to comScore, eBay handled more than 2 billion U.S. product searches in the third quarter. For the same time period, Amazon saw 847 million searches, while Google handled only 226 million product searches. 
Social Networking: The Past
Dec 03, 6:14PM
Editor's note: This is the first of a three-part guest post by venture capitalist Mark Suster of GRP Partners on "Social Networking: The Past, Present, And Future." Online Social Networking 25 Years Ago: CompuServc, Prodigy & The Well Listening to young people talk about social networking as a new phenomenon is a bit like hearing people talk about a remake of a famous song from my youth as though it was the original version. If you think "Don't Stop Believing" was first recorded on the show Glee I'm talking to you. And so it goes with social networking. Yes, I was doing it when I was a teenager and yes, it was online, too. We were on services called CompuServe and Prodigy. Other people were in the online community called "The Well" (founded in 1985). We connected for the same reasons you do today. We were looking for what I call the "6 C's of Social Networking" - Communications, connectedness, common experiences, content, commerce & cool experiences (fun!). There were chat rooms, discussion groups, dating, classified ads—you name it.
Google Acquires Phonetic Arts To Make Robo-Voices Sound Human
Dec 03, 5:47PM
No, Google hasn't acquired Groupon (yet). But it does have a smaller, though very interesting acquisition to announce: it's just acquired Phonetic Arts, a company based in the UK that works on speech synthesis in games. Phonetic Arts makes technology that can convert lines of recorded dialog into a 'speech library' — feed it a few hundred lines of recordings using your voice, and it can then piece together those sounds to generate new sentences that sound surprisingly realistic. Up until now the company has primarily been focused on using this technology for games, but Google intends to use it to make its own automated voices sound more fluid and human.
Tinychat's Video Chat App Is Blowing Up On Facebook
Dec 03, 5:03PM
Tinychat's super simple messaging service lives on the Web (and then some), but the fledgling company's Facebook video chat application is clearly seeing some solid growth of its own. The app is now the single most used video chat application on the Facebook Platform, with roughly 2.4 million monthly active users according to the application page.
comScore: Android Approaching iOS In Overall U.S. Smartphone Subscribers
Dec 03, 5:00PM
comScore released its monthly smartphone mobile report today, which continues to show that the Android OS is eating away at smartphone market share reach from Apple's iOS and RIM's BlackBerry OS. The data, which measured smartphone usage from July until October of this year, showed that 60.7 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during period, up 14 percent from the preceding three month period. comScore says that the 1 out of every 4 mobile subscribers are using a smartphone. Similar to the data from last month, RIM took the top spot as the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. with 35.8 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, which is down 3.5 percent from the last period. Apple followed with 24.6 percent share (up 0.8 percentage points). Google's Android OS saw the strongest growth, rising 6.5 percentage points to capture 23.5 percent of smartphone subscribers. Microsoft accounted for 9.7 percent of smartphone subscribers, while Palm accounts for 3.9 percent. 
Comcast: We Are *Not* The Bad Guys In This Whole Netflix-Level 3 Fiasco
Dec 03, 4:17PM
This certainly changes things. You'll recall that the Internet flipped out the other day when it emerged that Netflix's traffic carrier, Level 3, said that Comcast was taking advantage of its position as one of the nation's largest ISPs by demanding more coin to pass on Netflix traffic to its customers. It is, in fact, largely boring tosh, but it speaks to something we've been talking about for some time. That is, of course, Net Neutrality, which I tend to capitalize for some reason, almost imbuing it with a greater sense of importance. No matter, for nor Comcast has told its side of the story, and things are quite different in its recollection of events. Comcast, feeling some FCC heat, says that this particular incident is truly nothing more than a plain ol' commercial dispute. This isn't Comcast playing the heel, tap-dancing all over the principles of Net Neutrality. In fact, you might even say that Comcast is the victim here.
Google Scientist Jumps To LinkedIn To Work On Big Data
Dec 03, 4:17PM
LinkedIn has scored a big talent win today, as Google Scientist and Tech Lead Daniel Tunkelang joins the professional social network to work on data initiatives (you can access Tunkelang's LinkedIn profile here.) According to Tunkelang's blog post announcing the new job opportunity, he will be joining the data scientist team at LinkedIn, working under Chief Scientist DJ Patil. Tunkelang writes that he will be working on "products and discover insights from a data collection," tackling the issues of "information extraction, matching, recommendation, social network analysis, and network visualization."
As Milo Finds An Exit, Wishpond Throws Its Hat Into The In-Store Product Inventory Ring
Dec 03, 3:58PM
On the heels of Milo's $75 million acquisition by eBay; a similar product inventory site, called Wishpond, is throwing its hat into the ring. Like Milo, Wishpond lists the real-time inventory of brick and mortar retail stores and is building its product listings platform around large chains like Target or BestBuy as well as from mom and pop shops in small towns. On the merchant side, Wishpond's platform integrates with point-of-sale systems and allows retailers to upload their inventory onto the site. Wishpond will not only list the in-stock inventory on its platform, but will also help the merchant create a storefront on their Facebook page (similar to what Payvment does). The startup says that it will populate the page with new products and promotions when applicable.
CBS-owned Last.fm Stems Losses To $4.45m, But bulk of Users Still In UK
Dec 03, 3:22PM
Last.fm, the UK-based music startup acquired by media giant CBS in 2007 for $280m (£140m), made a loss for 2009 of just under $4.45 million (£2.84 million), reveal new accounts for the company. The loss posted in 2008 was £17.11 million, reflecting the high costs of streaming music, which the company has now cut. It just goes to show how expensive streaming can be... Financials published on the UK's Companies House show the company ended last year with net liabilities of £22.24 million, but parent company CBS is still effectively subsidising the company and will "make available such funds as are needed". We're hoping that CBS is getting some value out of this relationship. Over 54% of Last.fm's revenues in 2009 were from the UK, 33.5% from the US, 9.4% from EU countries, and 2.3% from the rest of the world. That's a gain on US users but the question is, is it enough to sustain CBS as a sugar daddy? 
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