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The Rise Of Facebook's Valuation From 2004-2011 [Graphic]
Jan 11, 7:24AM
The panic at absurd rumors of Facebook's demise over the weekend, coupled with the Goldman Sachs Facebook investment frenzy at the beginning of this year got us thinking; Did initial Facebook investor Peter Thiel, who invested 500K early on and still thought Facebook was undervalued at $30 billion back in September, actually make the most impressive investment call in tech history?
Can Klout Actually Measure Real-Life Clout? (TCTV)
Jan 11, 5:53AM
So now Klout has a trove of cash and some big name investors. Add to that it's solving a problem plenty of brands desperately want someone-- someone other than random social media "experts"-- to solve. But can true influence actually be measured by algorithms, especially algorithms that people can't find a way to game? And if it can be measured, what is it really worth? What's the street value of a retweet? Isn't there something about removing the friction of word-of-mouth referrals that inherently lessen the value of them? Klout founder and CEO Joe Fernandez does a decent job of convincing me in the clip below that Klout may indeed be on to something big. More important: He's convinced his team and Kleiner Perkins and Greycroft Partners. If you're still a skeptic too, watch the video below.
Bump Raises $16 Million Round Led By Andreessen Horowitz
Jan 11, 5:00AM
If you've got an iPhone or Android device, there's a decent chance you're familiar with Bump, the nifty service that lets you swap contact information (and other data) by simply tapping two phones together. The service has been around since 2009, and now has 7 million active users across 25 million total installs on Android and iOS devices. And today Bump has some big news: it's just raised $16 million in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Sequoia, Sherpalo (Ram Shriram), and SV Angel (Ron Conway). Marc Andreessen will join Sequoia's Greg McAdoo on the board. That's a lot of money for the startup, especially given that it doesn't have a clear path to revenue quite yet. But it has some ambitious plans. Bump has historically been all about person-to-person transfers. First, it started with swapping contact information. It's since added support for photos (which are very popular), music, and even money via PayPal. But now it also wants to help with a different kind of interaction: helping people 'Bump' with businesses, bands, and countless other venues. 
Klout CEO: We Made the Decision to Go for It (TCTV)
Jan 11, 4:51AM
Klout's funding news this morning was quickly drowned out by Square's funding and then both were drowned out by Groupon's gargantuan round. But for Klout, the funding round was pretty significant. In raising a surprisingly large $8.5 million, the company was singling its decision not to take a flip and to try to build a big company out of measuring influence online. For Klout founder and CEO Joe Fernandez, it's a human version of page rank and the opportunity can be just as big. Fernandez stopped by TechCrunch to talk about the inside drama of the round, including the team's wrestling over whether to flip-or-not, whose money to take and what all that cash will be used for. In a future segment, we dive into my concern: Can influence online really be accurately measured?
Bing Gordon, Kleiner Perkins Partner And Level 60 CityVille Player
Jan 11, 4:27AM
Zynga's CityVille is a little more than a month old, but it's already the most popular application on Facebook and is nearing in on 100 million monthly active users. It makes the success of FarmVille, Zynga's second most popular game, look shameful in comparison. Like other Facebook games, there's a lot of pointing and clicking and just enough excitement to get a certain type of player to pull out their wallet and spend a few dollars. But there's something different about CityVille. It's got just enough SimCity in it to make it slightly more interesting than just pointing and clicking. And a lot of people in Silicon Valley who are busy doing productive things for society are doing more than giving the game a passing glance. They're sticking around, at least for now.
WITN: Wikileaks Is Dead – Long Live Julian Assange
Jan 11, 1:47AM
After Paul's Saturday post about Julian Assange resulted in him being labelled a US government stooge - not to mention receiving a couple of death threats (no, really) - he's decided never again to discuss the founder of Wikileaks. In fact, after much consideration, he's decided that he was wrong (as was Vanity Fair) and TechCrunch commenters were right: Assange is an unblemished hero of openness, and in this week's episode of Why Is This News, we celebrate his many worthy accomplishments. Nah, just kidding. Slightly NSFW video below.
Make Them Stop: AT&T And Verizon Reps Are Now Fighting With My Tweet Stream
Jan 11, 1:16AM
Earlier today, I posted a simple observation on Twitter. "Interesting: @att has twice the Twitter followers of @verizonwireless and @verzion - so they have that going for them." That sparked an outcry from disgruntled AT&T users who more or less said in reply: "that's because everyone follows @att to complain!" Funny. And probably not too inaccurate. But two types of people I didn't expect to respond started to: those from Verizon and AT&T. Welcome to the chaos amongst the companies that is Verizon iPhone Eve.
Why I'm Having Second Thoughts About The Wisdom Of The Cloud
Jan 11, 12:49AM
I've always been a big advocate of storing things in the cloud. Not just emails and files, but my entire life. As I've written before, I live permanently in hotels, and my whole life fits into carry-on luggage. This means that the vast majority of things I "own", or at least use, live in the virtual space. I rent Zipcars in London and San Francisco. I use Hulu (or iPlayer in the UK) for TV and Netflix (/Lovefilm) for movies. My music lives on Pandora, and Last.fm and - yep - Spotify. My personal information too, lives largely in the cloud: I bank online, I pay taxes electronically and for anything that has to be sent my regular mail, I keep a virtual mailing address at a London members' club. For email, voice and SMS I use Google Voice, forwarding to whichever SIM card I happen to be using, wherever I am in the world. Recently, though, I've started to have second thoughts about the wisdom of the cloud.
Epicurious: Watch A Great iPhone App Drop To A One Star Rating Because Of Corporate Inattention
Jan 11, 12:14AM
You'd think the same folks who tore Gourmet down to the ground in order to embrace new media would be a bit more savvy. If you cook, you've probably tried (and loved) the Conde Nast Epicurious iPhone app. The app has been essential in the kitchen and I've made many great recipes over the past few months. Recently, however, they added an interstitial ad to their app that essentially breaks it beyond all hope. When you search for a recipe, a screen pops up with an X and a "Try Now" button. Press the "Try Now" button and you head over to the app store (on an iPhone) to a page describing how magical the Gourmet iPad app is. That's right, you can't download it on the iPhone. Press the X? Guess what happens. That's right. It goes back to the App Store.
PHP Fog Raises $1.8 Million To Be The Heroku Of PHP
Jan 10, 11:41PM
If you're a developer you're probably familiar with Heroku, the startup that was just acquired by Salesforce for $212 million in cash. Heroku helps developers deploy and scale their Ruby applications, effectively allowing them to outsource maintenance and administrative tasks so they can get to coding. Now there's a new startup called PHP Fog that has a similar mission, except it's hoping to make lives easier for PHP developers. The company has just raised $1.8 million in funding in a round led by Madrona Venture Group, with participation from First Round Capital, Founders Co-Op, and a number of angel investors. The service is still in private beta, but 100 TechCrunch readers can sign up right here.
Kindle Comes To The Mac App Store, Already No. 5 Free App
Jan 10, 11:26PM
Continuing its quest to be on every major computing platform, Kindle is now available as an app in the new Mac App Store. As the first ebook app in teh Mac App Store, it is already the fifth most downloaded free app. Amazon is pursuing a "buy Once, Read Anywhere" strategy with the Kindle, with the idea that once you download a Kindle book, you should be able to continue reading it on any device. You can read a Kindle book on a Kindle, an iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, Windows PC, Windows Phone 7, and Mac. Kindle already launched Kindle for Mac last March, but this version is distributed through the Mac App Store which is part of the latest update to OS X.
Hey Cult Of Mac, We Didn't Photoshop That Deleted Verizon iPhone Tweet
Jan 10, 11:00PM
Earlier this morning reporter Rich DeMuro caught our attention with a unusual @Verizon tweet that looked like it was sent from Twitter for iPhone. While we weren't the first to see it, or even the first tech blog to publish a post on it, we wrote about it anyways, namely because it was "interesting" that whoever is behind the Verizon account may have been tweeting from an iPhone (Verizon or otherwise) in the days prior to a rumored Verizon iPhone launch.
Glenn Beck: We Must Stand Together Against All Violence (With A Gun In Our Hands)
Jan 10, 9:56PM
>From the Department of Unintended Juxtapositions: Apparently, right wing pundit Glenn Beck likes to stand against violence with a gun in his hands. At least that's the impression you might get if you visit his website. One of the top three featured articles right now is his response to the Arizona shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords with the reasonable quote: "We must stand together against all violence." But if you look to the side, you might also catch a photo of Beck peeking around the corner a gun in his hands (see screenshot above). It's as though he wants to shoot the crap out of violence. Or maybe he wants to stand together and sing Kumbaya. Will the real Glenn Beck please stand up? If you don't see the image right away, keep reloading the page (go ahead, don't be scared). Different photos of Beck appear as whimsical design elements along the side of the page. There's Beck as a teacher, a Founding Father, and gun-toting lunatic or some sort of Secret Service agent (I'm not really sure what he's supposed to be, actually). There's also one of him holding a boulder over his head (see below). I guess that is what he means by "stand together against all violence."
The Verizon iPhone Hype Shown In One Image
Jan 10, 8:36PM
I'm on a plane right now flying out to New York City. Why? Look at the chart above. That's pretty perfect visualization of what the entire world now expects tomorrow: the Verizon iPhone. Apple's stock has surged over 5 points today. And it's up nearly 10 points since the whispers for began on Friday that Tuesday would be the big unveiling. This surge shouldn't be surprising since at the minimum, the Verizon iPhone is expected to add a few more billion dollars to Apple's bottom line.
Facebook Begins Moving Everyone Over To New Profile Design
Jan 10, 8:11PM
Last month we wrote an extensive overview of Facebook's new profile design, which reshuffles some of the most popular features to make sure they're front and center. At the time, Facebook wisely decided to make the feature opt-in, in much the same way that Twitter did when it launched 'New Twitter'. Apparently the reception has been generally positive, because today Facebook has announced on a blog post that it's going to begin rolling everyone over to the new profile. The biggest changes to the profile, for those that haven't seen it yet, include a handful of photos that are now presented at the top of the page.
Groupon Raises, Like, A Billion Dollars
Jan 10, 8:02PM
Groupon has closed what remained of that huge $950 million financing round which we first reported on in late December. They closed on roughly half of it then, from DST, Fidelity and Morgan Stanley. We then learned that Kleiner Perkins was also in the round. Now we have the rest of the details, and the company will issue a press release today on the round. True to their never be totally serious attitude, the press release will be titled Groupon Raises, Like, A Billion Dollars. A whole slew of new and existing investors are participating in the round, which values Groupon at a whopping $4.75 billion. Investors in this round include Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Digital Sky Technologies, Maverick Capital, Silver Lake Partners, and Technology Crossover Ventures. As we previously reported, Allen & Company LLC acted as financial advisor. 
Startup Sherpa (Kickstarter): Going Direct To The Audience For Crowdsourced Funding
Jan 10, 7:33PM
If you want to crowdsource the funding for a project—whether it is a product, album, or a film—one of the best places to find both patrons and early customers is Kickstarter. In this week's episode of Startup Sherpa, host Chris Dixon dives deep into the crowdsourced-funding phenomenon with Kickstarter founder Perry Chen. The majority of projects on Kickstarter are creative ones involving film, art, or music. But product design and startups can be just as creative. Chen describes the funding model on Kickstarter as "somewhere between commerce and patronage." And some of the most notable projects are technology products, including open social network Diaspora and the TikTok iPod Nano watch that raised almost $1 million. In the videos below, Dixon and Chen discuss what made those two projects take off. Chen also offers advice for how to kickstart your own project on his site. 
Foodspotting Scoops Up $3 Million From BlueRun Ventures
Jan 10, 7:24PM
Location-based food discovery tool, Foodspotting has just picked up 3 million in series A funding from BlueRun Ventures, days shy of its one year anniversary on January 15th. Angels from the previous $750k seed round will also be following on and BlueRun's Jay Jamison will be joining Foodspotting's board. Foodspotting CEO Alexa Andrzejewski tells TechCrunch that the company chose BlueRun specifically because of their focus on growth in the mobile space. Foodspotting lets you snap up pictures of dishes at restaurants and also has a simple food recommendation algorithm which Andrzejewski says will be bolstered with the most recent financing. 
Square Raises $27.5M From Sequoia And Khosla, On Track To Process $40M In Q1 Payments
Jan 10, 7:21PM
We recently reported that Jack Dorsey's mobile payments startup Square was in the process of raising a new round of funding at a $200 million valuation. Today, Square's general manager Keith Rabois tells us that the company has officially closed its largest round of funding to date, raising $27.5 million in new funding led by Sequoia Capital with exiting investor Khosla Ventures participating in the round. Sequoia partner Roelof Botha has joined Square's board of directors. We've heard from sources familiar with the matter that Square's valuation in the round was around $240 million (that's up from a $45 million valuation in the startup's Series A round in 2009) Square has steadily gained traction as a simple payments option for small businesses and is processing millions of dollars a week in transactions. 
Holtzbrinck Ventures And HarbourVest Closes €177M Early Stage Fund
Jan 10, 7:17PM
We've just learned that German VC Holtzbrinck Ventures will announce that it's closed a whopping €177 million early stage fund tomorrow. The Holtzbrinck Ventures Fund IV is backed by both Georg von Holtzbrinck publishing group and funds managed by HarbourVest Partners, a global private equity investment firm. This is a significant new fund for European standards and will fundamentally help prosper and establish consumer web startups from all walks. Current investments and holdings include highly successful ventures, such as Zalando, Groupon or the freshly exited brands4friends. 
Google Goggles Can Now Read Print Ads. Oh, And Play Freaking Sudoku!
Jan 10, 7:07PM
Of all the mobile applications that Google has come out with in the past couple of years, Google Goggles is definitely one of the coolest. You point your smartphone at any object, and Google attempts to figure out what it is — and it's actually pretty good at it. And now it's gaining two pretty interesting features. Well, one interesting and one awesome. The first is the ability to recognize print ads. Yes, you can now point your smartphone at an ad in a magazize or newspaper and Google will recognize the brand or product and return results for it. Google says that this will work for major U.S. newspaper and magazine ads from August 2010 onward.
Days Before Big Announcement, Verizon Is Tweeting From An iPhone
Jan 10, 6:33PM
So we've got Siegler up in the air travelling to New York in order to watch some Verizon honchos and possibly Steve Jobs unveil a CDMA phone tomorrow morning. As Verizon iPhone anticipation (wow, I will actually be able to make calls!) nears fever pitch, people are grasping at any signs of their iPhone dreams coming true. For example, along with pointed hints from the @Verizonwireless, it appears that the @Verizon Twitter account has been tweeting from an iPhone in the days leading up to the event, giving the tech media at least one more post about the mythical phone that launched a million page views.
Head In The Clouds, Ballmer Pushes STB Head Muglia Out After 23 Years At Microsoft
Jan 10, 6:14PM
One of Microsoft's core strengths is their Server and Tools Business (STB). In fact, it's a $15 billion a year business for the giant. CEO Steve Ballmer cited that number today in an email to employees announcing the departure of the head of that division, Bob Muglia. So why is Muglia leaving such a successful endeavor he built? Because Ballmer decided it was time for a change. "The best time to think about change is when you are in a position of strength, and that's where we are today with STB – leading the server business, successful with our developer tools, and poised to lead the rapidly emerging cloud future," Ballmer writes. "Bob Muglia and I have been talking about the overall business and what is needed to accelerate our growth. In this context, I have decided that now is the time to put new leadership in place for STB," he continues.
Meetup Perks Helps Local Groups Find Local Sponsors
Jan 10, 5:56PM
Everybody, it seems, is getting in on the local offers game. Now, so is Meetup, one of the most local sites out there, with Meetup Perks. Meetup Perks just launched today, with the aim to make it easier for local businesses to find groups to sponsor by offering discounts and other deals. There are about 80,000 groups on Meetup, including everything from tech meetups and car enthusiasts to hiking and cooking groups. About 30,000 businesses already offer some of these groups deals, discounts, and other perks from local businesses. But up until now these sponsorships have all been informal and done directly between the groups and local merchants. With Meetup Perks, Meetup is creating a self-serve platform that makes it easier for merchants to find groups to sponsor and for group organizers to opt into receiving deal offers. 
Prezi Launches A Precious Presentation App For The iPad
Jan 10, 4:59PM
If you haven't yet checked out Prezi, one of the most innovative presentation tools I've ever seen, you're totally missing out. Today, the young company behind the amazing product is (finally) launching the highly-anticipated Prezi for iPad (iTunes link), enabling users to show stunning live presentations straight from the tablet computer. Right off the bat: we all know the iPad doesn't support Flash, so not all existing presentations can be viewed in full if they contain Flash material such as videos. Apart from that, all presentations that were made in the past should be flawlessly viewable on the iPad.
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