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Awards In Hand, The Social Network Filmmakers Heap Praise On Zuckerberg
Jan 17, 6:13AM
One of the standout scenes at in The Social Network happens in the first five minutes of the movie. Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) is sitting in a bar with boyfriend Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) when she says the following to him: You are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole.It basically sets the tone for the entire film. And it's also undoubtedly one of the many scenes that made Facebook (the actual company) uneasy over the film. Well tonight, after ringing up a number of the major awards at The Golden Globes, writer Aaron Sorkin took a moment in his best screenplay acceptance speech to acknowledge the real Mark Zuckerberg and that very scene.
'The Social Network' Wins Golden Globe Awards For Best Picture, Screenplay, Director, Score
Jan 17, 4:12AM
After being nominated for a number of awards at this year's Golden Globe awards ceremony, 'The Social Network' nabbed Best Picture (in the drama category), Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin), Score (Trent Reznor), and Director (David Fincher). Those are all significant categories for the awards ceremony, with the movie garnering more awards from the Hollywood Foreign Press than most of the films nominated this year. Interestingly, Sorkin and the film's producer Scott Rudin both thanked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in their acceptance speeches. 
Blog Fight Rules Of Engagement
Jan 17, 2:17AM
Blog fights happen. Sometimes for attention, but most of the time because someone is really pissed off about something. And don't count out big media, they jump right in too when they feel it. No one's ever written down any rules for blog fights that I know of. But there are some unspoken rules and guidelines. Here are a few core strategies:
A Twitter Snapshot Of The Tunisian Revolution: Over 196K Mentions Of Tunisia, Tweeted By Over 50K Users
Jan 17, 12:57AM
After four weeks of civil unrest, the fall of the Tunisian president Ben Ali played out for all the world on Twitter this Friday, some dubbing it a "Twitter Revolution" like the election protests in Iran and Moldovia. Increasingly, collective events from TV shows to the World Cup to #lessambitiousmovies to the fall of dictatorships cause spikes in related conversation on the microblogging network which, with its broad media influencer adoption, has become the world's eminent news amplifier.
Yahoo Hasn't Updated Their Oscars Site Since March 2010
Jan 17, 12:43AM
There seem to be a lot of Yahoo properties that no one pays any attention to at all. We noted that Yahoo kept their Halloween content up past that holiday, for example. There was the Delicious snafu where a blog post saying the site wasn't going offline was offline because the site had been taken down. Now, we've noticed, Yahoo's Academy Awards site hasn't been updated since March 2010. This is despite the fact that Yahoo had a press push earlier this year: "Yahoo is doubling down on its awards show content this year," says the article. It's not just that the content has been pushed to Yahoo's OMG site. There's little on this year's Academy Awards there, either.
The Boy With The Unsold U.S. Rights: Ideas for Disrupting a Publishing Pain Point
Jan 17, 12:31AM
On the face of things, I don't have a huge amount in common with Stieg Larsson. For a start I'm not Swedish; and I'm not dead. Also, in the time it took you to read those last two sentences, Stieg Larsson sold more books than I did in the whole of last year. And yet, if Larsson were still around, I feel sure there's at least one area on which we'd agree (two if you count on the importance of training female Eritrean People's Liberation Front guerrillas in the use of grenade launchers). And that's the pain and frustration of trying to sell international rights to our books.
Asmyco: Each iOS Device Has Downloaded More Than 60 Apps
Jan 16, 9:46PM
Asmyco, the Helsinki-based app developer / industry analysis advisory firm founded and led by a longtime Nokia manager, has just published a new report on its blog with notewrthy data on the increase in iOS downloads by device. The company reports that more than 60 apps have been downloaded for every iOS device sold. That's up from 10 apps downloaded for every iPhone/iPod touch in 2008, says Asmyco. So how did the firm get to that number? As the Apple App Store approaches 10 billion total downloads, App downloads are increasing at a faster rate that iTunes music downloads (of course, not all iTunes users are getting their music from iTunes). 
True Ventures' Entrepreneur Force Pays It Forward To Budding Tech Leaders
Jan 16, 7:38PM
In the midst of the implosion of the financial markets in 2008, True Ventures raised its second fund. Founder and partner Phil Black tells us that shortly after this raise in early 2009 (which he calls the "dark days in the financial world"), the fund's partners were sitting at a meeting looking for innovative ways they could help jump start the tech economy. Inspired by President Obama's 2009 inaugural address, True Ventures decided to launch their own program to encourage college students to work at early-stage startups, and to help inspire and educate the "entrepreneurs of tomorrow." Called the True Entrepreneurs Corps (TEC), the program places 12 undergraduate students in the fund's early-stage portfolio companies. The internships take place during the summer in the San Francisco area and range in terms of focus, from technical coding to finance to marketing to business development. And TEC offers students a $3000 stipend for the summer. 
The Thin Wedge Of Quora
Jan 16, 2:34PM
In 2010, a handful of mobile photo-sharing applications unleashed armies of handset users to snap pictures and instantly share them across multiple platforms and networks: Instagram growth exploded to become a Twitter for pictures; Picplz received generous funding, Path emerged from stealth mode, Occipital enabled 360-degree panoramic experiences, Foodspotting encouraged users to capture food images, DailyBooth positioned itself to focus on the front-facing camera, and World Lens translated signs from English language to Spanish. Photo-sharing features were also embedded into existing sharing services, such as Foursquare and Posterous. (This entire arc was captured in a discussion on Quora, "What explains the explosion in social photosharing entrepreneurial activity?") The act of taking and sharing pictures prompted many to label this a "key wedge" activity which companies could leverage in order to build out new social networks and new products or services, either around location, food, smaller circles of friends and family, and so forth. The wedge being used, in this case, is pictures as the first entry point into building something bigger. Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon laid out the theory and practice in this post. Wedge activity isn't just confined to social picture-sharing. What if, in the case of Quora, their "thin edge of the wedge" was interaction around Q&A activity? What markets can that wedge help open up?
Oversized Assets Indicate 2048×1536 Resolution On iPad 2
Jan 16, 2:04PM
A couple image assets included in the latest version of iBooks seem to have the same naming convention as iPhone apps have when they must accommodate both old and new iPhone displays. In other words, the images imply that the iPad 2 will undergo a similar transformation: remaining the same size while doubling the resolution of its screen. If this true, you can sign me right up. Although the iPad's IPS screen is bright and has a great viewing angle range, I've always found its resolution distracting. I thought I left 1024x768 behind back in the late 90s.
The Block Album
Jan 16, 1:43AM
Every few eons we get another RSS is dead swarm of stories, usually involving Dave Winer versus the rest of the universe. Sub-themes include dead calling is stupid, I found this post on RSS, and get off your porch grandpa. Typically Dave uses the event to launch yet another version of Radio 8 tricked out to convince us that his lack of business model business model beats traditional data silo roach motel closed software. It may sound like I am pursuing a personal vendetta. I'll admit to some mixed emotions about Winer and his attempts to regain control of what he calls RSS but is in fact a new socially adept layer dominated by Twitter. Starting with my post several years ago on TechCrunch, I've stated the obvious, that RSS has become at best a formative technology that has led to the development of realtime social streams of citations.
OMG/JK: Pushing Google's Nonexistent Buttons
Jan 16, 12:32AM
Earlier this week we had a special episode of OMG/JK to mark the launch of the Verizon iPhone, but we're already back for more. I know what you're thinking: this may be the best week, ever. In this episode we discuss recent rumors about the iPad 2 — which will likely come with a new, higher resolution screen and a SD card slot. We also take a look at the rumors that the iPad and iPhone may soon ditch their single, iconic buttons. Next, we examine Google's recent bold moves to promote WebM and move away from H.264, which has the web in a bit of a tizzy as it debates what this will mean for the future of web video. Finally, we take a broader look at some of the problems that Google has had lately, and why the public and the press seem to have been criticizing the search giant more than usual.
Gillmor Gang 1.15.11 (TCTV)
Jan 15, 8:00PM
In the good old days of tech media, Microsoft led the charge in impossibly convoluted contortions around self-interested maneuvers. Today Google has taken over that role. And the new Microsoft stands as a pale shadow of itself, fighting tooth and nail to rescue defeat from the jaws of victory. With Steve Ballmer as Donald Trump: Nice job, Bob. You're fired. As we found out on today's Gillmor Gang, Google is being called on a transparent bluff. Namely, that yanking H.264 from Chrome is all about the open Web. That WebM will stop Apple from eating the heart out of Android and Chrome and maybe YouTube. Already Google is re-explaining the move. But not soon enough to stop Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek and me from having some fun on the Gang this week. Kudos to Microsoft and Google for their hard work this week. Thanks for the material, guys. 
A Brief Explanation Of Why Minecraft Matters
Jan 15, 7:57PM
On Wednesday, it was announced that a game called Minecraft had hit a million sales. This probably isn't the first time that you, a denizen of the internet, have heard that word. But unless you're in the habit of following up on every mention of every indie game you happen to see, there's a good chance this particular title might have slipped under your radar. So what is this Minecraft, and why is everyone talking about it? And more importantly, why should you care?
The 4-Hour Body: The Real App You Are Working On Is An App Called Yourself (Review)
Jan 15, 5:27PM
Tim Ferriss is a 33-year-old Silicon Valley angel investor, consultant, Singularity University advisor, and former entrepreneur who in 2007 published a book called The 4-Hour Workweek; in 2008 won Wired's "Greatest Self-Promoter of All Time" prize; and last month published a sort-of-sequel, The 4-Hour Body. His books seem roughly equally divided between really worthwhile, interesting advice and totally ridiculous crap. What's most interesting about them is their approach. In his own bizarre yet effective way, Ferriss has become the world's first hacker-guru. And I hate to admit it, but I must confess: I have halfway become a devotee. The 4-Hour Body attacks self-improvement in the same way Silicon Valley startups strive for success: data-driven decision-making, A/B testing, iterative development, willingness to pivot. This isn't new. A sizeable subset of the hacker community has been "hacking their body" for years, and sites like Lifehacker have grown around that approach. Ferriss, though, is the first to promulgate that ethos to the general population - and he has been wildly (and deservedly) successful. 4-Hour Body rocketed straight to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.
Let's Compete on Innovation Rather Than Patents
Jan 15, 3:00PM
The next generations of telecom technologies are called "LTE" or "4G". China's Huawei believes that by 2015, it will hold 15–20% of the worldwide patents in these technologies, and that these will it at least 1.5% of the sales price of every device—every cell phone, laptop, and tablet—that uses them. Huawei is on track to achieve its goals: in 2007, it held just 152 patents; by the end of 2009, it had applied for 42,543 patents, of which 11,339 had been granted in China, 215 in the United States, and 1282 in Europe. Huawei's rival, ZTE, claims to hold 7% of the world's LTE patents and plans to increase this to 10% by 2012. Emboldened by these successes, the Chinese government has initiated a nationwide program to make China the world leader in patents in every important industry. The New York Times reported that the government is offering cash bonuses, better housing, and tax breaks to individuals and companies filing the most patent applications. According to the Times, China's goal is to increase the number of its yearly "invention" patent filings from this year's 300,000 to one million by 2015. And it wants another one million "utility-model patents", which typically cover items like engineering features in a product. In comparison, there are 500,000 invention patents granted every year in the U.S. The requirements for "utility-model patents" are so mundane that they are not even recognized in the U.S. as a legitimate criterion for the existence of intellectual property. 
Union Square's New $165 Million Fund Is All About Growing With The Network
Jan 15, 1:27PM
Back in December, we spotted an SEC filing indicating that Union Square Ventures was raising between $135 million and $200 million for a new "Opportunity Fund." The offering wasn't complete and the firm could not discuss it, but today partner Fred Wilson explains in a post what the new fund (which ended up being a $165 million fund) is all about. The fund is not about going after different opportunities than Union Square has been focussed on since the outset. It is that the size of the opportunity Union Square is focussed on—which Wilson describes "Internet services that create large networks"—is larger than ever. And the new fund will provide more dry powder to invest in network startups, whether they need $25,000 or $25 million. Wilson explains:
What Facebook Should Steal From Microsoft's Playbook
Jan 15, 12:48PM
Editor's note: This guest post was written by Raj Lalwani, the co-founder and CEO of Hallmark Social Calendar (formerly Social Calendar), a birthday reminder app on Facebook. In 2007, when Facebook opened its platform to developers, it seemed Facebook was using Microsoft's playbook - let developers create apps using their platform and see what apps succeed (Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, Harvard Graphics). Then acquire or clone the successful ones (Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint) as the cash cow and leave the crumbs (relatively speaking) for others. Something seems to have gone wrong - the third-party app ecosystem is not exactly thriving and Facebook still has no cash cows like Microsoft has (Office and Windows). Facebook is increasingly looking like Yahoo! - it does everything from Photos, Chat, Email to Places. It provides just enough features to be functional but leaves much to be desired, and increasingly depends on advertising as the revenue model. Here is what Facebook should steal from Microsoft's playbook which until recently had the largest market cap in technology (it's Apple now).
Instagram For The BlackBerry [Screenshot]
Jan 15, 3:55AM
Inspired by the epic Angry Birds for Blackberry, Myspace VP Sean Percival has come up with a hypothetical of what the popular photosharing app Instagram would look like on the text heavy and camera weak Blackberry platform. The above image is particularly humorous when coupled with the fact that Instagram, which just hit one million downloads, has not yet launched on Android. Percival's ultimate message here is intended to go beyond the lols however, "With so many brands getting into Instagram I was curious how a piece of humor (or viral) content might do within the Instagram ecosystem itself. No doubt those brands will need to bring something more than that perfectly filtered photo of a kitty cat to make an impact."
Twitter For Mac's Spectacular Hidden Little Feature: Tweet Anything From Anywhere
Jan 15, 3:11AM
I love Twitter for Mac. Love it. It has completely altered my day-to-day workflow. And it has changed the way I use Twitter itself. And that was before I found out about this killer little hidden feature today: Tweet from anywhere. I don't know how I missed it before, but apparently installing Twitter for Mac adds a new "Tweet" command to basically a ton of apps running in OS X. MacStories first pointed this out earlier today, and now I can't get enough.
Facebook Shares Hit $28.26 Per Share, That's a $70+ Billion Valuation
Jan 15, 2:24AM
The SecondMarket Facebook shares auctions are back on after a holiday break, and the valuation is up big time. The last auction prior to this one closed December 15 at $22.75/share. Today it hit $28.26 per share. With 2. 5 billion or so shares outstanding, that's a $70.65 billionish valuation. A month and a half ago shares were trading on SecondMarket at a $50 billion valuation. What's changed? The Goldman Sachs investment announced earlier this month increased the hype even further. No wonder the SEC is starting to pay attention to these trades. Sounds like Accel Partners may have sold a little before the peak.
Posterous Cofounder Garry Tan Steps Down, Heads To Y Combinator
Jan 15, 1:36AM
Garry Tan, one of the cofounders of easy-to-use blogging service Posterous, is moving on from the company. Tan will be leaving to take a position at Y Combinator, where he will serve as a designer in residence. Posterous doesn't put much weight on titles, but Tan had a hand in the site's engineering, design, and product development. Posterous isn't taking off as quickly as its competitor Tumblr, but it has a solid audience and has recently released a neat Groups feature. Tan didn't elaborate much on his reasons for leaving, but says that it boils down to wanting to work with smaller teams, which he'll be able to do at Y Combinator (Posterous is now at around 13 employees). He also added that Posterous is going "gangbusters" and that he expects 2011 to be "really phenomenal".
Want To Know What Your Friends Think? Ask Polling Site GoPollGo
Jan 15, 1:23AM
Former TechCrunch developer Ben Schaechter left TC a couple months ago to launch his own startup and today we finally get to see the fruits of his labor. Sick of the poor analytics, lack of geo-graphical information and little vote analysis on industry leaders like Poll Daddy, Schaechter built GoPollGo to maximize what he felt was the potential of polling services. Says Schaechter, "The polling space is crying out for disruption and innovation. There is *so* much information that can be dervived from vistors. When mashed up with users' opinions, the data gets thoroughly interesting."
Ask a VC: Satish Dharmaraj on India, the Beauty of Fragmentation and Farmers Markets (TCTV)
Jan 15, 1:22AM
I have a dilemma with Ask a VC. Generally, I'm trying to do shows that are under 10 minutes, so they're more consumable. But in the case of Ask a VC, I want to get to as many reader questions as possible and would rather not cut someone off when they are giving you business advice. So starting this week we're going to post the whole show as usual below, and give you links to each question and answer. That way if you don't have 15 minutes to watch it all, you can still find out the answer to your question or a question that you are grappling with. I usually find that its easier to consume long-form videos in podcast form than during my daily blog reading, so as a reminder, you can also download the episodes of any of our TCTV shows from iTunes. This week, Redpoint Ventures' Satish Dharmaraj was our first return guest and we got to a good number of questions including...
Cubeduel Goes Viral Too Quickly, Stumbles Over LinkedIn API Limits
Jan 15, 12:53AM
Yesterday we ran a post about Cubeduel, a service that mixes the best (or worst) of Hot or Not with LinkedIn. Fire up the site and it will show you photos of two coworkers — pick the one you'd prefer to work with, and Cubeduel will present you with another pair of photos. It's addictive, a bit evil, and has skyrocketed in usage over the last few days since it launched. Unfortunately, it took off a bit too quickly. The service went down earlier today for reasons that were initially unclear — did LinkedIn block the site because it ranks coworkers in a way that isn't exactly flattering to everyone, or did the site just get too popular, too fast? Turns out it's the latter — Cubeduel has exceeded LinkedIn's API limits (which is what one of the site's creators, Tony Wright, initially guessed). Here's an explanation from LinkedIn Director of Communications Hani Durzy:
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