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Search Still Sucks
Feb 13, 7:53AM
A decade ago I tried Google for the first time. Like everyone said, it was magic - the result I wanted was right there at the top. For someone who'd been using AltaVista for years before that it was a very pleasant experience. Anyone who was on the Internet before Google came along knows exactly what I'm talking about. Google just felt right. It got the job done. It's been a creeping feeling, growing over the years, but it sort of feels like pre-Google again. Search is a really bad overall experience. Travel searches, for example, are a joke, and startups like Gogobot are popping up to try to fix that. When I'm trying to figure out the best hotel for me when I travel I bail on Google entirely and head to Tripadvisor (shudder), and Gogobot. Same for gadget product reviews. GDGT, Amazon and occasionally Consumer Reports seem to have the best collections of data, so I just go there directly and bypass Google. In fact, I use Google mostly for navigation, not discovery these days. Meaning I know the document I'm trying to find and figure out the best search query to locate it. But pure discovery? It's a shit show of layer upon layer of SEO madness vying for my click.
Google Explains, Apologizes For, CR-48 Spam
Feb 13, 7:04AM
Early this morning people who have received a Google CR-48 notebook, and people who've requested one, got hit with 100 or more emails from a newly created Google Group. Google sent out an email this evening apologizing for the emails and explaining what happened. Google was planning on launching the group next week for all users who have been selected to be in the program. But someone discovered it early and posted to it. 
The Guardian's David Leigh Talks About Julian Assange and Wikileaks
Feb 13, 1:57AM
"Freedom of speech is being denied [to] Luke Harding while Wikileaks and Julian are getting in to bed with these dictators; these enemies of freedom of speech..." - David Leigh
The Guardian's Wikileaks Book Is This Generation's "All The President's Men"
Feb 13, 1:56AM
Two weeks ago, I reviewed the New York Times' book: 'Open Secrets: WikiLeaks, War and American Diplomacy'. It's a remarkable work of journalism, combining the paper's collected reporting on Wikileaks, with editor Bill Keller's personal account of working with Assange. For my money, Keller's account was the stand-out highlight of the book - a behind the scenes journalism thriller, punctuated by details from the leaked documents themselves. In fact, as I read through the bulk of the book, I found myself wishing that Keller's style had continued throughout. Even in edited, compiled form, the revelations from "Cablegate" and the Iraq war logs are a lot to digest and it would have been wonderful to have Keller as narrator to walk the reader through them all. That didn't affect my review, though: it was too much to expect the Times to publish that kind of comprehensive narrative so quickly. You can imagine, then, how delighted I was to receive a copy of the Guardian's new crash-published Wikileaks book and discover that it was all the things I wanted from the Times' book. And more.
Lissn Strips Down To Its Skivvies: Three Anonymous People Chat While Others Listen
Feb 12, 9:54PM
When Lissn launched on stage at TechCrunch50 in September 2009, we described it as sort of a "broader Twitter meets a simpler Google Wave". Well, like the latter, the idea behind Lissn never really caught on. By March of last year, the service decided to pivot a bit to be based more around individuals rather than specific conversations. But that didn't really work either. So now, with version 3, they've decided to strip away basically everything. Founder Myke Armstrong says that they started removing features after hearing author Eric Ries talk about creating a "minimum viable product". He determined that Lissn, at its core, was simply about conversations, not the people having them or the topics they're about. So here we have the new Lissn, which is sort of like a Chatroulette for conversations now.
Why Starting Justin.tv Was A Really Bad Idea, But I'm Glad We Did It Anyway
Feb 12, 9:07PM
Right now I'm neck deep in product launch mode, putting the finishing touches on our new mobile video application—Socialcam. Of course, I've been here before . . . Years ago when we launched the Justin.tv show we had no idea what we were doing. This much was obvious to anyone who watched. Outsiders attribute far more strategic thought to the venture than we gave it. Some think that we planned all along to start a live platform, and that the Justin.tv show itself was a way of promoting that platform. While this ended up happening, none of it had crossed our minds at the time. Emmett Shear and I had been working on Kiko, the first Javascript web calendaring application in the Microsoft Outlook style. We prototyped the application in our final year at Yale, went on to raise money from Y Combinator, then continued working on it for over a year. Then Google Calendar was released—boom—absorbing most of our nascent user base and capturing most of the early adopter mindshare. But to be perfectly honest, Kiko would have failed regardless. We were too easily distracted and hadn't really thought through the strategic implications of owning a standalone calendaring property (hint: no one wants a calendar without email). A short time later we were burned out and spending most of our time playing Xbox with the Reddit guys in Davis Square—hardly a startup success story.
Gillmor Gang 2.12.11 (TCTV)
Feb 12, 6:00PM
On the Gillmor Gang, I recalled that moment when Gabe Rivera suggested I log into Twitter. Then came the year where I posted nothing, followed by the gaming of Track, the FailWhale, and a lot of noise about how social media and the enterprise didn't have a thing in common. Of course, they were wrong, and Marc Benioff proved us right. Chatter.com was announced at the Super Bowl, and now millions are slowly moving down the runway toward takeoff. Chatter rolled out @mentions and Likes this Sunday, and we heard the same old noises about applying social signals to business processes. Fellow Gangster John Taschek and I have been experimenting with @mentions for some time now on Twitter. Together with direct messages, the two signals have provided a key tool for communicating what we want publicly, and what we want to keep private. Email can kiss its lack of the @sign goodbye. And along with it, the malignant hierarchical constraints that choke serendipity and calcify progress. 
(Founder Stories) Fred Wilson Explains Why He Wouldn't Invest In Groupon Or Pandora
Feb 12, 5:30PM
Few VCs have a hotter hand right now than Fred Wilson. His firm, Union Square Ventures, is an investor in Twitter, Zynga, Foursquare, Tumblr, Etsy, Clickable, and more . In this episode of Founder Stories, he talks to host Chris Dixon about Union Square's investment thesis has changed from going after all web apps to companies that are "building a large networks of engaged users." (Watch the video above). It has to be be both a large network and engaged users. By that requirement, he says he wouldn't invest in Pandora (which just filed for an IPO yesterday, although this was taped a couple weeks ago) because Pandora listeners just sit back. The users aren't doing anything in Pandora," he says, "even though Pandora is a great company." Similarly, he wouldn't invest in Groupon. Not because he thinks it's a bad business, it's just not his area of focus. "Groupon is an ad network," he says, "we wouldn't invest in that." Within ecommerce, he feels that marketplaces (like Etsy) do fall under his definition, but things like Diapers.com or Zappos would not. Wilson also mentions some companies that got away which he wishes he had invested in: AirBnB and Bump, which he lost to Sequoia. 
Intel Kept In The Dark Over Nokia's MeeGo Plans; Operators Reject First Device
Feb 12, 5:10PM
Prior to the public announcement on Friday, Intel was kept in the dark with regards to Nokia's plans to relegate MeeGo to a glorified R&D project, sources with knowledge of the situation tell TechCrunch Europe. The U.S. chip maker, it appears, was caught off guard as were many media outlets and analysts - this publication aside - with the news that Nokia has forged a long term partnership with Microsoft that will see the handset maker adopt Windows Phone as its primary smartphone platform. Intel, which along with Nokia is developing the MeeGo operating system, is said to be extremely concerned now that Nokia will inevitably reduce its engineering commitment, which it desperately needs, and where this leaves plans to get its Atom chip into smartphones and other mobile devices. We've also learned that Nokia's first MeeGo device, originally scheduled to be announced late last year, has been sent back to the drawing board by operators.
Lessons From TechCrunch Disrupt Audience Choice Winner Badgeville's Launch
Feb 12, 4:30PM
I was honored to have been selected to launch my social rewards and analytics company, Badgeville, this past September at TechCrunch Disrupt. Badgeville made it to the final round of the Startup Battlefield and won the Audience Choice Award. As a result of our success at TechCrunch, we've had the opportunity and good fortune of selling over $1 million in Web-based software, securing 25 clients with 1 billion monthly page views, raising $2.5 million in series A funding, and growing our team from five to 20 people with three offices around the world. In the first 30 days following Disrupt, our website received 20,000 visitors, often with over 1,000 visitors per day. We were impressed and, at times, overwhelmed by the amount of qualified leads we received as a direct result of the publicity spurred by the event. Since then, when I first meet an entrepreneur, they are frequently interested in the key factors that contributed to Badgeville's successful launch. I thought it might be helpful for others to consider our story when evaluating their options when it comes to introducing their companies to the world.
10 Reasons To Buy A Tablet (And 5 Reasons Not To)
Feb 12, 3:16PM
You've held out for months, waiting and watching the market for some sign of a tablet that you think you'd like. But maybe you're asking the wrong question. Instead of "Which tablet should I buy?" maybe you should be asking why you need a tablet in the first place? We've written out a brief guide to deciding whether you need a tablet at all. As for a recommendation, the two devices we can unequivocally recommend right now are the iPad and, if you're into Android, the Galaxy Tab (although there is some talk of an upgrade coming soon). However, don't buy right now. The iPad 2 is on its way and the Xoom, Playbook, and TouchPad, are coming soon as well. So before you break out the credit card, let's talk about a few reasons to buy a tablet... and a few reasons not to. 
How to Fix the Flawed Startup Visa Act
Feb 12, 3:00PM
Many foreign-born techies in the U.S. and abroad are pinning their entrepreneurial hopes on the passage of a bill, sponsored by Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), to create a startup visa. Tech-industry notables such as Paul Graham, Eric Ries, Brad Feld, Fred Wilson, and David McClure have lobbied for this. I, too, lent this my support. In fact, I have been advocating such a visa since 2007—when my team's research revealed that 52% of Silicon Valley's startups from 1995 to 2005 were founded by immigrants. We also learned that a million skilled workers and their families were stuck in "immigration limbo" and that many were beginning to return home—causing America's first brain drain. But, as I wrote in my Bloomberg BusinessWeek column, I fear that the Kerry-Lugar bill will get approved—with overwhelming support from both parties. Our leaders will declare victory and claim that they have made the U.S. more competitive. This will not, however, produce the expected startup activity; it won't give our economy the boost it desperately needs. That's because the bill is far too limited. And, given the divisive nature of the current political debates about immigration, this may be the only immigration bill that gets passed until way after the next elections—by when it will be too late. Let me explain the issues and suggest some solutions.
Google CR-48 Notebook Owners (And Hopeful Owners) Besieged With Flood Of Google Group Spam
Feb 12, 9:26AM
We're still trying to figure out exactly whats happening, but Google CR-48 Notebook owners, and even some people who just signed up to get one but haven't yet, started getting hit with dozens, and then over 100, emails this evening. It all started at around 12:23 am PST. Why? It appears that people were automatically added to this Google Group - http://groups.google.com/group/chrome-notebook-pilot-users - and then the emails started flowing every minute or two. And then many times a minute as people started posting asking for the spam to stop, which was then sent out to every member. One tipster unsubscribed to the group after over a hundred emails came in over 20 minutes. Another person said they got 89 in rapid fire before unsubscribing. We'll update with more info as we get it. Here are some of the messages being posted:
UberMedia, Indeed. Bill Gross' Twitter Ecosystem Empire Just Acquired TweetDeck
Feb 12, 2:16AM
The number of companies in the Twitter ecosystem keeps contracting. But not for a necessarily bad reason, but because they keep getting purchased. And what's crazy is that it's largely one person who has been buying them up: Bill Gross. We've just learned that his company, now called UberMedia, has just acquired TweetDeck. We're hearing that the deal, which happened recently, was in the $25 - $30 million range. And this is clearly the largest deal they've done yet as TweetDeck is the largest Twitter client outside of Twitter's own properties.
Telogis Raises $2.9 Million More To Help Companies Manage Fleets, Reduce Emissions
Feb 12, 2:07AM
Telogis, a location-based technology firm in Aliso Viejo, Calif. has raised another $2.9 million, according to a new SEC filing, to help businesses track and manage their fleets of vehicles, and workforce using GPS, mobile and web technology. The company touts its "mobile resource management" software and services as environmentally beneficial, and fuel-saving. According to the Telogis website, its mapping and fleet-management systems help companies: cut [drivers'] idling by more than 25 percent, reduce miles driven out-of-route by 30 percent, and can reduce speeding for better fuel economy... 
Sony: "Publishers Are Being Held To Ransom By Apple"
Feb 12, 1:14AM
There's much to be said in favor of a successor to iTunes. Not just the application itself, though I'd love to see it disappear, but the whole service. Things move fast, and although Apple moved faster than the music industry, it now finds itself in a distressingly similar, and vulnerable, position. Sony seems to think the iron is hot, and consequently is preparing to strike; SCE CEO Michael Ephraim is quoted by The Age as saying, "Publishers are being held to ransom by Apple and they are looking for other delivery systems, and we are waiting to see what the next three to five years will hold." Strong words, but can Sony back them up? The future, they believe, is in streaming, and strong competition is already present in the form of established services like Spotify, Rdio, and Grooveshark. Will Sony's Music Unlimited service, in the middle of a stepped roll-out in Europe, actually form a credible alternative, or will it languish with low subscriber numbers until Sony kills it off in a couple years?
In A Step Back Towards V3, Digg Ending RSS Submissions For Publishers
Feb 12, 12:35AM
In a step back towards the old Digg, Digg Product manager Mike Cieri just sent out an email to partner publishers stating the intent to remove the RSS submitted stories feature. For those of you that remember, the RSS submission feature was how stories from the Reddit publisher account on Digg were sent to the Digg front page in an act of rebellion against the V4 redesign of the site last August. The painful V4 redesign led to a user revolt and a drastic drop in traffic, with a corresponding increase in traffic over at competitor Reddit.
The Internet Scores Its Second Victory Of The Day, Borders Nears Bankruptcy
Feb 12, 12:02AM
A while back a Seeing Interactive post entitled "You've Got Mail Is Ripe For A Sequel" went popular on Hacker News. In You've Got Mail the movie, which is a bit of a joke around TC HQ because of its ties to Aol, The Shop Around The Corner, a small bookstore run by Meg Ryan goes out of business because Fox Books, a huge Borders-type book store run by Tom Hanks, opens up around the corner. The "Is Ripe For A Sequel" post pointed out how differently that scenario would have played out. Twelve years later, Borders, affected by online book sales and sales of competing e-readers, is heading into a tailspin.
People, Not Things, Are The Tools Of Revolution
Feb 11, 11:35PM
Warmest congratulations to the Egyptian people, whose truly grassroots revolution has reminded the world what political action is supposed to look like. Although the work is far from done, and reconstituting a government by the people and for the people is perhaps the more difficult phase, it is right that they, and the world, should take a moment to reflect on a job well done. Some are using that moment to praise the social media tools used by some of the protesters, and the role the internet played in fueling the revolution. While it's plain that these things were part of the process, I think the mindset of the online world creates a risk of overstating their importance, and elevating something useful, even powerful, to the status of essential. The people of Egypt made use of what means they had available, just as every oppressed people has in history. Twitter and Facebook are indeed useful tools, but they are not tools of revolution — at least, no more than Paul Revere's horse was. People are the tools of revolution, whether their dissent is spread by whisper, by letter, by Facebook, or by some means we haven't yet imagined. What we, and the Egyptians, should justly be proud of, is not just those qualities which set Egypt's revolution apart from the last hundred, but those which are fundamental to all of them.
TechCrunch's Laura Boychenko Infiltrates Google Ventures
Feb 11, 11:22PM
We're never happy when a TechCruncher leaves, but it's always nice when they end up somewhere awesome and can feed us lots of confidential information. Ben Meyer at Facebook and Daniel Levine at Accel Partners, for example, send us weekly confidential updates from their companies. Laura Boychenko, who has been with us since 2008, is working her last day at TechCrunch. On Monday she starts a new job at Google Ventures. And what Google doesn't know is that we're keeping Laura on our payroll, too, and we expect lots of inside information to be coming our way. It's the TechCrunch way.
With 80 Million Users, Pandora Files To Go Public
Feb 11, 10:38PM
Music streaming service Pandora has filed to go public. It could end up raising as much as $100 million. Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan are co-managing the deal. The filing puts them on track for a mid-2011 IPO, as we reported earlier. Some financial stats from the SEC filing: For the first nine months of 2010 it lost $328,000 on revenues of $90 million. (Michael Robertson's $100 million revenue estimate we published earlier this tear was pretty damn close). Pandora's fiscal year ends on January 31 (weird), but in the prior full year ended on January 31, 2010, it lost $16.7 million on revenues of $55 million. So you can see how much it got its fiscal house in order since then, adding $35 million in revenues and practically eliminating its loss. 
Mubarak Shut Down The Internet, And The Internet Paid Him In Kind
Feb 11, 10:08PM
Yesterday, after 17 days of protests, former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak gave a speech to the Egyptian government that made it seem like he would not be stepping down. This led to many people on the ground in Egypt and elsewhere feeling depressed, a series of humorous jokes being bandied back and forth on Facebook and Twitter and one Twitter employee commenting to me,"Well, we can only do so much." It has become fashionable amongst Western media and armchair foreign policy experts (hi Malcolm) to dismiss the idea that what happened in Egypt was a digital revolution mainly because most people associate Facebook and Twitter with the mundane over-sharing of what you ate for breakfast. That and the fact that its been pretty damn hard to pin down what exactly causes revolutions. This belief isn't helped by the truth that a ton of social media noise did not actually lead to a regime change in Iran during #IranElection. 
"I Love The Petting Zoo Guy": The Curious Characters Sarah Lacy Met While Writing Her New Book [TCTV]
Feb 11, 9:47PM
For the past few days, it seems the whole world has been reviewing Sarah Lacy's new book, Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit from Global Chaos . Fortune's Dan Primack described it as "an outstanding piece of journalism", Jon Swartz at USA Today called it "a fascinating new gem of a book," Vivek Wadhwa in Business Week describes how it "vividly illustrates how the American Dream has become America's most significant cultural export" and even Michael Arrington - possibly the world's most persistent Silicon Valley flag-waiver - jumped in, saying "Sarah's book opened my eyes... to the untenable constraints that people around the world have to work with." My own - thoroughly biased review can be found here. But, yeah yeah, blah blah - I get it - it's a brilliant piece of business journalism. For me, though, the best thing about the book is its cast of characters. The Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky entrepreneurs. The Chinese driving school guy who has his own petting zoo, the Israeli movie mogul, the Brazilian slum-kid-turned-genius-entrepreneur and - of course - Jean de Dieu Kagabo. So while everyone else continues to rave about the important business lessons and geopolitical implications of Sarah's book, I bullied her into the TCTV studio to chat about some of her favourite people she met while writing it. The individual parts - one for each country - are below, or you can watch the full thing here.
Funny Or Die Explains The AOL-HuffPo Deal: "Bringing The Future Back To 1996″
Feb 11, 9:42PM
Ever since AOL announced its $315 million acquisition of the Huffington Post, pundits have been asking what does it mean? Well, look no further. Funny or Die created the faux infommercial above that looks like it was shot 15 years ago. The tagline is, "AOL and the Huffington Post: Bringing the future back to 1996." Basically, what you get with AOL-HuffPo are Alec Baldwin editorials and cybersex chatrooms filled with midwestern housewives. Oh, and you can also download your favorite Wav files of Arianna Huffington quotes, which you can listen to every time you get a new email: "Master the Internet." I am downloading some right now at AOL HQ, from where I'm writing this post.
Internet: 13,483,282 Newspaper: 0
Feb 11, 8:33PM
A lot of people like to bitch and moan about how in the age of realtime information, the stream moves too quickly and as a result, there's a decent chance of inaccurate news being spread. There's no question it's an issue, but with the situation in Egypt, we're once again seeing the overwhelming upside of this realtime data spread that makes services like Twitter so powerful. And just look at the flip side. The above image shows the frontpage of a newspaper that was delivered this morning. There are hundreds more like it around the country. Many, many people still get their news this way. They woke up this morning, opened the paper and got information that is so old that it's now totally inaccurate. It's ridiculous.
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