Hi there!
Here's the latest feed from TechCrunch.
Add feeds@feed2email.net to your contact list to make sure you receive all your emails
Make sure to visit feed2email.net to get more feeds sent to your inbox.
To find out which feeds you are subscribed to, or to get further help, just reply to this email.
Stephen Colbert Launches HuffPo Parody Clone "The Colbuffington Re-Post"
Feb 17, 9:56AM
Aside from Sarah and Paul's strange Bieber-based attempts at SEO, I haven't noticed many changes around here since some AOL people and then Arianna Huffington became my uber bosses. I mean I still get paid to work and everything which is cool so + 1! But really my AOL hat really isn't enough to keep me from absolutely loving what Stephen Colbert just did in an acutely searing critique of The Huffington Post's controversial content practices.
Levchin and Gurley Say That Next Big Company Will Capture The Interest Graph
Feb 17, 8:04AM
Yesterday, at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco, Googler and PayPal founder Max Levchin and Benchmark GP Bill Gurley discussed "game-changing technology" and the future of the Web. Emblematic of today's mindset, they attacked this rather large topic by comparing the strengths and objectives of Google and Facebook, using the latter's jaw-dropping stats (500+ million users, 1 in every 13 people on Earth logs into Facebook each day) and its promotion of the social graph as a measure of what's to come. Levchin said that Facebook is fast becoming the new social white pages, i.e. when you don't know where someone is on the Web, you go to Facebook to find and connect with them. But, in addition to that, he says, the social networking giant is really "the rich white pages," where you not only locate someone but have the added benefit of finding out what they like, what they read, what their favorite movies are, and so on.
Vitrue Raises $17 Million For To Help Brands Manage Social Media
Feb 17, 7:57AM
Vitrue, a social media marketing company, has raised $17 million in Series C financing led by Scale Venture Partners and Advent Venture Partners with existing investors General Catalyst Partners, Comcast Interactive, and Dace Ventures participating in the round. This brings Vitrue's total funding to $30 million. In conjunction with the announcement, former Facebook Vice President of Global Sales Mike Murphy has joined Vitrue as Special Advisor to the CEO. As we've written in the past, Vitrue's SaaS platform allows brands and marketing agencies to communicate with fans and consumers across Facebook and Twitter accounts, location based services, and via mobile applications. The company's SRM (social relationship management) platform is being used by a number of high profile brands including Harley Davidson, Mentos, Dick's Sporting Goods, Crocs, Eddie Bauer, Maybelline, Purina, McDonald's, YouTube, Ford, AT&T, Disney and Best Buy.
Worried What Your SEO Guys Are Up To? BrightEdge Will Tell You
Feb 17, 7:10AM
JC Penney gets put in purgatory at Google for link farming. AT&T, Siemens and others are buying SEO links on Forbes and get busted. Employees of these brands may or may not have known exactly what was going on. But I'm guessing more than a few execs were unpleasantly surprised by the news. Wondering who exactly is doing what to your brand out there in SEOland, and how bad of a hit you might take? Then you may want to use a tool that will show you the warning signs of link farming. SEO firm BrightEdge is giving people a free tool to do this. The timing of it couldn't be better. The new tool, called BrandSafe Link Audit, is "a new, free analysis and alert product that can expose disreputable SEO techniques to CMOs before they end up in the headlines." It tells you about the quality of backlinks to your sites and whether or not you may be at risk from paid links and link farms. 
Is Yahoo Getting Close to Selling Its Lucrative Yahoo Japan Shares?
Feb 17, 5:10AM
Yahoo's CFO Tim Morse spoke at a Goldman Sachs Investing conference today and was peppered with questions about Yahoo's Asian assets, which are the bulk of the value of its stock price right now. On the subject of Alibaba, Morse was very conciliatory, repeatedly praising the job that the management team is doing building the business, emphasizing that Yahoo was just a financial stake-holder. He said that Yahoo was in no hurry to name it's contractually obligated second board member. On the subject of Yahoo Japan, there has definitely been a shift in tone when it comes to whether or not Yahoo might divest its incredibly valuable stake. Earlier this month an analyst from Pacific Crest, noted as much in a research report, raising its rating on Yahoo based on the potential for a boost from selling the Japan shares and its price target to a comparative heady $21 a share.
Not Content With Insulting Kids, Women, Users; Orabrush Tongue Goes After VCs
Feb 17, 4:03AM
Earlier this week we wrote about True Venture's remarkably non-lemming investment in Orabrush-- a seemingly ho-hum company that makes tongue scrapers, but has found all sorts of creative ways to sell them using YouTube and social media. One of those ways is weekly podcasts from a gross tongue named Morgan who insults everyone and occasionally beats up kids. This week he decided to insult True Ventures: "Some sucker in California invested like $2 million in Orabrush." Oh, Morgan. He's just saying what so many entrepreneurs have thought. Video below. 
Groupon Spars with Tencent; Joint Venture Isn't Inspiring Local Confidence
Feb 17, 3:27AM
There's trouble in Tencent and Groupon's China group buying joint venture, Gaopeng.com, according to press reports from China. Apparently the site went up for a day, Tencent balked and pulled it back down. Beyond that, people tell us the operation is pure chaos: Rapid hiring, little due diligence and money being thrown around. The biggest gripe: It's almost entirely run by foreigners. It sounds like exactly what you'd expect based on this hiring ad, we printed a few weeks ago. It boasts of near-infinite funds, goals to hire 1,000 people by March and an emphasis on consultants and MBAs-- not people versed in the local market. Chinese language skills aren't even mentioned in the ad. It's easy to say this is just another botched joint venture and another arrogant US Internet company swaggering into China, thinking its brand name and wads of cash will bridge cultural gaps. Given the track record of US companies entering China, it's actually hard to say anything but that. 
The Final Night Of IBM's Jeopardy Challenge: How Did Watson Do?
Feb 17, 1:00AM
There we have it. The IBM Jeopardy Challenge has concluded, so what follows is a brief review of what happened tonight. Once again, West Coasties (and anyone else who didn't get to see the final episode live) should probably click away for now—there will be spoilers. You have been warned.
This iPhone 4 Exploded
Feb 17, 12:15AM
How would you feel if your iPhone 4 burst into flames on your wooden table, flames licking the laquer, and the noise scaring your girlfriend and child half to death? That's what reader Omar had to deal with this week when his iPhone completely exploded. He writes: The phone got hot then started smoking then blew up. My wife and kid were in the room and it set off my fire alarm. It slighty burned my hand when I tried to pick it up. Basically the battery caught on fire.
The Media Industry's Biggest Fear: How Do We Know Next Year Apple Won't Be Taking 50%?
Feb 16, 11:21PM
At the risk of going on and on about Apple's controversial new subscription billing rules, let me just add one more thing. Yes, these new rules may affect music streaming apps and movie streaming apps, but first and foremost they are aimed at print publishers who were hoping to port their existing subscription business models over to the iPad. The big publishers and other media companies with substantial subscription businesses don't like the prospect of handing over 30 percent of their revenues in perpetuity to Apple. What they like even less is losing the direct relationship with their customers, and all the data that comes along with that. (Whoever owns the billing relationship owns the customer, after all). But the one thing they fear most of all is Apple's pricing power. The refrain I've heard from a couple of publishing industry insiders is: "How do we know next year Apple won't be taking 50%?" 
+1 Incoming? Google's New Toolbar Is Rolling Out
Feb 16, 10:36PM
For months, we've been getting tips about a new toolbar that Google has been testing on google.com. In fact, we first posted about it back in November and the tips have been steadily coming in since then. But today something happened: we've started getting a massive wave of tips about the toolbar. And all of us are now seeing it too. Yes, it looks like Google is rolling out their new toolbar. You might ask: so what? Well, judging from the leaked images we got of Google's social product, +1, it would seem the two might be directly related.
Wonga Raises £73m In Series C Funding To Double-Down On Massive UK Growth
Feb 16, 10:34PM
Wonga, the short-loans company which uses a realtime platform to assess users' applications instead of people, has raised a significant £73 million ($117 million) funding round - actually a Series C - as expansion capital. Wonga plans to use the cash to expand further in the UK, it's home market. The funding round was led by Oak Investment Partners. Meritech Capital partners, another US VC, and the Wellcome Trust, the UK's largest charity and health-funding organisation, also invested, as did some existing investors. Wonga has also had previous investment from Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, Balderton Capital, Dawn Capital and London based Seed fund TAG. However, we understand from sources that Balderton didn't invest in this round, making Dawn Capital the only investor to have invested three times in the business, and the only European VC to have invested in this round. 
Forbes Accused Of Link Spam, Plays Dumb, But Forgets To Delete All The Links
Feb 16, 10:02PM
Forbes, along with eWeek, CIO Magazine and a whole lot of other sites, have long been in the business of selling links on their site. The links aren't placed very prominently, but the buyers don't care because all they want is the search juice. See, for example, the JC Penny paid links story from last weekend. Starting Monday Forbes started to delete the links from their site. We've been watching these links come down, but they seem to have forgotten one page. See the bottom right of this page for paid links to Netsuite, AppRiver, Bluepay, SquareSpace and others, all with very nice descriptive keywords like "ecommerce," "Create a Website," etc. Previous links to Siemens and AT&T were prevalent, and those links still appear on eWeek and CIO Magazine. As Barry Schwartz noticed today, Forbes received and posted a notice from Google "encouraging" Forbes to remove the links "that could be intended to manipulate PageRank."
The Egyptian Behind #Jan25: "Twitter Is A Very Important Tool For Protesters"
Feb 16, 9:17PM
Social media's role in the Egyptian revolution has been picked apart, but what do people in Egypt think about it? Meet Alyouka, the 21-year-old Egyptian who was the first person to Tweet out the #Jan25 hashtag which, along with #Egypt, became a rallying cry and loose way to organize communications around and about the protests. Twitter found Alyouka (no last name given) and asked her to write a post about her experience with social media on its hope140 blog. "Twitter is a very important tool for protesters," she writes. While she credits Facebook with being amore important organizing tool, Twitter was the communications tool of choice among a "certain class of activists . . . armed with smartphones." She explains how the protesters used Twitter:
Why Are You People Defending Apple?
Feb 16, 9:14PM
As you've doubtless heard by now, yesterday Apple revealed its new fee structure for premium content: all apps that offer premium content outside of the App Store have to also offer it via Apple's official in-app purchases (this includes Amazon's Kindle) and Apple takes a 30% cut of all subscriptions. The response has predictably ranged from outrage to approval — my colleague MG Siegler did a thorough piece talking about why this makes sense for Apple and users, even if it may leave developers up in arms. But I'm still having a hard time swallowing it. My reaction has been one of trepidation. I don't like where this is headed, and I think that many who consider themselves technophiles are completely dropping the ball by rationalizing what Apple has done. The first mistake people are making has been to focus on whether or not this move is Apple's prerogative. Ignoring the rumored antitrust issues, I really don't think it's worth considering whether Apple has the right to impose a 30% fee on applications, any more than I question whether Monster Cable has the right to sell their HDMI cables at multi-thousand percent markups, or whether cell carriers have the right to charge exorbitant fees for text messages.
Taskforce Helps You Organize Your Inbox and Become a Taskmaster
Feb 16, 8:09PM
If you're a TechCrunch reader -- or, really, if you live in the 21st century -- you probably get more than one or two emails in the course of a day. In fact, you probably get a lot more. For some of us, emails have a way of accumulating faster than trolls in a comment section, and it can become an arduous task to keep track of which emails are top priority and which are your ex-girlfriend telling you to come and pick up your stuff. Thanks to Taskforce, a member of Y Combinator's latest class of startups, organizing your inbox just got a lot easier. Taskforce, simply put, is an inbox extension that integrates with Gmail to convert your emails into tasks and makes it simple to create reminders. To begin using the plug-in, you simply download the extension, and sign in to your email account. Taskforce will pop up (it looks like a tall-ish Google toolbar) and prompt you to begin creating tasks. You can then set due dates, add collaborators, delay the date, and make comments on your tasks. It also adds buttons to the top of each of your emails, allowing you to convert the email into a new task, or add it to an existing task. (And don't worry, Taskforce doesn't access your inbox, all actions take place through the extension.)
Fon Raises $13.5 Million In New Round To Expand In The US
Feb 16, 7:57PM
Fon has secured €10 million ($13.5 million) in a new funding round led by Atomico, the VC firm founded by Niklas Zennström, co-founder of Skype. The company markets wifi routers which turn domestic connections into a network of publicly accessible hotspots. Coral Group and other existing Fon investors also contributed to the round which is designed to meet the surge in demand for WiFi from smartphone and tablet users, and to expand in the US and other markets. Previous rounds for the company, which was founded in 2006 by serial entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky (who also founded Jazztel and Viatel), raised over €40m. 
The iPad Makes Apple The Top Seller Of Mobile Computers, So It Can Do Whatever It Wants
Feb 16, 7:37PM
With all of the debate about whether or not Apple will prevail with its new subscription pricing for media apps on the iPad and iPhone, it is helpful to keep one thing in mind: nobody else yet comes close to selling as many tablet computers as Apple. In fact, if you count the iPad as a mobile computer, in the fourth quarter Apple passed HP as the biggest manufacturer of mobile computers measured by products shipped. According to NPD's DisplaySearch, Apple shipped 10.2 million laptops and iPads in the quarter, giving it a 17.2 percent share of the mobile computing market compared to HP's 15.6 percent share. (Acer, Dell, and Toshiba filled in the remaining spots in the top five). Now remember that Apple shipped 7.3 million iPads last quarter, up from 3 million the quarter before. So it's new position atop the mobile computing heap comes directly from the popularity of the iPad. (You could argue it doesn't belong in the same category as laptops, but it is mobile and it is a computer). 
Greplin's Social Search Opens Its Doors To All
Feb 16, 7:30PM
Greplin, the service that indexes and lets you search all of your online social stuff (Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), has just opened its doors to everyone. Earlier this week we reported on their new financing round from Sequoia Capital, and over the last couple of days they've let in everyone on the waitlist. And as of right now, you can use Greplin, too. Why would you want to use Greplin? Because it lets you search across all of your emails, Facebook data and Twitter stuff with one query. And they haven't stopped there. You can also authorize Google Apps, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Evernote, Yammer, Salesforce, Box.net, Basecamp, Google Voice, Google Reader, Google Contacts and more. And then find stuff in those apps with a single query. We first covered Greplin, a Y Combinator startup, back in August. They had a limited launch then and revealed a $700,000 angel financing. Not too long after that launch the service began to crash, and Greplin stopped taking new users. They rewrote the entire back end of the service. And what's most amazing is that the new site, which flies, was created by just a handful of people. They now have five employees, but three of them were hired recently. 
Does Watson Prove We've Reached The Singularity? [Video]
Feb 16, 7:14PM
"We will soon create intelligences greater than our own. When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity, an intellectual transition as impenetrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding." -- Vernor Vinge Jeopardy has never been so exciting. The world has watched rapt for the past two days as IBM super computer Watson has at first held its own and then gone on to defeat Jeopardy champions Brad Rutter ($10,400) and Ken Jennings ($4,800), raking in $35,734 by the end of night two yesterday. People are even speculating as to whether its much ballyhooed false "Toronto" answer is some sort computer joke.
With Potentially Deadly New Apple Rules Looming, Rdio Revamps Their iPhone App
Feb 16, 7:01PM
With an on-demand catalog of over 8 million songs, it's hard not to love Rdio. But given the new rules soon to be enforced in Apple's ecosystem, it seems as if the company may be in for some stormy times ahead. But with a fresh $17.5 million in the bank, they're plowing forward anyway. Today brings a new version of their iPhone app. This latest version, 1.0, is very slick. Using what they call the "springboard" dashboard, you can easily access different parts of the service. Essentially, this is the homescreen design that Facebook and other popular apps use (which itself mimics the iPhone homescreen) to give users a quick overview of what they can do. Notably, the new design gives users "one-touch" access to new releases, top charts and recommended albums.
With RSS Face Down In A Ditch, Lifeless, Pulse Finds A Heartbeat Beyond It
Feb 16, 6:19PM
We love the "RSS Is Dead" meme here at TechCrunch. Hell, we started it. And while RSS isn't exactly dead as in gone, it is dead in that the vast majority of people who consume content on the web have absolutely no idea what it is and will never know what it is. But even that's not necessarily bad news for RSS. What is bad news is that services that previously only relied on it are now moving beyond it. Today, Pulse, the visual news-reading app for iPhone, iPad, and Android, is announcing that they're moving beyond RSS, and instead hooking up with APIs to get access to content. What type of content? Content from Reddit, Digg, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, and PicPlz. Yes, you'll now be able to browse all of those within Pulse.
TCTV: Mobile World Congress 2011, Capsule Edition
Feb 16, 6:03PM
There's still a full day left at the conference here in Barcelona, but we've seen most of what there is to see, and summarized it all up in this video for ease of consumption. Of course, all our coverage can be found at the MWC11 tag, or just by going to MobileCrunch. Watch the short video inside, and head to the links below for all our MWC love, plus a gallery of shots from around the conference.
Forget 90/10 Split, Key To Google One Pass Is That Customer Information Is Shared With Publishers
Feb 16, 5:55PM
In perhaps the most coincidental bit of timing ever, Google has today announced their content subscription and management service for publishers: One Pass. Okay, let's be honest, it's not coincidental. Google announced it today because just yesterday, Apple announced their own subscription service within the App Store. And their offering is highly controversial, to say the least. Google, it appears, is once again taking the anti-Apple approach. In their blog post on the matter, the company makes it very clear that they mean for One Pass to be very publisher-friendly. But is it too publisher-friendly?
The Motorola Xoom: $800 Unsubsidized, $600 for WiFi-only
Feb 16, 5:33PM
There she is. The Motorola Xoom is hitting the market at a whooping $800 sans any carrier subsidize for the 3G version with the WiFi model fetching $600. The Moto's CEO failed to state in the Reuters report when the Honeycomb tablets will go on sale -- or pre-order for that matter -- although it could be as early tomorrow. He also failed to address the nagging little disclaimer found in the Best Buy circular indicating that the WiFi will be locked without one month of VZW's pricey data. This pricing puts the 32GB Xoom nearly on par with the 32GB iPad. Both tablets ask $600 for the WiFi-only version while the 32GB 3G iPad is just slightly less at $730. Of course that's for the first gen iPad, with things likely being slightly different for the iPad 2. Apple's price points could stay very similar to the current model, but the storage level could increase, which would make the Xoom appear in a different tier altogether. It would still sell, though. 
If at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_feedburner_com_techcrunch+unsubscribe-hmdtechnology=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
To stop all future emails from feed2email.net you can reply to this email with STOP in the subject line. Thanks
