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Feb 21, 5:33AM
European streaming music startup
Spotify is in the process of closing a very large financing, say multiple sources.
DST, the venture firm that has backed Facebook, Groupon and Zynga, is said to be leading the deal, which values Spotify at around $1 billion. The size of the round will be $100 million or more, say our sources. The company has raised at least €82.3 million to date, including a relatively small round of financing
a year ago from
Founders Fund. This new round, though, is at a much higher valuation. The Founders Fund round was rumored to be at a similar valuation as the previous round, a 2009 financing that valued the company at around
€200 million.
Feb 21, 5:26AM
Right now Yahoo engineer
Jeremy Johnstone is my hero. Frustrated with with
Flickr's lack of HTML5 support on the web, Johnstone -- whose position is currently "Technical Yahoo!" on the
Yahoo For Good team -- has decided to take his employer to task, where else? In his Flickr steam. Earlier today Johnstone posted the above image, with the following barb.
"No Flickr, you have it wrong. I don't need to install anything. I just need to use a different site to host my video which properly supports modern web technologies."
Feb 21, 12:10AM
Looks like Bill Gross' UberMedia has had its API access reinstated for at least two of its apps this Sunday afternoon, after
a dramatic turn of events led to them being shut down on Friday. In their return, Blackberry client UberTwitter will be changing its name to UberSocial and Android app twidroyd will be making no name changes -- Both have complied with Twitter's requests to remedy the offending violations. >From Twitter
Support:
"We've given the developers of twidroyd and UberSocial for Blackberry (formerly UberTwitter) access to the Twitter API again. Our initial review indicates that steps have been taken to remedy the violations for these applications. 
Feb 20, 10:41PM
With 45 million monthly active users on Facebook, CrowdStar is now the second largest social gaming network behind Zynga (which has 275 million monthly active users). Second in line in the social gaming race isn't bad for a startup that has received only $100,000 in funding and is one-tenth the size of Zynga in terms of employees. And with a new CEO at the helm and a fast growing set of popular games, CrowdStar is gearing up for a big 2011 to help the company grow in terms of users and games. We sat down with Peter Relan, newly appointed CEO of CrowdStar to talk about how he plans to move the company forward in 2011. Relan is also the chairman of the incubator YouWeb (where CrowdStar first received funding), but stepped into the CEO role recently. 
Feb 20, 6:56PM
Last night at the dinner table we wrestled with the next generation in the form of our 17 year old. It all began when she asked to borrow my iPad for "a second." We had been discussing Lady Gaga's new single, which Naomi insisted was a direct cop of a Madonna 80's hit, Express Yourself. OK, there might be some similarity — like the whole verse, 75% of the chorus, and the fact that Lady Gaga is in fact Madonna. But I maintain that Lady Gaga is the first and only artist to appear since the Beatles were thrown off the rooftop in London with sufficient gravitas to allude endlessly to in articles about technology. So I did the adult thing to do in this parenting opportunity. I distracted my daughter and grabbed my iPad back. Things got worse fast. 
Feb 20, 5:00PM
Editor's note: This is a guest post written by TheIceBreak CEO Christina Brodbeck. Brodbeck is a UI designer, angel investor and entrepreneur based in San Francisco, CA. Women in tech. I hate to say it, but I am tired of hearing about women in tech. As a female tech startup founder and angel investor, I am routinely asked how I feel about the lack of women in the technology sector. Frankly, I'm a bit tired of the question. It's a topic worthy of discussion, but the conversation has grown far too narrow (as tends to happen in our Silicon Valley bubble).
Feb 20, 4:00PM
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The Q&A land rush is on. Quora, of course, has been hyped to the moon, and not without reason. Fortune magazine recently profiled five more Q&A sites, and three new ones just launched: Cloudy, where your friends answer your questions via SMS; Setlr1, which is like Twitter for yes/no questions; and InboxQ, Q&A on Twitter. Is this a bubble full of copycats doomed to wither into Yahoo Answers Redux? Maybe - but I don't think so. I think there's something important going on here, and it's more than just questions and answers. I think these are the first skirmishes in the reputation wars. The identity wars are already over. Facebook won, Twitter snagged the silver medal, and OpenID lost. Log In With Facebook and their associated Open Graph have succeeded so thoroughly that Facebook increasingly defines users' online identities across a whole panoply of sites. But who will define and codify our online reputations? That's a question whose answer will matter - a lot.
Feb 20, 3:00PM
People always say things change fast in Silicon Valley. Here, and in other entrepreneurial communities around our country, ideas collide, companies form, money is injected, talent is allocated, and the pace of innovation churns. Entrepreneurship is so accessible, the best talent flock here to found companies like Google. Today, it's tougher for those foreign entrepreneurs to get here in the first place, which has given rise to the Startup Visa movement, a specific policy within Startup America. These are necessary moves our country needs to make to retain the international talent we train and to cultivate more ecosystems to build the next Google. While we try to slowly fix our domestic policies, the world is less patient. Mobile social technologies have nudged citizens into the streets in of Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, Algeria, Bahrain, and now Libya. There's no denying one huge influence in these movements: social networks. Social networks did not cause these revolts, but they greased the wheels. In Egypt, a Facebook fan page acted as the stone while it's citizens banded together as a flint. The result was a spark. And, that spark was fanned by Twitter, a drum of kerosene so inflammable that Google, Twitter, and SayNow teamed up to enable Egyptian citizens to communicate outside national borders by creating mobile networks where phone calls could translate into tweets. All of this activity got me thinking about what will be the next phase in the social networking revolution, what will reach mass consumer scale, be global, and generate real social and financial impact. There's perhaps no greater market to disrupt. The fast-moving nature of politics today, whether in "mature" markets such as America or "new markets" such as in Egypt, have paved the way for individuals to express themselves and their interests in a political context. 
Feb 20, 6:58AM
Cultural relativity is an amazing thing. While American parents worry about their kids being on Facebook, Egyptian parents are naming their kids "Facebook" to commemorate the events surrounding the #Jan25 revolution. According to Al-Ahram (one of the most popular newspapers in Egypt) a twenty-something Egyptian man has named his first born daughter "Facebook" in tribute to the role the social media service played in organizing the protests in Tahrir Square and beyond. Helmed by now-famous Googler Wael Ghonim, the "We Are Khaled Said" Facebook page showed up within 5 days of Said's death in June and served as a hub for dissidence against Egyptian police brutality as well as a way to disseminate logistical information about the escalating anti-government protests until Mubarak's resignation. Other activist pages like one actually called "Tahrir Square" cropped up shortly afterward.
Feb 20, 6:50AM
Attention European startups based in or passing through London. I will be hosting regular "Office Hours" from now on so I can meet you and hear about your company. I'm initially trying an experiment by publishing my calendar availability on Tungle here http://tungle.me/mikebutcher. 
Feb 20, 1:18AM
On Friday afternoon, Paul J. Miller caused what passes for a kerfuffle inside the technology journalism meta-bubble. Miller, as you know, is "Senior Associate Editor" at our estranged sister site Engadget - or at least he was until yesterday when he posted a resignation note on his blog. The reason for his leaving? The Aol Way. You've already read the document: Tim Armstong and David Eun's 58-page death warrant for journalists and the practice of journalism at Aol. Hyperbole? Hardly. Here are a few choice quotes...
Feb 19, 10:39PM
In Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 film The Godfather, there's a scene between Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) and Sonny Corleone (James Caan) that plays out like this: Tom: Your father wouldn't want to hear this, Sonny. This is business not personal. Sonny: They shoot my father and it's business, my ass! Tom: Even shooting your father was business not personal, Sonny!
Events the past few days in the tech ecosystem have reminded me of this scene. As we've all heard by now, yesterday, Twitter made what seemed to be a quick and drastic decision to block a number of popular Twitter third-party clients, namely, UberTwitter and Twidroyd. Both of those, of course, are owned and operated by UberMedia, a company which is quickly buying up a significant part of the Twitter ecosystem — presumably to figure out a way to monetize it.
Feb 19, 9:30PM
What was the best business decision VC Fred Wilson ever made? What was the worst? What part of his job does he dislike the most? The answers might surprise you. In the video above, Wilson answers some rapid fire questions (delivered in a not-so-rapid fashion) from Founder Stories host Chris Dixon. The clip is an outtake from the interviews segments we ran a week ago, in which Wilson talks about frothy valuations, his investment philosophy, the relationship between VCs and startups, and the VC business in general. We cut up the interview into four separate clips, which you can find in the links above, but they were so popular I am putting the entire unedited 17-minute interview below, for those of you who missed it the first time around or want to watch it all the way through.
Feb 19, 7:30PM
Publishers have been struggling for years. Now local newspapers, magazines and even the New York Times, that Grey Lady, are being treated like old ladies by Apple, stealing their pocketbooks while they're trying to stay on a fixed income. This week, Apple announced what the publishing industry has been clamoring for, subscriptions, in exchange for a whopping 30% cut. Clearly, paid subscriptions are a part of the future of all online media, whether tied to a print version or not. That's what The Daily is all about and even AOL might one day go down that path (Tim Armstrong admitted as much on CNN). It's part of the shift to the Subscription Economy that's happening across not just media, but software, cloud computing, communications, consumer services, entertainment, you name it. This guest post is by Tien Tzuo, founder of Zuora, a subscription billing company. Previously, he was chief strategy officer and employee No. 11 at Salesforce.com.
Feb 19, 6:00PM
The Gillmor Gang conflated two major stories this week into one: Apple's terms of service for app store approval, and Twitter's actions regarding UberMedia. The noise regarding Apple being hauled in front of the DOJ illustrates just how powerful Apple's strategy continues to be. As many point out, Android's market share makes it virtually impossible to tar iOS with monopoly status. It's almost as though Erick and Steve planned it that way, right down to Google following up with its 90% scenario as if to validate Apple's 70% model. Stephen Elop also made that point with his decision to let Microsoft acquire Nokia, reminiscent of Yahoo's failure to notice the ballgame was over when Ballmer pulled the trigger on them a few years ago. Then it was a seat at the search table; today it's a seat at the mobile one.
Feb 19, 5:00PM
1996 was a great year in the life of the web. Netscape had launched two years earlier, Excite@home was going to wire all of our homes with unthinkably fast megabit connections, Webvan was going to deliver farm fresh fruits and veggies to everyone's house (without delivery charges) and Flooz was going to make wallets (as well as the cash they contained) obsolete. In terms of ground breaking innovative thinking, 1996 was a very good year. For me, I was in primary school when all of this was happening, and I hoped that one day I could be part of something like this. I've always dreamed of changing the world with innovative technology and from my perspective 1996 was the time when an explosion of some of the most innovative thinking the world had ever seen became visible to the public in such a life-altering way. When most people talk about the dot-com boom and bust they talk about the money that was made and lost in the process. What they don't talk about so much is the innovation that created completely new and world changing technologies. From my perspective the money is interesting but the real conversation needs to be about the rate at which a new technology is adopted, the speed with which new companies are gaining market share and the disruptions that are happening as new technologies and companies supplant the prior generation's most popular products. This guest post is by Ben Keighran, CEO & Co-Founder of Chomp, a search engine for mobile apps.
Feb 19, 3:00PM
I sent my first e-mail message in 1995, to a member of my development team. That was the only person I knew who had an e-mail address in those days. I also did my first web search around that time. I think I used Lycos for this. I entered some keywords into a text box, separated by Boolean operators, and received a list of web pages that I could click on that referenced these words. Sixteen years has passed. I receive about 400 e-mails a day now from people all over the world. E-mail has become part of my life and has changed the way I communicate and the way I work. I don't know anyone anywhere who doesn't have an e-mail address. When I went to Sikkim, India, last year, a Buddhist monk in a remote Himalayan monastery even gave me his e-mail address. The web has also evolved in a similar fashion—it seems to be everywhere and connects everyone, for everything. Internet technologies are now toppling dictatorships in the Middle East.
Feb 19, 2:39AM
Last time we checked in with SecondMarket in late January, Facebook shares had declined from the auction's high point at $28.26 a share (a $70 billion + valuation) to $26.25 a share which means a $65.5 billion valuation going by its 2.5 billion shares outstanding. While at the time we had speculated about a peak and signs of a decline, shares are up 2.85% this week, at $27.00 a share and a $67.5 billion valuation. 
Feb 19, 12:56AM
Between the likes of picplz and Instagram, image-sharing sites are making plenty of headlines these days. And there's one obvious offshoot that seems ripe for similar services: video. Granted, Path offers support for video, but it's semi-private and there could still be an opportunity for a more public service to tap into this trend.That's where Justin.tv's upcoming app Socialcam comes in. The app, which remains in a very limited beta, is looking to to offer a straightforward way for people to capture and share their videos with friends — and yes, it's doing that in a way that is very similar to Instagram and picplz, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I sat down with Justin.tv founder Justin Kan and VP of marketing Matthew DiPietro to get a tour of the app, and have also gotten the chance to play around with the Android version myself. Kan says that it's frustratingly difficult to share video taken on your phone with friends: email attachments are a pain because of size issues, and MMS leads to heavily degraded video quality. YouTube makes it easy to upload directly from your phone, but the focus there doesn't seem to be on sharing your clips with a network of friends.
Feb 19, 12:20AM
Want to come celebrate Sarah Lacy's new book with us in San Francisco? Here's your chance. We are giving away 10 free tickets to her launch party, all of which include a free signed copy of her critically acclaimed new book, Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How The Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit From Global Chaos. As Paul Carr noted, Sarah's new book has been called "a fascinating new gem of a book" by USA Today, and "an outstanding piece of journalism" by Fortune. 
Feb 18, 11:59PM
It was back in July of last year that we first wrote about a service called Voyurl with the headline: It's Hard To Tell If Voyurl Or Their Ads Are Creepier. You see, at the time, the still-in-stealth startup was targeting angel investors via Google ads get their attention to hopefully talk about their product. That's actually pretty smart. So we had to give the edge to the product itself being creepier. You see, its aim was to be a service that made your entire browsing history public. At the time, we said the best way to think of this was as a sort of "Blippy but with more potential porn". Of course, Blippy has since been tweaking its service to be less about public sharing of your purchases and more about the social dynamics of purchases and recommendations. But fear not, Voyurl is gladly picking up the creepy mantle!
Feb 18, 11:57PM
Both the BBC and the AFP are reporting that Muammar Gaddafi's government in Libya has began to block user access to Facebook in the country's capital of Tripoli and are shutting down access to Internet connections in the rest of the country in response to anti-govermental protests. Twitter user Ramy Raoof says that sources in Libya have confirmed the Facebook blocks, but that Twitter.com is not blocked and Internet access is not yet down. Al Jazeera is also reporting access to its sites being cut off as well as access to Facebook.
Feb 18, 10:48PM
The media world is in a tizzy over Apple's new subscription billing rules for iPad and iPhone apps. Basically, Apple will now take a 30 percent cut of all in-app subscription revenues and own all the customer data. As written, the rules apply to everything from iPad magazines and newspapers to subscription music services and even subscription movie services like Netflix. We've debated these rules up and down. In this special episode of Fly or Die, Rhapsody president Jon Irwin joins us to explain how online subscription media businesses work from his perspective. Irwin is one of the few executives brave enough to speak out against the new rules.
Feb 18, 10:43PM
I don't know how many times I've been visiting a city, looking for a place to work, and have just ended up in a Starbucks. I hate working in Starbucks. But I know they have WiFi, so I go there anyway. Time and time again. But what if a service existed that showed you other options for getting work done when you're on the go? That's exactly what LiquidSpace is going to be. The service, which hasn't launched yet, can most easily be thought of an Airbnb for workplaces. Their aim is to find the best spots around a city to work from and show them to you via a location-based mobile application. But these aren't Starbucks locations, instead they'll be offices, business centers, lounges, and all sorts of other places that people have set up with things like WiFi, but are under-utilized at various times. LiquidSpace will help these places maximize their potential.
Feb 18, 9:43PM
Last week, Mike promised that, if Sarah Lacy's new book, Brilliant Crazy, Cocky, reached the number one slot in Amazon's Entrepreneurship category, we'd host a big launch party in San Francisco. At TechCrunch, we keep our promises. The party in on! Update: Tickets to the event are now completely sold out. If you'd still like to attend, you can try to win a ticket here.
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Last night at the dinner table we wrestled with the next generation in the form of our 17 year old. It all began when she asked to borrow my iPad for "a second." We had been discussing Lady Gaga's new single, which Naomi insisted was a direct cop of a Madonna 80's hit, Express Yourself. OK, there might be some similarity — like the whole verse, 75% of the chorus, and the fact that Lady Gaga is in fact Madonna. But I maintain that Lady Gaga is the first and only artist to appear since the Beatles were thrown off the rooftop in London with sufficient gravitas to allude endlessly to in articles about technology. So I did the adult thing to do in this parenting opportunity. I distracted my daughter and grabbed my iPad back. Things got worse fast. 
