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M&A Activity Down 22 Percent in Q1, But IPOs And Acquisition Amounts On The Rise
Apr 01, 12:33PM
DowJones Venture Source has released its quarterly data on venture-backed exists and its appears that M&A activity has dropped in Q1 2011 despite the momentum that venture-backed exits gained throughout 2010. In the first quarter of 2011, 104 U.S.-based venture-backed companies achieved liquidity, netting $9.8 billion, according to VentureSource. That represents a 21% decrease in exits and a 17% increase in capital raised from the first quarter of 2010 when 131 exits raised $8.4 billion.
In Baffling Move, The Huffington Post Erects Paywall Solely For NYT Employees
Apr 01, 11:35AM
In a move sure to irk at least two or three people who work for The New York Times, The Huffington Post (owned by AOL, our own masters in some degree of command) has put up a paywall that applies only to NYT employees. In a message to affected potential readers of HuffPost content, founder Arianna Huffington explains that NYT employees can henceforth access only one article for free per month.
Facebook, Zuckerberg Sued For $1 Billion After Not Removing A Page Fast Enough
Apr 01, 10:24AM
I took my sweet time to check if this was an April Fools joke to be put on our exhaustive 2011 list, but it appears to be as real as can be. Larry Klayman, a renowned American activist, former Justice Department prosecutor, former U.S. Senate candidate and book author, says he has sued both Facebook and founder Mark Zuckerberg for over $1 billion after the social networking giant failed to remove a page calling for a third intifada against Israel's Jewish population swiftly enough. The suit was filed yesterday in Washington by Klayman, himself of Jewish origin. The complaint is embedded below.
April Fools 2011: The Big List
Apr 01, 7:02AM
Yes, folks, that's right. That special, special time of year is upon us. It's April Fools 2011! We take April Fools pretty seriously around here, so we'll be constantly updating this post with the best April Fools jokes and pranks the World Wide Interwebernets has to offer. All night and all day. As long as it takes. If you find a gem, please share it with us in the comments. Thank you in advance. So, without further ado, here is Aol HuffingtonCrunch's big list of April Tomfoolery:
Facebook Terminated Corporate Development Employee Over Insider Trading Scandal
Apr 01, 4:18AM
Facebook corporate development manager Michael Brown (pictured left in happier days) recently and abruptly left Facebook, and the company then hired a senior Google employee to replace him. It was a curious departure and the chatter around Silicon Valley was that there was a lot more to the story. And in fact there is. Via a scandal that could have far reaching consequences by bringing even more SEC scrutiny onto rampant secondary trading in non-public startups like Facebook and Twitter. Brown, multiple sources have confirmed, purchased Facebook stock on secondary markets (like those occurring weekly on SecondMarket), which Facebook considers insider trading and grounds for immediate termination. Sources say this is well communicated throughout the company. It's unclear how egregious the trade may have been. We've heard the trade was related to knowledge of the Goldman Sachs investment that value the company at $50 billion earlier this year, and we've heard from others closer to the situation that it was just a naive mistake and Brown has paid the price and moved on. One source says the trades were made last September, well before the Goldman deal was in the works. Either way, Facebook took it seriously and no doubt the SEC would too.
NYC Announces BigApps Winners Roadify, Sportaneous, And DontEat.at
Apr 01, 4:17AM
New York City announced the winners of its second BiggApps competition tonight. BiggApps is a way to get developers to use city and government data to create useful apps for citizens and visitors to New York City. The prize money was doubled to $40,000 split up among 14 winning apps. The first prize went to Roadify, an iPhone app that crowdsources information about public transport and parking spots. Users can give or get parking spots, realtime updates about buses and subways, or transit schedules. The parking finder is genius. It shows the spot using GPS on a map. I think everyone who has ever tried to park in New York City has dreamt of an app like this. Now someone actually built it. 
Mark Cuban Teams With Qualcomm To Bring Augmented Reality To Mavericks Tickets
Apr 01, 4:10AM
Thanks to the influence of owner and tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Dallas Mavericks season ticket holders will be able to enjoy a touch of the technological when claiming their 2011 playoff tickets. The Mavericks have teamed with Qualcomm to add augmented reality to this year's playoff tickets. Augmented Reality -- or "AR" for those "in the know" -- refers to a display in which simulated imagery or graphics are superimposed onto a view of the real world. In the case of these basketball tickets from the future, viewing on your Android will allow you to play an interactive game. 
'Know Your Meme' On What It's Like To Be An Internet Folklorist
Apr 01, 4:06AM
The website and show "Know Your Meme" were swallowed up this week by ICanHasCheezburger networks in a seven figure deal, proving once again that Internet memes are serious business. In light of this news, the Know Your Meme crew, Internet folklorists Elspeth Rountree, Kenyatta Cheese, Jamie Wilkinson, Patrick Davison and Mike Rugnetta actually performed an episode of their heralded show live on stage today at Web 2.0 Expo. 
Play Him Off, Flugelhorn Feline: YouTube Time Travels To 1911
Apr 01, 4:00AM
Head to YouTube after 4AM local time and you'll notice that it looks a little old fashioned — and not in a 1999 blinking construction sign sort of way. YouTube is reverting back to what it would have looked like had it been around in 1911, complete with grainy, sepia video footage, no audio tracks (save for piano accompaniment), and title cards in place of the site's normal comments. Yes, it's time for April Fools, and the world's largest video portal is ringing it in once with some video player trickery — a tradition it started in 2008 after RickRolling all of its users. YouTube has accompanied the gag with a blog post from President Taft, and it's also put together some 1911-ified memes, featuring the ancestors of Annoying Orange and a certain musically-inclined feline. Even some of the ads are old fashioned.
Video Curation Is Growing Up, ShortForm Hits One Million Visitors
Apr 01, 1:56AM
With 35 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, the Google-owned video behemoth would be the second largest search engine were it standalone site. Web video has become a powerful medium. But, I think it's also fair to say that this powerful medium is in serious need of curation. What if you're just looking for a quick laugh, a short video, and don't want to wade through billions of videos -- what if you want to create your own, personally curated streaming video channel? Hmmm? Thankfully, content curation has come to video: ShortForm shows it's here to stay. The San Francisco-based startup allows users to create personalized channels of web video content, easily pulling clips from YouTube and other video sites. You can play videos back-to-back to create a stream of video, not unlike the TV viewing experience. Creating custom channels is simple, and I would say the UI is more user-friendly (or at least more attractive) than that of YouTube.
Tech CEO Approval Ratings: Schmidt Goes Out On A High, Donahoe Climbs, Bartz Falls
Apr 01, 1:25AM
A survey taken over the last year by Glassdoor, a jobs and career community that allows users to anonymously share an inside look at jobs and companies, confirms that Eric Schmidt looks better when he's on his way out. As the Google big whig prepares to step down from a decade of service as chief exec, his employee approval rating is at an all time high. On the flip side of the popularity coin, Yahoo's Carol Bartz is seeing her honeymoon period come to a close. In what is likely unsurprising news, among tech CEOs, Bartz saw the biggest decline in her approval rating in the past year, compared to the 12 months prior. Between March 2009 and March 2010, she held a 77 percent approval rating among her employees, whereas compared to the following year, her approval rating dropped to 50 percent. Granted, this is still 16 percent higher than that of her predecessor, Jerry Yang. Yang had a 2008 George Bush-like approval rating of 34 percent when he stepped down as CEO.
+Like Browser Extension Pretty Much Eliminates The Need For Google +1
Mar 31, 11:43PM
Google launched the +1 feature of its social layer yesterday and if you're like most tech journalists you probably likened the move to attaching a Facebook Like button to Google search results. Well now someone has gone and done exactly that, no joke. Meet +Like, a Firefox, Safari and Chrome extension that lets you see how many people have liked a specific Google search result on Facebook as well as which of your Facebook Friends have recommended a specific piece of content, whether or not that action took place on Google search.
Spotify Announcing US Launch; Closing European Service To Fund It
Mar 31, 11:10PM
We've been more skeptical than most about Spotify's promises to launch in the US, but it looks like Europe's favourite music service is finally ready to make good on its promise. Deals are in place with the major US record labels and Valley investors are lining up to provide the cash needed to pay for costly music licenses. The catch? We're hearing from multiple sources today that in order to finance the cost of a US launch, Valley investors have demanded the company shut down its European service, effective noon on Friday (GMT). The brand new 'Spotify USA' -- unavailable to users in Europe -- will launch on Monday morning.
Richard Rosenblatt: Seriously, Leave My Yacht Out Of This
Mar 31, 10:23PM
Earlier this afternoon, Mike posted an exclusive story about an internal war raging within Google. In the post he mentioned that Google revenue chief Nikesh Arora had recently returned from a two week jaunt in the Caribbean with Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt aboard Rosenblatt's yacht, The Adsense. A few minutes after the post went live, Rosenblatt called the TechCrunch office and left a voicemail. Boy is he pissed. Not at any of the other details of the story -- which he doesn't deny -- but about Mike revealing details of his yacht. We understand that, in these piracy-infested times, the super-rich are rightly protective of their yachts -- but come on dude, it's called 'The Adsense'. That's news! Voicemail below.
Movie Studios Approve $30 Rental Plan, Theater Owners Mightily Upset
Mar 31, 10:00PM
It must be an absolute nightmare being a Hollywood executive in 2011. Four big studios (20th Century Fox, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros.) have announced plans to introduce a premium video-on-demand service, to debut on DirecTV next month as "Home Premiere," that will screen movies a mere 60 days after their theatrical debut. Renting such a movie will set you back $30. And if you think you're angry about that, just imagine how theater owners must feel. AllThingsD already has a scenario where the $30 price tag probably isn't as high as you might initially think, particularly if you're trying to have a "moment and daddy need to go to the movies alone for once" night. Once you pay for a baby-sitter, parking, movie tickets, a little popcorn and maybe a soda you're well past the $30 barrier. The studios made the announcement at an industry convention in Las Vegas. Oh: they never bothered to tell movie theater owners about this ahead of the big announcement.
Google Inadvertently Classifies Google Places As A "Content Farm" And Removes From Search Index
Mar 31, 9:09PM
Power struggles within Google's executive team, which have been brewing since the announcement of long time CEO Eric Schmidt's departure, are apparently bubbling up to the surface. Case in point: In an extraordinary move to illustrate its independence, say sources, the Google webspam team actually classified Google Places as spam and a content farm, and temporarily removed it from search results. 
Facebook Now Has 250 Million Mobile Users (And A New Unified Mobile Website To Match)
Mar 31, 9:04PM
For years now, Facebook has offered quite a few ways to access the site from mobile devices, and they've proven immensely popular. In February 2010 the site had 100 million mobile users per month — today it's announcing that it's up to 250 million. To coincide with the growth stats, Facebook has some other news to announce about mobile. We hear most often about Facebook's native applications available for iPhone, Android, WebOS, and other app platforms, but a significant majority of mobile users actually access the site from the web. And up until now Facebook's web setup has been a bit complicated: users on smartphones like Android and iPhones have been directed to touch.facebook.com, which is optimized for large touchscreens. And users accessing the site from a featurephones (and there are a lot of them) would be directed to the more plain-looking m.facebook.com. Today, that's changing: Facebook is merging touch.facebook.com and m.facebook.com into the same site.
GameStop Acquires Game Streaming Startup Spawn Labs And Distribution Platform Impulse
Mar 31, 9:04PM
Video game and software retailer Gamestop has acquired TechCrunch50 company Spawn Labs, a startup that develops game streaming technology. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. In addition, GameStop also announced the acquisition of game distribution platform Impulse, which is a division of software company Stardock. Spawn Labs launched in 2009 as a Slingbox for video games. Via, Spawn Labs appliance and computers apps transmit HD-quality (720p) content over the Internet so that players can use the peer-to-peer game streaming service to play games simultaneously.
OMG Someone Just Found An Embeddable Google +1 Button – And It Works!
Mar 31, 6:45PM
A day after Google unveiled its "+1" product, someone has already taken a close enough look at the code to track down an embeddable +1 Button. Said button wasn't supposed to be public yet - they essentially let people recommend any online content on Google search.
Boxcar Pushes Its Way Onto The Mac
Mar 31, 5:23PM
My love of Boxcar should be pretty clear at this point. Because I'm an information junkie, it's probably the app I use the most on my iPhone/iPad besides Safari. And earlier this year, they brought the notification goodness to the web as well. Now they're taking the next step: native Mac support. Yes, Boxcar is here for the Mac. The app resides in your toolbar and when clicked shows a drop-down with all of your notifications as they come in in realtime. You can set it so a sound goes off with every new message and if you have Growl installed you can get a visual notification as well.
Why Salesforce Overpaid For Radian6
Mar 31, 5:12PM
As you may have heard, yesterday Salesforce announced the $326 million purchase of social media monitoring company Radian6, the CRM company's largest acquisition to date. While we know that Salesforce has been actively pushing its social strategy with the debut of a Twitter and Facebook-like Chatter and the Service Cloud 3, $300-million plus is a lot of money for the CRM giant to shell out for a single company. In a press call with Salesforce executives and analysts yesterday, the company's CEO and founder Marc Benioff said that Radian6 currently has a revenue run rate of $35 million and is expected to add $40 to $50 million in revenue to Salesforce's top line this year. At $326 million, Salesforce paid nearly ten times Radian6's revenues, which is rare. So why did Salesforce want Radian6 so badly? First, Salesforce is aggressively pushing a social strategy and it's a dog eat dog world in the social enterprise space with a massive number of companies trying to capture marketshare for social applications. Salesforce is actively marketing Chatter but the Yammer and Jive competitor isn't a clear cut leader in the space. Radian6 boosts the company's footprint in social, and provides an established set of well-known clients, such as Dell, GE, Kodak and UPS. 
Twitter Kills The #Dickbar
Mar 31, 4:59PM
Yes, it's happened. Days after Jack Dorsey comes in to head product, the dreaded #Dickbar, or the Quickbar that inserted ads into your tweet-stream on the iPad and iPhone, is dead. While Twitter had taken the step to pin it to the top of the app weeks ago, today it's decided to do away with it altogether. >From the Twitter blog: "Rather than continue to make changes to the QuickBar as it exists, we removed the bar from the update appearing in the App Store today. We believe there are still significant benefits to increasing awareness of what's happening outside the home timeline. Evidence of the incredibly high usage metrics for the QuickBar support this. For now, we're going back to the drawing board to explore the best possible experience for in-app notification and discovery."In case anyone misses it, you can replicate the experience <a
eBay Bets On Online To Offline Shopping, Adds Milo's Local Product Availability To Search
Mar 31, 4:43PM
eBay has been quick to start integrating Milo's local product inventory technology into its products after picking up the startup for $75 million in December. eBay added Milo's local results in its barcode scanning apps, RedLaser for iPhone and Android, and GiftsNearby, as a shopping tool for consumers to find gift options available for pick up at local retailers in their neighborhood. Today, eBay is launching its deepest integration with Milo—on it's search platform. Milo's local availability results will show eBay shoppers which local stores in their neighborhood currently have a desired item in-stock and how much it costs at each location. Milo currently provides access to millions of products from approximately 50,000 stores across all 50 states. 
GameSalad Raises $6.1 Million For iPhone And iPad Game Creation Tool
Mar 31, 4:30PM
GameSalad, formerly Gendai Games, has raised $6.1 million in funding, led by Steamboat Ventures, with participation from Greycroft Partners, DFJ Mercury, DFJ Frontier and ff Asset Management. GameSalad's game creation tool allows non-programmers to build, develop and publish 2D casual games games for the iPhone and iPad. The benefit of using the platform is that developers can design, publish and distribute original games for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Web without needing to write a line of code. To date, GameSalad has been used to create powered over 8,500 titles in the iTunes App Store including more than 30 top 100 U.S. Games in Apple's App Store. 
Opera Mini Returns To GetJar's Mobile App Marketplace
Mar 31, 4:23PM
A few weeks ago, after the debut of the Opera App Store, app marketplace GetJar banned Opera's mobile browsing app Opera Mini from its own mobile app marketplace. The reasoning: Opera's App Store was available in the app and competes directly with GetJar's marketplace. Today, it appears a truce has been made, as Opera Mini 6 is now back in the GetJar store. GetJar remains committed to offering consumers the best possible content regardless of category, phone or platform, said Patrick Mork, CMO of GetJar. Opera Mini has been a great partner and one of our top apps for many years and our users will be happy to have a bigger and better version of Opera Mini back in our store.
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