Monday, January 30, 2012

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After Leo DiCaprio Invests, Lance Armstrong Races To Promote, Advise Mobli

Jan 30, 8:59AM

lanceMobli, the startup behind the eponymous, much-hyped realtime photo and video sharing service, has struck a partnership with road racing cyclist and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong. Armstrong, a seven-time Tour de France champion, will be making use of a private Mobli channel to keep his fans and followers up-to-date on his life through videos, photos and whatnot.


AngelList Launches 2011 Yearbook: 500 Startups, 2,500 Investors & 12,500 Introductions

Jan 30, 7:29AM

Screen shot 2012-01-29 at 11.10.11 PMAngelList, the community for startups that is part social network and part communication tool, designed to connect first-time entrepreneurs with respected angel investors, got hot in 2011. Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi's startup community was oft-talked about as a service with the potential to transform dealflow and give young entrepreneurs access to hard-to-reach investors -- with value proposition being evident on both ends, for founder and investor. The across the platform were many last year, and to start off the year, AngelList is giving users a chance to review all the craziness that 2011 had to offer, as it this weekend soft-launched its "2011 Yearbook". The Yearbook offers the public an opportunity to get a more detailed look at AngelList's activity over the course of last year -- who grabbed funding, from whom, how much -- with CrunchBase offering some data to boot.


LivingSocial CEO: Lumping Us With Groupon Is Like Lumping eBay With Amazon

Jan 30, 6:32AM

Tim O'ShaughnessyThe local commerce industry as represented by daily deal sites like Groupon and LivingSocial is still barely learning to walk, even though Groupon has 10,000 employees and LivingSocial has 5,000. While the two companies look nearly identical today, don't be surprised if they diverge. LivingSocial CEO Tim O'Shaughnessy reminded me in a conversation last week that "a lot of people lumped eBay and Amazon together 10 years ago" because they both were "ecommerce" companies.


For Those Who Can't Let Go Of The Past: The Techmeme Re-Underliner

Jan 30, 4:48AM

HeadlinesFixedRemember the old Techmeme of a week ago, before the new design took effect? Sure, the new design is easy on the eyes. But is it better? Personally, I'm already used to the new look, other than the sponsored posts stuck in your face in the new middle column (push those to the right, please, where ads belong). But some people just can't let go of the past—people like Eric Marcoullier (founder of OneTrueFan, Gnip, and MyBlogLog). Marcoullier hates the new design so much that he created a Chrome extension to revert it back to its old look.


DreamHost's Unhappy January Continues: First, A Database Breach, Now An Outage

Jan 30, 4:25AM

dreamhostDreamHost has been having a rough couple weeks. The low-cost hosting provider and domain name registrar found some unauthorized activity in its databases back on January 20th, which they later admitted were a series of attacks that may have led to the theft of some of their customers' FTP passwords. The company required mandatory password resets for all their Shell/FTP accounts -- you can read our coverage here. DreamHost's bad dream continued today, as they've been reporting outage problems, as Web, SSH, and FTP services were down for many of the company's virtual private servers, shared, and dedicated machines. The outage was first reported at 4am PST on Sunday, and has continued throughout the course of the day, with the company offering updates on its blog.


Sony Rolls Out A Trio Of New Cyber-Shot Point And Shoots

Jan 30, 4:00AM

DSC-TX200_Red_RightIn the market for a new point and shoot? Didn't think so. Why don't you take a gander at the new Sony shooters anyway?


Turning Two: FoundersCard Pulls Back The Curtain On Its Membership Community For Entrepreneurs

Jan 30, 2:33AM

FoundersCardThe top executives in today's largest corporations not only travel in style, but they have access to an absurd array of perks while they travel, from awards and complimentary products to discounts on just about everything. On the IPO "road show" for his company VarsityBooks (now part of eFollet.com), serial entrepreneur Eric Kuhn remembers being "amazed" by witnessing firsthand "the rates and privileges that top executives at the underwriting investment banks received." After leading VarsityBooks to be twice-listed as a public company on NASDAQ (the only company I'm aware of to do so), Kuhn got out in 2006 and started FoundersCard in 2009 -- determined to bring the same rewards and opportunities to entrepreneurs and founders -- "the true risk-takers and value-creators," he says.


Twitter, Democracy, and Internet Freedom

Jan 29, 11:00PM

1620349_pic_1299261234Twitter has taken fire in recent days from activists and bloggers who fear that the company's new censorship policies will muffle online freedom. News reports recall the ways in which protestors have had made use of Twitter to oppose dictatorships, and dissidents express concern that their ability to communicate will be harmed. The more immediate issue, however, may lie elsewhere. Twitter's new policies demonstrate vividly the complicated relationship between Internet freedom and democratic government.


The Emergence Of The Content Creation Class

Jan 29, 10:16PM

online-content-creationThe content creation class shall inherit the Internet. Richard Florida coined the expression the Creative Class, his belief being that these 30 to 40 million would be the driving force for economic development in a postindustrial world. Instead of driving the macro economy the Content Creation Class refers to the group of people who drive content on the internet those that write blogs, those that upload video to YouTube, and those that upload pictures to share with the world.


7 Reasons Why Pinterest Isn't Yet Ready for Tech Brands

Jan 29, 9:50PM

Pinterest_logoManaging a tech brand means you always need to be on the lookout for innovative and creative ways to engage your community. Lately, the rise of Pinterest, a social content curation platform, has been making headlines. As early adopters and community managers, we naturally jumped on board right from the start. So far, our overall experience with Pinterest has been a positive one, and we realize its potential. But we've also found that it's not yet ready for most tech brands – especially those that have no visual products. In other words, Pinterest seems to expect brands to adapt their content to fit Pinterest's platform, rather than Pinterest optimizing their platform for brands.


How Google+ Can Win: Make Publishing Universal

Jan 29, 9:02PM

Google-Plus-LogoLarry Page recently announced that he is quite thrilled with Google+'s explosive growth -- with 90 million registered accounts and 80% of the people engaging on a weekly basis across all Google properties. The problem, of course, is that very few of these 90M users are actively publishing on Google+. The Google+ strategy of fine-grained sharing of personal content using Circles has not been very effective. It takes a lot of effort to create and maintain circles, and Facebook has proven that most users seem to be comfortable sharing personal content such as family albums and baby pictures with their complete social graph.


(Founder Stories) Jeff Clavier: On Getting Your Product In Front Of A VC (And Keeping It There)

Jan 29, 8:41PM

JC FS Video 4 Advice.mov-1Because every VC's inbox is overflowing with pitches, and because VC's don't take meetings with just anyone, SoftTech VC's Jeff Clavier, (who just raised $55 million for his third fund) offers advice to founders who hope to cut through the clutter, schedule a meeting, and score some financing from prominent investors.


Games Decreasing In Popularity On Android, Entertainment Apps On The Rise

Jan 29, 8:20PM

games-ios-android2The mobile app ecosystem is growing so quickly - exponentially, even - that sometimes it's hard to see the larger trends occurring in the space. To really gain insight, it helps to look back over a longer period of time, like a year for example, in order to take stock of the changes taking place. To that end, I reached out to mobile app search company Chomp, who kindly obligated my curiousity by packaging together its first ever annual app search analytics report. The report digs into the data from Chomp's 1 million app searches per month, to reveal trends in app prices, category share, top apps and more.


10 Ways to Leverage Facebook for Startups: Part II, On-Site

Jan 29, 6:31PM

ryan_dogpatch_reasonably_small-121Yesterday I discussed how to improve user acquisition, activation and activity by building Facebook directly into your web experience. There is of course another half to the equation: leveraging Facebook.com to expand your reach and engage your users. On-Facebook success is less product-heavy than success off-Facebook, although they both ultimately aim for the same outcome: engagement. While it is as much an art as a science, if you optimize for engagement and continually test your way across Facebook's myriad of products – you may well find yourself sitting alongside The Rock (Facebook's best personality?) and Spotify (terrific example of being a platform first-mover).


The Ecommerce Revolution Is All About You

Jan 29, 4:55PM

AmazonPersonal recommendations have always been a part of ecommerce, but there has been little innovation since Amazon introduced retail and product personalization 10 years ago. But with the increasing mountains of data at digital retailers' fingertips, ecommerce is about to get even more personal. The fact is that right now there is little iteration from personalized ecommerce beyond what is taking place on Amazon. So you'll see suggestions of what other shoppers who bought a certain item also purchased, or recommendations to similar items to what you have purchased, but there is a whole world of social data, and even more-in-depth purchase data that can be mined by retailers to help increase sales.


Google, Facebook, Privacy — And You

Jan 29, 1:22AM

google privacy policyLike millions of other people, I got an email from Google this morning. It was entitled "Changes to Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service". The first sentence describes the intent of the changes as shortening 60 policies into one, and improving their readability.


Curebit Apologizes for Copying 37Signals: "Stupid, Lazy, and Disrespectful"

Jan 29, 12:38AM

curebit logoThat's awkward: Just as it was announcing a $1.2 million round of funding, online referral startup Curebit was caught lifting designs and code from 37Signals, the company behind popular collaboration tools Basecamp, Highrise, and others. The copying was called out on Twitter by 37Signals partner David Heinemeier Hansson, who, after an exchange with Curebit co-founder Allan Grant, called the Curebit team "fucking scumbags." It probably didn't help that Grant's initial responses didn't seem particularly contrite — he defended the copying as a "quick test" and at one point told Heinemeier Hansson, "Chill dude :)" (VentureBeat has a great blow-by-blow account of the initial controversy.)


Apple Buy Hollywood? That's A Terrible Idea

Jan 28, 11:51PM

hollywood fireApple should not use its $100 billion in cash to buy, or buy into Hollywood. While it would most assuredly (ahem, cough) disrupt the system, it would not spur the kind of creative chaos and innovation that would lead to the Emerald City of any show, on demand, for free, to rent, or buy, or subscribe, and organized by taste or popularity, or you! In fact, Apple buying into Hollywood, would actually kill Hollywood. Here's why:


FounderSoup: Stanford and Andreessen's New Startup Generator

Jan 28, 10:25PM

founder soup logo 4A single entrepreneur alone is vulnerable to shortsightedness, to fatigue. But with a team comes diverse perspective, encouragement, and the wherewithal to push through problems. That's why a group of Stanford computer science and business students started the Andreessen Horowitz-backed FounderSoup program. It's designed to give entrepreneurs with an idea or a fledgling company a chance to pitch -- not to raise funding, but to recruit co-founders. At its first full-scale event on Thursday night I saw an effective model for fostering startups, and several brilliant ideas in healthtech and energy (reviewed here) that could turn into successful companies.


Kindle Sales Growing Faster Than The Nook's

Jan 28, 10:23PM

kindle fireBarnes & Noble may be challenging Amazon's dominance of the e-book world, but the Kindle sales are still growing faster than the Nook's — at least if you connect the dots between some of the numbers included in a recently-published article by The New York Times.



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