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.
20 Startups Demo And Launch At London Web Summit
Mar 19, 11:31AM
Today at the London Web Summit a number of startups are launching on stage so here's a quick run-down of their businesses and our quick take on them. Out of these 20, three will demo on stage for a prize worth close to £100,000 in a convertible note from DJJ Esprit, £15k in legal services from Orrick, £15k in advisory services from KPMG and £4k in hardware from HP. However, we'll be delving a little deeper into these guys in due course. They are being judged on the usual startup criteria: Problem, Solution, Technology, Team, Market, Traction, and Future prospects.KISSmetrics Looks To Turn Your Customer Data Into An Interactive Infographic
Mar 19, 10:23AM
KISSmetrics, an analytics startup that wants to help you boost your user acquisition and retention rates by providing a more robust picture of how your customers are using your site, is today announcing "KISSmetrics Experiments." A la Gmail Labs, Experiments enables KISSmetrics users to access and test out experimental new features and help decide whether they become lasting parts of the product. The first experiment KISSmetrics unveiled today is a visualization feature that customers can use to view data on how their users interact with their site, web apps, and mobile products. The new experiment expands on its so-called "People Views," which Jason first covered last year, that essentially allow site administrators to drill down into the way that individual users are browsing and using their sites.PeerIndex Picks Up $3 Million To Win Friends And Influence People (And Beat Klout)
Mar 19, 9:24AM
Whether you subscribe to the idea of social influence or not, services that mark -- or try to mark -- it are continuing to pick up momentum, and the latest example of that is PeerIndex, the UK-based social influence marketing platform, picking up a $3 million round of funding from a group of angel and private equity investors. The Series A round was led by Antrak Capital with participation from the ex-head of Reuters, Tom Glocer, as well as Restoration Partners chairman Ken Olisa and angel investor Sherry Coutu.Live Stream From The London Web Summit 2012
Mar 19, 8:50AM
This is the live video stream from London Web Summit. You'll find the schedule here. CLICK HERE FOR THE LIVE STREAM London Web Summit (follow #LWS hashtag on Twitter) is being held at The Brewery Venue, in London's East End, already the single biggest cluster of tech startups in London. The Summit has 50 speakers, 1,000 attendees and 20 startups demoing. The conference features Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom, Google's Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora as one of a number of keynotes, including Shervin Pishevar (investor in Uber), Lars Hinrichs (HackFWD), Jason Goldberg (Fab.com), Morten Lund (Tradeshift/Everbread), Ben Parr (formerly Mashable), Reshma Sohoni (Seedcamp) and Axel Dauchez (Deezer) among others.How Apple Could Fight The Bots, Scams And Other App Store Junk
Mar 19, 5:06AM
No platform is perfect. Not even Apple's. Over the last few weeks, there has been a flood of news about malfeasance in the app store from download bots to credit card scams to address-book sharing. I broke a few stories about app-related credit card fraud originating from Taobao, the eBay of China, and automated bots that download apps thousands of times to drive them up the charts. Then The New York Times and BusinessWeek came in with their own takes this week. This puts the heat on Apple to further regulate the store, which is long overdue. Though to be fair, I still think that the iOS platform is more egalitarian than Facebook, which lends itself to a winner-take-all dynamic. iOS is also more lucrative per user than Android or Facebook, according to data from analytics provider Flurry and conversations I've had with top-tier developers like EA Popcap. Anyway, here are a few solutions:How Startups Are Key To The Economic Recovery
Mar 19, 12:46AM
Despite the promise brought by the latest round of successful IPOs and rallying public markets, the news continues to be filled with headlines around the possibility of a "false recovery." Europe's continent-wide recession and expanding debt issues, rising oil and gasoline prices, an only-modest improvement in the unemployment rate, and the "moderate" growth predicted by the Fed continue to leave people feeling uneasy about the state of the economy. With the underlying and systemic issues still present in the financial sector, some even believe that we could see something akin to the recession of 2008 happen all over again. But there is one segment that remains very bullish about the future of the economy and where signs of improved growth and economic stability can be found. This "hope" for our economy is in the entrepreneurs who start small businesses -- the innovators and dreamers who believe that against all odds they can build something better -- create something from nothing, and drive change in the world.Apple Will Tell Us Monday How It Plans To Use Its $100B In Cash
Mar 18, 10:43PM
Everyone has been wondering what Apple will do with its outsized cash reserves -- currently at just under $100 billion. Tomorrow the company will hold a conference call to tell the world what that will be. "Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, and Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO, will host a conference call to announce the outcome of the Company's discussions concerning its cash balance. Apple will not be providing an update on the current quarter nor will any topics be discussed other than cash," read a release from the company.The "Twitter Mafia" Poised to be Silicon Valley's Next Great Network
Mar 18, 9:51PM
In middle school, my teacher assigned a book by Mario Puzo called "The Godfather." Yes, it was pretty epic. From that work of art, mass audiences were introduced to Don Corleone and eventually its derivatives Goodfellas, Bugsy, Capone, Casino, Heat, The Departed, and scores of other pieces that romanticized the notion of organized crime across the globe, a world of big bosses, willing soldiers, and internal codes of helping out each other, from family to family.Hitting It Big In The Enterprise
Mar 18, 8:57PM
Silicon Valley is its own best friend when it comes to booking sales. The first dollar in the door for most startups comes from another startup. That's because startups are always seeking a competitive edge, they can make purchasing decisions fast and are willing to accept the risk of buying from another small company. It works great for most companies in most tech verticals most of the time. But it also induces market myopia. Selling solutions only to startups slows your growth by limiting your addressable market. That may not seem like a problem if you've got customers like Zynga, but even the most amazing and fast-growing startups have but a fraction of the budget of big established corporations outside of Silicon Valley.With TV Everywhere, It's All About Discovery
Mar 18, 7:55PM
200 million connected TV devices will cumulatively ship in the next 18 months, and combined with Xbox (23 million+ Live customers), PS3, Wii, and devices like Apple TV and Roku, about 300 million Connected TVs will be in living rooms in the next 18 months. That's as many TVs connected to the Internet as Android devices in the market today. In other words, the Connected TV ecosystem today is in a similar place to the Android ecosystem in mid-2010. Players like Netflix have already built billion-dollar businesses on Connected TV - Nielsen found that over 85% of Netflix streaming customers use Netflix on their living room TV.The Next, Next Thing
Mar 18, 7:00PM
Computers have been getting steadily "better" -- faster, smaller, cheaper -- for sixty years. But they get "smarter" -- more capable and more broadly useful -- in discrete leaps, the biggest of which don't happen very often. We're overdue for our next big leap. Working with computers is intoxicating. The price/performance curve is always moving to the right. Every year one can do more: Design new user experiences, write new kinds of programs, and develop new hardware. In this context of constant change, it's easy to focus on the trees rather than the forest. Good engineering is often about incremental improvement. Good business is often about finding product/market fit, while good design is often about giving users an interface that is easy to understand.User Experience Vision For Startups
Mar 18, 6:00PM
Welcome to 1889. The field of photography was just changed forever. Up until recently, the process of taking and developing photos was expensive and cumbersome. As a result photography was available only to professional photographers or rich people. Then, a guy named George Eastman comes up with a new way to take photos. He develops a special flexible, unbreakable, rolled film that allows people to take photos and then send the film to a factory where the photos can be developed and sent back to the customer's house. Suddenly, photography becomes available to everyone. Kodak is born.Why Highlight Wasn't A Breakout Success At SXSW
Mar 18, 4:56PM
Highlight is one of the most talked about apps out there. It was touted to be the breakout app at this year's SXSW. But it wasn't. In fact, almost everyone I've talked to who used it ended up turning it off or uninstalling it. (The same probably goes for Glancee, Sonar, etc.. but I only really tried and talked about Highlight.) I've had many discussions about the app and most have been really polarizing. Either people love the idea, or absolutely hate the idea. I find myself trying to have a more balanced opinion. Although I uninstalled it the first day, I think the overall concept of Highlight is interesting and with enough adoption, could be compelling for the right user. But SXSW was the wrong place for it to break. Here's why.Hatch Labs CEO Dinesh Moorjani On What Makes A Successful Incubator
Mar 18, 4:01PM
15-month-old Hatch Labs is but a baby compared to incubators like Y Combinator, but CEO Dinesh Moorjani has a very different idea on what an incubator should look like. The "sandbox", as Moorjani would call it, is a joint venture between IAC and Xtreme Labs, and aims to grow mobile startups that are scalable and move beyond being minimally viable, and actually offer the user a sense of delight. How very Microsoft of them. Moorjani says what makes Hatch really different from other incubators is that it finds the middle ground between seed funding/accelerators and VC.A Brave New World: Too Much (Online) TV
Mar 18, 3:00PM
"When the TV is on All day without rest, Mama knows it's too much ~ And Mama knows best." -- The Berenstain Bears and Too Much TV, by Stan and Jan Berenstain One of my favorite books growing up, and one I like to read regularly to my children, is Stan and Jan Berenstain's "The Berenstain Bears and Too Much TV". The book starts out with Mama Bear preparing a snack for the Cubs, Brother and Sister Bear rushing in from school, grabbing the snack, and immediately sitting in front of the TV without hesitation. It continues when Papa Bear comes home from work and does the same. "There's no question about it, those cubs are watching too much TV!" she says in the book repeatedly as she observes their condition.Thumb Offers A Reality Test For SXSW Winners
Mar 18, 3:16AM
Every year, before, during, and after South by Southwest, everyone's eager declare someone the winner of the conference. Then comes the inevitable backlash, with questions about whether Popular App X will ever catch on with "regular people" — or if it's just useful to techies who are constantly checking their iPhones in search of the next party. For the second year in a row, mobile Q&A app Thumb (formerly known as Opinionaided) is offering its own take. It made a list of the apps that seemed to be getting buzz at the conference, then polled its users on whether they actually used the apps. The results (there were 4,700 responses total, with at least 220 for each question) are being pitched as an answer to the question, "Which SXSW Apps Do Real Americans Actually Use?"Robert Scoble Talks Startups And The Changing Face Of SXSW [TCTV]
Mar 18, 1:30AM
Earlier this week, TechCrunch TV hosted a live show from the floor of the convention center at the South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas and we were really pleased to have technology evangelist and early-stage startup hunter Robert Scoble as a guest. Watch the video above to hear Scoble's thoughts on how SxSWi has grown over the past decade from a few "geeks off in the corner" to a massive gathering, what apps he's most excited about right now (Highlight gets a mention), his time on the StartupBus, why he's still bullish on Google+, the kind of startup pitch he's sick of hearing, and lots more.The Real SXSW "Winner" Is The Mophie Juice Pack
Mar 18, 12:54AM
So Highlight didn't "win" SXSW, as some tech bloggers had hypothesized, for many reasons. It did however have a close relationship to what eventually ended up winning, as its background GPS turns out to significantly strain iPhone battery life. Even before SXSW, users were reporting notable reduction in battery charge when using Highlight, on average going from two days to one day of use per full charge while the app is running. In the mobile app battleground that is SXSW Interactive, the battery drain was even more pronounced. People crowded round the charging stations some startups had set up. "ABC: Always be charging," was a running joke amongst techies. At some point I even saw a woman at a restaurant using a charger as a scrunchie.DIY SEO Startup BrandYourself Has Nearly 6,000 Sign-Ups
Mar 18, 12:30AM
BrandYourself made the famous startup pivot earlier this month, and now it's sharing some data about the initial results. The company started out as a way for people to control the impression they made online, both through search results and on social networks. It even recommended articles that you could read and share in your chosen subject area. Co-founder and CEO Patrick Ambron says his team eventually realized that the approach was "too much," and that "the one BIG thing people loved about us was helping them improve their search results."Fear And Loathing In Online Video
Mar 17, 11:00PM
The story of Hollywood's relationship with technology reads like an on-again-off-again soap opera romance: initial feelings of fear, panic and jealousy followed by amity and intense attraction, followed, in turn, by more fear, jealousy and heated exchanges. Back in the early 1980s, MPAA President Jack Valenti went before Congress and asked them to outlaw the VCR. His graphic language infamously went so far as to compare new TV tech to the Boston Strangler.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
