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For Startups In Search Of A Celebrity Partner, Go Beyond The Name
Jan 06, 7:00AM
Editor's note: Sameer Mehta is the CEO and co-founder of 12Society, along with celebrities Nas, Michael Strahan, Nick Cannon, Tim Lincecum, Blake Griffin, and Kevin Love. I recently had a chance to sit backstage at a sold-out Nas concert and listen to him talk about his upcoming tour dates and all the stories that come with it. It was a pretty cool moment for a young entrepreneur who grew up a Nas fan. However, it wasn't all play. Between sets and amid screams of the crowd, we reviewed the mockups for our new site design and specs on featured products.Desperately Seeking Startup Skills: Where Highly Sought-After Folks Hang Out
Jan 06, 5:00AM
Editor's note: Jon Bischke is a founder of Entelo and is an advisor to several startups. For many startups, the New Year means a new hiring plan. There is high demand for a select group of individuals with skills that startups are looking for. Here are five of the positions we see the most demand for, along with some suggestions for where potential candidates congregate.In Defense Of The Humble App Walkthrough
Jan 06, 2:00AM
Editor's note: Aaron Travis is vice president of user experience at Citigroup and CEO of PolySuite.com. When starting a new web or mobile app, you may find yourself confronted with an instructional walkthrough illustration or help text indicating how to use it. If you are a technophile who looks at new apps every day, you might quickly dismiss these aids and wonder why designers keep adding these things that just get in the way of using the app.Google Pledges To Restore In-Browser Maps Access To Deprived Windows Phone Users
Jan 06, 1:55AM
Rejoice, Windows Phone users: your daylong Google Maps crisis will soon be over. After causing quite a kerfuffle the other day by effectively blocking Windows Phone users from accessing Google Maps in-browser, Google has released a statement (obtained by The Next Web) clarifying its rationale and promising that it would soon fix the issue.What Games Are: Here Come "Local" Mobile Games
Jan 05, 10:00PM
While the single- and parallel-game types have streaked ahead on mobile platforms, multiplayer games has been more tentative. Particular "local" multiplayer games, of the kind that you play with friends in a location like a pub. However with the arrival of a little game called Spaceteam, I think that may be about to change.The Fifth Horseman: Samsung
Jan 05, 8:26PM
We all know the "four horsemen" of tech: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. These are the companies that pretty much everyone agrees will shape the foreseeable future of the tech sector. In some circles, that list makes waves for who is not included: Microsoft. But any rational thinker (meaning those outside of Redmond or anyone who hasn't made a career as a .Net developer) knows that Microsoft simply no longer belongs on that list. But that doesn't mean the list is perfect. In fact, I do think there's an omission that's becoming a glaring one: Samsung.Gillmor Gang: Two Clouds And A Screen
Jan 05, 6:00PM
The Gillmor Gang — John Taschek, Robert Scoble, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — made it past the Fiscal Cliff in good order and got back to the day job: buying stuff. With CES on the horizon, the talk quickly got down to screens big and small. Passive TV vs. transactional mobile devices, the differences between the platforms are being absorbed by the big players as they rush to consolidate each other's positions.Why We Need To Kill "Big Data"
Jan 05, 5:00PM
It's the New Year and along with resolutions about eating healthier, being kinder and exercising more frequently, I'd like to add one more to the list. Let's banish the term "big data" with pivot, cloud and all the other meaningless buzzwords we have grown to hate.Investing In 2013: It's About Time, Not Location
Jan 05, 4:00PM
Editor's note: Bill Lee is the CEO and co-founder of Twist, an investor in companies such as SpaceX, Tesla Motors, and Yammer, and board member of Big Fish Games. I constantly field questions about the existence of an angel/Series A crunch. Rather than join this debate, I tell investors and founders that it's more important to focus on the next big thing and think beyond current trends, even in a tough financing/startup environment.Enter The Dronenet
Jan 05, 2:00PM
Here's my favorite Big Idea of the year so far, via John Robb, who's always worth your attention: The Dronenet, a "short distance drone delivery service built on an open protocol." He fleshes it out in a series of posts, but basically, it would be a network of drones that would carry things the same way the Internet carries data: in packets, over a series of multiple hops, routing on the fly. Sound like a pipe dream? Not at all: Matternet is a startup working on implementing just that for delivery of high-value goods (pharmaceuticals, electronics) to developing countries and/or rugged locations where the roads are so few and/or terrible that UAVs become the superior option. Their idea is for drone transportation to--literally--leapfrog trucks in those areas in the same way the cell phones leapfrogged land lines. Robb's, typically, is bigger.AWS Needs To Figure Out Its Enterprise Plan
Jan 05, 5:30AM
Editor's note: Rodney Rogers is chairman and CEO of Virtustream. I'm a large enterprise and my ears are ringing. I hear that you, AWS, know exactly what I need. Before I get into that, AWS, I want to let you know that I admire you. You made a market. But this doesn't mean you know me, AWS, and I believe your foray into enterprise will expose you.Publishing Startup Graphicly Raising $1M More As It Aims For Profitability
Jan 05, 2:56AM
Graphicly is about to close a $1 million bridge round of funding, as first revealed in a regulatory filing. The company started out as a marketplace for digital comics, but last year it launched a new set of tools aimed helping publishers distribute their content onto a wide range of platforms, including iOS, Android, and Kindle. CEO Micah Baldwin told me today that things have been taking off, with millions of dollars in annual revenue and 1500 percent growth year-over-year. (And even though it's no longer focused exclusively on comics, it recently announced a big comics deal to distribute more than 60 Peanuts titles.)Zynga's One Standout From Its String Of Sequels Has Been Farmville 2
Jan 05, 2:32AM
Sequels can be risky business for embattled social game developer Zynga. They can extend the lifespan of a popular franchise like Farmville. But they also siphon away players from the original game. So if a sequel doesn’t retain players well, it can cannibalize the player base for both the original and the follow-up like with Mafia Wars and Mafia Wars 2, which the company shut down just days ago. But Farmville 2, with its 3D graphics, has managed to stay atop the charts since it was released late last fall. The game is really the one standout sequel in Zynga’s recent line of follow-ups including Cityville 2, which has dramatically lost traffic over the past several weeks. Zynga just released some engagement stats today about the performance of Farmville 2. To underscore how big a risk Farmville 2 is for the company, the original game has been one of the top money makers for the company since it was launched in 2009. Even three years later, it made 20 percent of Zynga’s $285.6 million in online gaming revenue in the third quarter of last year. That’s $57 million in one quarter alone or more than a half-million dollars a day. The company was super careful with its prize possession, even testing it under the name of Big Harvest in the Philippines before launch. All eyes will be on Zynga’s next earnings call, when the company will reveal how well this sequel has performed financially. Farmville 2 currently has 42.4 million monthly active users, 7.4 million daily active users and a healthy stickiness ratio of daily-to-monthly active users at 17.5 percent, according to tracking site AppData. It appears to have peaked though, and has lost about 700,000 daily active users in the last seven days, according to the service. That’s not necessarily something to be alarmed about though, because most social games peak early on and then decline while retaining the most lucrative players or “whales.” Even if active usage declines overall, revenues can still increase from a good title for months or years to come. The original Farmville was around for about eight months before it peaked in monthly active usage, but that was before Zynga had amassed its network of players on the Facebook platform.Mobile Gaming Platform Heyzap Confirms $4.3M Round From Union Square And Qualcomm
Jan 05, 2:27AM
Heyzap, which built a social platform for mobile games, has raised $4.3 million in Series B funding. The round was revealed in a regulatory filing (first spotted by The Next Web). Co-founder Jude Gomila confirmed the news over email and said the funding comes from existing investor Union Square Ventures and Qualcomm.Facebook Mobile User Counts Revealed: 192M Android, 147M iPhone, 48M iPad, 56M Messenger
Jan 04, 10:50PM
Facebook keeps user counts for its mobile apps hidden, but researcher Benedict Evans found a way to uncover them and they provide critical insight into the direction and performance of Facebook's mobile efforts. Most interestingly, Facebook's Android user count is growing much faster than its iPhone user base, but is found on a lower percentage of Android devices. Let's take a closer look.The Weekly Good: A Star Is (Re)Born, The Lester Chambers Story
Jan 04, 9:47PM
Your song hits the Billboard Hot 100 Charts at number 11, you and your brothers have played with the likes of The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, things are great, you're on fire. You've got it made, right? Wrong. Lester Chambers is living proof that just because you become "popular", it doesn't mean that you will be rewarded properly for it.Vobi Raises $1.5 Million For Online Collaboration That's Kicked Off By Phone Calls
Jan 04, 9:39PM
Austin-based Vobi.com, a cloud-based collaboration startup which will sell its services through mobile operators, has raised $1.5 million in Series A funding from Dallas VC firm Trailblazer Capital. The firm specializes in communications companies that have unique IP, explains Vobi CEO Mark Castleman, making it a good fit as Vobi's lead investor.Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, CTO Rich Tom To Depart The Company In Q1 2013
Jan 04, 9:14PM
Hulu just posted an internal email from CEO Jason Kilar to its blog, indicating that he and CTO Rich Tom will be leaving the company during the first quarter of 2013. The timing is new, but word that Kilar was on his way out was circulating as early as August 2012, when an internal memo included a passage about transitioning to a new CEO.Gillmor Gang Live 01.04.13 (TCTV)
Jan 04, 9:05PM
Gillmor Gang - Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Recording has concluded.Amazon Improves Its Web Services Console, Launches Tablet Support And Android App
Jan 04, 8:20PM
As Amazon's Web Services (AWS) continues to add more tools (there are currently 21 AWS services), the Management Console that provides a graphical user interface to services like S3, EC2 and CloudFront was starting to look a bit unwieldy. Today, Amazon is making a number of design changes to make the Management Console a bit easier to use for developers. In addition, Amazon is also launching a tablet-optimized view of the AWS Console and an Android app for managing EC2 cloud computing instances.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.
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