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.
ILCE-7_wSEL2870_right
Oct 16, 8:11AM
Sony has announced a couple of new cameras early this AM, including the A7 and A7R, both mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras with a twist that's unprecedented for that type of device – a full-frame sensor is housed within each. That makes these the smallest, lightest full-frame cameras with swappable lenses to boast full-frame power, and with a 36.4 megapixel sensor on the A7R, and a 24.3 megapixel one in the A7. Of course, it's the sheer size of those sensors that makes all the difference here.
tctv
Oct 16, 3:22AM
A while back, we were at a dinner, and when one of us mentioned that we were an editor at TechCrunch, the guy across the table from us chimed in, without introducing himself, with a well-worn complaint: "Why does your site load so slow? It's unreadable on the tablet." It's not like we're oblivious to this. We're not just TechCrunch writers and editors, we're also, first and foremost, TechCrunch readers. It's a pain point for us that our current site has the distinct honor of being among the slowest at AOL. AOL is, well, pretty slow.
Time_for_a_Square_briefing__-_leenakrao_gmail.com_-_Gmail
Oct 16, 3:20AM
Square today is formally launching Square Cash, a product that allows anyone to send money to a contact via email. Square initially soft-launched the product to a limited number of users earlier this year but is opening the service more broadly to users with a few tweaks to the initial payments system. As Square's director of products Brian Grassadonia explains, this launch aligns with the company's goal of reducing friction around payments and making commerce simpler. Whereas Square's core products, including its iPad register and swiper, make payments easy for merchants, this makes sending cash to anyone as simple as sending an email.
gre9del
Oct 15, 10:44PM
Apple sent a message on its (public) developer news boards today encouraging developers to submit apps that are fully compatible with its upcoming operating system OS X Mavericks. If the fact that Mavericks went GM (Gold Master) recently isn't enough for you, we're hearing that it is indeed "ready" for release, hence the encouragement on Apple's part.
Twitter Growth
Oct 15, 10:33PM
Twitter's percent user growth is slowing. In a new S-1 amendment to its IPO filing, Twitter notes it hit 231.7 million monthly users by at the end of Q3 2013, up 6.13% from 218.3 million at the end of Q2. If you look back, you'll see Twitter had 6.86% growth in Q2, 10.27% in Q1, and 10.77% in Q4 2012. The slowing growth could indicate trouble signing up new users or retaining older ones.
Alex Williams
Oct 15, 10:32PM
There are two camps in the cloud world. There are the cloud washers, which are the ones who put a cloud sticker on everything. They say, "Oh, yes, it's a private cloud for big data." Then they throw in a few dozen other buzz words for the new look on their legacy technology. The other camp, the cloud services providers, enable customers to innovate in less time than it would take if they had to rely on static, traditional systems. 
colleentechcrunch
Oct 15, 10:29PM
Typically, TechCrunch Cribs goes inside tech companies to show a side of them that cameras don't often see. But this episode took us to the San Francisco office of CreativeLIVE, the online education startup that broadcasts its classrooms live to a worldwide audience -- here, cameras are literally part of the furniture. So in this case, Cribs just turned the cameras on the people who typically turn the camera on others. So meta! It was very fun to see behind the scenes of a truly modern kind of video studio.
alexjameswilhelm
Oct 15, 10:26PM
According to its newly refiled S-1 document, Twitter has lost $133.8 million to date in 2013. That compares negatively with its equivalent loss of $70.7 million in 2012. Both loss figures include the results of the first 9 months of the calendar year.
alexjameswilhelm
Oct 15, 9:42PM
In the third quarter, Yahoo purchased eight companies, including Lexity, Rockmelt, and Xobni. According to its earnings release, the net cash impact on those purchases totalled $163 million. Does that mean that the total value of the eight purchases came to $163 million? Not at all. That figure is merely the net cash outflow for Yahoo, or, the total cash that it paid to the companies’ shareholders, less cash that the companies had on hand. This doesn’t give us the full picture of the total cost of Yahoo purchases, given that the company could also employ stock as well as cash to make acquisitions. In fact, that seems to be the majority option. Here’s Yahoo in its second quarter earnings: During the second quarter of 2013, Yahoo! repurchased 25 million shares for $653 million and used a net $1 billion in cash for acquisitions (including a net $970 million to acquire Tumblr). That appears to imply that Yahoo used a net $30 million that quarter to acquire the eight companies that it picked up in the second quarter that were not Tumblr (for a total of nine second quarter acquisitions). Unless Yahoo bought exceptionally cash-rich companies – not likely, frankly – then it appears to have used far more of its own stock as bargaining chip than cash to purchase the smaller firms. The Tumblr deal was nearly all cash, though the company had over $15 million in cash on hand at the time of the deal. Speaking very purely, Yahoo has under $1 billion in cash and equivalents. But, its total cash position, as it is usually calculated including “[c]ash, cash equivalents, and investments in marketable securities” total $3.2 billion. That, tied to its forthcoming massive Alibaba check, and Yahoo is more than sufficiently capitalized to keep on buying if it wants to. Though, it isn’t clear if Yahoo will pursue more cash-focused, or stock-based purchases moving forward. It has shown an appetite for both. Top Image Credit: Kevin Krejci
gre9del
Oct 15, 9:30PM
Twitter has amended its S-1 filing to note that it will be listing on the New York Stock Exchange under the TWTR symbol, a detail that was omitted from the original filing. The new document was uploaded to its EDGAR archive today. There is still no valuation or IPO estimation listed in the document. Twitter notes that it now has 230 million MAUs, marking a growth of 15 million MAUs over the last three months since June 2013, which isn’t exactly a huge number. Twitter says that its revenue is up to $168.6 million in Q3, 2013 compared to $82.3 million in the year-ago quarter. According to a CNBC report, Twitter currently plans to do an IPO roadshow from October 28 to November 6, will price its IPO on November 14 and start trading on November 15. But the final date for pricing is said to be “fluid.” There had been some speculation that Twitter would list on the more tech-heavy Nasdaq previous to the announcement. Nasdaq shares fell 1.6 percent on the news that the listing will go to the NYSE. Twitter competitor Facebook chose to list on Nasdaq, which may have been a component of Twitter’s decision to list on the NYSE. There are several new items in Twitter’s updated S-1 filing as well, including the fact that, as of September 30, it now has 2,300 employees. Twitter has also updated the S-1 to note that there were 48 billion tweet impressions online in Q3, up from 30 billion in Q2 2013. There is also growth in MAUs accessing Twitter from a mobile device, up to 76 percent of users in Q3 versus 75 percent in Q2, and over 70 percent of its ads revenue was from mobile devices, up from 65 percent. The five-point jump in the mobile revenues on mobile devices is worth noting, as it shows just how much Twitter is working on its revenue plans for mobile. Revenue is up 106 percent over the past nine months to $422 million, which marks a slowing from the 107 percent growth over the six-month period ending June 30. The bigger gasp is that the net loss figure increased by 89 percent to 133.9 million over the past nine months as compared to the figure for the last six months ending in June 2013, which put net loss increases at 41 percent to $69.3 million. Twitter notes in the filing
colleentechcrunch
Oct 15, 9:21PM
Mobile-only social networking app Path laid off 13 staffers today, axing 20 percent of its workforce. Rumors of the layoffs have been percolating around the tech industry this afternoon and were first confirmed by Valleywag. Path founder and CEO Dave Morin, who celebrated his 33rd birthday yesterday, has not responded to requests for comment. In a phone call today, a Path spokesperson told TechCrunch that the layoffs represent a "realigning of the company" as it places a "huge focus on Path 4," the next version of its app. We're hearing that the layoffs affected primarily data and marketing operations, but Path would not confirm what departments were affected, saying only that "it was across the organization." 
sarahintampa
Oct 15, 9:18PM
Walmart today announced its plans to expand its same-day grocery delivery service, a part of its “Walmart To Go” offering, to a new market: Denver, Colorado. This move follows the company’s ongoing grocery delivery tests which have been taking place over the last couple of years in San Jose and San Francisco. The Denver area test is currently a closed beta, meaning customers will be allowed to trial the new service on a first-come, first served basis only. For now, they can request access by signing up at Walmart.com/togo. The retailer says it began online grocery delivery in San Jose and San Francisco back in April 2011, where the service is also available to most cities along the peninsula. Customers can choose from tens of thousands of eligible items online, including fresh produce, meat and seafood, dairy, bakery items, and even non-grocery items like health and beauty products, electronics and toys. Shoppers designate a two-hour slot for their delivery, then orders are fulfilled by local Walmart Supercenters and delivered in Walmart To Go trucks. These branded trucks have previously been used in the San Jose and San Francisco areas, and are now coming to the Denver area, too. Denver was already participating in Walmart’s broader efforts in same-day delivery, which began in select markets last fall. Denver in particular gained same-day delivery in November 2012. For background, last October, Walmart announced its intentions to experiment in this area of same-day delivery, which began with tests in Northern Virginia (outside D.C.), Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and San Jose/San Francisco, initially. Customers in those regions could shop online – though not necessarily for groceries – then have their orders sourced and fulfilled by their local Walmart stores. The company is still experimenting with price points for this service, it seems, as they note that the Denver area delivery fees will be “in the $5 to $10 range.” However, it will run some introductory offers for new participants in order to encourage sign-ups, including some free delivery options, we’re told. Same-day delivery is available for orders placed by 8 AM M.T. in the Denver market, and returns can be handled at the time of delivery, in-store, or by phoning to have a driver return to pick up the item. Though Walmart remains the largest brick-and-mortar retailer worldwide, it has lost ground online to Amazon.com over the years, which threatens its business as more consumers shift their shopping
ferenstein
Oct 15, 9:05PM
In an effort to protect government whistleblowers from unprecedented levels of surveillance, the Freedom of the Press Foundation has launched SecureDrop, an anonymous submission tool for secure communications between sources and journalists. SecureDrop accepts encrypted documents and tips from sources and facilitates communication without putting journalists in jeopardy of having to reveal sources under the threat of imprisonment. The need for security is heightened given the Obama Administration’s aggressive prosecution of leakers under the Espionage act. Last Spring, for instance, the Justice Department seized the phone records of AP journalists involved in reporting a foiled bomb plot in Yemen. "One of the reasons that the Obama administration has prosecuted so many whistleblowers is that there's an easy way to find digital trails of how journalists meet sources and talk to them," said Freedom of the Press Foundation Executive Director, Trevor Timm. "We need to figure out a way for journalists to talk to sources without that fear." SecureDrop was originally the project of fallen hacktivist, Aaron Swartz (then called DeadDrop). The project has since been updated to account for recent National Security Agency spying revelations, though the organization reminds reporters than nothing is 100% secure. The code base is open source and has been vetted by security experts from the University of Washington [PDF]. Freedom of the Press Foundation has even offered to help outlets install the rather complex encryption tool. Learn more about it here. [Image Credit: Flickr User Electronic Frontier Foundation]
anthha
Oct 15, 9:00PM
BlogTalkRadio has signed a big partner to its live podcasting network — sports site SB Nation. The timing might seem interesting, since news broke today that Vox Media, the company behind SB Nation and tech news site The Verge, has raised a $40 million round led by Accel. However, SB Nation shows have actually been live on BlogTalkRadio's site since September — they just haven't formally announced until now. (Plus, it took me a little while to write this post.) 
SM-announcement
Oct 15, 9:00PM
When it comes to online genealogy, the two major for-profit players are Ancestry.com and MyHeritage. Ancestry.com got a major head start over MyHeritage, but it mostly focused on gathering historical records while MyHeritage put an emphasis on building and matching family trees. But now it’s also starting to amass a wider range of historical records. Today, MyHeritage announced a major multi-year partnership with the largest nonprofit player in the space, the Mormon church-sponsored FamilySearch. Thanks to this partnership, MyHeritage’s users will now gain access to 2 billion historical records and family tree profiles from FamilySearch. In return, FamilySearch’s users will be able to use MyHeritage’s technology (through that company’s API) for matching family trees with historical records. MyHeritage has committed about 40 of its 150 employees to this project. While the partnership has a time limit, MyHeritage founder and CEO Gilad Japhet didn’t disclose the length of the agreement. Japhet says the service currently has about 75 million registered users who have added 1.6 billion profiles. It’s available in 40 languages, and while Ancestry.com may be bigger in the U.S., MyHeritage argues that it’s the biggest player in most European and South American countries. Because it’s hard to migrate family trees between services, it’s seeing very high retention rates, but this also means that it’s hard to gain new users from smaller competing services without outright acquiring those services. About a year ago, for example, MyHeritage bought Geni.com to acquire its engineers, user and data. One feature that makes MyHeritage unique is its ability to match up its users’ family trees, which helps them discover previously unknown branches of their families. The service’s fuzzy matching algorithm can find these matches even when there are minor errors or alternative spellings. Today’s partnership with FamilySearch.org brings a wide range of new documents to MyHeritage, which the company is now ingesting and plans to start exposing over the next few months. Given the Mormon church’s focus on genealogy for religious reasons (which at times lands it in hot water), FamilySearch has amassed one of the largest – if not the largest – database of records related to family history. In total, FamilySearch will provide about 1 billion records to MyHeritage. As Japhet noted, FamilySearch was sitting on a treasure trove of data, but didn’t have the technology to easily analyze it. MyHeritage, on the other hand, has the technology but needed more data. This
ericeldon
Oct 15, 8:33PM
“At some level, it is still contrarian,” Accel Partners’ Andrew Braccia admits about leading a $40 million fourth round of funding in Vox Media, the publisher of hundreds of major league sports fan blogs as well as tech/culture site The Verge and gaming site Polygon. Coming on top of $30 million in previous rounds, the Washington, DC-based company will have the most venture backing of any high-end content creator when the round is finalized in the coming weeks. There are precious few other examples on this scale. Viral-oriented Buzzfeed has raised nearly $50 million in total. Politically-focused Huffington Post had reached $37 million before Aol (TechCrunch’s parent company) bought it. Silicon Valley investors, at least, are still not very optimistic about startups that put content first. But Braccia has been leading venture rounds in Vox since its first in 2008. What does he like? Vox’s long-term strategy, which it has been building out for a decade. It was founded in 2003 by Markos Moulitsas and others from The Daily Kos, his namesake political commentary blog. That site had grown into a pillar of the progressive blogosphere in that turbulent political era because it focused on big issues and let readers publish their own posts. But instead of expanding into other parts of the political world, the founders stepped back and wondered how the model might apply more broadly. The answer they found was sports. Co-founder and sports writer Tyler Bleszinski decided to focus on a personal passion, Oakland baseball, and launched Athletics Nation. Readers loved it, and from there the company slowly built out a content management system, more sports sites, the start of an ads business, and eventually attracted a former Aol executive, Jim Bankoff, as an advisor. Braccia, who is known in these parts for finding unusual, big-time deals (Braintree, Lynda.com and 99Designs are some fresh examples), first met the company through Bankoff when Vox had around 75 sites. He quickly got the big idea, he tells me today, as he’d already been a long-time reader of two of the sports sites, McCovey Chronicles for the S.F. Giants baseball team and Golden State of Mind for the Golden State Warriors basketball team. “Building a media company is not as well understood in Silicon Valley as building a software company, or building other types of companies that scale differently based on network effects, virality, or whatever it might look like,” he explains. “You have
alexjameswilhelm
Oct 15, 8:24PM
Today in conjunction with its third quarter earnings release, Yahoo announced that it has come to a new agreement with Alibaba that will force the company to sell less of its shares in the Chinese ecommerce firm when it goes public. The number of shares that Yahoo will be required to sell now totals 208 million. That figure represents a 20.4 percent decrease on the former 261.5 million share requirement. Yahoo owns 523.6 million ordinary shares of Alibaba. Yahoo’s Alibaba stake is worth tens of billions of dollars, provided that Alibaba goes public in the $100 billion to $120 billion range that is usually discussed. Yahoo was required to sell half its Alibaba stake when the retail giant goes public. Yahoo claims to be “pleased” to hold onto more of its stake, post-IPO. Joe Tsai, a member of Alibaba’s board, said that “[u]nder its new leadership, Yahoo has made it a priority to build a good relationship with Alibaba.” So, this reduction can be chalked up to Mayer’s influence as CEO. Also, in late 2012, Yahoo exec Jacqueline Reses joined Alibaba’s board. As a company, Yahoo doesn’t need to sell its Alibaba stake to stay solvent, but as a bank account, the more it taps the resource, the more shiny things it can buy. Yahoo will net plenty, even with the reduction. Early-stage, mobile-first companies in the Bay Area beware, Yahoo is still hungry and well-funded.
anthha
Oct 15, 8:14PM
Yahoo just released its earnings report for the third quarter of the year, with revenue of $1.08 billion (minus traffic acquisition costs) and earnings per share of 34 cents. That's in line with analyst estimates on the revenue side ($1.08 billion) and the estimated EPS of 33 cents. Revenue is down 1 percent from the same period last year, while net earnings are down 91 percent, to $297 million.
ctvelazco
Oct 15, 8:06PM
Well, it's that time again -- famed chipmaker Intel has just reported its fiscal Q3 2013 earnings and they're just a bit better than expected. The company reported quarterly revenue of $13.5 billion (which is pretty much flat compared to its performance last year) and earnings of $0.58 per share (again, same as last year).
alexjameswilhelm
Oct 15, 8:04PM
The Scroogled advertising campaign undertaken by Microsoft to ding and scuff its rival Google appears to be an effective effort, according to statistics recently published by AdWeek. That publication's report details data collected for Microsoft by GfK Roper indicating that, following a visit to Scroogled.com, Google's favorability gap with Bing with users fades from 45 points, to 5.
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
