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Amazon Bought GoPago's Mobile Payment Tech And Product/Engineering Team, DoubleBeam Bought The POS Business
Dec 21, 10:49AM
Last week, we wrote about how Amazon had quietly acquired mobile payments startup GoPago. Today, some more details about the deal: A source close to the situation confirms that Amazon bought the technology and the engineering/product team of GoPago, but none of the existing point of sale business and current merchant relationships. This part of GoPago is going to DoubleBeam -- a sale confirmed by DoubleBeam late Friday.Snapchat Sacrifices Ephemerality With New Replay Feature
Dec 21, 2:29AM
My least favorite part of Snapchat is mistakenly opening video Snap when I can't hear it, like in a noisey public place or when my sound is off. Snapchat tried to address that today with an experimental new Replay feature that lets you rewatch one old Snap per day. But by fixing that problem it created a much bigger one. It killed off some of its ephemerality.Snapchat Adds Filters, A Replay Function And For Whatever Reason, Time, Temperature And Speed Overlays
Dec 21, 1:00AM
Snapchat busted out an update to its app today just before the holidays. The new version of the ephemeral messaging app includes several color filters, a new 'special text' font and a few other additions.BTC China CEO Attempts To Calm The Bitcoin Market After RMB Deposit Shutdown
Dec 21, 12:06AM
In a letter posted on the Chinese bitcoin trading site BTC China CEO Bobby Lee attempted to calm the markets by posting a long, detailed description of the way forward for the company. "As China's first Bitcoin and Bitcoin trading platform company, we have more than two and half years of operating experience and a good reputation," he wrote. "I believe you love Bitcoin and will fully understand our decision."Mobile Rewards Startup Kiip Upgrades Its User Contests With New "Challenges" Product
Dec 20, 11:25PM
When Kiip announced last week that that it's powering rewards in Zepto Labs' popular Cut the Rope mobile games, co-founder and CEO Brian Wong said it didn't share one of the key details (because, uh, reasons) — that this is the debut of a new Kiip product called Challenges. The company is best-known for allowing advertisers to sponsor rewards in games and other apps at key moments, say when players beat a level. With Challenges, instead of just giving each user a reward, brands can run contests and sweepstakes and give prizes to the winners. For example, Wong said Cut the Rope players will have a chance to win plush toys today.The "Target Breach Flood" Is Already Appearing On The Carder Black Market; Target Reacts
Dec 20, 11:22PM
In a deliciously detailed post, security writer Brian Krebs has explained the path taken by credit card numbers stolen in the Target breach on their way to the carder black market. Krebs has far more information in his post but he's discovered that some card shops have created Target-only sections for the trove of numbers.Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs
Dec 20, 11:10PM
Hello, future IKEA Swedish meatballs! How are you this Friday? Ready to be torn to bits by sharp, gnashing, robotic teeth? I bet you are. In this exciting edition of TIDWRTWHUFOO we meet some tiny flying robots, some big climbing robots, and some bigger flying robots.NSA Reportedly Paid A Security Firm Millions To Ship Deliberately Flawed Encryption Technology
Dec 20, 10:58PM
Today Reuters reported that the NSA paid RSA, a security company and subsidiary of EMC, $10 million to use a flawed random generator technology as the “preferred” option in its BSafe software, increasing its popularity. In September of this year, the New York Times reported that the NSA was working to, in its own words, “break widely used Internet encryption technologies.” That the NSA wanted to get past encryption was not surprising. How far along it was, however, came as a shock. An NSA memo was blunt in its assessment of its own progress: “Cryptanalytic capabilities are now coming online. Vast amounts of encrypted Internet data which have up till now been discarded are now exploitable.” After being implicated in the NSA’s efforts to get around encryption, RSA told its customers that they should stop using the flawed algorithm. As the Wall Street Journal reported at that time, the warning was “one of the first instances of a security company acknowledging the U.S. government may have been involved in propping open a backdoor into a product.” Reuters’ revelation that the NSA had paid RSA $10 million to use the flawed algorithm changes the discussion. Instead of the NSA being some sort of evil mastermind, bent on making popular security standards obsolete, it was instead buying its way into companies. And for small sums to boot. Who wants to wager that this is the only time the NSA paid a security company to use flawed code that it prefers so that it can better beat back encryption? And if it can get a company with as long a history as RSA to bend so far to its quarter for a mere ten million dollars, the NSA could have bought any sort of access and influence that it wanted. Depressing, but probably true. Top Image Credit: FlickrFacebook Officially Joins The S&P 500, Prices Follow-On Offering At $55.05 Per Share
Dec 20, 10:52PM
Facebook said this afternoon that it has priced its previously-announced secondary offering of 70 million shares of Class A stock at $55.05 per share. At this price, some $3.85 billion in stock will be offered in the sale. The offering is expected to close on December 26th. Facebook also said that Standard & Poor’s has officially added Facebook’s stock to the venerated ranks of the S&P 500 Index, as of market close today. Here’s the breakdown of where the 70 million shares are coming from: “A total of 27,004,761 shares are being offered by Facebook, and a total of 42,995,239 shares are being offered by certain selling stockholders, including 41,350,000 shares offered by Mark Zuckerberg.” Facebook says that the money it makes in the sale will be utilized for “working capital and other general corporate purposes.” It’s important to note that Zuckerberg’s participation in this stock sale does not mean that he’s cashing out of the company he helped found. This week Zuckerberg exercised a stock option to purchase 60 million shares of Class B stock, and Facebook says that the bulk of proceeds from his Class A sale will be used to “satisfy taxes that he incurred” with the Class B purchase. CEO problems, I guess.
Ask A VC: GGV Capital's Glenn Solomon On How Companies Should Build And Expand In China
Dec 20, 10:45PM
In this week's episode of Ask A VC, we had GGV Capital's Glenn Solomon in the studio to talk about the developing technology market in China, and his predictions for 2014.
Windows Phone's 2013: A Year In Perspective
Dec 20, 10:03PM
Windows Phone, Microsoft’s smartphone platform has ground out its place at the mobile table employing a combination of tenacity, marketing dollars, improving firmware, and, at last, a world-class device lineup. It has not been an easy road for Microsoft, who launched Windows Phone 7 Series straight from the ashes of Kin, a time in which your uncle had more credibility in the mobile market. It came to the public nearly 2 years before Windows 8 did the same, for perspective. And yet, following the release of Windows Phone 8 at the end of last year, along with new hardware from Nokia that could match, at last, rival devices, Windows Phone has outlasted BlackBerry, made market share progress, bolstered its app store depth, and has more or less become the accepted third place mobile platform. Or, as Paul Thurrott wrote recently, “We’re number three. And no, that doesn’t suck.” But is that right? The Struggle It is something like vindication to see Windows Phone walk on its own two feet. If you were around when user interface experiments landed on Zune helped set the groundwork for much of Windows Phone’s GUI, there is a historical element at play in this narrative. And, personally, I loved the idea behind Windows Phone the first time we got a taste, eventually calling for Microsoft to release a Windows Phone tablet in the pre-Windows 8 days. They did, but they called it Surface. Still, we need to be careful. That Microsoft has answered the ”can we beat BlackBerry and become an accepted mobile player” question aside, most of its work still remains ahead of the company. As Thurrott notes, Windows Phone ended 2012 with 2.8% global market share. It is concluding 2013 with 3.6%, a mere 28.57% increase in a year that we in the media are generally heralding as pivotal in the best possible sense for the company. So, what gives? The mobile market is growing, and while Windows Phone is growing more quickly — hence its market share improvements — it is hardly tearing up the charts, and Android is increasingly taking on the mantle of smartphone hegemon. Android Thurrott details the precise issue that I think could constrain Windows Phone’s forward momentum, perhaps lowering a ceiling onto to how far it can grow in 2014 and beyond: 2013 was, alas, the year that Android became the Windows of the mobile world. Android surpassed 80Zimperium Raises $8M For Mobile Security That Turns The Tables On Attackers
Dec 20, 9:14PM
Let's say you're at the airport, checking your email on your iPhone over the wifi. Well, you've already made your first mistake. You've trusted the airport network to be secure enough to protect you from hacker attacks. Zimperium announced today it has raised $8 million from Sierra Ventures to build out its mobile technology designed to protect you from those attacks at the airport or wherever else you might be.Gillmor Gang Live 12.20.13 (TCTV)
Dec 20, 9:04PM
Gillmor Gang - Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor. Live recording session has concluded for today. like us on Facebook at Facebook.com/GillmorGangGift Guide: Something For A Twenty-Something
Dec 20, 9:00PM
Twenty-somethings are some of the hardest people to shop for. They're changing so quickly, interests waxing and waning by the day, that it can be pretty difficult to figure out a great gift for the holidays. But have no fear. At least one of these four suggestions should be a good fit for a young professional or college student, whether they're your family member or friend.Why Do People Keep Giving Foursquare Money?
Dec 20, 8:55PM
Foursquare just raised a bunch of money, again. This time it's a Series D round of $35M, back in April of this year it was $41M in debt financing. The company seems to keep being able to convince people there's something of value in its global location service.Facebook Eyeing Up A $10-$15M Acquisition Of India's Little Eye Labs
Dec 20, 8:02PM
We now have more details on Facebook’s plans to acquire Bangalore-based Little Eye Labs, an Indian startup whose primary product is a software tool for analyzing Android apps’ performance. Multiple sources have told us that the two companies exchanged the term sheets few weeks ago, and that a final announcement could be made by mid-January. The deal size is expected to be in the range of $10-15 million. Overall, the Little Eye Labs acquisition fits right into in Facebook’s mobile ambitions, an area where it has lagged rivals like Twitter, despite having some 874 million of its 1.19 billion-strong (September figures) user base logged on via mobile devices. And Facebook has been on the lookout for startups that could potentially help it gain a greater foothold on mobile devices. As part of its aggressive mobile strategy, Facebook acquired Parse, a mobile-backend-as-a-service startup in April of this year. A Facebook acquisition of Little Eye Labs would mean a lot for an Indian startup that’s less than one-and-a-half years old, and it would mean much more for the Indian startup ecosystem as a whole, where acquisitions of this profile have been tough to come by. While exploring potential acquirers, Little Eye Labs also pitched to Twitter, but Facebook seemed to offer a better deal, another source added. One of the sources who shared some details about this proposed acquisition said that if the deal closes, most of the Little Eye Labs’ founding team will move to Facebook’s U.S. headquarters, and work there as part of the mobile engineering team. Little Eye Labs caught the attention of potential acquirer(s) in Seedcamp, London, where the startup was refining its product along with 20 other companies. Gaurav Lochan, who joined Little Eye labs from India’s largest e-commerce company, Flipkart, earlier this year, had this to say about using the startup’s tool for fixing a bug in Google’s official I/Q app at the event. Flipkart, was also the first customer for Little Eye Labs. Kumar Rangarajan, co-founder of Little Eye labs, had even acknowledged that the company was in discussions with Facebook earlier this month, after reports of the acquisition first surfaced. However, Rangarajan could not be reached at the time of publication. A Facebook spokesperson, who had earlier declined to offer any comments, has also not responded. The Little Eye founders — Kumar Rangarajan, Satyam Kandula, Lakshman Kakkirala and Giridhar Murthy, all worked together previously at IBM.This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Our Favorites For 2013
Dec 20, 8:00PM
It’s the most reflective and introspective time of the year, so this week on the TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast we take a look back at the year that was and offer up our favorite gadgets. John likes a lot of stuff, including the treadmill desk that has become a permanent fixture on the Gadgets cast, and some more broadly transformative gadgets, too. Predictably, I like Apple stuff, and also predictably, Matt Burns likes some kind of reciprocating saw or tool or whatever. Some of the devices that come to mind can be found in our team gift guide, or on one of the other various gift guides we’ve been gifting you all season long. So have a listen to this week’s episode of the TechCrunch John Biggs Treadmill Deskcast, featuring John Biggs in the title role, Darrell Etherington, and Matt Burns. We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3 p.m. Eastern and noon Pacific. And feel free to check out the TechCrunch Gadgets Flipboard magazine right here. Click here to download an MP3 of this show. You can subscribe to the show via RSS. Subscribe in iTunes Intro Music by Rick Barr.ChallengePost Will Soon Support Software Innovation On An Ongoing Basis Outside Of Contests
Dec 20, 5:16PM
Hackathon and online technology challenge contest provider ChallengePost (disclosure: ChallengePost is the current service provider for TC Disrupt hackathon events) is pretty proud of its 2013 – the company awarded $7.5 million in prizes to developers and software creators this past year, topped 400,000 registered users on its platform, and hosted 130 hackathons and online competitions. That represents 100 percent growth in business compared to 2012, but already the company is turning its attention to something new: supporting the kind of innovation that happens within a confined time frame at hackathons, but on a continuing basis.Backed By Steve Blank & More, Startup Genome Founders Launch Next-Gen Benchmarking Tool For Startups
Dec 20, 5:02PM
Three years ago, a team of researchers, entrepreneurs and data geeks set out on an ambitious mission: To put the world’s technology startups under the microscope in an effort to better understand why some succeed and why 90 percent eventually go the way of the dinosaur. Fast forward to today, and The Startup Genome (as it’s now called) has analyzed data from over 100,000 startups around the globe and has conducted hundreds of in-depth, qualitative interviews with entrepreneurs and investors. The results provide an exciting look into not only what characteristics and qualities make for a successful formula, but how different startup ecosystems stack up with each other. The team behind the project has also begun to leverage its unique data sets to create a benchmarking tool to enable entrepreneurs to evaluate their progress compared to their peers and help them make more informed product and business decisions. This month, after more than a year of testing and tweaking, the team finally released Compass into the wild. Compared to prior iterations, Compass founder and CEO Bjoern Herrmann (who is also one of the co-founders of The Startup Genome Project) tells us, the now fully-baked startup benchmarking tool offers automated data collection from a host of tools and services popular among SMBs, including services like Salesforce.com, MailChimp, Google Analytics, Mixpanel, PayPal, Quickbooks and Stripe. Using data derived from the sources, Compass then funnels your startup’s business metrics into its revamped dashboard, allowing them to view company benchmarks across a range of categories, configure an alert system to stay up to date on company revenue, churn rate, user growth rate, acquisition costs and so on, while offering visualizations of that data in correlation charts, graphs and via tailored, supplemental analysis. But the real key to the new Compass product, Herrmann says, its the new dynamic system its team developed to generate benchmarks based on large data sets. Up until today, most benchmarking solutions have relied on 50-year-old methodologies to collect and analyze data, so, the team has instead developed a methodology designed specifically for Big Data analysis. For example, prior iterations of Compass only grouped companies in to two categories — B2B or B2C — which, of course, is a fairly limited taxonomy given the diversity of startups out there. The new product, however, places companies along a continuous spectrum based on the “complexity of customer interaction,” Herrmann explains. On one endInVision Raises $11.6M From FirstMark Capital And Tiger Global
Dec 20, 5:00PM
InVision, a prototyping tool for thousands of web developers and designers, has recently closed an $11.6 million Series A round from FirstMark Capital and Tiger Global. The company launched in 2011 out of New York with a mission to make it easy for designers to share, interact with, and get feedback on their prototypes. Users can easily upload Photoshop files to the web and add interactions to form a simulation, all within a normal web browser under a single link (which can be password protected).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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