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.
Data As A Company's Secret Weapon
Jan 26, 7:00AM
This year, we're going to see data go from an opaque, untapped, and mystifying asset to a hyper competitive, I-can't-believe-you-don't-use-it weapon for businesses. I don't mean big data; I mean data of any size: big, medium, and small. In fact, it's not about the amount of data, it's about the kind of data you have (and, of course, being smart enough to use it). This is all starting to happen because software is being built specifically to analyze lots of data – and it's no longer cost-prohibitive to use this software, and the insights can fundamentally change the trajectory of your business.The Secrets To Snapchat's Success: Connectivity, Easy Media Creation, And Ephemerality
Jan 26, 2:09AM
Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel has been known to be pretty quiet when it comes to sharing secrets about how the company works, but today he provided a little more transparency around its mission and how it thinks about the communications that users send through the app.CrunchWeek: Netflix Earnings, Stripe's Big Raise, And Snowden's Live Q&A
Jan 25, 11:35PM
It's that time of week for an episode of CrunchWeek, the show that brings a few TechCrunch writers together to chat about the most fascinating stories of the past seven days in tech.
App.net Launches Backer, A Bitcoin-Friendly Crowdfunding Engine For Individual Software Features
Jan 25, 10:38PM
As the popularity of crowdfunding grows ever larger, an interesting new trend has started popping up: developers, curious if a new feature is worth building, are asking interested customers to chip in to cover development costs. In other words: if you really want a certain feature, put your money where your mouth is. App.net has just launched a new crowdfunding tool meant for exactly that.Overseeding Will Be Key To Strong Venture Returns
Jan 25, 10:00PM
The story is one we've heard before: plucky startup sails through seed fundraising, unfurls its wings, then runs into the brick wall of not enough venture and shatters into pieces. The numbers speak for themselves.TechCrunch Giveaway: 20 Anki DRIVE Starter Kits And Free Ticket to The Crunchies
Jan 25, 9:18PM
The team over at Anki is so thrilled about being a Crunchie Award finalist for "Best New Startup of 2013" that they've decided to show their appreciation to our readers by spreading the Anki love and giving away Anki Drive starter kits (each valued at $199.95) to 20 lucky people.
Achievement Unlocked: The SF Class War Reaches Godwin's Law
Jan 25, 8:38PM
Yes, Tom Perkins went there. In a letter to the Wall Street Journal published this morning, with the surprising title "Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?," the legendary venture capitalist compared Nazi Germany's war on the Jews to "the progressive war on the American one percent."Gillmor Gang Live 01.25.14 (TCTV)
Jan 25, 6:19PM
Gillmor Gang - Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Live recording session has concluded for today. "Like" us on Facebook at Facebook.com/GillmorGangDash's Smart Driving App – A "Fitbit For Cars" – Arrives On Android
Jan 25, 5:30PM
Dash, a Techstars New York-backed startup that wants to be like a Fitbit for your car, has now launched. The product includes a combination of a hardware device and smartphone application which offers real-time feedback on your driving, trip logs, access to vehicle diagnostics (that pesky “check engine” light, and who can fix it!), a map showing where the cheapest gas is nearby, and even social features. Like several of the “connected car” products on the market, Dash’s hardware involves an OBD device you can purchase from either within the Dash mobile application or the Dash homepage. The Dash software will also work with any Bluetooth-enabled OBD device, if you happen to already have one, or you can choose from two types of devices Dash’s homepage points to: generic devices found on Amazon for $10 and up, or a premium OBD LINK LX which is a steeper $69. The Dash software works with either type of device, the company says. But the premium hardware offers a better build quality, power management capabilities, and connection reliability, among other things. Once installed, the device connects via Bluetooth with your Android smartphone to communicate with the Dash app. The app offers you a variety of helpful tools, both when you’re on the road and when you’re off. The app’s design is well done, too – very modern and clean, which is still somewhat of a surprise on Android, though that’s increasingly less of a case these days as developers begin to treat the platform with the respect its larger marketshare has earned. As noted above, Dash offers a variety of “connected car” features, including the ability to track your trips, watch your gas consumption, find nearby gas prices, detect crashes and alert emergency services, understand the warning messages your car’s computer throws and even locate a reliable mechanic who can resolve the problem. Mechanics are ranked by proximity and star ratings, explains Dash co-founder and CEO Jamyn Edis. Edis and Brian Langel both previously worked at HBO before starting Dash, where Edis was VP of R&D, which included tech strategy for HBO GO, and other skunkworks projects using augmented reality, video search, smart TV apps, Nike Fuel-like hardware for HBO Sports and more. Before that, he spent a decade at Accenture, working on large-scale technology projects and strategy for a variety of clients, including Sprint, British Telecom, Fox Interactive, MySpace, Warner Music, PlayStation and manyMost Americans Are Unaware Of [Insert Issue Here]
Jan 25, 5:00PM
Let’s face it: a disturbingly large portion of the American electorate are not-so-knowledgable about their world. As of 2008, 30% still maintain that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and 18% think the sun revolves around the earth. So, when our friends in the press ran headlines about how most Americans had heard “nothing at all” about President Obama’s recent surveillance reforms, I would have been surprised by exactly the opposite. Let’s take a trip down the rabbit hole of America’s civic knowledge and whether it matters to a functioning democratic state. Most Americans Haven’t Heard Of [Insert Issue Here] Pew surveys released fresh stats about the number of Americans who approve of the National Security Agency’s dragnet program, along with a pie chart showing that 50% had heard “nothing at all” about President Obama’s proposed reforms. To political pollsters, results like this would be a regular Tuesday. Indeed, it was almost embarrassingly easy to find the exact same results for any given issue. –Fewer than 25% of Californians knew “much at all” about the massive healthcare overhaul, the Affordable Care Act, that impacts every single American. –Fewer than half of parents with children in public schools knew anything about the Common Core Standards, arguably one of the most radical overhauls of education in at least 50 years. –A measly 39% of Republicans who think the 2012 attacks on an embassy in Benghazi was the “biggest political scandal in American history” could identify that event took place in a country called Libya. –For kicks, 41% of Americans cannot ID their folksy deputy commander-in-chief, Vice President Joe Biden Polls Get More Disturbing/Hilarious In truth, polls may be radically overestimating Americans’ knowledge. Respondents are known to offer strong feelings for policies that do not actually exist. To test the extremes of this fact in the most disturbing/hilarious possible fashion, I conducted a national poll to see how Americans thought about military intervention in an imaginary country. This was around the time when the president was debating forceful humanitarian intervention in Syria. A whopping 63% of Americans polled had an opinion, either for or against, helping out the good people of “Guavastan”. Guavastan, not yet an actual place, is a luxury island I hope to inhabit after striking it rich in the field of journalism. Some folks got our little joke. One respondent quipped, “guavastan…is that near papaya ville”. Others just hadBillion-Dollar M&A Club Admission Guidelines
Jan 25, 4:00PM
Average valuations for venture-backed M&A deals typically come in a pretty tight range. According to the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), in 2013 there were 377 total M&A exits of venture-backed companies with mean pricing of $161 million. This compares with total deal count of 499 and 488 and mean pricing of $143 million and $173 million in 2011 and 2012, respectively.Cute Alert! Can Fuzmo Crowdfund The Build Of Its Pet Pictures Platform?
Jan 25, 3:55PM
Talk about a minimum viable product. The co-founders of Fuzmo, a site that just lets you share pictures of cute pets with other enthusiasts, originally started out as a simple Instagram account, Insta_Animal.Failure Modes
Jan 25, 2:00PM
This was a rich month for the deadpool. Prim shut down. So did CarWoo. And much-hyped Outbox. And even moot's Canvas/DrawQuest, which had 1.4 million app downloads and 400,000 monthly users. All part of the game, right? The circle of startup life, or something. It's a truism that most startups fail. But in fact most startups don't even get to fail, in the way the word is most commonly used in Silicon Valley.SoundCloud Raises $60 Million At A $700 Million Valuation
Jan 25, 12:35PM
SoundCloud recently closed a Series D round of funding led by Institutional Venture Partners with the Chernin Group. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news. It has since been confirmed by IVP and SoundCloud. Previous investors also participated in the round, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, GGV Capital, Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures. SoundCloud’s ultimate goal is to become the audio platform of the web, or the YouTube of audio. Just like YouTube, user-generated content remains the startup’s fuel. Every minute, 12 hours of sound and music are uploaded to the platform. For comparison’s sake, YouTube reports 100 hours of content uploaded every minute. Many up-and-coming electronic music artists use SoundCloud to release mixtapes and share them around the web. Well-known musicians also release singles or live recordings on the platform to share them with their fans on Twitter or Facebook. In other words, SoundCloud is the perfect place to transform a music file into a URL and embeddable music player. Back in October at Disrupt Europe, SoundCloud co-founder and CEO Alexander Ljung said that the company was focused on growth and engagement. That’s why it simplified its premium offering. “The big thing when we made that change is that we went from four different account levels with a fairly wide range of pricing to two different levels with a smaller range,” Ljung said. With a free account, you can upload up to 2 hours of music, while the most expensive plan allows you to upload an unlimited amount of music for $12 a month (€9). Subscriptions used to be much more expensive, and an unlimited plan was out of reach for many amateur artists. Today’s funding news is probably the consequence of this focus on growth. At Disrupt, Ljung said that subscription numbers were “pretty much exactly on our forecast.” Seeing American VC firms putting a lot of faith in a European startup is a big win for the Berlin startup scene. But SoundCloud still has to find the major hidden, yet reachable, treasure. Most of SoundCloud’s 250 million users turn to SoundCloud to consume music, listen to artist-curated playlists and comment. They aren’t content creators; they carefully curate a music feed by following artists on the platform. For now, they don’t generate a lot of money for the company — the website has never been inundated with ads. According to Re/code, the company is nowApple Preparing For Push Into Mobile Payments For Physical Goods, WSJ Reports
Jan 25, 7:03AM
A long-rumored move by Apple is reportedly one step closer to becoming a reality today. The Wall Street Journal says that Apple is looking into a way to expand its mobile payments efforts into a means by which its users can pay for physical goods using iOS mobile devices via their existing iTunes accounts.The Obama Administration's Frustrating NSA Week
Jan 25, 2:24AM
While Congress and the nation at large have done little except talk and embark on preliminary legal skirmishes regarding the United States’ mass surveillance practices, the forces in favor of reform and change had a decent week. The Obama administration did not. The president’s speech one week ago on proposed changes to NSA practices was met with skepticism. A sample headline detailing the response: “Jon Stewart skewers Obama’s vague, rambling NSA speech.” The Post was sedate but firm: “Obama goal for quick revamp of NSA program may be unworkable, some U.S. officials fear.” If the president had hoped that his reform proposals — including mild curtailment of the phone metadata program, some sort of protection for the privacy of foreign citizens and the like — would placate those opposed to the NSA, he was certainly disappointed. Praise could be found for the president, but in the form of a backhanded compliment. Republican Rep. Peter King was content with the speech, because it didn’t seem to propose meaningful change: “I didn’t think any changes were called for, any so-called reforms, but the fact is the ones that the President made today are really minimal. [...] So long as the NSA can move quickly to protect us against plots, that’s all that is necessary: That the data is there, and the NSA is able to move quickly.” Impressive accolades. When the forces arrayed against change think you are doing fine, you aren’t pushing for much change. Also this week the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board lit into the NSA’s bulk collection program, saying that it lacked firm legal footing. The White House was left to somewhat lamely argue that it “simply disagree[s] with the board’s analysis on the legality of the program.” The group also attacked the key reason for keeping the program: Its efficacy. The group’s report contained the following, as the Washington Post quoted: “We have not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the telephone records program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation. Moreover, we are aware of no instance in which the program directly contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack.” This week Russia announced that it would not expel Edward Snowden, and that the choice to leave would be his to make. So, if the administration had hoped that theHow To Successfully "Neg" Facebook
Jan 25, 1:29AM
"Facebook may have an irreversibly bad brand," wrote 22-year old Branch founder Josh Miller in December 2012 in a post about his 15-year old sister's predilections for social apps. Almost a year later, his chat startup was acquired by Facebook. Awkward. The "criticize Facebook" > "get bought by Facebook" dynamic in the Branch/Potluck acquisition was so ironic, it was the first thing to come to mind for many upon hearing the news of the merger. Will Oremus over at Slate wrote a whole post peppered with critical quotes from Miller, ending with a quote from SLC Punk: "I didn't sell out, I bought in."Check Out The Magic (And Technology) Behind Self-Balancing Electric Skateboard Onewheel
Jan 25, 12:38AM
Every once in a while in this job you see something that just fucking blows your mind. Some invention that makes you wonder "How'd they think of that?" and "How the hell did they get that to work?" That's how I felt the first time I saw Onewheel, the magical self-balancing electric skateboard that's currently collecting backers on Kickstarter.It Doesn't Have To Be This Way
Jan 24, 11:42PM
There is a story being told about us here in the tech industry in San Francisco -- that we are entitled, or that we are oblivious. I don't believe that's true. Or I don't believe that it has to be true.End Of An Era As VKontakte Founder Durov Sells His Stake To Russian Mobile Giant
Jan 24, 11:24PM
Pavel Durov, the elusive founder of VKontakt (VK), at 100 million users Russia's biggest social network, has confirmed that he has sold his 12 percent stake stake to Ivan Tavrin, the CEO of major Russian mobile operator Megafon. The telco's second-largest shareholder is Alisher Usmanov, one of Russia's most powerful oligarchs, a man who has long been lobbying to take over VK.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
