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Valentines Day Bait & Switch: Groupon Must Avoid Becoming Just Another Useless Coupon Site
Feb 11, 9:21AM
I assume that "sale!" signs in retail businesses are usually just BS. The stores keep normal prices higher than they should be so they can offer customers a faux discount. Whether it's always true or just often true doesn't matter. People don't really get all that excited about signs that say "HUGE SALE 50% OFF" or whatever. We're desensitized to it. Groupon has been different, though. They've had real discounts, verifiably way below normal retail costs. That's why so many tens of millions of people look forward to their Groupon email every day, and why so many people sign up for skydiving lessons that they never knew they wanted. There are signs, though, that the model may not scale infinitely forever. Beyond just common sense, I mean. Some merchants have failed to take the coupons they've already sold on Groupon when they saw the overwhelming volume it brought in, for example. 
Nokia Confirms Microsoft Partnership, New Leadership Team, Organizational Changes
Feb 11, 7:39AM
Ahead of its Strategy and Financial Briefing in London, Nokia has shared some details on what it plans to announce at the event. As expected, the company is aligning its strategy with Microsoft. By now, you've probably seen the 'burning platform' memo penned by the fresh CEO of the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer, former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop (the existence of the brutally honest memo was first reported by TechCrunch Europe and later published in full by Engadget).
Movie And TV Recommendation Startup Inveni Closes $483K Funding Round
Feb 11, 3:40AM
Minnesota-based startup Inveni announced today that it has closed a $483,333 seed funding round led by a group of Silicon Valley investors, who asked to have their identities remain confidential. Be that as it may, the latest round of funding brings Inveni's total to $1.7 million. Inveni is a free web service that serves up movie and TV recommendations based on a user's unique tastes. How does it work? Think of it as technology akin to that which drives Netflix's personalization and recommendation features. Inveni's software assists you in creating a customized "Taste Profile" by enabling you to share the preferences you've already established on sites like Amazon or Hulu. Speaking of Amazon, Inveni founder Aaron Weber told me that the startup is being advised by NetPerceptions, the makers of the collaborative filtering software that drives Amazon's recommendation engine.
You Can Now Punch People On The iPhone, Congratulations Humanity
Feb 11, 3:11AM
Oh Western culture, when will you cease to amaze me! First the fact that you can buy a Julian Assange as Che Guevara shirt in the WikiLeaks "mall" and now this ... "Punch Your Friends" is an iPhone app created on a lark by Blippy co-founder Philip Kaplan, while he was on vacation in Hawaii. When I asked him for more information about the app he responded, "Flattered but it's not really TechCrunch worthy yet. Frankly the app isn't that great."
The Funny Coincidence between Bing's Rise And Conduit's Declining Traffic
Feb 11, 1:15AM
Last December toolbar startup Conduit announced they were bailing on Google search in favor of Bing. In January Bing surged in search market share, up over 2 points to 12.8%. You wouldn't think Conduit was the main force behind the rise. But the data suggests it is. 
UN Secretary Rice On Facebook And Twitter: "Governments Are Increasingly Cognizant Of Their Power" [Video]
Feb 11, 12:40AM
American UN Ambassador Susan Rice gave an unprecedented livestreamed townhall at Twitter HQ today, "a very interesting and exciting day" due to the at the time impending speech of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. The talk was replete with questions from Twitter users and had its own hashtag #askambrice. Rice began the townhall praising Twitter for leading the charge in redefining the media landscape in these unique times. 
Inside The Psychobox: A Tour Of Dropbox's Bumping Office
Feb 11, 12:25AM
It's time for another tour of a hot tech company's office, and this week brings us one of my favorites: Dropbox. The service makes it easy to share files between multiple computers, and their office is loaded with neat memorabilia, games, and unreasonably tall people. Make sure to watch til the very end for a surprise, twist ending. That I won't be able to live down for quite a while. And in case you missed them before, make sure to check out our previous episodes: - Take A Doc On The Wild Side At Scribd (With Bonus Go Karts!)
- Dogs, Unicorns, And Mysterious Gongs: Inside Yelp's 5-Star Pad
(Founder Stories) Fred Wilson On Frothy Valuations
Feb 10, 11:35PM
With acquisition feelers out to Twitter for a reported $8 billion to $10 billion, bubble talk is once again the topic of discussion. It's a recurring theme, and on this episode of Founder Stories venture capitalist Fred Wilson talks to Chris Dixon about the frothy valuations in Techland. Wilson is careful not to use the word "bubble," but this is familiar ground for him. He he has been vocal about signs that he finds disturbing, such as investors chasing returns and startups with little more than three founders in a garage getting bid up for no reason. In the video he specifically calls out Quora and its instant $86 million valuation as troubling. Yet by the end of the clip he also concludes that Facebook is going to be worth a lot more than $50 billion. Wilson's firm Union Square Ventures is an investor in Twitter (although this show was taped before the current deal talk rumors came out), as well as Zynga, Tumblr, Etsy, and Foursquare. So he's seen a lot of the rising valuations first-hand, and is benefiting from his early investments in these companies. But it is getting harder and harder, and he is honest about the fact that sometimes he is getting outbid by other VC firms like Sequoia. Dixon, who in addition to running Hunch is a very active angel investor through Founder Collective argues that there isn't a bubble at all because the fundamentals of Internet companies are so much stronger now and creating real revenues.
Group Dating Startup Ignighter Raises $3 Million
Feb 10, 11:25PM
Ignighter, the group dating site that is part of the TechStars class of 2008, has raised $3 million in Series A funding from a number of well-known investors. This brings the company's total funding to $4.2 million. The round was led by Point Judith Capital with GSA Venture Partners, Founder Collective, GTI Capital Group, Hugo Enterprises, Rajan Anandan, David Cohen, Dave Tisch, Kal Vepuri, Peter Lehrman, Nihal Mehta and other angels participating. 
Inspired By #Egypt, GroupFlier Launches Curated Texting Groups
Feb 10, 10:34PM
Much like 1000Memories with its online memorial to Egyptian protesters, group-texting app GroupFlier realized that its users were clamoring for an #Egypt-related feature, specifically one that provided curated Twitter and other content relating to the anti-Mubarak protests. GroupFlier founder and Harvard Cyber-security expert Morris Penner thought this was a good idea. Following tweets about a specific issue on your phone is super noisy, whether you're getting tweets on SMS (even though I have no idea who does that anymore) or using an iPhone app. Penner got one of his employees to set up the group "Egypt4Peace," which follows the tweets made by activist and Google Executive Wael Ghonim, as well as on the ground reporters Dan Nolan and Sharif Kouddous.
The iPhone Nano Rumor Reborn: 1/3rd Smaller, Older Components, $200 With No Contract
Feb 10, 9:55PM
Just in case you haven't had enough Apple rumors in the past 24 hours... Hot off the heels of the talk that Apple is planning to release the iPad 2 in a few weeks — and then another new version of the iPad in the fall (something which we've heard from a very good source), here comes another one. Today, Bloomberg is reporting that Apple is working on a smaller, cheaper version of the iPhone. And here's the thing. Once again, we've heard this as well. Not to play second fiddle to Bloomberg's story, but we'd previously heard from a source (different from the iPad one) that Apple was definitely at work on a device that could be thought of as an "iPhone nano". We'd been trying to dig for more, but had yet to come up with anything substantial. But it looks as if Bloomberg has, in a similar vein.
Hertz Spending Estimated $10 Million On Solar Rooftops In U.S. This Year
Feb 10, 9:52PM
Rental car stalwarts, The Hertz Corporation (Hertz, NYSE:HTZ) revealed plans to install 2.3 megawatts (MW) of solar photovoltaic systems at sixteen locations across the U.S. this year. As the first piece of their solar initiative, Hertz completed construction of a 235 kilowatt system — that's about the size of 60 typical U.S. home solar installations — on the rooftop of their Denver International Airport business (image below). According to a company press statement, that single system is expected to "produce 342,766 kilowatt hours of AC output and will offset approximately 650,000 pounds of CO2 annually..." 
Facebook Now Has 149M Active Users In The U.S.; 70 Percent Log On Daily
Feb 10, 9:47PM
This morning, at a joint event held by Ogilvy and Buddy Media, Facebook's head of U.S. agency relations Sarah Personette, revealed a number of statistics about the global usage on the social network. According to Facebook, 149 million Americans now actively use the social network (as of 2009, the network had 100 million active users in the U.S.). And 70 percent of these active users in the U.S. log on to the social network daily. Personette also revealed a few other country specific numbers—France has 22 million active users, with 65 percent returning daily; the UK has 29 million active users, and Canada has 19 million active users. We contacted Facebook for confirmation and were issued this response "we're not offering guidance on the matter." Odd, considering that Personette presented the data to the public at the event. 
Buzz Editor: Immersion Releases MOTIV Haptics Platform
Feb 10, 9:27PM
You rarely notice haptics, but when it comes to human-computer interaction, they can make or break a device. That's why Immersion (the leader in haptic feedback - basically little high-speed motors in phones and other devices that add a vibrational component to on-screen interaction) just announced a way to create amazing haptics for almost all Android phones. Their MOTIV platform offers programmers and carriers a new way to add vibrational feedback to phones. For example, instead of a curt buzz when something explodes on screen, you can add special "macro" vibrations that turn the motor on and off at various frequencies, recreating the vibrations associated with an explosion. It's a bit hard to describe, but think of an audio editor for buzzing motors. 
You May Kiss The Bride, Thanks To Google Weddings
Feb 10, 8:15PM
Google is making a big push into the wedding planning scene today, launching a full fledged planning portal for brides and grooms to be. Google Weddings is a destination that houses wedding-specific templates in Google Sites, Google Docs and Picnik for save-the-dates, wedding websites, planning materials, invitations and more. Google has also partnered with wedding planner Michelle Rago to provide tips and guidance on which designs to use. This isn't Google's first move in the wedding planning world, the search giant also began offering customized wedding templates in Google Docs a year ago that let users access pre-made documents to track your wedding budget, collect addresses for invitations, compare vendors and much more. 
Foursquare Saw Over 200,000 Super Bowl Check-Ins — A Record; Packers Fans Dominated
Feb 10, 8:04PM
As we noted last week, Foursquare decided to experiment with a new feature for Super Bowl Sunday: Promoted Venues. Specifically, they created a "Super Bowl Sunday" worldwide venue that anyone could check-in to to let others know that they were watching the Super Bowl. So how did it go? Well, when it wasn't crashing the network, really well! Foursquare has a post today detailing the experiment. Apparently, there were over 200,000 check-ins on Super Bowl Sunday from all around the work. In fact, as we suspected, it became the most checked into venue ever — and it took just four hours for that feat to happen. Foursquare also says that it was the largest online check-in event of all time.
Facebook Unifies UI As It Rolls Out New Design For 'Pages'
Feb 10, 8:00PM
Back in December Facebook unveiled a significant redesign to user profiles, which now feature a handful of photos at the top of the page, new sections for featuring your family members and best friends, and some other mostly-cosmetic tweaks. Today, the site is launching a similar design for 'Facebook Pages' — the public profiles used by brands, businesses, and celebrities to communicate with thousands or millions of fans at once. The new Pages incorporate many of the changes made during the December redesign: you can now feature images at the top of the page. Application tabs are being moved from the top of the profile down to a sidebar just beneath the profile image. And there's a widget that shows what 'Likes' you have in common with the Page. Which brings us to some of the more interesting changes.
The Onion Speaks To Every Fanboy's Fear: With Jobs Out, A Grotesque MacBook
Feb 10, 7:09PM
When Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced he was taking another medical leave of absence earlier this year, the talk immediately started. "But what happens when Apple has to release a new product?" "Will it suck?" The truth, of course, is that Apple has a pipeline of products that likely spans years — all based on calls made while Jobs was in charge. And many of those are already in various levels of late-stage development. But what if a new products slips through the cracks? What if interim Apple head Tim Cook greenlights something awful? The Onion explores this possibility today. Say hello to the new "grotesque" MacBook.
Guitar Hero Didn't Die A Natural Death, But Was Killed By Myopic Greed
Feb 10, 7:06PM
Kudos to Activision for doing exactly what so many people had been predicting for years now. The world's biggest video game publisher said yesterday that it was going to "disband Activision Publishing's Guitar Hero business unit," citing a decline in interest in the music game genre. And what could possibly be the reason for that, hmm? Maybe releasing sequel after sequel after sequel in such a quick succession that you don't give gamers any room to breathe? Gotta maximize short-term profits! The future? That's someone else's problem.
Slacker Raises $3 Million To Equip More Phones, Cars With Personal Radio Service
Feb 10, 7:03PM
Slacker, the 'personal radio' company, has raised $3 million in debt funding, an SEC filing reveals. The company confirmed that it has secured extra capital, from all of its existing investors, but wouldn't say much else. Asked what the financing round would be used for, the answer I got was: "for scaling the business". 
Huffington Post Unique Visitors Surge To 28 Million In January
Feb 10, 6:47PM
Huffington Post, our soon to be sister site (assuming government clearance of the AOL acquisition goes through), had quite a January. Unique U.S. visitors surged to 28 million in January from 24.5 million in December, according to Comscore. They're nearing half a billion monthly page views in the U.S. as well, up from 439 million in December. Why the jump? The site was hovering around 22 million U.S. monthly visitors for most of last year. There was a small jump in December, then the January surge. And that's despite the fact that a cobranded Yahoo/Huffington Post page deal ended at the end of 2010. The Tucson shooting was a big factor, says Huffington Post. As well as the 13th Zodiac sign ridiculousness. We also note that Huffington Post is the third result on Bing for "sex," and Comscore says it's the second biggest search query traffic driver, after "Huffington Post."
Pen.io Is An Easy Way To Share Your Drafts
Feb 10, 6:45PM
Imagine writing a blog post, this very one even, and wanting a friend's feedback. Usually, unless your friend had access to your CMS or you had a Google Sites setup, this would be hassle to do casually -- unless you sent them the text in Skype or iChat. Obviously I've done this before. Task.fm founder Anthony Feint has created Pen.io (and yes, it's an interesting choice of name) for this and sundry other situations, like when you want to share a recipe or don't want to give a freelancer access to your CMS backend (that's what she said) but need to collaboratively edit a draft. Similar to Wix.com, Jottit and Publ.ca, Pen.io allows you to publish, share and edit a page, without creating an account. 
SwipeGood Raises $500K From Michael Birch And Others To Allow You To Donate With Each Purchase
Feb 10, 6:40PM
Y Combinator-incubated startup SwipeGood, which allows you to donate to charity each time you buy, has raised $500,000 in new funding from Bebo co-founder Michael Birch, the recently launched Start Fund, Y Combinator, Ron Bouganim, MR Rangaswami (Sandhill Group), and Frederik Fleck (Richmond View Ventures). Once you enroll your credit/debit card with SwipeGood, every purchase you make gets rounded up to the nearest dollar. So for a $50.50 purchase of groceries, $0.50 will be given to charity. At the end of the month, SwipeGood will send your total donation amount to the charity or cause of your choice. 
Ramping Up: Mary Meeker's Latest Mobile Trend Slides
Feb 10, 6:20PM
Today, Kleiner Perkins partners Mary Meeker (the former Internet analyst-turned-venture-capitalist) and Matt Murphy are giving a presentation at Google's thinkmobile conference for its biggest 200 advertisers. The complete slideshow is above, and it goes through ten mobile trends Kleiner is following and investing in. Meeker's slideshows are always insightful, and she's been focusing on mobile the past few years. But in particular the first three slides are real eye-openers. The first one shows the acceleration of mobile device adoption from the iPod to the iPad. In the first three quarters after the introduction of the iPod, 236,000 units were shipped. When the iPhone came out, it hit 3.7 million units shipped in its third quarter, but then the iPad blew both of its predecessors out of the water with 14.8 million devices shipped.
Mobile: It's Not Too Late To Be Early
Feb 10, 6:00PM
Editor's Note: This guest post was written by Jason Spero, the head of mobile ads for the Americas at Google. Spero joined Google in May 2010 as part of the acquisition of AdMob where he was vice president and general manager of North America responsible for strategy and operations. Mobile is finally delivering on its promise. All the technology is in place and consumers are engaging in droves, on smartphones in particular. However, many businesses still aren't hearing the call. Most have not yet meaningfully engaged with mobile consumers and adapted their strategies to capitalize on the mobile opportunity. But, it's still not too late to be early to mobile. Here are five simple steps that businesses should take —today—to build the foundation of their mobile marketing and commerce strategy. 
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