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Items by Robin Wauters

TechCrunch

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  For Sale: Germany’s “TechCrunch”

  Posted: January 9th, 2009, 6:02am CET by Robin Wauters

  We’ve been getting quite a few tips about this, and German media outlets are picking up the story like crazy, so here goes: if you were ever in the market for a German blog, now would be a good time to put your money where your mouse is. Robert Basic, famous in German-speaking countries for his blog Basic Thinking, has put the site up for sale on eBay reportedly because he wants to start from scratch again.

  Basic Thinking is a technology blog which has actually been dubbed the ‘German TechCrunch’ by some; we’d be honored but we’re not sure since we haven’t been following it and our German is a little rusty. Basic is really straightforward about the incoming revenue of the blog on the auction listing: it made him about €37,000 gross from display and text link advertisements in 2008. He hasn’t been actively selling advertising on the site so he’s confident that it could bring in way more revenue, especially considering his status as the German ICT blog and that his Google PageRank could be brought back from 4 to the former 6 by simply removing the text link ads.

  The visitor numbers for Basic Thinking aren’t enormous, but considering the niche and the limited (German-speaking only) scope, they’re decent enough: last month the site reportedly received 85,000 unique visitors and served 254,000 page views. The total number for 2008 was just under 2.5 million unique visitors and 3.6 million page impressions. The embedded graph shows the site’s growth since it took off in 2005 (it was actually started back in 2003 but had been on hiatus for a while).

  

  So, what are you waiting for?

  Bidding closes in about six days, the current offer on the table is just over €20,000 (Basic was hoping for something between 10k and 100k so we’re curious to see where this will end).

  (Image on top courtesy of Bild)

  Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

  

  

  
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  @BreakingNewsOn: From Twitter Account To Public News Wire Service

  Posted: January 9th, 2009, 2:50am CET by Robin Wauters

  If you’re a news junkie and you’re on Twitter, there’s a good chance that you’re following @BreakingNewsOn, an account that often actually breaks news before any other media organization does, ranging from political news to natural disasters and other noteworthy events from across the globe.

  As one of the 16400 followers of the account, I caught an announcement last week about the impending launch of BNO News, an extension of the news service to a separate website and a Pledgie entry where people can donate in order to contribute to the launch. I was intrigued and got in touch with founder Michael van Poppel, who set up the account back in May 2007 when he first found out about Twitter and the potential of releasing short news announcements quickly to people opting into it.

  How Osama Bin Laden jumpstarted the service

  In September 2007, van Poppel got hold of an unpublished videotape of Osama bin Laden, which he consequently sold to Reuters. It was then that he realized that he was sitting on something potentially valuable, and started thinking about organizing and structuring the whole process around the Twitter account. Over the past few months, BreakingNewsOn grew into a service that provides 24/7 news updates from around the world, often before any mainstream media reports on the same events, and providing more context with relevant text messages and links about the topic right after posting the actual breaking news.

  

  Van Poppel says many news organizations claim to be leaders in breaking news but rarely live up to those claims because the information is often already “out there” for some time. He won’t go into detail about the specifics of his newsgathering operation, but says they use pretty much the same official sources as any news agency but with a much more efficient, unique processing system in combination with an extensive monitoring platform that digs up fresh news items almost as they happen. If you’re interested, read about how BreakingNewsOn beat a 911 call once in reporting a bus crash in the Bronx.

  Moving away from Twitter

  The reason BreakingNewsOn is moving away from Twitter in favor of a separate website with live updates from news events from across the globe, is as simple as it is obvious: the free service could never be monetized the way Twitter works right now. BNO News will have separate RSS feeds and e-mail alerts. It intends to also process user-submitted news items in true citizen journalism fashion and is thinking of adding some features especially designed to cater to professional journalists and raw news junkies.

  The team has every intention of keeping the service free to users, and is keen on keeping the Twitter account pumping out news updates the way it is now, although I expect them to tone it down a little if the site gets any traction.

  Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

  

  

  
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  Better World Books Had One Hell Of A Holiday Rush

  Posted: January 8th, 2009, 8:25pm CET by Robin Wauters

  Socially-conscious Better World Books, a for-profit online bookseller that shares its revenues with literacy initiatives worldwide, released some pretty impressive holiday sales figures recently which we thought were worth sharing.

  First, a little background about the company. It was founded back in 2002 by three friends from the University of Notre Dame who started selling textbooks online to earn some extra dough, and has now grown to a company with more than 200 employees. The store sells new titles, but also actively supports book drives and collects used books and textbooks through a network of over 1,600 college campuses and partnerships with nearly 1,000 libraries across the U.S.

  Better World doesn’t charge any shipping fees for shipments within the US (and only $3.97 worldwide), and every order gets shipped carbon neutral with offsets from Carbonfund.org. Unlike traditional for-profit companies, Better World Books adds a social component to everything it does as a commercial venture. So far, the company has converted more than 16.4 million donated books into $5 million in funding for literacy and education.

  It’s a remarkable company, and I’m really happy to see that they seem to be doing very well, and that they killed during the holiday period. Better World Books reports that its overall traffic increased 131% during the holiday rush, and that they saw a 500%+ increase in gift certificate sales over the previous holiday season. That translated into 194% revenue growth for the site in December 2008 (up until Christmas), compared to the year before.

  We asked for some more details, and got some absolute numbers for the holiday sales: December revenues grew to $2.1 million and revenue for this month is expected to top $4.5 million (apparently January is always the best month for BW thanks to textbook sales). The company says it’s on target for $31 million in revenues this fiscal year, which ends June 2009.

  If revenues in January actually ramp up to $4.5 million, that will match in just one month the amount they raised in venture capital from Good Capital in April 2008.

  Not bad for a bunch of do-gooders.

  Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

  

  

  
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  Microsoft Releases Tag, Its Second iPhone Application

  Posted: January 8th, 2009, 3:45pm CET by Robin Wauters

  At CES, Microsoft has introduced its second iPhone app after dipping its toe with the release of Seadragon Mobile last month. The name of the application is Microsoft Tag, and it enables users to instantly access mobile content, videos, music, contact information, maps, social networks, promotions, etc. simply by pointing the device’s camera to a custom tag.

  If this makes you think about the principle behind QR codes, you’re not the only one. Like QR codes, Microsoft Tags are unique two-dimensial codes that can be used to open URLs or multimedia files. The big difference is the tech behind it: Microsoft Tag is based on a whole new technology developed in-house by Microsoft Research called High Capacity Color Barcodes (HCCBs), and offers a significant twist.

  Microsoft Tags are smaller than QR codes and uses triangle shapes and colors to store data instead of square pixels. Actually, Microsoft Tags doesn’t actually store any information, except for a unique ID which can fetch more data stored on Microsoft servers. This allows way more information to be attached to tags than with QR codes.

  Microsoft Tags are available for the iPhone as well as Windows Mobile, J2ME, Blackberry, and Symbian S60 phones. The application can be accessed by visiting Gettag.mobi using your mobile phone browser; for the iPhone, search for ‘Tag Reader’ in the App Store.

  

  (Thanks to Neowin for the heads up, image above found on istartedsomething)

  CrunchBase Information Microsoft Information provided by CrunchBase

  CrunchBase Information iPhone Information provided by CrunchBase

  Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

  

  

  
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  Dutch Startup eFresh.com Raises $5.4 Million From Rabobank

  Posted: January 8th, 2009, 3:19pm CET by Robin Wauters

  The Netherlands-based internet startup eFresh.com has secured €4.25 million (or roughly $5.4 million) in funding from one of the largest banks in the country, Rabobank. The company, which operates a B2B portal for the perishable industry, had previously raised an undisclosed amount of capital from private investors.

  With the funding, Rabobank acquired a stake in the startup’s parent holding company, GET Holding, which was on the verge of filing for IPO recently but ultimately decided to hold off because of the economic downturn.

  eFresh.com bills itself as ‘eBay for the fresh produce industry’, offering information services and a live direct trading platform for buyers and sellers of anything ranging from fruit (see example), meat, fish to flowers, eggs and dairy products. The company uses a bank-escrow service that allows traders to handle financial transactions directly with each other in real-time, and doesn’t take any commission on deals but instead makes money by charging membership fees (€899 a year) and advertising.

  The company says it will use the extra capital to improve the usability of its online presence and grow on an international level following the same buy-and-build strategy we’ve seen eBay executing the past couple of years. eFresh.com has acquired 15 smaller companies and portals over the past years, and hopes to expand those operations to adequately compete against large trading portals like Alibaba and Global Sources (both strong in Asia).

  Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

  

  

  
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  Engine Yard Cuts 15% Of Workforce

  Posted: January 7th, 2009, 10:17pm CET by Robin Wauters

  The bad news for startups keeps on coming in. This time it’s RubyOnRails application hosting provider Engine Yard that has laid off 15% of its staff, as publicly reported on the company’s blog earlier this week. We’ve contacted co-founder Lance Walley and can confirm that 12 out of 82 people have been let go, across several departments.

  The TechCrunch Layoff Tracker has been updated accordingly.

  Engine Yard, which essentially delivers a platform to build, manage and host Rails applications, raised raised a $15 million Series B round of funding from new investors New Enterprise Associates and Amazon last July, with investor Benchmark Capital also participating. The round brought its total amount of funding to $18.5 million.

  Competitor Heroku also attracted substantial funding in 2008, but they have been spared from significant lay-off rounds so far, at least to our knowledge. Other alternatives to Engine Yard include Joyent and Rails Machine.

  Unsurprisingly, Lance Walley added that the lay-offs are part of a ’slight course change’ that had been in the works for several months already, and that Engine Yard is in perfect health. Also noted is the fact that Walley is no longer the CEO of the company, and that they’ve appointed John Dillon to assume leadership of the company in order to meet new profability (and other) goals.

  Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

  

  

  
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  Model Sues Google Over Snarky Blogger Remarks

  Posted: January 7th, 2009, 8:00pm CET by Robin Wauters

  Canadian model Liskula Cohen has sued Google for a number of snarky remarks that were made by a blogger using the company’s Blogger service. The NY Daily News reports that the former Vogue cover girl has been called ’skanky’ and ‘an old hag’ by an anonymous blogger on a website called Skanks in NYC (could be deemed NSFW).

  The defamation suit, filed in Manhattan, seeks a court order compelling Google and its Blogger service to identify the anonymous blogger. Google declined to discuss any specifics, only responding to the claim by saying they sympathize with victims of cyberbullying but “take great care to respect privacy concerns and will only provide information about a user in response to a subpoena or other court order”, so we’ll leave you with a quote from Cohen instead:

  “I’m tall, I’m blond, I’ve been modeling for many years, and people get jealous,” she said. “If I had to deal with everyone who is jealous, I wouldn’t have time to do anything else.”

  While some people are quick to dismiss that the model would have a case, and that she’s just looking for attention, I’m not so sure. It’s nearly impossible to identify bloggers who don’t reveal their real name without the help of the companies that maintain publishing platforms, and a line has to be drawn somewhere regarding what people can say anonymously just because they’re using the internet to say it.

  The attacks on the blog are rather personal and vicious, and they’re targetting Cohen almost exclusively. As Ars Technica points out, the model will need to demonstrate defamation twice: once to show that she has a sufficient case that the identity of the blogger should be unmasked, and then again for suing the blogger directly.

  Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

  

  

  
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  Sun Microsystems Acquires Q-layer To Expand Cloud Computing Offerings

  Posted: January 7th, 2009, 6:44pm CET by Robin Wauters

  Sun Microsystems is elevating its presence in the cloud with the acquisition of Belgium-based Q-layer, which is in the business of automation of cloud computing deployments. Q-layer will become part of Sun’s cloud computing unit. The official statement doesn't provide much more details, and the terms of the agreement remain undisclosed 'as the transaction is not material to Sun'. Q-layer's technology simplifies and automates the deployment and management of both public and private clouds and allows users to quickly provision and deploy applications, a key component in Sun's refocused strategy, according to the company.

  

  
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  UGO Entertainment Buys 1UP Gaming Network; EGM Bites Dust

  Posted: January 7th, 2009, 3:08pm CET by Robin Wauters

  Hearst Corporation unit UGO Entertainment has agreed to acquire 1UP.com, a property attracting a gamer audience along with its associated sites including GameVideos.com, MyCheats.com and GameTab.com. There had been rumors about a pending acquisition for a couple of weeks (more specifically, reported by Joystiq), but yesterday evening the company released the official news.

  The acquisition deal is structured as an asset purchase between UGO Entertainment, which itself was acquired by Hearst Corp back in July 2007 for a reported $100 million plus, and the Ziff Davis Games Group who owned the 1UP Network. Sadly, the acquisition also meant a number of lay-offs at 1UP, with the ‘1Up Yours,’ ‘1Up FM’ and ‘1Up Show’ podcasts being terminated.

  In addition, Ziff-Davis has made official the closure of gaming magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly. Its January issue will be its last after nearly 20 years of publication, so it’s going in the deadpool. The demise of print media continues.

  (Very cool image by Kotaku)

  Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

  

  

  
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  Artiklz Launches Public Beta Of Conversation Search Engine

  Posted: January 6th, 2009, 8:57pm CET by Robin Wauters

  Artiklz is debuting its conversation search engine to the public today, and it’s definitely worth taking a look. What the service does is aggregate comments from the more popular blogging and commenting platforms as well as a number of services including Digg, Reddit, FriendFeed, Delicious, etc. and make them available through a single search engine.

  This is very similar to what companies like Crunchies finalist BackType and also uberVU are all about, and I definitely see the need for this type of service: regardless of one’s interests or line of work, dedicated comment search engines make it easy for users to find out what the content and tone of conversations across social media really are. I like the fact that you no longer need to visit every web service that has comments separately in order to find out what’s being said, but that you can go to a single place, do a simple search and find out.

  Artiklz also helps center discussion about your blog posts in one location, enabling you to get notifications by e-mail, SMS, IM or a web interface, whenever a new comment is made about your writings on any given service. You can also add a badge to your blog that gives your readers the option to be notified when you post a new article, or when somebody leaves a comment on a given post, and you can even track a specific individual’s comments.

  Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

  

  

  
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  Clearspring Lays Off 20%, President And COO Jay Rappaport Leaving

  Posted: January 6th, 2009, 4:09pm CET by Robin Wauters

  Seems like widget distribution startup Clearspring is another victim of the economic meltdown forced to make some tough decisions. We heard rumors floating that the company laid off about 20% of its staff in early December, and we’ve now confirmed with Clearspring that several people have in fact been let go, although they’re not sharing the exact amount of firings. CEO Homan Radfar says:

  Late in Q4 last year, we decided to reduce our workforce. Even though we had a great year with tremendous growth, the economic uncertainties caused us to lay off colleagues. I am sad to part with them

  Worse, the company has to find a replacement for President and COO Jay Rappaport, who joined the company in April 2007 and brought a lot of experience in-house as the ex-President of Vonage and former COO of AOL. We’ve added Clearspring to our Layoff Tracker.

  There’s no doubt that Clearspring is being hit hard by the financial crisis, and since its business model is based primarily on online advertising its prospects are probably going to get worse before they get better.

  Don’t count out Clearspring just yet though. They might be trimming down for tough times ahead, but with total venture investment in the startup at $36 million, with $18 million raised in a series C last May, they may very well have enough cash to weather the storm and come out stronger on the other end.

  Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

  

  

  
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  Is AppLoop Fading Already?

  Posted: January 4th, 2009, 4:22pm CET by Robin Wauters

  When AppLoop launched its self-service platform for tracking and advertising on mobile applications last July, we were quite impressed. Leveraging the iPhone 3G’s native GPS capabilities, AppLoop’s geo-aware mobile ad network was able to tell when a consumer was close to a specified business address and serve up ads for that business accordingly.

  Last October, the startup came out with the App Generator, a nifty tool that turned any online publication with an RSS feed into a separate iPhone application.

  Now, we’re hearing rumors that the startup is in trouble, and they appear to hold some truth. For one, the company’s website has been down for the past two days. Worse, a quick glance on Twitter suggests that the service’s downtime is also causing iPhone apps using AppLoop libraries to crash.

  We would hate to see the young company fade away, so we’re hoping this is a technical glitch which is simply taking a lot of time to repair. But the two startup’s founders are eerily silent about the downtime on their blogs and Twitter accounts, so it might be idle hope.

  We’ve contacted AppLoop and will update this post accordingly as soon as we get some insight on what’s happening.

  Update: after an e-mail from co-founder Eric Kerr, we’re putting the company in the deadpool as they effectively had to shut the service down ‘for a variety of financial and legal based reasons’. Kerr claims users have been sent an e-mail several weeks ago and that some might not have received it. I’m not so sure, but I definitely think it’s bad form not to put a message on your website or blog about the demise of your company.

  (Hat tip to Philip Roy for the heads up)

  Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

  

  

  
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  Facebook Quietly Pulls Polls

  Posted: January 4th, 2009, 12:34pm CET by Robin Wauters

  We got a tip that Facebook Polls, the social networking service’s business tool that enabled anyone to create a paid poll targetting a pre-defined group of users, is no longer available. The link that used to redirect to the service is now effectively forwarded to the Facebook homepage, and you won’t find any reference of Facebook Polls anywhere on the company’s business or advertising pages. What happened?

  Update: Facebook has acknowledged putting Facebook Polls on hold following a technical migration last October which raised some questions internally about the priority for the product. They advise users to switch to one of the many polling applications available on the service.
  Statement:

  “The ability to create Facebook Polls is no longer available on the public site, though users may still receive Facebook Polls created internally by Facebook. Facebook is exploring options for making a polling product publicly available again in the future but has no definite plans to discuss at this point.”

  When Facebook Polls launched back in June 2007, we called it a dream product for brand marketers and market researchers. Users could create a poll and target users based gender, age, location or profile keyword. Facebook charged a variable fee based on how quickly you wanted results, and based on how many results you wanted and how much you were wiling to pay per result. Prices ranged from $.10 to $1.00 per data point, plus an initial $5 insertion fee, and the polls appeared in Facebook users’ news feed so more people could become aware of the service.

  

  Back then, Facebook had only 20+ million users on the social network - it has more than six times that amount today - and Polls seemed like a great way to monetize the appeal and engagement of Facebook’s user based on demographics. On the other hand, there was some criticism regarding the pricing and the fact that Facebook Polls delivered statistically insignificant results.

  Anyone care to take a wild guess why they decided to pull the service?

  (I have contacted Facebook PR and will update this post if and when I get word back.)

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  JournalSpace Drama: All Data Lost Without Backup, Company Deadpooled

  Posted: January 3rd, 2009, 12:29pm CET by Robin Wauters

  Blogging platform JournalSpace (which I’d never heard of to date) has ceased to be, following a wipe-out of the main database for which there was no back-up in place. According to the JournalSpace blog, the database was overwritten as a result of a malicious act from a disgruntled ex-employee.

  It was the guy handling the IT (and, yes, the same guy who I caught stealing from the company, and who did a slash-and-burn on some servers on his way out) who made the choice to rely on RAID as the only backup mechanism for the SQL server. He had set up automated backups for the HTTP server which contains the PHP code, but, inscrutibly, had no backup system in place for the SQL data. The ironic thing here is that one of his hobbies was telling everybody how smart he was.

  More information is available here.

  The company set up a Twitter account which it used for updates, and reading the messages in reverse chronological order is telling enough. If your blog was hosted on JournalSpace, you can visit this helpful blog post with instructions on how to save most of your content and comments using Google Cache.

  JournalSpace had apparently been around for 6 years, and will now be releasing its source code to the open source community, and possibly sell off the domain name and trademarks.

  By the way, when’s the last time you backed up all the data on your computer?

  (Via Slashdot)

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  EMC Acquires SourceLabs, And With It Open Source Documentation Project SWiK

  Posted: January 3rd, 2009, 12:01pm CET by Robin Wauters

  Looks like software giant EMC has acquired SourceLabs, provider of a set of tools and services used to support open source software like Linux, at least according to TechFlash.

  The company sells subscriptions for enterprise support, maintenance, and upgrades for open source software, including SASH, offers a proprietary Open Source Management System and is also behind the wiki website SWiK, a community project that documents open source software.

  The acquisition fee remains undisclosed, and like Matt Asay over at CNET, we’re not really sure what the reason behind EMC’s decision was. He also mentions that SourceLabs had been shopping collaboration project SWiK separately for a couple of weeks to no avail, so it’s highly unlikely EMC bought SourceLabs for the community site rather than the people, know-how and client list. It also seems EMC used its brand new subsidiary Decho, formed from two previous acquired companies Mozy and Pi Corp, for this acquisition.

  SourceLabs raised $7 million in venture funding in October 2006 from Madrona Venture Group, which led the round, Ignition Partners and Index Ventures.

  Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

  

  

  
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  Six Reasons Your Web Startup Will Fail (But Don’t Let Them Stop You).

  Posted: January 2nd, 2009, 8:23pm CET by Robin Wauters

  Any entrepreneur will tell you it’s quite a thrill to start and grow companies, foster ideas and turn them into products people want to use, start a community and see it thrive, change the world (even if just a bit, for a tiny group of people). Many entrepreneurs consider it to be their destiny, and often they will tell you that they wouldn’t trade it for anything, regardless of the eventual outcome of the startup’s objectives.

  Being an entrepreneur is also damn hard, for thousands of reasons and then some. I would like to point you to a testimony of that undeniable fact, penned by one of the founders of web startup MakeFive, whose Elevator Pitch video we recently highlighted. Eric Karjaluoto is his name, and his must-read blog post is titled ‘Why your web startup will fail‘. Required reading for aspiring entrepreneurs!

  Here’s the gist, summarized in 6 points:

  - You won’t have an audience
  - You’re going to run out of cash
  - You’ll get frustrated
  - The emotional rollercoaster will beat you
  - You’ll get excited about something else
  - But it won’t be because of the competition

  Of course, none of the challenges and obstacles cited in the post will ever stop a true entrepreneur from trying. This lifestyle chooses you, not the other way around.

  (Image via BizHack)

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  Google Wants You To Know About Its Hidden iPhone App Menu

  Posted: January 2nd, 2009, 11:43am CET by Robin Wauters

  Google put an easter egg in the menu of their iPhone application, but they hid it so well that no one stumbled upon it, so they simply decided to blog about it to reveal the gem.

  Venturebeat was first to report and has more screenshots.

  If you have the Google Mobile App installed on your iPhone, go to the Settings tab, scroll to the bottom and keep swiping upwards until a secret option dubbed ‘Bells and Whistles’ appears (this also works in the foreign language versions of the app, and it will stay there once you’ve found it).

  The hidden menu lets you change the theme color of the app and its default sounds to chicken or monkey noises. It also enables you to turn on a ‘Live Waveform’ which visualizes speech as a graph, and an effectively useful one that lets you opt to to open hyperlinks in the app itself.

  Now go tell all your friends that you found it first!

  Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

  

  

  
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  If You Are Really, Really Desperate For Cash, These Guys Will Give You $3k

  Posted: January 2nd, 2009, 11:15am CET by Robin Wauters

  Consulting firm Herman Blackbook is launching a new micro-fund today for application developers who want to build stuff on top of “Twitter, Boxee, AppNexus, Trulia, iPhone, and more” called the New Platforms Fund. The catch? They’ll invest only “$1-3,000″ (I hope that’s $1,000, not $1, but whatever) in exchange for equity and they are only investing in “up to 10 cutting edge ideas.”

  This capital is supposed to get entrepreneurs to an alpha stage, when they’ll go out and pitch for more money, from someone else.

  Update: VCwear is introducing the $100 fund; they will invest that amount in t-shirts for the dumbest Twitter app you can come up with.

  For the sake of comparison, the size of Kleiner Perkins’ iFund is $100 million, and it focuses only on applications for the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

  Let’s be honest. There is very little reason for an entrepreneur/developer to apply for the New Platforms Fund. Incubator micro-funds like Y Combinator, TechStars and Seedcamp don’t give you much in the way of capital ($15k-$20k), but at least it’s enough to live on for a few months while you work on your idea. And those funds have very deep connections in the venture capital world to get you your first round of capital after you’ve spent their initial funds. It’s not clear at all that this new fund can do any of that for you.

  If you’ve tried raising from the other guys, your friends, family and anyone else who’ll talk to you and no money is coming, I guess you could give the New Platforms Fund a try. Just don’t quit your day job. Application is here.

  Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

  

  

  
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  Angelsoft Gets An Upgrade, Opens Network To Venture Capitalists

  Posted: December 31st, 2008, 11:19am CET by Robin Wauters

  Angelsoft, a New York based company that develops a platform for connecting early-stage investors and entrepreneurs and managing investment deal flow, has released a significant update to its software and is finally opening up its network to VCs next to angel investors.

  When the company released version 3.0 last September, the upgrade was centered more about making it easier for early-stage investors to sift through entrepreneur applications, search and rate them, etc.

  The new version is called Angelsoft 3.4 and comes with 317 updates (release notes), most of them bug fixes, but also introduces a number of features including a nifty ‘Tripit’ style one that enables users to e-mail in deals to a default e-mail address. The company says that most key features have been added to make it easier for VCs to manage deal flow, but that there was also a lot of improvements for angel investors.

  Angelsoft was started in the fall of 2004 by David S. Rose, Chairman of the New York Angels, and Ryan Janssen. The company claims to currently cater to 442 angel groups and VCs, 14,852 investors, with 3,100 startup applications coming in a month. Angelsoft’s public stats show that 1,32% of the applicants ultimately get funded, but also that the activity on the network is definitely picking up.

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  Update Twitter, Doogie Howser M.D. Style

  Posted: December 31st, 2008, 10:33am CET by Robin Wauters

  I knew someone would eventually nail the perfect service for updating Twitter. That day has come, with the launch of Twoogie, where you can send and view tweets in true Doogie Howser, M.D. style on an IBM PS/2 screen.

  Just add your username behind the URL to view your Twitter stream the old school way (e.g. TechCrunch). Note that for some reason - could be intentional - it doesn’t always work straight away. To update, you’ll need to log in with your Twitter credentials, so that’s entirely up to you.

  Twoogie comes straight from Syndeomedia Labs, based in the Philippines and Australia.

  You can tell us how cool it is or how we write too much about Twitter related stuff in 3, 2, 1 …

  

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  AT&T’s YellowPages Paid $3.85 Million In Cash For YP.com

  Posted: December 30th, 2008, 6:06pm CET by Robin Wauters

  AT&T’s YellowPages subsidiary purchased the two-letter domain name YP.com (now redirects to yellowpages.com) last month from the company LiveDeal (formerly YP Corp.).

  A SEC filing has now revealed that YellowPages acquired the domain name for a cool $3,850,000 in cash payment. That’s a lot of money for an admittedly valuable domain name, especially during this economic downturn. It probably didn’t hurt that YP.com was actually operational and generating revenue for LiveDeal, but we should also note that this amount is roughly half of the publicly listed company’s current market cap.

  For the sake of comparison: AT&T (or rather BellSouth and SBC at the time) acquired YellowPages.com for something approaching $100 million dollars a couple of years ago. Its market capitalization, of course, exceeds $165 billion.

  Hat tip to George Kirikos for the tip.

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  F*MyLife Offers A Glimpse Of Others’ Screwed-Up Lives

  Posted: December 30th, 2008, 5:09pm CET by Robin Wauters

  If you enjoyed visiting DMFail, which surfaced Twitter messages intended as private messages on a public website but ultimately failed, you’re bound to get a kick out of this: F*** My Life is a service in beta where registered users are given a public platform to complain about just how screwed up their lives are and why.

  In true Web 2.0 style, other users can comment on the short revelations and indicate that they in fact agree about the fact his / her life is f*cked up, and/or if the submitters actually deserve it. Thanks to those groundbreaking features, you can filter down stories based on the number of people who agree or think it’s well deserved, and you can also get a top-down list of the most discussed or most favorited life stories.

  It all makes for very awkward reading (it reminds me of that creepy, now defunct Confession account on Twitter), although I’m sure there are people that will actually enjoy this.

  Update: there’s also What A Fail, an iteration of the popular French Vie De Merde, and F*MyLife seems to be heavily ‘inspired’ by it.

  There are currently only 100 stories on the website, but if you have anything to complain about in your life, eat your heart out (in max. 300 characters). Do remember to assign the correct category, so F*MyLife can keep making these graphs as an insight into what makes people miserable the most.

  

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• 

  TipsBase, A Place To Share Tips And Tricks About Anything

  Posted: December 30th, 2008, 11:35am CET by Robin Wauters

  TipsBase is a new social network centered around sharing tips and tricks about a wide variety of topics, counting on user-generated content to populate the community site with interesting tidbits on why and how to do (or not do) certain things. The team behind the website likened it to a ‘YouTube for tips’, but that’s quite the overstatement.

  TipsBase says it’s different from the crowded space of How To websites and other social networks where tips are shared via message boards and the likes, by providing a centralized platform where registered users can share short, practical advice about any topic ranging from business, computers and video games to fashion, pets, gambling and health. There’s also a social layer on top of it, where you can do classical social networking stuff like befriend people, subscribe to their tips, comment on articles, send direct messages, rate content, etc. This is similar to what Tipstrs is all about.

  The team is convinced that users will benefit from the fact that TipsBase covers so many categories, but I tend to think niche communities or websites dedicated to tips and tricks about a limited set of topics work better. There are better resources for finding tips and tricks about video games, for instance, and I’m not even going to consider looking for tips on health or personal finance on a general website like TipsBase.

  They’re also going to have a hell of a time moderating incoming tips (see second screenshot for example). Having your community flag spam and adult material is one thing, but I think the quality of the tips is what would make users come back for more, and there’s no way to assure that when all it takes for people to start sharing tips is providing their e-mail address and picking a password.

  

  

  CrunchBase Information TipsBase Information provided by CrunchBase

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  Meet Mar.Com, The Techmeme For Marketing And Communication That Isn’t

  Posted: December 29th, 2008, 5:52pm CET by Robin Wauters

  I just stumbled upon the freshly launched Mar.Com, dubbed a ‘Techmeme for Marketing and Communication’ by co-creator Giovanni Gallucci on Twitter. It’s essentially an aggregation and filtering service for news related to advertising, digital marketing, search engine optimization, etc. where users can also submit events and jobs related to those topics.

  First of all, I have to hand it to founders Gallucci, William Hurley and Mike Erwin: the (domain) name is awesome². That said, I fail to see the connection with Techmeme, as it has nothing to do with automatically aggregating news from a number of sources and having the best / most linked / most discussed article come out on top. Users can submit, discuss and rank stories related to all things marketing, so it’s more like a Digg for marketing and communication than anything else. In fact, I suspect they’re using Pligg CMS or a similar product to run the website although I’m not entirely certain.

  Update: Gallucci got back to my e-mail and explained why Mar.Com is still ‘kinda’ like Techmeme:

  While we are not totally automated we are taking hints from techmeme. A couple of the accounts on mar.com are “owned” by bots. They cull through RSS feeds for us and collect possible stories based upon our own internal algorithm. We then make a decision to promote the stories either to the site based upon the category the bot as recommended to us, promote the story to the site after changing the category or do nothing.

  I’m sure there are numerous websites which have similar objectives as Mar.Com (although I can’t think of any besides Sphinn), and I’m also sure they’re going to have a tough time forming a strong enough community that actively engages with the content to make Mar.Com a must-visit. That said, it might be worth checking out from time to time to see if you’re not missing out on any stories.

  

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  Can Music Production Be Crowdsourced? Minimum Noise Thinks So.

  Posted: December 29th, 2008, 3:48pm CET by Robin Wauters

  Copenhagen, Denmark-based startup Minimum Noise wants to take a crack at crowdsourcing music production, by connecting musicians around the world in an open marketplace where like-minded artists can get together to create music tracks.

  Basically, users can submit a project, describe what they’re looking for and what they’re prepared to pay for it. This can be anything from vocals to a bassline or the main instrumental riff, but the bottom line is that someone from the Minimum Noise community is supposed to run with the project and add a layer to whatever exists already. Typically, this would be something the project creator(s) or any of his musically gifted friends or family members are unable to accomplish without looking online for help. Project creators can accept submissions from other community members, pay him / her if they’re happy with the results and obtain the necessary material and rights of usage.

  This is rather similar to the way WeMix (co-founded by artist Ludacris and backing by angel funding), Bojam and Indomite function, but I’m not sure if it’ll work.

  There’s definitely merit in the idea of musicians collaborating on the net, but I doubt music as such can be crowdsourced at all. Isn’t creating music supposed to be a personal experience (or a group experience if there’s more than one person involved of course)? And even if it’s not, what exactly would drive musicians to look online for peers to complement or perfect their work? I could be dead wrong here, but I don’t see it happening, or at least not in the volumes required to build a business on top of it.

  What do you think?

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  Want To Be A Reality TV Star? RealityWanted Could Be Your Missing Link.

  Posted: December 29th, 2008, 12:42pm CET by Robin Wauters

  Why people even want to go on reality TV shows is beyond my understanding, but it could be just me. Heck, there’s even a social network centered around reality TV programs and its protagonists, so it is probably just me. RealityWanted is such an online community, and its focus lies in one important aspect of the whole thing: the casting.

  RealityWanted claims to have accumulated 100,000 members since its launch, and it’s dedicated to connect the aspiring reality TV stars (God knows the world needs them too) among them to producers of reality TV programs. Members can register for a free account, create a profile and post pictures to promote themselves to casting professionals. There’s news and video interviews on the site as well, but the casting element seems to be the essential reason of being for the website. It kinda works like an online job board (e.g. Crunchboard): casting directors can post ‘vacancies’, and RealityWanted members can apply for them online.

  Yes, it’s niche, but reality TV is also an enormous industry and I’m pretty sure RealityWanted fills a need. Somewhere. Honestly.

  The site was founded by Mark Yawitz, who apparently appeared on some reality television programs himself in the past, and Jason Oropallo. Yawitz started building RealityWanted as an information hub way back in 2000, but it was officially launched as a social network in 2004.

  What are you still waiting for? I hear they’re still casting for married women with an addiction or obsession (just about any will do).

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  Cuil Fail: Traffic Nearly Hits Rock Bottom

  Posted: December 27th, 2008, 4:18pm CET by Robin Wauters

  Remember the ill-fated Google-killer Cuil? Named ‘Cuill’ and very much in stealth mode for the first part of the year, they finally emerged end of July 2008 with a ‘massive’ search engine that would rival the most popular search engines of our time with an enormous index, an innovative interface and some nifty features.

  Rival, it never did. The launch of the search engine was nothing but a classic PR trainwreck, with much hype and little to show for. Cuil failed to deliver good enough results to drive anyone to change their search behavior, and quickly became the subject of backlash and criticism because of their poor performance and indexing methods that actually took websites down in the process. Last time we reported about Cuil, was when their VP of Products (and AltaVista founder) Louis Monier quietly resigned from the startup.

  With the end of the year approaching, I took a peek at how they’re doing traffic-wise out of sheer curiosity. After all, with no less than $33 million in funding and a founding management team consisting of ex-Google search experts, something had to give, right?

  Well, no. Cuil isn’t performing well any way you look at it, and I can only imagine how nervous the startup’s management team and investors must be by now. Based on the numbers and graphs we gather from Google Trends, Alexa, Compete and Quantcast, you could even say search engine traffic is nearing rock bottom. Apart from that, a Cuil search for ‘TechCrunch’ still displays a Gmail logo rather than our own.

  

  
   
   

  CrunchBase Information Cuil Information provided by CrunchBase

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  BookSprouts, A Social Network For Book Worms And Clubs

  Posted: December 27th, 2008, 1:01pm CET by Robin Wauters

  Reading books is usually a solitary experience, but it triggers social activity as well, as the ongoing success of real-life book clubs shows. BookSprouts is a fairly new online community dedicated to book readers who love discussing books over a nice cup of virtual coffee. The social network is designed to make it easy to start an online book club, discuss books with other individuals, organize meetings and write up reviews.

  First of all: the website looks and feels great. Signing up was quick and easy, and the lay-out of the website as well as the copy all make it very clear what to do after you’ve registered. There’s a powerful search behind the community layer so it’s very easy to add books you’ve read, or books you haven’t read yet but would like to. Creating and joining a book club on BookSprouts is done in a heartbeat, and you can look for book clubs by book (surprise!), subject, author, or geographic location. Based on the search results, the social network currently counts about 275 virtual book clubs, but some of them are invite-only.

  BookSprouts faces the same hurdle most online community websites do when they launch: the inevitable ‘chicken and egg’ problem. I added a couple of books I read to my virtual bookshelf, but none were being discussed in any book clubs, nor were there any reviews. That means there’s not much social about this particular network for me so far. I could start my own book club of course and recruit members from the site or my own friends, and start writing reviews like crazy, but we all know only a small percentage of users actually gets around to being an active creator on these types of services, so only time will tell if BookSprouts can turn enough visitors into online book club ‘leaders’.

  I also don’t see the business model behind BookSprouts. You have to dig very hard to find ads on the site and users don’t get charged for anything. What I see are affiliate links for buying books you’ve added to your profile on Amazon or AbeBooks (which recently became part of the Amazon family), but that seems rather pointless as I’m likely to already own books I’m declaring myself a fan of.

  BookSprouts will find itself competing with Shelfari (recently acquired by Amazon) and the AbeBooks-backed LibraryThing, both of which are social networks centered around books.

  

  (Found via MoMB)

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  TwitTangle Lets You Rate, Tag And Categorize Your Twitter Friends

  Posted: December 24th, 2008, 12:04pm CET by Robin Wauters

  Another day, another Twitter related application launches. This time around it’s TwitTangle, a service that pulls information about your followers from the Twitter API and enables you to put a layer on top by rating and tagging them, and also lets you categorize them in groups. Looks like something Scoble could use.

  Like most Twitter apps, TwitTangle requires you to enter your credentials in order to use the service, so that’s up to you. If you do, you’ll find that the look and feel closely resembles that of the Twitter web version, with some added functionality but without the ability to see replies or direct messages. You can filter tweets by period or by tag. Of course, you need to tag all your friends first, so that’s quite a drag if you follow lots of people. Once you’ve taken the time to rate your friends (from ‘Just friends’ to ‘I love them’), you can view a custom timeline that takes your ratings into consideration and shows the updates of your best rated friends first.

  Most useful is the Groups feature, which users have long been waiting for Twitter to implement themselves (for the record, they do offer this functionality for the Japanese version), but it’s not nearly enough to justify using TwitTangle daily, particularly because the basic features that make Twitter a good two-way communication channel are not in there. Also, there are no RSS feeds, nor a search function.

  Definitely needs some tweaking.

  

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