Saturday, September 15, 2007
AOL, Yahoo To Launch New Products At TechCrunch40
Just one week to go until TechCrunch40 conference. Forty new products will launch over two days, with a $50,000 cash prize going to the “best-in-show” product as selected by the panel of experts.
But the entrepreneurial spirit isn’t just alive and kicking in the startups. The big guys have some stuff to show, too. Yahoo and AOL will both launch new products next week at TechCrunch40. And it’s likely we’ll add one more “BigCo” product to the mix as well later this week. The Yahoo and AOL products are being launched outside of the core 40 new launches, and will not be eligible for the $50,000 prize. But they will launch it in front of the main crowd, and audience comments and questions will be part of the show.
More announcements coming this week. The conference is now virtually sold out - there are a handful of tickets remaining. Register here.
But the entrepreneurial spirit isn’t just alive and kicking in the startups. The big guys have some stuff to show, too. Yahoo and AOL will both launch new products next week at TechCrunch40. And it’s likely we’ll add one more “BigCo” product to the mix as well later this week. The Yahoo and AOL products are being launched outside of the core 40 new launches, and will not be eligible for the $50,000 prize. But they will launch it in front of the main crowd, and audience comments and questions will be part of the show.
More announcements coming this week. The conference is now virtually sold out - there are a handful of tickets remaining. Register here.
Labels: $, AOL, At, Crunch40 Tickets, Google, New, o Launch, Products, TechCrunch40, Yahoo
iPhone Interfaces For MovableType And TypePad Launched
SixApart have announced an iPhone interface for their popular hosted blogging solution TypePad.
The new interface is automatically presented when an iPhone or iPod Touch is detected and allows users to create and edit posts, manage comments, configure mobile settings for posting photos directly from an iPhone, and view a published blog, all from an iPhone friendly layout.
Proving what good corporate leadership can provide for (soon to be) open sourced tools, the interface has been ported to the MovableType platform and is available for download as a completely open source plugin.
Movable Type’s Byrne Reese claims that the release of the MT plugin gives bloggers another reason to buy an iPhone, but in the cut throat blogging CMS business it may well give users a greater incentive to switch back to MovableType.
The new interface is automatically presented when an iPhone or iPod Touch is detected and allows users to create and edit posts, manage comments, configure mobile settings for posting photos directly from an iPhone, and view a published blog, all from an iPhone friendly layout.
Proving what good corporate leadership can provide for (soon to be) open sourced tools, the interface has been ported to the MovableType platform and is available for download as a completely open source plugin.
Movable Type’s Byrne Reese claims that the release of the MT plugin gives bloggers another reason to buy an iPhone, but in the cut throat blogging CMS business it may well give users a greater incentive to switch back to MovableType.
Labels: $, cartridges. It has a USB Port and is compatible with Windows, Google, Heads, iPhone Interfaces, Launched, Movable, or, Type And TypePad
Listphile: Lists On Speed
Los Angeles based startup Listphile is aiming to bring list making into the Wiki and Mahalo space.
Listphile is a free collaborative list building tool that offers the openness of a wiki with the structure of a database. The company aims to create a vast and easy to use online platform that people will utilize for learning, working together, and socializing.
Lists can include Google Map Mashups, video and images, and users are able to create database pages for specific topics as well.
listphilepic.jpgExamples include the The Open Surf Atlas: an open atlas of surf spots on the planet, with video, images, maps and data specific to each spot, Earth Friendly Tips for the Home, Yoda Quotes (with video) and Oyster Varieties - a list of oyster types commonly eaten and cultivated, with photos.
To be honest, when I first saw the word “lists” I was initially skeptical as to what ListPhile might offer, but having spent some time on the site I was pleasantly surprised. It looks and feels like a Maholo style consumer play; the information available isn’t as thorough as Wikipedia but it’s feels more friendly. I’d think it would be an appealing offering to the non-geek set, although having said there is nothing stopping the site from appealing to everyone.
ListPhile has some experienced people behind it; Caterina Fake (Flickr) is on the advisory board and founder Steve de Brun has worked with a variety of startups and also worked with News Corp. A startup to watch.
Listphile is a free collaborative list building tool that offers the openness of a wiki with the structure of a database. The company aims to create a vast and easy to use online platform that people will utilize for learning, working together, and socializing.
Lists can include Google Map Mashups, video and images, and users are able to create database pages for specific topics as well.
listphilepic.jpgExamples include the The Open Surf Atlas: an open atlas of surf spots on the planet, with video, images, maps and data specific to each spot, Earth Friendly Tips for the Home, Yoda Quotes (with video) and Oyster Varieties - a list of oyster types commonly eaten and cultivated, with photos.
To be honest, when I first saw the word “lists” I was initially skeptical as to what ListPhile might offer, but having spent some time on the site I was pleasantly surprised. It looks and feels like a Maholo style consumer play; the information available isn’t as thorough as Wikipedia but it’s feels more friendly. I’d think it would be an appealing offering to the non-geek set, although having said there is nothing stopping the site from appealing to everyone.
ListPhile has some experienced people behind it; Caterina Fake (Flickr) is on the advisory board and founder Steve de Brun has worked with a variety of startups and also worked with News Corp. A startup to watch.
Labels: $, Combinator, Google, Google Reverses, Listphile: Lists, on, Speed
Hulu Makes First Acquisition; Chinese Video Startup To Form Backbone Of New Service
We haven’t heard much about Bejing-based startup Mojiti before this week. They popped up in the TechCrunch Forums in January and are notable because the founder, Eric Feng, was previously at Microsoft Research Asia. Nothing other than that, and they do not appear to have many users.
But they sure are in the spotlight now: a source with knowledge of the deal indicates that the $1 billion News Corp./NBC online video joint venture Hulu has acquired the company and is using its platform for the basis of the upcoming Hulu service.
Mojiti is a basic online video platform that also allows users to annotate videos at specific time points. The annotation feature is somewhat similar to another startup, click.tv, which is rumored to have been acquired by Cisco.
The deal may have originally leaked via an overheard airport conversation as the Mojiti execs flew back to Asia after meetings with Hulu in the U.S. Neither company has officially confirmed the deal. Rumored price is in the $10 million range.
It is surprising that Hulu would use a third party platform for their service rather than build it themselves from the ground up. They’ve already missed their promised Summer 2007 launch date, however, and probably think the acquisition will get them to market faster.
But they sure are in the spotlight now: a source with knowledge of the deal indicates that the $1 billion News Corp./NBC online video joint venture Hulu has acquired the company and is using its platform for the basis of the upcoming Hulu service.
Mojiti is a basic online video platform that also allows users to annotate videos at specific time points. The annotation feature is somewhat similar to another startup, click.tv, which is rumored to have been acquired by Cisco.
The deal may have originally leaked via an overheard airport conversation as the Mojiti execs flew back to Asia after meetings with Hulu in the U.S. Neither company has officially confirmed the deal. Rumored price is in the $10 million range.
It is surprising that Hulu would use a third party platform for their service rather than build it themselves from the ground up. They’ve already missed their promised Summer 2007 launch date, however, and probably think the acquisition will get them to market faster.
Labels: $, Backbone, Form, Gmail, Google, GPRS, Hulu Makes First Acquisition; Chinese Video, integrated handsfree speaker, New, Of, Service, Startup, To
TechCrunch40 Tickets To Sell Out; More News
Just five days until TechCrunch40 next week in San Francisco. As of right now we have 27 tickets remaining, which means it should sell out sometime tomorrow afternoon and registrations will be cut off. There will be approximately 900 people at the conference, which is about double what we had originally planned (and hoped for).
Forty companies are preparing to launch products (actually, 39, but more on that below) in front of the full audience and panel of experts, and will compete for the $50,000 prize. An additional hundred startups will be showing their products in the demo stations. On top of that, Yahoo and AOL will be launching products at the event, and we have keynote sessions with Marc Andreessen, David Filo, Chad Hurley, Michael Moritz and Mark Zuckerberg. Jason Calacanis has been coaching startups at Sequoia Capital over the last few days to perfect the demos.
As I said above, we actually only have 39 startup launches planned. The last spot on stage on the last day will go the audience choice from the demo pit companies. Each attendee will be given two tokens (one for each day) to give to the demo pit companies they like best. Whoever gets the most tokens gets a spot on stage and is fully eligible to win the $50,000 prize.
I am really looking forward to the event, and I am absolutely humbled by the outpouring of enthusiasm we are receiving from companies and attendees . I’ve never been associated with a production of this size - there are literally thousands of moving pieces and any number of things can go wrong. There will undoubtedly be a hiccup or two during the conference, but with any luck all of the planning and hard work will pay off, forty startups will get the launch event they deserve and another hundred will get to show their stuff to nearly 1,000 people.
See you Monday! If you are attending, look for additional logistical details and announcements on the TechCrunch40 blog.
Forty companies are preparing to launch products (actually, 39, but more on that below) in front of the full audience and panel of experts, and will compete for the $50,000 prize. An additional hundred startups will be showing their products in the demo stations. On top of that, Yahoo and AOL will be launching products at the event, and we have keynote sessions with Marc Andreessen, David Filo, Chad Hurley, Michael Moritz and Mark Zuckerberg. Jason Calacanis has been coaching startups at Sequoia Capital over the last few days to perfect the demos.
As I said above, we actually only have 39 startup launches planned. The last spot on stage on the last day will go the audience choice from the demo pit companies. Each attendee will be given two tokens (one for each day) to give to the demo pit companies they like best. Whoever gets the most tokens gets a spot on stage and is fully eligible to win the $50,000 prize.
I am really looking forward to the event, and I am absolutely humbled by the outpouring of enthusiasm we are receiving from companies and attendees . I’ve never been associated with a production of this size - there are literally thousands of moving pieces and any number of things can go wrong. There will undoubtedly be a hiccup or two during the conference, but with any luck all of the planning and hard work will pay off, forty startups will get the launch event they deserve and another hundred will get to show their stuff to nearly 1,000 people.
See you Monday! If you are attending, look for additional logistical details and announcements on the TechCrunch40 blog.
Labels: $, Crunch40 Tickets, Gmail, Google, inbuilt Dictaphone, Sell Out; More News, Tech, To
Lending Club Breaks $1 Million, Expanding
Lending Club, the Facebook exclusive person-to-person lending service has passed the $1 million mark in loans to Facebook users. It’s similar to other P2P lending sites Prosper, Zopa, and Kiva.
The milestone comes just short of 3 months since the the site hit the $100,000 mark, and 3 1/2 months since going live as an original Facebook Platform partner.
Lending Club will also announce today that it is expanding beyond Facebook and will now offer similar ways to connect borrowers and lenders through thousands of alumni associations and professional organizations.
The new site includes tools for building diversified loan portfolios composed of pieces of 20 to 30 individual loans, hosts a forum for financial experts to share their knowledge with the Lending Club community, and “Better Rates Together,” a blog community that features expert advice on P2P lending and personal finance.
Lending Club recently secured $10.26 million in Series A financing led by Canaan Partners and Norwest Venture Partners.
The milestone comes just short of 3 months since the the site hit the $100,000 mark, and 3 1/2 months since going live as an original Facebook Platform partner.
Lending Club will also announce today that it is expanding beyond Facebook and will now offer similar ways to connect borrowers and lenders through thousands of alumni associations and professional organizations.
The new site includes tools for building diversified loan portfolios composed of pieces of 20 to 30 individual loans, hosts a forum for financial experts to share their knowledge with the Lending Club community, and “Better Rates Together,” a blog community that features expert advice on P2P lending and personal finance.
Lending Club recently secured $10.26 million in Series A financing led by Canaan Partners and Norwest Venture Partners.
Labels: $, $1 Million, Breaks, Club, Expanding, Google, GPRS, Lending
Viacom And Social Project Launch Broad Decentralized Social Network Called Flux
It turns out the rumors of a Viacom investment and partnership with social network Tagworld were accurate. Viacom invested a reported $40 million in the company for a minority stake (Tagworld was previously funded by Draper Fisher Jurvetson) and the two companies began working on new social networking products. Tagworld’s parent company has been renamed Social Project.
Tomorrow morning they are launching the fruit of that partnership - an ambitious new disaggregated social network around Viacom’s MTV, Comedy Central and other brands and associated websites called Flux.
Tagworld/Social Project cofounder Evan Rifkin and Mika Salmi, the president of Global Digital Media for MTV, walked me through the product earlier this afternoon. A screen shot of the unlaunched service is below.
The new service takes technology developed by Tagworld and Viacom’s existing Flux brand and creates distinct social network properties for each of the brands (some are launching now, hundreds are launching throughout the rest of the year). Like Ning, users who sign up for any network (say, Comedy Central’s) can join other networks (like MTV’s) with a single click.
As users add additional communities to their profile, they bring their content and friends with them. Flux is simultaneously a single brand as well as hundreds of distinct, branded social networks.
Not Just About Viacom Brands
Flux is opening up to companies and brands outside of the Viacom family. Twenty non-Viacom sites have been quietly testing the service for some time. See, for example, Vinyl Pulse and 50Cent. Both have integrated social networks built by Tagworld. They’re not yet co-branded under the Flux service, but will be now that the service is officially launching. New third party sites will soon be able to apply to join the Flux network; in the future there an API and other tools will become available that will let anyone join.
As I said above, comparisons will inevitably be drawn to Ning and white label social networks (see our overview of various white label services here and here).
But Flux really is a network of networks. While it is most like Ning, the walls between the Flux networks are very porous - uses drag content (photos, videos, etc.) between sites, perhaps grabbing a video from the 50Cent site and presenting it on their profile at the MTV site. While each community has distinct branding, the individual users see groupings of brands that they enjoy under a single profile.
What Happens To Taworld?
The existing Tagworld site remains as is, although the company is turning off new registrations for now and focusing entirely on Flux.
Tomorrow morning they are launching the fruit of that partnership - an ambitious new disaggregated social network around Viacom’s MTV, Comedy Central and other brands and associated websites called Flux.
Tagworld/Social Project cofounder Evan Rifkin and Mika Salmi, the president of Global Digital Media for MTV, walked me through the product earlier this afternoon. A screen shot of the unlaunched service is below.
The new service takes technology developed by Tagworld and Viacom’s existing Flux brand and creates distinct social network properties for each of the brands (some are launching now, hundreds are launching throughout the rest of the year). Like Ning, users who sign up for any network (say, Comedy Central’s) can join other networks (like MTV’s) with a single click.
As users add additional communities to their profile, they bring their content and friends with them. Flux is simultaneously a single brand as well as hundreds of distinct, branded social networks.
Not Just About Viacom Brands
Flux is opening up to companies and brands outside of the Viacom family. Twenty non-Viacom sites have been quietly testing the service for some time. See, for example, Vinyl Pulse and 50Cent. Both have integrated social networks built by Tagworld. They’re not yet co-branded under the Flux service, but will be now that the service is officially launching. New third party sites will soon be able to apply to join the Flux network; in the future there an API and other tools will become available that will let anyone join.
As I said above, comparisons will inevitably be drawn to Ning and white label social networks (see our overview of various white label services here and here).
But Flux really is a network of networks. While it is most like Ning, the walls between the Flux networks are very porous - uses drag content (photos, videos, etc.) between sites, perhaps grabbing a video from the 50Cent site and presenting it on their profile at the MTV site. While each community has distinct branding, the individual users see groupings of brands that they enjoy under a single profile.
What Happens To Taworld?
The existing Tagworld site remains as is, although the company is turning off new registrations for now and focusing entirely on Flux.
Labels: $, Broad, Called, Decentralized, Flux, Google, Social Network, Viacom And Social Project Launch
Docstoc Comes Through On That Financing
I criticized Los Angeles based startup Docstoc in a post last month for pre-announcing a financing that hadn’t actually closed yet.
At the time of that post, where I suggested that they may be counting their chickens before they hatched, they said:
We are about to close another substantial round of financing from at least one, if not all, of the following investors 1) one of the co-founders of myspace 2) the angel investors in www.baidu.com and the head of mp3.com that lead the company to its 400M acquisition – at least one of these players will lead our next round, and all three parties may participate. Financing is expected to close by the end of the month.
Well, their gamble paid off. They raised a first round of financing from Scott Walchek (investor in Baidu), Brett Brewer (co-founder of MySpace parent Intermix Media) and Robin Richards, the former president of MP3.com. They won’t disclose the size of the financing to me, but they certainly closed on the investors they said they would.
The startup itself remains unlaunched for now, but I’ve seen a demo and its got potential. Like Scribd, Docstoc is a sort of YouTube for documents - users can upload just about any document type (MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Illustrator, and PDF) and display via a Flash interface on any website. But there are key differences, too. Our first post on the company is here.
At the time of that post, where I suggested that they may be counting their chickens before they hatched, they said:
We are about to close another substantial round of financing from at least one, if not all, of the following investors 1) one of the co-founders of myspace 2) the angel investors in www.baidu.com and the head of mp3.com that lead the company to its 400M acquisition – at least one of these players will lead our next round, and all three parties may participate. Financing is expected to close by the end of the month.
Well, their gamble paid off. They raised a first round of financing from Scott Walchek (investor in Baidu), Brett Brewer (co-founder of MySpace parent Intermix Media) and Robin Richards, the former president of MP3.com. They won’t disclose the size of the financing to me, but they certainly closed on the investors they said they would.
The startup itself remains unlaunched for now, but I’ve seen a demo and its got potential. Like Scribd, Docstoc is a sort of YouTube for documents - users can upload just about any document type (MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Illustrator, and PDF) and display via a Flash interface on any website. But there are key differences, too. Our first post on the company is here.
Labels: $, Church, Comes, Docstoc, fashion, Financing, Google, on, That, Through
Yahoo Invites Us Into Mash, Its New Social Network
A little more than two months after we first reported rumors about Yahoo’s new social network Mosh, the company has given us a preview of a social network with a slightly different name: Mash.
The service includes features common to Facebook, MySpace, and My Yahoo. You can load a set of modules onto your profile page and move them around drag-and-drop style. The modules include Flickr RSS, Ego Boost, Common Friends, MyMoshLog2, Blog Module (RSS 2.0), Asteroids, Astrology, PimpMyPet, Hover, Kaleidescope, Guestbook, and My Stuff.
The modules gallery also states that “in the coming months we’re going to open up our module development platform to 3rd party developers,” which suggests that Mash will be following in Facebook’s footsteps at least to some extent (it will be interesting to see whether there will be canvas-like pages, too).
Users are encouraged to edit each other’s pages. Each time we visit our profile page, we are seeing new modules that others have loaded for us. This capability certainly adds to the “mashing” aspect of the social network. It is also appears as though Yahoo intends for users to mash their information together from across the company’s various properties, perhaps making Mash the main hub for Yahoo users.
While profile pages appear to have a pretty consistent structural layout (like Facebook), users can customize the design of their pages by changing colors and inserting background images (like MySpace).
Mash also has something called Pulse, which is very similar to Facebook’s news feed. The Pulse page shows “updates from your friends” that are basically Twitter-like messages reporting all of your friends’ activity on Mash.
Unfortunately, it looks like Mash lacks a vital feature of Facebook: search. In the top right of every Mash page there is a search box for regular Yahoo search, but that appears to be it.
Yahoo is calling Mash the next generation of profiles and has plans to roll it out quietly. Mash users can invite their friends into the network, so we’ll be getting a section for Mash up on InviteShare shortly (Update: We have set up an InviteShare page for Mash here). When you invite a friend into Mash, you can create a profile for them that they can choose to adopt or not.
Mash appears to be Yahoo!’s way of saying adieu to its existing social network, Yahoo! 360, but no word yet on whether the company will actually be shutting down 360.
Mash’s blog can be found here.
Additional screen shots:
The service includes features common to Facebook, MySpace, and My Yahoo. You can load a set of modules onto your profile page and move them around drag-and-drop style. The modules include Flickr RSS, Ego Boost, Common Friends, MyMoshLog2, Blog Module (RSS 2.0), Asteroids, Astrology, PimpMyPet, Hover, Kaleidescope, Guestbook, and My Stuff.
The modules gallery also states that “in the coming months we’re going to open up our module development platform to 3rd party developers,” which suggests that Mash will be following in Facebook’s footsteps at least to some extent (it will be interesting to see whether there will be canvas-like pages, too).
Users are encouraged to edit each other’s pages. Each time we visit our profile page, we are seeing new modules that others have loaded for us. This capability certainly adds to the “mashing” aspect of the social network. It is also appears as though Yahoo intends for users to mash their information together from across the company’s various properties, perhaps making Mash the main hub for Yahoo users.
While profile pages appear to have a pretty consistent structural layout (like Facebook), users can customize the design of their pages by changing colors and inserting background images (like MySpace).
Mash also has something called Pulse, which is very similar to Facebook’s news feed. The Pulse page shows “updates from your friends” that are basically Twitter-like messages reporting all of your friends’ activity on Mash.
Unfortunately, it looks like Mash lacks a vital feature of Facebook: search. In the top right of every Mash page there is a search box for regular Yahoo search, but that appears to be it.
Yahoo is calling Mash the next generation of profiles and has plans to roll it out quietly. Mash users can invite their friends into the network, so we’ll be getting a section for Mash up on InviteShare shortly (Update: We have set up an InviteShare page for Mash here). When you invite a friend into Mash, you can create a profile for them that they can choose to adopt or not.
Mash appears to be Yahoo!’s way of saying adieu to its existing social network, Yahoo! 360, but no word yet on whether the company will actually be shutting down 360.
Mash’s blog can be found here.
Additional screen shots:
Labels: $, Gmail, Google, Its .New. Social .Network., Latest, Lithium, Yahoo .Invites. Us. Into. Mash
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