The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Klout Launches Brand Pages To Help Companies Engage Influencers
- Shasta Ventures, Founders Fund Put $4.5 Million In The Uber For Carwashes, Cherry
- Watch Out, Best Buy, Ikea Will Soon Sell Their Own HDTV System And It’s Awesome
- Review: Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4540 All-in-One Printer
- This $650 iPhone Case Can Withstand A .50 Caliber Shot In The Back
- Oakley Could Be Cooking Up Smart Glasses To Take On Google’s Project Glass
- Hulu Changes Deal For Advertisers: Now They Only Pay When Viewers Watch The Whole Ad
- Interview: Megadeth’s David Ellefson Talks Shop About Rock Shop (Video)
- Read It Later Rebrands As Free App, Pocket; Updates UI With Filters, Favorites And More
- Sun Co-founder’s WayIn Launches End-To-End Platform For Easy Twitter Polling
- Dog Patch Labs Says It’s Kicking It From Dublin. Can Incubators Solve Europe’s issues?
- European Carriers Aren’t Digging Nokia’s Lumia Line
- 12Society Grabs Michael Strahan, Nets Funding From Groupon Co-founders, BeachMint President
- Threadflip Gets $1.6M From Baseline, First Round, Dave Morin And Others To Virtualize The Clothing Swap
- It’s Just A Flesh Wound: Apple Stocks Down For Fifth Consecutive Day
- Survey: MP4 Is Top Format For Web and Mobile Videos
- SAY Media Has A New Way To Measure Online Ads: “Cost Per Exposure”
- Peter Thiel’s Breakout Labs Awards $350K Each To Six Ambitious Biotech Startups
- Shared Online Paywall Service Piano Media Secures 2 Million Euros From 3TS
- Menswear Startup American Giant Gets Into The T-Shirt Business
| Klout Launches Brand Pages To Help Companies Engage Influencers Posted: 17 Apr 2012 09:00 AM PDT  Klout, the startup that measures influence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Google+ and other social apps, is launching a new feature for companies today to help brands engage with influencers. Called Brand Squads, these dedicated profile pages allow companies to have a centralized place where they can engage with influencers. For background, Klout evaluates users’ behavior with complex ranking algorithms and semantic analysis of content to measure the influence of individuals on social networks. The company topped 10 billion API calls in December, which is up from 100 million API calls in January, 2011. The company has more than 4,000 API partners, up from around 100 in early 2010. And it has indexed north of 100 million public profiles. Klout also just raised around $30 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins and others, with partner Chi-Hua Chien joining the startup’s board. As Klout’s David Temple explains, Brand Squads “are Klout's way of giving influencers a place to be recognized and have a direct impact on the brands they care about most.” Previously, brands had more simple pages with just their Klout Score. Brand Squads is a different twist on brand pages, where top influencers for brands have a chance to be recognized and have an impact on the brand. With these dedicated pages for brands, Klout users can see a dynamic list of top influencers for each brand, watch conversations flow across social media, monitor information about a brand’s recent developments, and earn access to special Perks. Perks are exclusive offers or experiences, given as a result of your Klout score. Klout is launching Brand Squads with Red Bull as a launch partner. So if you take a look at the Red Bll ‘brand squad,’ you’ll see that Red Bull has offered Perks that will roll out to their top influencers over the next few weeks. The very top influencers will get some merchandise or a trip to the X-Games.
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| Shasta Ventures, Founders Fund Put $4.5 Million In The Uber For Carwashes, Cherry Posted: 17 Apr 2012 08:49 AM PDT  Cherry, a recently launched startup that brings on-demand carwashes to you and your car, has raised $4.5 million in new funding from Shasta Ventures, Founders Fund, Shervin Pishevar and Bill Lee. Shasta managing partner Tod Francis will join Cherry’s Board. The startup previously raised $750,000 in seed funding from a number of ex-PayPal employees including Yammer CEO David Sacks, PayPal founder Max Levchin and Square COO Keith Rabois. In addition to the funding news, Cherry is also expanding to include their service in a total of 10 cities in the Bay Area, and releasing a new iPhone app. Similar to Airbnb, Uber, and GetAround, Cherry is a business that wants to make our lives in the real world better using data, location and mobile technologies. Via either the web or a native iOS app (Android will be released in a month), users can specify the location of their car on a street (as well as what type of car, color and license plate number) in a parking lot, or another public area. Once you check in with your car's location on Cherry, the service’s technology immediately finds and dispatches a carwash professional to wash your car right where you left it, and you don't even need to be there. Cherry charges $29 for each carwash, which includes cleaning of the car’s exterior and an air freshener. Cherry auto-charges customers' cards after each wash so they don't need to meet the washer to pay. Customers rate their wash, which Cherry uses as a customer’s tip and pays washers a bonus for five-star washes. The $29 also includes an interior cleaning as well. Car owners either leave their doors unlocked or they come down to unlock when the washer arrives (Cherry will send owners a text message). The washer will lock the car up when they’re done. In terms of insurance, every customer is covered under Cherry's guarantee, which covers any and all accidental damages to a customer’s car. Cherry’s co-founder Travis VanderZanden (a former Yammer exec) and fellow founder Art Henry personally meet with, vet, train and supply equipment for every washer hired to wash for Cherry. With the new version of the iOS app, Cherry implemented a UI redesign, added the ability to cancel a job without penalty, a view into a user’s Account Balance and other features. The company says a good chunk of usage so far has been for companies using Cherry as a perk for employees, or as “random acts of car washing” to friends and colleagues, etc. Launched in San Francisco originally, Cherry is now available in Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Redwood City, Cupertino, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Los Altos and San Jose. The new funding will be used to expand to additional cities outside of San Francisco. As I mentioned in my initial review of the service, Cherry solves the whole laziness problem when it comes to getting a car wash. While I’m not a huge fan of leaving my car unlocked, I would definitely try the service if it was available in my area.
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| Watch Out, Best Buy, Ikea Will Soon Sell Their Own HDTV System And It’s Awesome Posted: 17 Apr 2012 08:30 AM PDT  Ikea is entering a brave new world: home entertainment systems. The company unveiled its UPPLEVA line today with a smart YouTube ad (embedded after the jump). The video spot quickly explains that the UPPLEVA line is the savior to living rooms everywhere with hidden cable tracks, integrated wireless components and a customizable cabinet design. Argue all you want, but a HDTV is a glorified monitor. It should not be the primary point of focus when designing a home theater system. The new UPPLEVA line completely disrupts the big box store’s HDTV buying process with a high-dose injection of Ikea genius. Ikea has yet to announce the nitty-gritty details around the UPPLEVA line including the price. The line will apparently hit key stores in Stockholm, Milan, Paris, Gdansk, and Berlin in June 2012. Come autumn it will arrive at additional stores in Sweden, Italy, France, Poland, Denmark, Spain, Norway, and Portugal with a more broad launch following in 2013. The YouTube teaser lays out some basic spec concerning the HDTV. It seems up to the task with a 1080p LED LCD screen, 400Hz response time, and some sort of smart TV functionality — all good stuff. But the HDTV really doesn’t matter. Even though it has the specs of a high-end screen, Ikea could have employed a mid-range model and still made the same magic. Ikea understands that everything needs to work together. This new product line from the Swedish retailer exemplifies the notion of an all-in-one system. Sure, this probably doesn’t appeal to audio heads or A/V geeks, but it brings a beautiful system that works to the masses. Like with everything else Ikea sells, the UPPLEVA system is completely customizable with a range of TV sizes and cabinet designs. Buyers probably still have to piece them together using those dumb keys, though. HDTV development and innovation has slowed over the last few years. Buyers are no longer shopping on specs as there is little visible difference between the high and low-end flatscreens. That’s where Ikea, and perhaps Apple, can step in and offer more value alongside the pretty picture.
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| Review: Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4540 All-in-One Printer Posted: 17 Apr 2012 07:49 AM PDT  We’ve covered quite a bit of the Epson line and usually found the printers to be solid, respectable, and inexpensive. This latest addition to the WorkForce family, the WP-4540 is arguably all of those with a few caveats. This is a workhorse printer, designed solely to pump out as much paper as possible in an office setting. It’s quite large and heavy, and adding on the extra paper drawer makes it nearly a foot high. It weighs in at 36 lbs, making it cousin to some more compact laser printers. It can hold 580 sheets and prints duplex, which is at once a potential cost and time savings as your employees use less paper and have to fill the thing up less frequently. Because this is an multifunction unit, it includes a 30-sheet scanning hopper and can send faxes and scan to memory sticks. You’re going to see about five sheets per minute out of this thing and print quality was more than acceptable for an inkjet. Text printing was solid with no artifacts or banding and the photos we printed, while a bit light, we acceptable on glossy photo paper. The average photo took about a minute to print. One absolutely excellent feature is built-in AirPrint and Google Cloud Print. AirPrint alone is worth the price of admission on this unit and is a real timesaver. Luckily, AirPrint saves the day here because its presence enables me to overlook a number of potentially fatal flaws this printer has. First, there is no card reader built-in, so photographers should probably steer clear. It also doesn’t support PictBridge or printing from a thumb drive, omissions that push this firmly into the back-office category of printer. If you’re looking for a family/small office printer, I’d recommend something from Canon or another Epson MFP. This is not the printer you’re looking for. That said, at $299 this printer is cheap enough to be dangerous and thanks to relatively inexpensive ink – you’re paying about 2 cents per page – you’re not going to break the bank maintaining this unit. This printer doesn’t want the limelight. Stick it in a back room somewhere and tell people to print their internal documents to it. If you need something personal with more photo features, you’re going to come away disappointed. However, as a maintenance-free printer that will do its work quickly and well, you probably can’t go wrong.
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| This $650 iPhone Case Can Withstand A .50 Caliber Shot In The Back Posted: 17 Apr 2012 07:40 AM PDT  The iPhone is a notoriously fragile device. That’s where cases come in. However, this case, by a Japanese firm called Marudai, might be the toughest (and most impractical) case ever made. The massive backside is made of a combination of steel and aluminum, which is apparently tough enough to save an iPhone from a .50 caliber bullet. That is, of course, if the round hits the backside ’cause the front is as exposed as a naked iPhone on the subway. Marudai is currently taking orders for the massive housing. They’ll even ship an empty bullet for more lulz with the buddies. But the case is a bit impractical even if there is a hole for the iPhone’s camera. Look to G-Form for much more pocket-friendly and affordable iPhone protective casing. They might not be able to take a bullet for the owner but the casing can at least survive a fall from the edge of space.
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| Oakley Could Be Cooking Up Smart Glasses To Take On Google’s Project Glass Posted: 17 Apr 2012 07:25 AM PDT  Back when rumors of Google's fabled augmented-reality glasses began picking up steam, one of the most frequently repeated bits was that they bore a striking resemblance to (rather old) Oakley's Thump mp3-friendly sunglasses. The concept that Google eventually revealed looked nothing like them, but it turns out Oakley may eventually throw their hat into the smart eyewear ring. In a brief interview with Bloomberg, Oakley CEO Colin Baden revealed that the company has been working on a way to project information directly onto lenses since 1997. Once perfected, the technology would allow the company to create a rival to Google’s Project Glass Baden neither confirmed nor denied that Oakley would release a pair of smart glasses, though he seemed to have quite a few thoughts on the subject. He mentioned that the glasses should be able to work as a self-contained unit as well as connect wirelessly to a smartphone via Bluetooth. Nailing down the means of navigation could be critical, and Baden suggested that the display could be controlled by voice commands. Exactly what kind of information that the glasses will be able to display is another story entirely — Bloomberg reports that Oakley could target athletes with the heads-up technology they have in development, though their smart glasses would probably have to aim for a much broader audience if they ever emerge as a real product. I'll admit, the move seems like a strange one coming from a company like Oakley — they know how to make a handsome pair of glasses, but their previous efforts at fusing eyewear and technology haven't quite made the splash they were hoping for. Putting the underwhelming Thumps aside for a moment, Oakley also introduced a peculiar line of Bluetooth-capable sunglasses a few years back, which I imagine most of us have never seen in the real world. They certainly seem to be taking this new concept seriously though — a bit of poking around reveals that Oakley filed a patent for a "wearable high resolution audio visual interface" last September.
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| Hulu Changes Deal For Advertisers: Now They Only Pay When Viewers Watch The Whole Ad Posted: 17 Apr 2012 07:04 AM PDT  This morning, at the Ad Age Digital Conference in NYC, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar announced a significant change in how the media company will charge its advertisers. Going forward, advertisers will only be charged based on a 100% completion rate. In other words, if viewers don’t watch the whole ad, it doesn’t count. The change will be effective in both the free level of service and the subscription offering, Hulu Plus. The new feature had already been in beta testing with companies including General Mills, Zenith Media, and Horizon Media, all of whom, predictably, touted the move a big step in the right direction. AdAge cites Hulu’s current ad completion rate at 96% – a lot higher than the average of 81% for long-form content and 59% for short-form content. They also note that the change could bring increased rates from competition for the fewer spots available going forward. According to Hulu SVP of Advertising, JP Colaco, the 100% completion rate for advertisers is just one of several ways the company has been trying to work closely with the ad community. Writing for the official Hulu blog, Colaco also cited older ad products like the Hulu Ad Selector launched in 2007, which allows viewers to choose among multiple ads to select the one most relevant to them. More recently, the company introduced Hulu Ad Swap, which allows viewers to substitute out the ad they are watching for one that they feel is more relevant to them. Hulu Ad Swap now has been used over 9 million times. Hulu also announced today that the service has now passed over 2 million paid subscribers in Q1 of this year, which Colaco says is faster than any other video subscription service, online or off, in the U.S. According to metrics from comScore, Hulu now has around 38 million visitors a month, and revenue of $420 million in 2011, up 60% from $263 million in 2010. For comparison’s sake, as of the beginning of this year, Netflix was doing nearly twice as much revenue in a quarter as Hulu did in a year. Although Hulu owners were shopping the service around last summer, the company has been moving forward, most recently with the introduction of original content. The service now offers series like the political comedy “Battleground,” a reality show from documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock “A Day in the Life,” and later this summer, “Up to Speed,” a travel series from “Dazed and Confused” and “Slacker” director Richard Linklater will arrive. In January, the company said it would invest $500 million in content for 2012.
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| Interview: Megadeth’s David Ellefson Talks Shop About Rock Shop (Video) Posted: 17 Apr 2012 06:56 AM PDT  David Ellefson Rock Shop is a solid and simple guitar/bass amp-modeling app that runs on iOS. It is made by PocketLabWorks and works in conjunction with the company’s iRiff Port cable/interface. In case you hadn’t guessed by the name of the app, special consultation was provided by David Ellefson (bass player and founding member of Megadeth) in order to achieve the sound of his bass and guitar rigs. How does it sound? The tones, while specific to a few amps and cabinets, are quite excellent and resonant. The settings are based off Mr. Ellefson’s amp setup which provides a gritty bass tone, full of attack. I liked it. (You can hear David playing through it at the PocketLabWorks website). I had a few questions about how it was developed so rather than take my usual Paneldome approach, this time I was able to track down David for a Skype call and get some info from him directly. He was kind enough to take the time to talk with me. A price tag of $9.99 might seem a bit steep to some. I might have thought that myself a year ago, but since that time, $9 or $10 apps have ceased to be as much of a hurdle for me as they used to be. That’s one iTunes album (if you’re lucky). No big deal. I would say this is a fan’s app and I would likely pick it up for $9.99 myself because I am a fan. A large part of what you are purchasing are the tones and David’s main preset. Plus the app easily integrates David’s existing catalog of “how to” YouTube videos directly from within. However the app does have other valuable tools like iTunes play along, effects processing and the awesomely named “slow downer” (which lets you slow down tracks for practice without changing pitch…a must-have for learning thrash and speed metal these days). I think these could push some non-fans over the edge to purchase it too. Beyond the workings of the app itself, what struck me as interesting is what it represents in terms of marketing evolution. I had many a Megadeth cassette back in the day — I’m old enough for that. And Megadeth has been around for a long time…almost 30 years. They helped invent and define the Thrash Metal music genre. At first glance a sentence like that might make these guys sound old, but on the contrary — helping to develop an app like this is a strikingly contemporary action. I think it shows how connected David actually is to the evolving mechanisms of the music biz and that at least some members of the group are evolving as business-people and marketers by figuring out new ways to get the sounds they have created to the fans of their music.
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| Read It Later Rebrands As Free App, Pocket; Updates UI With Filters, Favorites And More Posted: 17 Apr 2012 06:53 AM PDT  Read It Later, an app that allows you to save articles and other content on the web to "read them later, is debuting a new version of its service and rebranding as “Pocket.” Founded in August 2007 by Nathan Weiner, Pocket has a mission that similar to Dropbox's: it wants to give you access to that content on any of your devices, be it a phone, tablet, television, or computer, without having to think about where you saved what. When you discover an interesting article, video or web page, but don't have time to view it you can save the URL to Pocket, and the list of content will be visible on any device. While Read It Later was previously a paid app, with today’s relaunch, Pocket’s Android, iOS and Kindle Fire apps have been set free. Not only does Pocket allow you to save content from the web, but the service also lets you mark content from over 300 apps–including Flipboard, Twitter, Pulse, and Zite. With the new version of Pocket, users will see a new, cleaner UI, as well as filters for video, image and text content. Pocket has also added new organizational tools for content, so users can favorite content, tag content with categories and keywords and more. Over the past five years, Pocket users have saved over 200 million items. Weiner adds that nearly five items every second are saved to Pocket from the web and apps. Around 33 percent of saved items come from 3rd party apps including Twitter, Zite, Flipboard and Pulse and 50 percent of items saved via Pocket are viewed on mobile screens (up from 34 percent in January). And 40 percent of items saved are not articles; popular content includes videos, images, things to buy, travel tips and recipes. Pocket says that web consumption peaks in the early morning and declines through the day, as consumers dig through their inboxes and find what they want to view later. iPad use peaks at night, as users view saved content in the pre-bedtime hours. Mobile consumption maps to commuting times, as users increasingly view content in transit. YouTube is the apps' most popular source of content. A year ago, Pocket had 2.5 million users; now it has 4.5 million. Pocket isn’t the only application that is trying to play in the “read it later” space. The app faces competition from Readability and Instapaper. More recently, there has been debate over some of the copyright issues that these services could face from publishers. Pocket has raised $2.5 million in funding from Foundation Capital, Baseline Ventures, Google Ventures, Founder Collective, and several angel investors.
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| Sun Co-founder’s WayIn Launches End-To-End Platform For Easy Twitter Polling Posted: 17 Apr 2012 06:37 AM PDT  In late 2010, Sun Microsystems Co-founder Scott McNealy and finance veteran Scott Johnston, launched WayIn, a mobile Q&A and polling service designed to let individuals and brands quickly create and respond to polls on anything their hearts desire. Thanks to the managerial clout behind it, the Silicon Valley-based startup has gone on to raise $20 million in venture funding. Now WayIn is extending its functionality with a new service called Twitpolls, which enables users and brands to engage with (and gather) realtime feedback from their Twitter followers. While there are plenty of websites and apps that allow content producers, brands, or individuals to take the pulse of their readers and customers (like Gopollgo, Quipol, Poll Authority, Poll Everywhere, Precision Polling, and CMSes like WordPress have their own polling functionality, thanks to startups like PollDaddy, for example), few have been able to build that much-coveted end-to-end platform that enables simple, direct polling inside the Twitter platform. And that’s how WayIn believes that TwitPolls can differentiate — and succeed where others have come up short. You don’t have to use a another website or app, meaning that users don’t have to leave the comfort of their tweet streams to respond to polls, an experience that can be a deal killer on a mobile device. As to how it collects its poll data, TwitPolls uses Twitter’s public APIs, and WayIn CEO Tom Jessiman tells us that Twitter is very much aware of TwitPolls and is helping the team find the best ways to engage with its platform. Naturally, this raises the question of why Twitter doesn’t build its own proprietary polling app, and whether the team sees its host as a potential threat down the road. But, as has been the case over the past few years, both Twitter and Facebook have focused on building platforms, allowing third-parties to build the applications and tools that best extend its service. This basically has allowed them to keep watch over the flock, acquiring or acqui-hiring the teams and apps that prove most successful — or would be best suited by integration. While Jessiman doesn’t see Twitter building its own app as a real, near-term threat — or TwitPolls as an acquisition target (yet) — Twitter yesterday acquired stealth startup Hotspot.io, to beef up analytics tools for its advertising and publishing partners. As we see ads infiltrate our tweet streams, some look back fondly on the time when the company didn’t have a business model. Yet, as the company continues to focus on ads as its main source of revenue, it’s looking to provide brands and publishers (advertisers) with more advanced targeting and segmentation tools. Advertisers want to optimize their branded content, and, in turn, they want to know how effective their campaigns are at reaching their intended audience, and whether or not they result in conversions. TwitPolls doesn’t fit in neatly to Twitter’s advertising strategy, but there’s definitely overlap. Twitter is also increasingly being used by brands as a form of social CRM — for sentiment monitoring and realtime customer interaction. Brands can easily ask their followers how they like a new feature, for example, and see the results in realtime. If they find the response is 90 percent negative, probably time for some iteration, and they can react immediately. What’s more, when it comes to live events, Twitter reigns, especially if you want to see that stream of consciousness from those outside your social network — why Twitter beats Facebook in this regard. TwitPolls can potentially make enjoying live events even better, because, instead of having to leave another app or website open while watching a sporting event, users can just look for the TwitPolls link in their tweet stream and reply directly. Responding to those hashtags counts as a vote, with TwitPolls utilizing Twitter’s APIs to wade through all the hashtag noise, funneling it into signal by directly linking responses to their original questions. Obviously, for TwitPolls to really take off and offer significant value to everyday users, it’s essential that it encourage big-name brands and organizations to begin using its platform. If TwitPolls links can become regular citizens of your tweet stream, the more recognizable the name becomes as it starts to sound familiar to users (like TwitPic), and engagement increases as a result. The TwitPolls team tells us that, within 48 hours of launch, brands like the NFL, PGA, WebMd, UnderArmour, EMC, the Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, Washington Redskins, Texas Christian University, and Liferay had begun using the platform to communicate with their followers. In this regard, the TwitPolls team fancies its service as an enterprise product, designed for companies. Thus, while the platform is initially free for all to use, it’s employing a freemium model that offers a set of advanced features for a fee. In the next few months, it will begin offering leaderboards, games, and customized charts and graphs, making these features available for companies willing to pay a premium. Considering that WayIn already exists as a product that brands can use to increase social engagement in standalone form, or by embedding into iterations on other websites, mobile apps, and Facebook pages — and has over 65,000 developers already in its fold — moving to Twitter is a natural evolution for the service. Twitter holds the most potential for the service, as it can become a smart B2B and consumer play, allowing anyone with more than a handful of followers to tap into the pulse of their network. There’s a good chance that TwitPolls can succeed where other Twitter-based polling systems have fallen short, but time will tell. What do you think? For more on TwitPolls, check it out at home here, or find WayIn here.
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| Dog Patch Labs Says It’s Kicking It From Dublin. Can Incubators Solve Europe’s issues? Posted: 17 Apr 2012 06:32 AM PDT  Dogpatch Labs, the incubator backed by Polaris Ventures, is perhaps most famous for helping out startups like Instagram, TurntableFM, Mixel, FancyHands and Formspring in their early days, out of offices in the Bay Area, NYC or Cambridge. It’s definitely had a higher profile in the U.S. than in Europe where it launched a Dublin-based offshoot 6 months ago. However, that move appears to be paying dividends, with DPL saying it has seen six investments of $1M or more already. These include funding rounds for Profitero, the pricing intelligence for retailers, which announced a $1M investment by Irish VC Delta Partners. And in January Biz Stone, Huddle's Andy McLoughlin and 500 Startups put another $1M into Intercom.io a CRM tool for web businesses that features Google Analytics-like integration that tracks customer interactions. Dog Patch isn’t just incubating startups. Nineteen-year-old hacker-turned coding evangelist James Whelton has based himself out of the Dublin office, where his Coder Dojo project has done workshops for coders as young as 4 everywhere from London to Tokyo. Other startups out of the space include travel startup Connectedtrips, BalconyTV, and Logentries. Noel Ruane, head of Dog Patch's operations in Europe says “the numbers do the talking. I'm confident this is just the start for Dog Patch Europe". It’s part of a wider trend. Incubators are rising once more in Europe, where startup teams find comfort in the close proximity of an incubator, in contrast to the spread out and geographically fragmented nature of the over-all European scene. Recently we saw Springboard in the UK co-locate with Seedcamp (more of an accelerator programme) in Google’s new Campus London facility, the first of its type in the world. And Innovation Warehouse also houses its startups in a facility backed by the City of London, nearby. But incubators aren’t for everyone and they have sometimes been criticised for locking startups into a model that isn’t built for longer term growth or follow-on investment. I guess Instagram may help to balance that perception in some people’s eyes, but we’re still waiting for something that big to come out of a European incubator.
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| European Carriers Aren’t Digging Nokia’s Lumia Line Posted: 17 Apr 2012 06:04 AM PDT  Nokia hasn’t had the best year. Of course, the launch of the Lumia line has been refreshing, as Nokia’s much-anticipated Windows Powered offerings are finally out in the world, trying to woo owners like neon-colored puppies in a pet shop window. The only problem is that four of the major wireless operators in Europe have deemed Nokia’s WP phones “not good enough to compete with Apple’s iPhone or Samsung’s Galaxy phones,” according to Reuters. The Lumia 710 and 800 have been on sale in Europe since before Christmas, and Europe has long been an easy market for Nokia. But times are a’changin’. One executive interviewed by Reuters said that “no one comes into the store and asks for a Windows Phone.” Which precisely pinpoints Nokia’s biggest issue. If the company was throwing Windows Phone onto its hardware 12-15 months ago, this wouldn’t have been such a big deal — Nokia still had enough market share. Now, however, Nokia is coming off the slump of all slumps. About a year ago (in May), Nokia saw its lowest market share in 14 years: 25 percent. Windows Phone also hasn’t penetrated the market as strongly as expected, so the partnership is much like two beaten, bruised gazelles teaming up to take on a pack of lions. Not super successful. But there’s also something to be said about the way the retailers are selling Nokia’s Lumia phones. It wouldn’t be the first time we’d heard about sales reps ignoring Windows Phones, and pushing Android devices or iPhones into the faces of consumers. WPTattleTale.com was started by Windows Phone enthusiast Robert McLaws, who believes that Windows Phone hasn’t been given a chance in stores. And Reuters reports that a similar situation is occurring in Europe, saying that a store clerk was quick to offer up an iPhone, followed by Samsung and HTC’s Android models to incoming consumers. Lumia models, on the other hand, were not prominently displayed. So is it the fault of the stores or is it the fault of the device? Probably a hint of both. Specs on the Lumia line can’t compete with those of Android or the iPhone, and those are just the cold hard facts. But in the same vein, Nokia’s WP phones are basically perfect for the new smartphone buyer or anyone looking for a refresh from an old phone. Time, and the release of Windows Phone Apollo, should tell us if this is a growing pain or a sign of things to come.
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| 12Society Grabs Michael Strahan, Nets Funding From Groupon Co-founders, BeachMint President Posted: 17 Apr 2012 06:00 AM PDT  Last month, having sold the assets of their latest startup, JungleCents, to its early investor, Mark Cuban, co-founders Sameer Mehta and Nadir Hyder took off to found a new venture. They brought with them what they said was one of the most important lessons they’d learned while building JungleCents — that the key to effective marketing, and those oft-elusive high conversion rates, is smart, editorial-driven content. And when you can get big-time influencers to help create that content, or at the very least, stamp it with their seal of approval? Serious engagement ensues … or so they believe. That’s why, when the team offered a sneak peek at its new venture, 12Society, there was a big name on the co-founder roster: Tim “The Freak” Lincecum. For those unfamiliar, Lincecum is a 27-year-old starting pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, as well as a two-time Cy Young Award winner and a major contributor to the Giants’ World Series victory in 2010. 12Society is still in stealth mode, which means the team still isn’t saying much about what they’re up to, though CEO Sameer Mehta has said that the startup will be a guy-focused lifestyle company built on “the intersection of culture, technology and commerce.” While this is purposefully vague, the co-founders said they want to create a better way for brands looking to target the 18- to 35-year-old male demographic and get them engaging, talking about, and sharing their products. So, what better way to do that then with editorial-driven content strategy led by big-name athletes — influencers that guys respect and look to for tips on gear, clothes, music, etc. (More in our initial coverage here.) In March, the team said that they would be announcing further “big name” co-founders in the coming weeks, with more athletes in the mix. Today, 12Society unveiled its second co-founder (apparently there will be a total of six): long-time New York Giant, Super Bowl winner, and current media analyst on Fox NFL Sunday and others, Michael Strahan. While few celebrity-founded startups have stood the test of time, 12Society is beginning to taking steps to ensure its longevity, adding Anthony Saleh of Atom Factory, Founder of Young and Restless Dee Murthy, and Mike Walsh of Rockstar Group (who is also an investor in Uber) as advisors. And today, 12Society is announcing that it has raised a round of seed financing to help it accelerate towards its impending launch. The financial backing comes from Groupon co-founders (and Lightbank founding partners) Eric Lefkofsky, Paul Lee, and Brad Keywell, as well as Diego Berdakin, the co-founder of venture-backed social commerce startup, BeachMint. Michael Broukhim, the VP of Customer Acquisition at BeachMint (and co-founder of MeetCharlie.com) and former SVP of Excite, CEO of Work.com, and co-founder of Recurrent Energy Don Hutchison are also investors. The amount of funding is undisclosed, but we’re hearing from sources that it was just north of $1 million. 12Society will be announcing a few more names in the coming weeks, with its official launch slated for sometime in May. For more, and to sign up for beta access, check the startup out at home here, or on AngelList here.
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| Posted: 17 Apr 2012 06:00 AM PDT  There has to be something in the air: Just when I thought that I had enough distraction in my life, one more sweet clothing swap site launches, allowing me to focus on my hobby (fashion, and specifically upcycled fashion) while I’m supposed to be focusing on my work. In the same space as Poshmarks, 99Dresses and Copius, Threadflip allows you to upload and sell items of clothing as well as buy others’ beloved, but for whatever reason unwanted, items of clothing. Unlike 99Dresses (which I am addicted to) Threadflip focuses on higher end clothing and expands beyond dresses to shoes, bags, accessories and jewelry. Like Copius, the selection varies but when it’s good it’s really good; Thus far I’ve seen a pretty promising $200 Prada bag, mint-condition $49 Gucci sandals in my size, and the hottest pair of vintage leather shorts ever. Squeal! I think I might just buy all of these for less than I spent on shoes last week — personal style is my kryptonite. A meticulous approach to user-friendly design and community enhancing elements like personalized profiles and recommendation make Threadflip a more inviting place for budding fashionista to shop, making eBay — where you can buy both Louboutins and a toaster, seem cold and impersonal. “It's been exciting to see a growing zeitgeist around online resale offerings,” says Threadflip co-founder Manik Singh, “Some of the key aspects of Threadflip that we're really excited about are our seamless end-to-end shipping solution (which means you can ship from the comfort of your home), the White-Glove Service (minimal effort/maximal value) and deep integration with FB, which brings a level of ease, transparency and authenticity to the entire buying and selling experience. Threadflip offers shoppers a convenient multitude of ways to search and shop. You can sort each category like Jewelery by recency, popularity, recommended, and size. “P2P Marketplaces are hard to build because you have to create a good balance between buyers and sellers,” Manik explains, telling me that Threadflip hopes to ameliorate some of the pain points of online shopping, by “building an early community of passionate users, setting the bar high around both content quality and ease of use, as well as building features to streamline the process for both sides (buyers/sellers).” You can also follow individual user activity a la Twitter and Threadflip has set up a series of Tastemaker Spotlights, highlighting the Picks and Closets of Vogue's Preetma Singh, Late Afternoon blogger Liz Cherkasova, On the Racks’ Laura Ellner and The Like’s Tennessee Thomas. (Coincidentally enough I went to college with Tennessee and she is indeed very cute and stylish, fact. Hi Tennessee.) In return for perks like expert curation, end to end shipping and “White Glove Service” (just send them a box of clothing and they’ll do the rest!) Threadflip charges sellers a 15% fee, which is comparable to that charged by competitors but less than that usually charged by eBay to list items. Floating the company while it makes adjustments like launching an iPhone app (ETA two to three weeks) and launching internationally is a newly raised $1.6M seed round led by First Round Capital and Baseline Ventures with Dave Morin, Forerunner Ventures, Greylock Discovery and Andreessen Horowitz Seed Fund on board. With the new funding, Kent Goldman from First Round Capital will be joining the company’s board.
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| It’s Just A Flesh Wound: Apple Stocks Down For Fifth Consecutive Day Posted: 17 Apr 2012 05:40 AM PDT  Apple stock fell 4.1% on Monday, continuing a five day skid and a trend that has drained $50 billion in market capital from the company and dropped share price from a high of $643 on April 10 to its current price of $580. Apple has been flying high lately, weathering dual storms of Jobs-Cook succession and, most recently, Mike Daisey’s Foxconn fabrications. The stock is up in early trading and many analysts are holding firm to an expected $700 target, calling this a “softening” and not a correction. Even investors are taking the loss in stride. One user, mauser96, wrote on the MotleyFool boards: Nothing has changed about the fundamentals. The price got too high too quick, it got too easy to make money buying AAPL. Mr Market always steps in when this happens. Of course when a stock has been going up, point declines are less meaningful. There were quite a few of these events in 2011, each of which marked a decent time to buy for investors with a time horizon longer than a few weeks.
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| Survey: MP4 Is Top Format For Web and Mobile Videos Posted: 17 Apr 2012 05:01 AM PDT  When you watch a video on the web or your mobile phone, the odds are pretty good you are using the MP4 video format and the H.264 codec. There are a lot of choices when it comes to video formats. But, MP4 is the top pick for both web and mobile viewing, according to a new survey released this morning by Sorenson Media. 69% of video professionals use MP4 regularly for the web, and 58% use it for mobile. Nearly four out of every 5 pros say they use the H.264 codec for file compression. The report has some bad news for WebM, Google’s sponsored royalty-free open video compression format. WebM came out on the button with just 5% usage on the web and 3% on mobile. Here’s the full results for web video by percentage of video pro users:
(Note: A majority of those surveyed selected more than one format, so the results total more than 100%.) For mobile videos:
Video formats have undergone major changes since the early days of streaming when Windows Media and Real were the dominant players. To create the distribution formats above, the pros use very different input formats. Apple’s QuickTime Reference Movie was the favorite source format. Here’s a look at the preferred inputs:
Where do all these videos wind up? The web is the most popular platform but there are many other destinations:
The survey, released during the National Association of Broadcasters convention, was conducted by Sorenson Media, a leading video encoding solutions company, with users in a majority of broadcast station groups in the U.S.
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| SAY Media Has A New Way To Measure Online Ads: “Cost Per Exposure” Posted: 17 Apr 2012 05:00 AM PDT ![SAY Media Content Ads[2]](http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/say-media-content-ads2.jpg?w=100&h=70&crop=1 "SAY Media Content Ads[2]") Back in February, comScore released a statistic that was probably pretty discouraging if you’re an online advertiser: In a study, it found that 31 percent of ads delivered were never actually seen by consumers. If you’re paying by the ad impression, that’s a lot of wasted money. Now online publishing and advertising company SAY Media has come up with one way to solve the problem, through a measurement called “cost per exposure.” CEO and co-founder Matt Sanchez says that since “we have a proprietary technology stack,” SAY can communicate with the browser and determine whether an ad was actually seen. That doesn’t mean it’s literally tracking where you’re looking, but it can tell whether the ad actually loaded within your browser window. So when SAY says it’s charging “per exposure,” advertisers don’t have to pay for ads that viewers never scrolled down to see, or that they scrolled past before the ad loaded. Sanchez says he’s hoping other publishers start adopting a similar system. “We really wanted to move the debate forward,” Sanchez says. “Instead of thinking about how to serve the most ads, publishers can start thinking about how to create value and how to relate advertising to content.” SAY isn’t just doing this to advance the cause of accountable advertising. It’s also announcing a new advertising unit, called Content Ads. Until now, SAY and its “Clean Campaign” strategy have focused on big ads that are priced for engagement, rather than impressions. Sanchez says the company wanted to create ad units that could serve companies that were a good fit for SAY’s sites but didn’t want to pay for the engagement ads. For example, he says private sales site Vente-Prive might want to advertise on Fashionista, but might not have the budget for or interest in a “big, high impact advertising campaign.” Content Ads are smaller, “lightweight” ad units that should, as the name implies, feel like content — they should usually come from advertisers who match the site’s editorial mission. And it didn’t make sense to price these new ads on the engagement model, so SAY came up with the cost-per-exposure plan. Sanchez says Content Ads are limited to SAY Media-owned sites, while cost-per-exposure pricing is available all across the company’s ad network.
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| Peter Thiel’s Breakout Labs Awards $350K Each To Six Ambitious Biotech Startups Posted: 17 Apr 2012 05:00 AM PDT  While most of us are still reeling in shock after last week’s one billion Instagram buy, Peter Thiel — through both Founders Fund and the Thiel Foundation — is almost single-handedly leading the charge into a future where humans don’t age or suffer from cancer, among other things. Call it crazy or whatever you’d like, but there’s no doubt that people who are trying to drastically change the world for the better often do. If a hologram can give a concert, it’s not that far-fetched to imagine a future where humans don’t die. As part of its commitment to improving the quality of human life in general, Thiel’s latest project, Breakout Labs, is awarding $5 million to companies who push the envelope with regards to “revolutionary” scientific innovation. Though induction in the grant program is on a rolling basis, Breakout Labs has awarded its six first grants, to companies who are “pursuing science in an entrepreneurial way,” Breakout Labs’ Executive Director Lindy Fishburne tells me. “That [$350k] in funding can help an early-stage team reach a milestone,” Fishburne said, “and make these companies more attractive to future funding.” She hopes that Breakout Labs’ support will eventually become imprimatur for early stage companies hoping to change the pursuit of science with technology. “We want to take advantage of the revolution in healthcare and science that is happening and reward companies who are operating in a nimble way,” circumventing the slow moving institutions of academia and traditional grants. In return for the $350k and other soft , Breakout Labs companies devote a modest percentage of their proceeds back to the incubator. The very first batch runs the gamut from organ cooling to molecular physics. While this cohort was heavy on biotech, Breakout Labs emphasizes that applicants can be anyone trying to meld the worlds of science and tech. Here is the full list of the first group of winners (with each company’s own description):
Thiel himself defended these ambitious goals in a release, "In the past, people dreamed of the future as a radically better, more technologically advanced place: you might live for centuries, delegate work to your robots, and take your vacations on the moon. Now, many people expect their children to inherit a world worse than today's. With Breakout Labs, we want to rekindle dreams of an amazing future. That's why we're supporting researchers who dream big and want to build a tomorrow in which we all want to live." You know you really can’t argue with this.
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| Shared Online Paywall Service Piano Media Secures 2 Million Euros From 3TS Posted: 17 Apr 2012 03:10 AM PDT  Editor’s Note: This post is by our regular contributor Natasha Starkell, the CEO of GoalEurope, the outsourcing advisory firm and a publication about outsourcing, innovation and startups in Central and Eastern Europe. Twitter @NatashaStarkell. Gplus.to/natashastarkell. Slovak startup Piano Media, which has challenged the online media industry with an aggregated paywall concept, has raised €2 million from 3TS, one of the leading private equity funds in Central and Eastern Europe. Piano Media, launched in May 2011, enables online publications to offer their readers premium content on a subscription basis. In July 2011 it raised €300,000 from MONOGRAM Ventures, Etarget and NextBig. In the two test markets, Slovakia and Slovenia, readers pay monthly subscription of €3.90 (Slovakia) and €4.89 Euros (Slovenia), which enables access to the premium content of all participating online media, a total of 60 websites and 20 publishers. The publishers receive a share of the revenue based on the traffic generated, while Piano Media keeps a commission. In the first month of the launch in Slovenia, a Central European country with a population of only 2 million people, Piano generated €26,000 for the participating publishers. The new round of funding will be used to fuel international expansion and improve software, according to Tomas Bella, the company’s founder and CEO. One of the earlier high profile investments of 3TS in Central and Eastern Europe is Hungarian LogMeIn, a cloud-based, remote-connectivity and collaboration tool that went public on NASDAQ and generated over $100 million in 2009.
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| Menswear Startup American Giant Gets Into The T-Shirt Business Posted: 17 Apr 2012 03:00 AM PDT  American Giant, a startup offering affordable, American-made apparel for men, is expanding into T-shirt sales today. The company launched at the beginning of February. CEO Bayard Winthrop has decades of experience in the apparel industry, including a stint as the CEO of Chrome, the preferred laptop bag-maker for hipsters. Winthrop says he started to realize that even though manufacturing has largely moved overseas, ostensibly to save money, the real cost is in distribution. So by selling direct to the consumer through its website, American Giant can manufacture its clothing in the United States (specifically in a facility just a few miles south of San Francisco) and still compete with other brands on price. The company started off with a line of sweatshirts, and thanks to positive word-of-mouth, Winthrop says the first shipment sold out in about a week. American Giant will be adding new types of apparel to its lineup every six to eight weeks, he says, and T-shirts are an obvious next step. Pricing for the shirts starts at $24.50. Since launching, American Giant has also opened a showroom in San Francisco’s Mission District. It’s downstairs from the company office, and was created as a place for American Giant to show off its wares to vendors, designers and other partners. Consumers can buy clothing there too, but don’t expect to see any more stores: “We have a reflexive aversion to the traditional store model,” Winthrop says. This is a pretty crazy time in e-commerce, with lots of new business models emerging, some of them aimed primarily at men. American Giant, however, keeps things pretty straightforward — you go to the site and buy the shirts and sweatshirts that you want, no flash sales or subscriptions in sight. “There’s lots of stuff that we think is fascinating and exhilarating on the e-commerce side, but you’re going to see us turn slightly a way from it,” Winthrop says. Instead, he wants to focus on delivering a high-quality product and experience.
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