VentureBeat |
- YouTube is racking up page views like crazy: 4B per day
- Fantage recruits schools one by one for kids online virtual learning world
- Startup and the city: A great moment in history
- Apple sees over 350K digital textbook downloads, report says
- New RIM CEO squashes Android rumors for good, promises little change
- Alan Wake’s American Nightmare kicks off high-quality game releases on Xbox Live Arcade
- Warning to toe-dippers: Being online ≠ going social
- Airbnb listers in New York average $21k a year
- TRUSTe secures $15M for increased online privacy managment
- Joyent grabs $85M from Weather Invest II, Telefonica to take on Amazon in cloud computing
- SeatGeek partners with Hearst, powering ticket search in their major sports markets
- Groupon CEO Andrew Mason is grumpy, takes on critics at DLD
- Top retailers saw big holiday traffic gains thanks to Facebook marketing (research)
- Tumblr now reaches 120M people each month
- BlackBerry’s leadership failure: The symbol of software’s triumph over hardware
- Tablet ownership doubled over the 2011 holiday season
- RIM co-CEOs will step down Monday…what took them so long?
- MediaFire CEO: Unlike Megaupload, our business model isn’t built on piracy
- Ex-con looking to fund over 15,000 inventions designed while incarcerated (exclusive)
- In further Megaupload retaliation, hacker group Anonymous takes down CBS.com
- Redbox launches daily trivia-based discounts
- The 14 hottest Chinese tech-startup clones of 2011
- FCC chairman Julius Genachowski calls for SOPA compromise
| YouTube is racking up page views like crazy: 4B per day Posted: 23 Jan 2012 08:35 AM PST
The site has boosted its daily page views by 25 percent in the last eight months — and gathering over 4 billion page views per day, reports Reuters. Also higher was the number of video uploads. According to YouTube-owner Google, 60 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute compared to the 48 hours of video uploaded per minute in May. There are plenty of reasons for the increase in viewership. YouTube has made to make its video site accessible on more mobile devices. smart televisions, and streaming media set-top boxes (Roku, Apple TV, etc.). It’s also redesigned its website with a simplified feel to emphasize YouTube channels. And speaking of YouTube channels, the company has previously committed $100 million for channel partnerships to increase the amount of premium, original content available on the site. Some of these channel partnerships include Madonna's DanceOn, World Wrestling Entertainment's Fan Nation, and exclusive bits from the Onion News Network. More recently, YouTube forged deals to bring a variety of news-related channels to the site from partners like Reuters, Young Hollywood and Penske Media-Ion TV. The company is also working with legendary director Ridley Scott on a short film festival channel, which it has committed at least $500,000 in prize money for a short video contest. With more premium channel partnerships in place, its understandable why YouTube viewership is on the rise — something that will undoubtedly pay off for Google. Last week during its quarterly earnings report the company stated that its display ads sales are generating $5 billion in revenue due in large part to YouTube’s success. Filed under: media, VentureBeat        
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| Fantage recruits schools one by one for kids online virtual learning world Posted: 23 Jan 2012 08:00 AM PST With more than 16 million registered users, Fantage is one of the rare successes among startups focusing on kids virtual worlds. The Fort Lee, N.J.-based company has created a world where kids can chat, play mini games, and engage in activities such as virtual fashion shows. Now the company is shifting more explicitly into education, launching a new Fantage School Challenge on a school by school basis. This kind of intense focus on one school is a way that Fantage can improve the adoption of its virtual world, which has 2million monthly active users. There used to be a ton of competition in kids virtual worlds from 2009 to 2011, with many of the worlds trying to copy the success of Club Penguin, which was acquired for $350 million (plus a $350 million earn out) in xx. Moshi Monsters has also appeared on the scene as real competition. But most of the rivals have fallen by the way side. Fantage targets a wide range of of ages, from 6 to 16, and its classroom-focused material focuses on math and language skills through mini games. “Teachers like it because we enable students to learn while playing,” said David Hwang, chief executive of the company, in an interview. Last year, the company invited a fifth grade class at the Christ the King school in Los Angeles to play Fantage educational games every day at school for an hour. The pilot program involved both online and offline competitions, and the winning team got a cash prize and an Amazon Kindle. It turned out to be a success and now the company is invited even more schools to participate in the Fantage Challenges. Veronica Castillo, fifth grade teacher at the school, said, "Everyone in the classroom was excited to participate, and the School Challenge provided extra motivation for my students to focus on important subjects like math and geography.” The company will roll out a new school each quarter. Two or three schools can compete with each other via the virtual classroom. The winning classroom gets a cash prize of $1,000 for the school. The goal is to enable schools to adopt the challenges by themselves, Hwang said. As word spreads among schools, they can organize their own challenges. Fantage has set up a challenge page for teachers. “The pilot we ran showed children can get engaged because of the competition,” Hwang said. “We hope schools can use our site to do this indpendently.” Fantage is also extending into separate sites for German and French speakers. “We are very excited and have been preparing this for a few months,” Hwang said. Fantage also plans to launch about one new app a month for mobile devices. It also launched three apps on the iPhone and one app on Android last year. The Bullseye app in November had 100,000-plus downloads with no spending on marketing. The company is creating the apps in-house and is tailoring them for kids who are the same age as the players on the web site. Fantage was formed in 2007 and it has a few dozen employees. Investors include Nexon, but Fantage has not disclosed how much money it has raised. Filed under: games, VentureBeat        
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| Startup and the city: A great moment in history Posted: 23 Jan 2012 07:36 AM PST Editor's note: Julia Plevin recently started a job at a startup that's still in stealth mode. She'll be posting occasional columns on VentureBeat about her experiences.
It must have been 11:37pm because I had been working on a report to present the next morning until eleven o'clock. My roommate convinced me to go grab a drink at our local bar and I agreed because I needed to take my mind off work for a few minutes before going to bed. So when a guy at the bar asked me what I did and wanted to hear about my startup I snapped at him. "I've been working all night. Work is the last thing I want to talk about.” But it turned out he also worked at startup. And was also a History major in college. This guy's startup deals with finance so almost everyone else he works with studied finance or engineering in college. He gets asked all the time why he studied history and his response was so good that I made a mental note to remember it for the next time someone asks me why I studied history. "Being a history major taught me how to be an analyst. I learned how to distill incredible amounts of information into a thesis statement. It's easier to write a ten-page paper than a two-page paper. History teaches you perspective," he said, "I don't know how anyone who studied history isn't in Silicon Valley right now." And that's just it. Silicon Valley is the boomtown of our age. This startup scene will someday be romanticized the same way Mad Men depicts advertising in the 1950s, Pan Am shows air travel in the 1960s, and some movies present Wall Street of the 1980s. Those of us who are working long hours in the hope that our company will be the next Facebook, Twitter, or AirBnB are living in a historic moment. The hotbed of excitement in our era is right here in Silicon Valley. Almost. It took all my strength not to book a one-way ticket to Burma when I found out that the United States restored relations with the country. As a journalist, I have an itch to be where the news is. That, and I have a personal connection to the country from doing some NGO work there. Burma is also having a historic moment. I'd try to liken it to this same moment in the tech industry, but that's not just fair. At least if I can't be part of one historic moment, I can be part of another. Being a history major in the tech industry has other perks. For example, I understood the analogy when our CEO said a venture capitalist once compared the old conflict between Facebook and Zynga to the Cuban Missile Crisis because of the potential for mutually assured destruction if Facebook didn't let Zynga use its platform. Also, I could sympathize with the CEO when he was explaining the challenge of distilling all the ideas our company has into a two-minute pitch to a venture capitalist who hears thousands of pitches. It's just like trying to answer whether Peter the Great was a hero or a villain in a thesis statement or explaining the causes of World War I in a paragraph. A late-night chat in a bar reminded me that it's not necessary to study engineering, marketing, or business if you want to work at a startup. There are benefits to studying other disciplines as long as you know how to argue that what you studied gives you a unique and valuable perspective. Previous Startup and the City columns: Lessons from landing my first startup job View from the other side of the hiring process Tiensin Treaty image via ShutterStock Filed under: Entrepreneur Corner, VentureBeat        
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| Apple sees over 350K digital textbook downloads, report says Posted: 23 Jan 2012 07:15 AM PST
Last week, the company launched a new version of its iBooks iOS application for the iPhone and iPad, which will offer highly interactive electronic textbooks, as well as a new textbook section in the iBookstore. It also debuted iBooks Author, which is a way for teachers to create their own textbooks. In the first three days since launching the new iBook initiatives, the report indicates that over 350,000 textbooks were downloaded from Apple’s iBookstore, and more than 90,000 downloads of the iBooks Author tool. “Our research indicates that Apple has a very strong following with Authors, Publishers, Faculty and Students and may capture 95% of Digital Textbook Market, while Amazon.com may only participate in the 5% of the market,” Analyst Trip Chowdhry wrote in the Global Equities Research report. Apple isn’t the only company with the potential to earn a great profit in the textbook market. The report also indicates that textbook publishers can save up to 35 percent of the production costs by selling their books through Apple. Also worth noting is that individual textbook prices are thought to be much less expensive than printed copies, which means people could be purchasing more of them. Regardless of how accurate the information in the report is, it seems very likely that Apple will have an impact in the digital textbook market for years to come. [via IBtimes] Filed under: media, VentureBeat        
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| New RIM CEO squashes Android rumors for good, promises little change Posted: 23 Jan 2012 07:13 AM PST
But, in a conference call new CEO Thorsten Heins held with the press this morning, he reiterated his position on sticking with RIM’s current strategy for the foreseeable future. The big takeaway, which will surely disappoint many Android fans, is that he outright refuses to break up RIM’s control of both its software and hardware. "We are strong because we have an integrated solution… I want to build on that. I will not in any way split this up," Heins said. He rightly pointed out that Apple, “the other fruit company,” is the only other mobile device maker to hold such control over its devices, and it makes sense for RIM to hold on to its integrated strengths for as long as possible. But with RIM’s next-generation BlackBerry 10 OS and devices not appearing until the end of the year, it’s difficult for Heins to get us excited about the company’s integration prowess. Given the many delays RIM has had with its new operating system, which is based on technology from QNX, many figured the company would be better off pulling a Nokia (which dumped its software for Windows Phone) and jumping to Android. (VentureBeat’s editor-in-chief Matt Marshall calls RIM’s exec shuffle the “official triumph of software over hardware.”) At this point though, it’s too late for RIM to make any such changes, and its stuck with its current game plan. Heins mentioned that the company would be willing to license BlackBerry 10 to others, but he said that “it’s not my focus one.” Even if RIM manages to find some He also reiterated that the company will focus more on consumer marketing over the next year — though honestly, the best marketing for RIM would be BlackBerry devices people actually cared about. VentureBeat is holding its second annual Mobile Summit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Alan Wake’s American Nightmare kicks off high-quality game releases on Xbox Live Arcade Posted: 23 Jan 2012 07:00 AM PST Alan Wake was a high-potential game that didn’t sell as well as expected in 2010. Critics said that the story was great, but the game play of the psychological thriller title was mediocre. Amid rivals such as the spectacular western Red Dead Redemption, which came out at the same time, Alan Wake got a lukewarm reception. With a new downloadable game coming, the question at hand for Alan Wake is whether the franchise can make a comeback.
The game is much more ambitious than previous Alan Wake downloadable content (DLC) and that is the whole point of Xbox Live Arcade House Party. If these games prove to be popular, then they will be one more step toward the decline of retail stores and the rise of digital distribution of games. And Alan Wake’s American Nightmare is an attempt to show that the franchise still has a lot of life left in it. The original story had a truly unique and artistic storyline. Famous novelist Alan Wake visited a small town of Bright Falls in the Northwest in an attempt to get over writers block. As he arrives there, his wife Alice is kidnapped. As he searches for her, he finds to his horror that events that he has written about in his fiction are coming to life. He finds pages from an unpublished novel he doesn’t remember writing and the novel’s fictional events become real. Creatures attack Wake in the darkness, who has to fight back with weapons that produce light, from flares to flashlights. The game had an innovative game style that revolves around manipulating the power of light against the forces of darkness. It was visually arresting and had an atmosphere that was as creepy as the Stephen King novels or horror movies that inspired it.
“People universally loved the story and the character in the first game,” said Oskari “Oz” Hakkinen (pictured right), head of franchise development at Remedy, in an interview at the recent Consumer Electronics Show. “One thing they asked for more of was an escalation of enemies and an escalation of weapons.” The new game has an enticing story as well, set in the town of Night Springs in the desert of Arizona. This game features the villain Mr. Scratch, an alter ego of Alan Wake. Scratch, who was first introduced in the DLC, is a serial killer who is hunting after Wake’s missing wife. Scratch is the evil dark twin of Wake from Bright Falls, where the locals believe a novelist when crazy and killed his wife. Wake has to defeat Scratch and the minions of the night and rescue Alice. Wake now has a new advantage, as he realizes he can rewrite reality by creating the text that he wants to see happen. The game is about a four or five-hour experience, following Night Springs episodes that Wake doesn’t remember writing.
The game engine produces the same cool light and darkness visuals, but it’s more responsive. The technology has moved forward so the graphics look even more gorgeous against the red Arizona sky. “We’ve improved a lot of things,” Hakkinen said. “In the story mode, the environments are more destructible.” Among the cool parts of the new game is an Arcade mode where the object is to survive as long as you can amid a sea of enemies coming out of the darkness. This is the part of the game that the developers created first when they were tooling around with ideas. They created a survival game that they felt could become the heart of an Xbox Live Arcade game.They began development on it, but story wizard Sam Lake, creator of the original story, weighed in on the project and got the story mode into development, since Remedy is really known as a story-based game company. The new story is more like a pulp action-adventure. Whereas Alan Wake was more like a Stephen King horror novel — with influences from Twin Peaks and Alfred Hitchcock — this is more like Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk ‘Til Dawn or Grindhouse, only on Route 66 in Arizona with a lot of cactus around.
The Arcade mode highlights some of the new variety to the enemies. If you shine your light on one type of enemy, it will simply clone itself and produce another one that will attack you. You have to take these enemies out by shooting them in the dark. And while most of the enemies attack you, the Grenadier will hang in the background, lobbing grenades at you. When you chase after the Grenadier, it runs away and it will only cease throwing grenades once you catch it. Another enemy is armed with a chain saw and is pretty hard to kill. “You’re rewarded for taking risks by getting multipliers when you score,” Hakkinen said. The game starts off slow, giving you time to search for resources and collect them. Wake can find and use some interesting new weapons such as the “nail gun,” which shoots out a deadly spray of nails. They quickly dispatch enemies, but the nails run out.Other weapons include submachine guns, Uzis, and a crossbow. You can dodge enemies as they’re about to slash you. Your health meter runs lower every time you get hit. As you find first-aid packs, you can use them to replenish your health, but only part of it. When all is hopeless and you are surrounded by multiple enemies, you can set off a flash bang grenade or a flare.
When you’re done, you can see your stats. Once you master the Arcade mode, you can move into the even harder Nightmare mode. The tough thing for Remedy is that some gamers may not be willing to give Alan Wake’s American Nightmare a chance because they tried the game play of the original title and found that it was lacking. The message Remedy has to get across is that this game play is a lot more fun. But if this game takes off on Xbox Live, fans of the series just might be able to breathe easier about some day seeing Alan Wake 2, a true sequel, to the original game. The original trailer is below and here’s a link to a video of the arcade mode. Filed under: games        
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| Warning to toe-dippers: Being online ≠ going social Posted: 23 Jan 2012 07:00 AM PST
Most brands participate in many, many social networks. But they use them purely as a messaging tool, which isn't what social networks are built for. There are six common myths regarding what it means to go social:
Overwhelmed yet? I don't blame you. Thinking about making an investment in social can look overwhelming from the outside. You're not just considering price and return on investment. You're also thinking about how much up-front time and attention it's going to take for you to launch and integrate; how you're going to scale; and how you're going to staff it. While it seems like a big pill to swallow now, going social for real and cultivating "superfans" and relationships is a business strategy that can save brands a huge amount of time, effort, and money. Many principles behind the science of social aren't really that new, because people and the way we interact and do business haven't change all that much for the past millennia. Yet, for the first time, we have the capacity to capture, store and analyze human behavioral data at a planetary scale. This enables us to really discover new principles and rediscover old ones that govern how customers behave. And this is just the beginning.
Filed under: social, VentureBeat        
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| Airbnb listers in New York average $21k a year Posted: 23 Jan 2012 06:35 AM PST
New Yorkers using Airbnb to rent out their apartments, extra bedrooms and even couches — more than 10,000 in total — are now making, on average, $21,000 per year in income, Chesky said. Some local listers make as much as $100,000 per year, he added. “That’s transformative income.” Of course, the proliferation of shared spaces in the city has several negative side effects, including more than a smattering of complaints from neighbors and questions of legality. Chesky, however, did not address these issues. At DLD, Chesky did speak extensively about the notion of a “sharing economy,” or what he believes is the third wave of Internet that gets people offline and connecting in the real world, as well as a movement that is stimulating local economies. The movement includes a number of startups proffering the exchange of shared goods, including Loosecubes, RelayRides and TaskRabbit. Instead of keeping up with the Joneses, we’re going to be sharing with Joneses, he said. “If we are successful … I think people will one day forget what the world was like before the sharing economy,” Chesky added. Three year-old Airbnb powers rentals in 19,000 cities in 192 different countries. In July, the startup closed a $112 million round of funding at a $1.3 billion valuation, and just released an Android application last week. [Image via DLD/Tumblr] Disclosure: The Digital Life Design conference paid my way to Munich. VentureBeat's coverage of the conference remains objective and independent. Filed under: social, VentureBeat        
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| TRUSTe secures $15M for increased online privacy managment Posted: 23 Jan 2012 06:00 AM PST
Joined by existing investors Accel Partners, Jafco Ventures and DAG Ventures, the company also plans to use the funding to expand its global presence by addressing the increased data privacy challenges across the world. By simplifying privacy management for companies and its consumers, TRUSTe hopes to ensure safe online interaction for shoppers, advertisers and even users in the mobile realm. "TRUSTe has a unique combination of robust technology, an innovative compliance methodology, and the most trusted and recognizable privacy brand through its pervasive online trustmark – enabling it to continuously deliver industry leading privacy management solutions," said Steve Anderson, Baseline Ventures. "In less than one year, their TRUSTed Ads online advertising compliance solution has become the market leader in this fast growing segment." Best known for its work with known companies like eBay, Apple, Microsoft and over 4,500 others, TRUSTe anticipates its accelerated development with privacy technology will expand its connection to new online businesses. Over the past 18 months, not only has the company tripled in sales, product offerings and employees, but it has also increased interest in investments for additional staff to support its growing need to address management for complex technology and complicated compliance agreements. Chief Executive Chris Babel plans to speak in Chicago Jan. 24 about data collection and the concern with online privacy at the 2012 Privacy & Data Protection Town Hall. Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Joyent grabs $85M from Weather Invest II, Telefonica to take on Amazon in cloud computing Posted: 23 Jan 2012 04:30 AM PST
Joyent provides infrastructure cloud computing services for customers like LinkedIn, THQ, Gilt Groupe and Kabam. The company’s core offering will now be enhanced with a wide-ranging partnership with Telefónica Digital, the global business division of London-based telecommunications company Telefónica. With the new partnership, Joyent will be able to bring its services to more countries thanks to Telefónica data centers throughout Europe and Latin America. Joyent CEO David Young enjoys colorfully differentiating his company from his largest competitor Amazon, by far the largest provider of cloud computing services in the world. Young describes Amazon’s cloud computing technology as a “junk yard” where all sorts of technologies have been “taped together.” “Amazon is the Kodak of the cloud,” Young told VentureBeat. “I don’t want to dump on Amazon, but I just don’t think you can look to a book seller and grocery store for cloud innovation. On the other hand, we’re building a cloud alliance around the globe.” The new massive round was led by Weather Invest II Group, with Telefónica Digital, El Dorado Ventures, Epic Ventures, Greycroft Partners, Intel Capital, and Liberty Global also participating. Joyent’s last funding round occurred in Sept. 2010 and totaled $15 million. In its history, the company has raised around $115 million. San Francisco-based Joyent was founded in 2004 and has about 150 employees. It also has offices in Vancouver, Singapore and Geneva. The company plans to announce other “exciting” partnerships in the near future that will enable the company’s services in even more countries. Joyent CTO and co-founder Jason Hoffman talked with us recently to help define “the cloud”:
And you can take a look at a diagram of a Joyent data center stack below: Cloud photo: CubaGallery/Flickr Filed under: cloud, deals, enterprise        
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| SeatGeek partners with Hearst, powering ticket search in their major sports markets Posted: 23 Jan 2012 04:13 AM PST  If you can stand to watch the Knicks play...Sports fans in San Francisco, Seattle, Houston and San Antonio will have a new way to search or the best deals on tickets. New York startup SeatGeek is partnering with Hearst to power ticket search on the websites for four of the media giants biggest metro newspapers. It’s another prominent partnership for a small company that has been on a hot streak in the last year. SeatGeek crunches data to tell customers when the best time is to buy tickets on secondary markets like Stubhub, ebay, and TicketsNow. It also models stadiums to give users a sense of where they can get the best view and weighs that against price to give consumers a verdict on which seats are the best deal overall. “SeatGeek has a compelling platform,” said Karen Brophy, Vice President and Director of Digital Product at Hearst. “This partnership helps to solidify our flagship sites as one-stop destinations for readers to tap into the best of what their local area has to offer.” In October of 2010 SeatGeek partnered with Yahoo, one of the biggest portals for online sports, and eclipsed its older, better funded rival, FanSnap, in terms of traffic. In December FanSnap was acquired, reportedly not for a big premium over their venture funding, leaving SeatGeek to lead the pack of search engines for tickets on the secondary market. More recently SeatGeek expanded beyond sports to cover tickets for concerts and theatrical. It launched Columbus, a sort of Pandora for live events, which learns users’ tastes and recommends upcoming shows. Two of the papers in this new partnership, The San Francisco Chronicle and the Houston Chronicle, are in the top ten nation wide in terms of monthly unique visitors and pageviews, so the Hearst partnership is likely to be a big boost to SeatGeek’s revenue. Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Groupon CEO Andrew Mason is grumpy, takes on critics at DLD Posted: 23 Jan 2012 03:56 AM PST
Mason fielded tough and rather unsympathetic questions from author and journalist David Kirkpatrick on Groupon’s business and the company’s sometimes head-scratching decisions. Kirkpatrick asked about Mason’s perception of the criticism Groupon has fielded since filing its S1. “People went from overly cheerleadly … to everybody piling on,” Mason said, attacking the media for flopping from being far too favorable to now far too harsh. “We’re not a perfect company … the criticism was unfounded,” Mason said. Kirkpatrick then peppered the CEO of the newly public company about the very replicable nature of Groupon's daily deals model and his investors’ decision to take hundreds of millions of dollars off the table prior to the IPO. Mason iterated that Kirkpatrick, and the public and press at large, don’t fully understand the barriers to entry. “It doesn’t matter that you don’t understand,” he brazenly said before diving into the reasons why people misunderstand the company’s business. Mason admitted that thousands of companies have replicated Groupon’s model. Few have seen more than marginal success and large companies have pulled out of the space entirely, he argued, pointing to Yelp, Facebook and OpenTable as examples of those that have tried and failed at daily deals. “People don’t understand what makes Groupon great,” he said. “There’s a human component, core to our DNA, that’s difficult for a full-on technology company to bolt on … look at the evidence.” On the topic of taking money off the table — Mason and early Groupon investors including Eric Lefkofsky and Bradley Keywell sold a chunk of their shares for nearly $1 billion while Groupon was still a private company — Mason strongly defended the controversial decision. If you have a startup, you should take money off the table if you can find sophisticated early investors, he argued. It alleviates the pressure of finding a short-term exit such as a sale to Google, he added. “Everybody has their number that lets them sleep at night,” Mason said, adding that by cashing out, Groupon can continue on as an independent company. To drive the point home, Mason said that the public should continue to criticize the practice of taking money off the table if they want a world where every company sells to Google or Amazon. “That’s a very creative reply,” Kirkpatrick said, challenging the time frame of the big cash outs. “We had enormous interest from investors,” Mason said. “Getting those investments was a net benefit to Groupon … none of those people that we sold stock to are complaining.” Throughout the discussion, Mason continued to stress the human component of the Groupon business. Groupon, he said, is a technology company with an important human core. He talked up the operations, sales and marketing side of the business as key factors that will support Groupon’s more tech-focused future, which will pivot around realtime local commerce. Three year-old Groupon now has 10,000 employees, with 7,000 of them working outside the U.S., Mason said. [Image via DLD/Tumblr] Disclosure: The Digital Life Design conference paid my way to Munich. VentureBeat's coverage of the conference remains objective and independent. Filed under: deals, social, VentureBeat        
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| Top retailers saw big holiday traffic gains thanks to Facebook marketing (research) Posted: 23 Jan 2012 01:36 AM PST
The “our” he speaks of may actually apply more directly to brands embracing the social network for social marketing. New data from comScore, revealed during the Monday morning presentation, highlights traffic gains big name brands recently experienced thanks to a combination of paid and earned media efforts on Facebook. Mega-retailer Walmart, which launched a Shopycat Facebook application prior to the holidays, saw 275 million display ad impressions as a result of a paid media campaign on Facebook, but experienced an additional 117 million social media impressions thanks to the organic sharing activities of its Facebook fans and their friends, co-presenter and comScore CMO Linda Abraham shared. comScore also looked at the percentage of people who visited retailer websites during a key week in the 2011 holiday season and found that for Amazon, Best Buy, Target and Walmart a high percentage of visitors to these sites were either Facebook fans or friends of Facebook fans (as seen in the presentation slide deck below). Sixty-four percent of visitors to Amazon during the week ending November 30 were brand-exposed Facebook fans, for instance, and 36 percent were friends of fans, according to comScore. Leading Black Friday retailers also saw significant year-over-year traffic lift thanks to their various Facebook and social campaigns, Abraham said. The data, Abraham concluded, shows that brands that know their Facebook fans, know their fans’ friends and push out the right creative message are seeing quantifiable results from their social campaigns. Brands, she heeded, should keep in mind that Facebook users spend a majority of their time on Facebook on their News Feeds (27 percent). They should alo note that Facebook fans are often a younger demographic group than their average customers, and remember that friends of Facebook fans are an equally important audience to reach. Disclosure: The Digital Life Design conference paid my way to Munich. VentureBeat's coverage of the conference remains objective and independent. [Image via DLD/Tumblr] Filed under: social, VentureBeat        
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| Tumblr now reaches 120M people each month Posted: 23 Jan 2012 12:43 AM PST
Karp, citing the startup’s latest Quantcast figures, shared that the social network and blogging hybrid now sees 15 billion page views each month. Interviewed by entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky, Karp talked about the company’s early growth, its decision to take the road less traveled in social networking, the unexpected advantages of building for creators, and Tumblr’s New York-centric culture. “The early growth that we saw was around creators … our first community was those creators,” Karp said of Tumblr’s initial growth spurt. “We didn’t set out to build network .. all we wanted to do was make novel tools.” But in building explicitly for creators, a widespread network of creators, curators and content consumers was born. Today, Tumblr powers nearly 42 million blog sites and is responsible for the creation of more than 16 billion posts. The social platform intentionally avoided some of the standard features, including comments and tagging, of the garden variety social networking experience, Karp explained. “Commenting makes YouTube a horrible place,” he said, adding that being tagged in a photo on Facebook is sometimes an awful experience. Instead, Karp and team oriented the experience around the creator and the small company set out to build tools for that audience. Those deliberate decisions have helped to set the startup apart from social competitors such as Google, Facebook and Twitter. Tumblr’s uniqueness extends to its New York company culture. The startup, he said, is going “all in” on the East Coast. It recruits talent from all over the country but, “everybody we are hiring, we’re bringing to New York,” Karp said. “It’s been really wonderful being the underdogs,” Karp added of the company’s calculated decision to build a business away from Silicon Valley, widely considered to be the center of technological and social innovation. So what’s next for Tumblr? The startup will continue to embrace its creator audience, but will also invest in reaching more international users, Karp said. Today, Tumblr is U.S.-centric with 45 percent of its audience stateside. The company will also use the months and years ahead to pursue “novel approaches to revenue,” as opposed to tacking on ads, that will fit the Tumblr community, Karp explained. [Image via DLD/Tumblr] Disclosure: The Digital Life Design conference paid my way to Munich. VentureBeat's coverage of the conference remains objective and independent. Filed under: social, VentureBeat        
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| BlackBerry’s leadership failure: The symbol of software’s triumph over hardware Posted: 22 Jan 2012 10:35 PM PST The decline of Research in Motion‘s Blackberry smartphone, reflected in the resignations tonight of co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, represents the admission of failure — finally — by a leadership regime that had been in place for a decade. More significantly, it represents the official triumph of software over hardware. RIM has been killed by the guys in the valley, who offer superior software platforms, Apple and Google. But it’s entirely another question whether RIM actually gets it. Listening to the new CEO Thorsten Heins, there’s no evidence he has what it takes to put RIM on track (as others are pointing out). “It’s going to be continuity, Heins said lamely, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal about the shuffle. This rambling video of Heins doesn’t help much (see below). Although he has at least pushed to license RIM's QNX operating system to other device manufacturers, something that others at RIM have resisted. Only a few years ago, it was hard to predict the RIM downfall. But if you listened to Silicon Valley insiders, RIM’s decline has been inevitable for more than a decade. RIM became known for its dead simple, really useful wireless email service. In 1998, RIM launched its first pager, the size of a bar of soap, and no one else was doing this near as nicely. C’mon! Email, streamed quickly and reliably over a fun little pocket-sized device? What’s not to like? RIM finessed its device, gaving birth to the “Blackberry” in 1999. The device won ardent fans among the plugged-in set, including Wall Street and other white-collar professionals. The power emailers. The device was too expensive for normal people, but BlackBerry won the hearts and minds of corporate executives. Over the next decade, it sewed up the enterprise market. It became known as the “CrackBerry.” People couldn’t put it down.
Meanwhile, BlackBerry continued to dominate. And in this way, Nokia, the largest cellphone maker, did too on the low-end with its “dumb phones.” Until circa 2007, it was the Golden Age of Hardware. The two companies perfected the hardware’s sync with phone networks. Voice quality was good and reliable. All RIM had to do was continue to make more of these useful phones, lower the price, and take ownership of the mass market. As BlackBerry became more entrenched, RIM’s leadership apparently became ever more certain of the company’s direction and superiority. But in 2007 and 2008, the groundwork was finally laid for software’s resurgence. Faster cell and data networks, at least in the U.S. and in many European and Asian countries, became ubiquitous. They became smarter too, offering things like location. Phones could also tap servers providing data over these upgraded networks to serve users with a plethora of useful applications. Then Apple launched its SDK, and the mobile app revolution was born. Third party developers used the network, and the phone, to offer their own services. Google’s Android launched shortly thereafter. RIM was left like a frog in a pot of slowly boiling water, clinging to what it thought was a safe world of superior hardware.
The context, of course, was ugly. RIMs company's stock price lost more than three-quarters of its value last year. It never could get its software platform together: Through 2011, it suffered a significant worldwide BlackBerry outage. Due to inferior innards, its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet paled compared to Apple's iPad, Amazon's Kindle Fire and various other Android tablets. RIM then delayed a well-needed software update on the PlayBook until February. And its revamped, underlying operating system, the Blackberry 10 OS, was delayed until later this year, and was already being called a failure. As it was, between June 2008, which is when the first GPS-enabled iPhone emerged, and June 2011, RIM’s shareholders lost almost $70 billion — or 82 percent of the company’s value. And its value has continued to decline. RIM is now worth a mere $8 billion, compared to Apple’s $400 billion. Apple, of course, is also a hardware company. But its focus on software, specifically the App Store, and the ecosystem of developers to supply apps to its platform, is what really helped Apple steal the show. And of course, Google, which never ever entered the hardware market, is the originator of the most popular smartphone platform, Android. And it did so by focusing on software, not hardware. It’s really about time that RIM’s leaders stepped down. Urgent change is needed. And the new guy, Thorsten Heins, whatever he does, needs to focus on software. Although it may be too late. VentureBeat is holding its second annual Mobile Summit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site. Chart credits: Yahoo Finance Broken BlackBerry image: Miggslives/Flickr Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Tablet ownership doubled over the 2011 holiday season Posted: 22 Jan 2012 09:01 PM PST Between Kindlemania and the usual gift-giving glut of gadgets, the number of e-reader- and tablet-owning U.S. consumers doubled between mid-December 2011 and early January 2012. According to research just published by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 29 percent of adults own at least one tablet or e-reader. Over the winter holidays, ownership numbers rose for both device types from 10 percent to 19 percent. The Pew project conducted three surveys, one in mid-December and two at the beginning of 2012. The results show a marked increase in ownership of tablets, e-readers, and the hybrids that exist somewhere between those two categories. It’s hardly surprising; if you’ve been following the tablet market, you’ve probably noticed more than a few competitively priced entrants, such as the Kindle Fire and Nook Color, both of which made their debut in 2011. With a slew of color, touchscreen, app-running devices — whether they are called tablets or e-readers by their manufacturers — all priced between $100 and $250, tablet ownership is now no longer solely in the domain of those with plenty of cash to burn. Leading the pack is Amazon, which sells a slate of Kindle e-readers and tablets. The online retail giant claimed to have sold units in its Kindle lineup at a rate of one million e-readers per week during the holiday push. "Kindle Fire is the most successful product we've ever launched -– it's the bestselling product across all of Amazon for 11 straight weeks, we've already sold millions of units, and we're building millions more to meet the high demand," said Dave Limp, Amazon's Kindle-focused vice president, in the middle of December. These somewhat down-market (if only in the graphics department) tablet/e-reader hybrids became so popular over the past few months that some analysts saw iPad sales slip as a direct result. "These are customers that either would have purchased a $100 Kindle or no tablet at all," said Morgan Keegan analyst Tavis McCourt at the beginning of January. "There are some customers who clearly wanted to gift a tablet this year, and it's cheaper to gift a Fire than and iPad. That's where the impact comes in." However, money still plays some role in whether or not a given consumer decides to spring for a tablet. While some demographic factors such as race and gender showed little or no statistically significant variations among tablet owners, education and correlating factors such as income showed strong proportional relationships to tablet and e-reader ownership. Based on Pew’s data, here are some tables we made to show income and education’s effects on tablet and e-reader purchases: Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| RIM co-CEOs will step down Monday…what took them so long? Posted: 22 Jan 2012 07:20 PM PST After years of struggling to keep up with Apple and Google’s smartphone supremacy, Research in Motion co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis have said they will step down from the troubled phone maker on Monday. RIM will replace the co-CEOs, who have jointly headed the company for 20 years, with COO Thorsten Heins (pictured). He has been at RIM for four years and previously worked for Siemens AG as CTO. He timidly said in an interview with The Globe and Mail that he will stay on the course set out by Balsillie and Lazaridis, and that the company must focus on improving its core BlackBerry product. Investors in RIM have been clamoring for a serious change in direction, especially in light of a disastrous 2011. The company’s stock price lost more than three-quarters of its value after various blunders, including a terrible worldwide BlackBerry outage and a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet that looked undercooked compared to Apple’s iPad, Amazon’s Kindle Fire and various other Android tablets. RIM also announced that its long-awaited BlackBerry 10 devices wouldn’t appear until the end of this year, and also delayed a well-needed software update on the PlayBook until February. With a new CEO at the helm, hopefully RIM can begin to right its ship. Heins said he has no intention to sell the company, a rumor we’ve been hearing for months. He also said the company still has the ability to grow and succeed. The first thing on his plate will be to pick up a chief marketing officer to help repair the struggling BlackBerry brand. Another big challenge will be prepping the new BB 10 operating system for release on devices in late 2012. As for the outed CEOs, Lazaridis will become vice chairman and Balsillie will stay on as a board member without an operational role. Balsillie and Lazaridis own 12 percent of the company's outstanding shares, making them the second and third largest shareholders of the company. RIM Director Barbara Stymiest will take over as board chairman. Do you think this move is enough for RIM to succeed in 2012? Update: RIM has posted a video of new CEO Heins talking about the state of the company. Watch it below: Front page broken BlackBerry image: Miggslives/Flickr Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| MediaFire CEO: Unlike Megaupload, our business model isn’t built on piracy Posted: 22 Jan 2012 04:58 PM PST
Already, two well-known file-sharing services, Uploaded.to and Filesonic have disabled several features of their sites this weekend because of the Megaupload scandal. Others are sure to follow. But Derek Labian, CEO of popular cloud-based file-hosting site MediaFire, told VentureBeat in an interview today that he isn’t too concerned about the government going after his company because, unlike Megaupload, MediaFire doesn’t incentivize piracy. “We don’t have a business built on copyright infringement.” Labain said. “Like many other cloud-based sharing services like Box.net and Dropbox, we’re a legitimate business targeting professionals.” When it comes to Megaupload, Labian described Kim Dotcom and his organization as “shady” and said the $175 million in revenues the company made should give people pause. He noted that Megaupload’s structure gave users monetary rewards for uploading pirated content. Users of the service could upload without a cap but users who want to download a large file (or download it faster) would have to pay for it. Those who uploaded the best files would be given free account upgrades or even cash. “Megaupload was making a ridiculous amount of money with a ridiculously bad service,” Labian said. “We frankly don’t see ourselves in the same space.” A little more background on MediaFire: The privately funded company out of Woodlands, Tex. was founded in 2006 and has steadily offered better ways to host and share large files. Because it offers an incredibly easy to way to share 200MB files for free with other people, the company has attracted employees at 86 percent of the Fortune 500 for sending files that are too large for e-mail. It offers unlimited downloads and file storage, and if you want to upload larger files with long-term storage, you can pay $9 a month for a Pro account or $49 a month for a Business account. But the company’s free file-sharing solution can also be used easily for sharing copyrighted files, especially music, with friends, relatives or anyone on the web. A Google search for a song name, an artist name and “MediaFire,” for example, will likely bring you to a copy of that file that can easily be downloaded from a MediaFire page. When asked about the Googling issue, Labian said that MediaFire is a “private service” and the only reason Google indexes a MediaFire page is when it has been shared by a user on a third-party site. He said MediaFire isn’t at fault for this and said Google should look into the issue. “We try to steer clear of things that would attract scrutiny,” Labian said. “If people are pirating on our service, we don’t want those people to use it.” Another reason Labian said he wasn’t worried about the government stepping in is because the company maintains a “good relationship” with various government bodies, including “Homeland Security, ICE, and the FBI.” Following DMCA protocols, whenever MediaFire is notified of a copyrighted file being shared inappropriately, the company immediately takes it down. As for the future, MediaFire is optimistic about what’s to come. Labian said the company has been working for a year on its next set of products, which will emphasize collaboration and focus on business users. He teased what was coming by saying that cloud storage providers Box.net and Dropbox significantly disrupted the cloud storage space, but MediaFire would do it next. “This is a tough market to be in, but we’re constantly looking to innovate,” Labian said. “Sharing will always be important, but it’s not the only important aspect for our customers.” Filed under: cloud, media        
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| Ex-con looking to fund over 15,000 inventions designed while incarcerated (exclusive) Posted: 22 Jan 2012 01:30 PM PST Like any news blog, VentureBeat gets a lot of spam. Sometimes it’s a long-lost relative from the Philippines who just needs us to send them $10,000 in unmarked bills so that we can claim our inheritance. More recently, “VISA” is claiming our credit cards have been suspended and that all we need to do to lift the restriction is disclose our social security number and mother’s maiden number to an unidentified Hotmail address. But every once in a while, an actual person with a story to tell finds their way to us. Enter Bill Chrouch, an ex-convict who is looking for funding for the 15,128 inventions he came up with while incarcerated. The following human interest piece consists of excerpts from a series of emails between myself and Chrouch, whose Department of Corrections page can be found here. Some minor grammatical editing was done for readability. ”I was able to really think outside of the box cause I didn't have all the stress a free person had.” “A rundown of my past includes a lot of time in jail and prison plus lots of charges that were from my old ways of thinking,” Chrouch wrote. “Over the years living the life of a criminal was hard on me and my family, and also a real eye opener cause that’s just not how I want to spend my life. A couple of years back I was sitting in my room locked down for around 20 hours a day, and I started thinking about ways I could make money and not have to commit crimes. I let my creativeness and my time mix and I would come up with ideas on new products just by studying my surroundings and creating new things in my mind. I was able to really think outside of the box cause I didn’t have all the stress a free person had. I came up with anything and everything including toys, websites/apps, green tech, tools, personal care products, to animal products and a lot of things in between. I understand that not every one of those ideas are great ideas, but I do however believe that there are quite a few of them that I know are good.”
“If you really think about it inventing is a way for man to overcome many of life’s obstacles and that everything that has moved our species forward was a form of an invention,” Chrouch wrote. ”Otherwise we would just adapt to our environment like most animals, but no we have brains that were built to solve problems and problem-solving and invention go hand-in-hand. Many people feel this same way even President Obama who says that if our country wants to move forward we need innovation. If we were to have more people inventing there would be manufactures hiring people to produce and market and sell these products which will be more jobs and also more taxes to help our states.” So what is Chrouch hoping to achieve by publicizing his story? “Now what I’m looking for is someone to help me with funding but as well as someone to become a partner to help me move forward. I need someone who can be hands on this project to get some of these ideas from paper to prototype and getting this process rolling. I’m not sure as what would best suit me if opening a company that patents ideas and license them for others to produce, or just to help companies develop new products to be brought to you, the public, to help all of us. All I know is that I have good intentions now and just want to change my life and move forward in my life and I have a book with thousands of ideas ready to be put to use. So if you feel as if you could be the person to help bring thousands of ideas to life then feel free to use my contact info to get in touch with me and I hope to hear from you.” When asked to elaborate on what sort of inventions he had concocted, Chrouch replied, “Some of the areas I’ve hit was green technology, toys, stuff for pets, new kinds of dishware, websites, even new types of engines that can power themselves cause if a motor can put out energy, then you have ways to harness that energy to make that engine crank out more energy.” He also shared a more specific example with VentureBeat: “One of my ideas that I came up with but is patented but I still like how I used my ingenuity in it… you know the garbage cans with the pedal that you step on to lift the lid? Well imagine standing in front of the toilet as a man and instead of bending down to touch that dirty seat you would just step on the pedal and it would pop up just like the garbage can and you won’t forget to put the seat down cause it would slowly come back down.” “I can’t seem to find the right person to see past my background and believe in me.” Naturally, we had to inquire further about Chrouch’s past. Chrouch’s past will undoubtedly be the first thing people are going to be wondering, regardless of how good his ideas may be. “…My past is not good but it is just some [breaking and entering] and drug charges and some weapons charges so it’s not great but hey, it made me the man I am today and I’m glad to say that’s the old me. You’re looking at a man that has done about eight years in total for my mistakes in life and I really hate my past because of the people I’ve done wrong and the hell I put myself through. Here I am with 12 felonies from doing dumb shit and hanging with the wrong crowd, and I went to prison twice but when I went the second time I was a man on a mission and I needed to come up with some way I could escape my lifestyle and you know what I turned to inventing. Instead of being out on the yard in the joint I was in my room looking at popular mechanics and Wired magazines to find objects in the pictures that I used to create concepts and to write everything down. So with these ideas I don’t not only want to earn money off my mind but I’d like to get some products patented to get some jobs over here in America and give back for what I did wrong in my life.” Filed under: enterprise, VentureBeat        
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| In further Megaupload retaliation, hacker group Anonymous takes down CBS.com Posted: 22 Jan 2012 01:14 PM PST
Anonymous has a long history of attacking government and business websites, and on Thursday the organization intermittently shut down the Department of Justice and Universal Music's websites. The collective said through various channels that it was retaliating for the shut down of popular file-sharing site Megaupload.com. Anonymous also recently made headlines for hacking into Stratfor's website and database, stealing credit card information and other sensitive details. Anonymous took down CBS.com in a rather unusual manner earlier today. As Gizmodo points out, the CBS takedown wasn’t a standard distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack because the CBS homepage only showed an index page with a single file. That suggests that whoever hacked the site deleted everything on it. The CBS site was down for about 20 minutes, according to the @YourAnonNews Twitter account, an official broadcast channel for Anonymous. Showing its global reach, Anonymous is also apparently attacking several Brazilian websites today as well, including the websites of Brazil’s federal district and Tangara da Serra city. Quite a way to retaliate for Megaupload. The Department of Justice indictment against Megaupload alleges that it is connected to a vast criminal enterprise has caused more than $500 million in harm to copyright owners. If convicted, the company and its executives could forfeit $175 million in assets, including 15 Mercedes, a Maserati, a Lamborghini, a Rolls-Royce with the license plate "GOD," and a huge pile of computers and large-screen TVs. Four people, including Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, were arrested Thursday in New Zealand, and three others named in the indictment are unaccounted for. You can see a screen grab of CBS.com’s homepage from earlier today below: Anonymous family photo: @VizFoSho/TwitPic CBS.com homepage picture: Anonymous/Lockerz Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Redbox launches daily trivia-based discounts Posted: 22 Jan 2012 11:29 AM PST Redbox, the dollar-a-day DVD rental kiosk company, has launched a new promotion where customers can earn discounts by partaking in movie trivia. The trivia is powered by Scene It?, the popular multiplayer trivia game, and can earn you up to 50 cents off a single rental every day. That’s a 50% discount, assuming you reserved your DVD online before picking it up. (Otherwise it’s $1.20 now.) You’ll be given 60 seconds to answer five questions, each worth a 10 cent discount. You can use two different lifesavers in case you’re stuck, or just skip to a new question. Although the discount is limited to once per day, you can play the trivia for fun as much as you’d like. You can see my results below. Not to toot my own very humble horn, but I’m kind of the greatest trivia master of our entire generation, so naturally I got all five right… while taking screencaps. And solving a Rubik’s cube. With my mind. If you act fast you can have my promo code, as I still need to finish Bunraku before 9pm tonight… Now bring on the video game trivia! Filed under: deals, media, VentureBeat        
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| The 14 hottest Chinese tech-startup clones of 2011 Posted: 22 Jan 2012 10:30 AM PST
People outside of China often wonder why the Chinese love to copy things. The answer is that it's the way they’re taught to learn. Follow the teacher, recite books, and don't challenge authority. This mentality sticks with people as they mature. Moreover, I'm sure many startups think, "Why shouldn't I copy?" if the business model has been proven overseas and they know how to adapt it for China. Not copying would almost represent a missed opportunity. When I interviewed the co-founder of Match.com, Peng Ong (now a Partner at GSR Ventures) he said "Copying is a form of innovation. The best companies never just copy; they copy and then localize. It's like jazz, you have a basic rhythm and structure and you move around that. Is jazz copying? I don't think there is any original idea. Google is a copy." I've realized that the word “innovation” can be interpreted in many ways. In China, I feel it means to adapt and improve. To some degree, everyone learns by copying. But where it becomes a touchy subject is when Chinese knockoffs don't just copy the business model, they copy everything except the logo! Since the Chinese are expert copiers of everything from Nike shoes and Italian-made furniture to tech startups, this skill ought to be commended. We’ve compiled a list of the best tech clones of companies that were hot in China over the last year. We picked the winners based their market leader position in the market perception. Of course, all the original startups ideas that made it big originate from America, particularly in Silicon Valley. Here we go, drum roll please! 1. Groupon – First and largest group buying site in the world Winner: Meituan, finished 2011 as number one group buying site by revenue. Honorable mention: Lashou, put up a good fight against Meituan. 2. Airbnb – First and largest vacation and private room rental site in the world Winner: Airizu, the earliest Airbnb clone in China. Honorable mention: Mayi, operated by one of China's largest classified sites, Ganji. 3. Tumblr – Largest light-blogging platform in the world Winner: DianDian, incubated by Innovation Works and raised US$10M. Honorable mention: Lofter, spawned from Internet giant, NetEase. 4. Pinterest – The hottest social bookmarking site right now, with fast growth and salivating VCs Winner: Huaban, from the makers from the best Flickr clone. Honorable mention: J.RenRen, from the makers of China's Facebook, RenRen. 5. Gilt – Exclusive discount luxury goods site Winner: Xiu, satisfying China's insatiable demand for luxury and brand names. Honorable mention: VIPstore, recently raised a new round of funding from Intel Capital. 6. Flipboard – First and most popular iPad magazine app Winner: Zaker, the earliest Flipboard clone emerged when Flipboard was blocked in China. Honorable mention: Xianguo, from the makers of a popular RSS reader. 7. Kik – Popular mobile messaging apps Winner: Weixin, a mobile app that is rolling Kik, Talkbox, Foursquare, Bump into one Honorable mention: Miliao, from Lei Jun, regarded as China's Steve Jobs One trend we noticed is that the best clones are often created by very large Chinese tech companies with existing resources and money. It shows how tough the environment is for grassroots startups trying to compete against the big guys. It is also telling of the health of China's startup eco-system — big companies can and will simply crush anything they see as a threat. This dynamic explains why the mergers and acquisitions market is not as active here as it is in America. Now that we are already flying through 2012, we’re looking for the next hot clones to emerge out of China. This article originally appeared on TechNode, a VentureBeat editorial partner based in China. Dachshund photo via ShutterStock Filed under: Entrepreneur Corner, VentureBeat        
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| FCC chairman Julius Genachowski calls for SOPA compromise Posted: 22 Jan 2012 10:19 AM PST
PIPA and SOPA would give the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against foreign websites associated with infringing intellectual property. Following a widespread online protest from prominent web companies, authors of both pieces of legislation have decided that the bills need to be reworked before being put to the House or Senate for vote. When asked about SOPA, Genachowski narrowly avoided disclosing whether he was pro or anti SOPA, but said that the vital importance of preserving a free and open Internet does not have to be at the odds with legislation that ensures effective mechanisms are in place to enforce intellectual property. This wishful-thinking viewpoint is in direct contrast to Y Combinator creator Paul Graham’s recent call for the death of Hollywood. “Hollywood appears to have peaked. If it were an ordinary industry (film cameras, say, or typewriters), it could look forward to a couple decades of peaceful decline,” Graham said. “But this is not an ordinary industry. The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their demise.” Genachowski, however, hopes that engineers and Internet entrepreneurs can work together with IP rights holders to figure out a way to preserve the open architecture of the web and give content creators the projection they’re entitled to. He did not elaborate on how a compromise between the two dissenting parties could be achieved. Genachowski also talked at length about the FCC’s mission to free up more wireless spectrum, echoing the statements he made at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. The largest need for change in regulatory policy is mobile and spectrum, he said. The demand generated by smartphones and tablets is going up 35 fold a year, but the supply of spectrum has stayed essentially flat, he added. The chairman is advocating for a two-sided auction system, as previously laid out, that would allow spectrum holders to exchange spectrum they’re not using in exchange for proceeds. The FCC would realign the spectrum, free it up and put it on the market in auctions that could generate up to $25 billion in profits. The U.S. is ahead of most of the world in rolling out 4G and will be the first country where the spectrum crisis will hit, but every country will face this problem, he warned. Disclosure: The Digital Life Design conference paid my way to Munich. VentureBeat's coverage of the DLD 12 conference remains objective and independent. [Image via Hubert Burda Media/Flickr] Filed under: VentureBeat        
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