I’ve had a couple of conversations with Skype exec Jonathan Christensen over the last few days to get a better understanding of just what directions the company plans to go with regard to third party developers. The recent announcement of the closing of the Skype Extras program seems to suggest Skype is heading exactly in the wrong direction.
As an aside, one of those conversations was extraordinary from a technical perspective. Jonathan called me via Skype, which forwarded via Skype Out to my mobile phone when I didn’t pick up. Since Google now controls my mobile number, it rang my cell and my home Vonage line per my rules. I picked up the vonage line and I had a crystal clear connection with no lag.
Christensen says that the Extras announcement is not about Skype backing away from a robust developer platform. Rather, he says, Skype is focusing on a next generation platform that will hopefully address the deficiencies of the old program and open many more opportunities for developers to build on Skype services. → Read More
Intuit will acquire the free online personal finance service Mint, we’ve confirmed from a source close to the deal, for around $170 million. Silicon Alley Insider first reported a rumor on this. The deal should be announced in the next few days.
Update: CEO Aaron Patzer has just confirmed the deal on-stage at TechCrunch50, and written a guest post describing The Value of TechCrunch50 that contains more details.
This is a terrific exit for Mint, which first launched two years ago at TechCrunch50. Mint took the top prize at that event and has been growing fast ever since. Their last round of financing valued the company at $140 million.
In all, Mint has raised $32 million over three venture rounds. → Read More
“Location” has been one of the most frequently used buzzwords in the web industry recently, with i.e. Twitter, Facebook and Google having substantially stepped up efforts in that area in the last few months. TechCrunch has always been particularly bullish about location-based mobile social networks, with Loopt, Brightkite or, most recently, Foursquare among the big names.
But there are more location-based social networks out there, and one of them, Centrl, is now intending to further bridge the gap between mobile phone users and the web at large (a move we called for last year). The service, which has been available on the iPhone [iTunes link], Android, BlackBerry [JAD file] and Nokia since May 2008, extended its offering with a web app a few days ago. → Read More
“Location” has been one of the most frequently used buzzwords in the web industry recently, with i.e. Twitter, Facebook and Google having substantially stepped up efforts in that area in the last few months. TechCrunch has always been particularly bullish about location-based mobile social networks, with Loopt, Brightkite or, most recently, Foursquare among the big names.
But there are more location-based social networks out there, and one of them, Centrl, is now intending to further bridge the gap between mobile phone users and the web at large (a move we called for last year). The service, which has been available on the iPhone [iTunes link], Android, BlackBerry [JAD file] and Nokia since May 2008, extended its offering with a web app a few days ago. → Read More
A few hours ago, we got a tip from one of our readers that they’d popped into their iPhone messaging app this morning, only to find that they’d suddenly gained the ability to send MMS. We chalked it up as a fluke – AT&T promised it would launch on September 25th, after all, and they haven’t exactly been punctual about this whole thing thus far. Two whole weeks early? It seemed shaky. Then a few hours later, we got another one. So far, we’ve received three tips, all from entirely different people, all claiming that MMS has sprung up on their iPhones sans jailbreak or any other sort of hackery. Being the curious folks we are, we popped over to Twitter, and sure enough: there’s a stream (albeit a very slow one) of folks reporting that MMS is now up and running on their handsets. Enabling MMS on AT&T’s end is a matter of disabling an “opt-out” toggle on each account, so this is the exact manner we’d expect things to roll out. We’ve contacted AT&T for comment, and we’ll report back with whatever we hear. Any more of our readers finding themselves MMS’d this morning? [Thanks David, Bethany, and Sean] → Read More
Social game startup Zynga sure does get into a lot of legal fights. Just as they settle down to business with the Playdom you-stole-our-playbook fight, we’ve confirmed that they settled a different lawsuit – one where they were playing defense.
In February 2009 Mob Wars creator David Maestri sued Zynga for copyright infringement. Maestri himself had only recently cleared up his own rights to the game after a scuffle with his former employer, SGN.
The Maestri-Zynga lawsuit has now been settled as well. The rumor was that Maestri was demanding $10 million from Zynga to settle the litigation. Ultimately, says one source, he got a payment in the “high seven figures.” So that implies something like $7 – $9 million. → Read More
This is probably a question that the record labels should be asking, but I’ll ask it here anyway: how do you guys listen to music in 2009? On your iPhone (or whatever portable device, it doesn’t matter for the purposes of this here post)? On your computer while you surf your favorite Web sites? At the gym? Now, how many of you will sit in front of your computer, and devote 100 percent of your attention to the iTunes visualizer? Not too many of you, I’d venture to guess. → Read More
The folks over at NewTeeVee took the “Flip SD,” as they called it – no real clarification if it was the bigger Flip Ultra or smaller Flip Mino camcorder – and did a side-by-side video quality comparison against the new iPod nano. You’ll recall that during the Apple presentation last Wednesday, Jobs and company took a few direct shots at the line of Flip cameras. → Read More
It’s less than a day before the third annual (and third sold out) TechCrunch50 launch event in San Francisco. Fifty startups are preparing to launch their new products on stage in front of thousands of people. Are they nervous? Yep. But its all part of a rite of passage into the wonderfully chaotic world of being a startup entrepreneur.
A bunch of good articles giving advice to launching startups have been posted over the last couple of days. We’re linking to them here, because when CNET and others look back at TechCrunch50 2009 and sort the winners from the losers, you want to be on that winners list. So take the advice of these grizzled veterans seriously. And then ignore most of it and forge your own path, like all good entrepreneurs do anyway: → Read More
Halloween is rapidly approaching, and many of you are no doubt looking for a cool costume to show off at various social gatherings. Me? I’m leaning toward being iTunes— a fat and bloated CD with a blue music note as a hat. But that’s me; maybe you’d actually like people to understand what you are? How about this, then: a Blood Elf or Night Elf? → Read More
Huzzah! It’s that time again! Time for TechCrunch 50: where thousands of struggling entrepreneurs spend three grand they can barely afford to watch fifty of their peers dancing like malnourished bears for the approbation of Jason Calacanis! It’s like Christians and lions meets Satan’s own version of speed dating, with added Scoble! What’s not to love? I’m sorry – you’ll have to forgive my cynicism, it’s just that I have to prove to you that I haven’t gone native. You see, one of the main reasons I was hired by TechCrunch was for my traffic-driving habit of hurling faeces at unsuspecting industry conferences. Conferences like Jeff Pulver’s inexorably ill-planned 140 Characters in New York or Loic LeMeur’s très froid ‘Le‘ in Paris – both of which saw the sharp end of my tongue when I was at the Guardian. I learned there that no-one cares when I talk about interesting start-ups or noteworthy trends – but when I textually assault a hard-working event organiser, the page impressions flow like gravy. READ MORE → Read More
After raising a total of $11.2 million since its founding in 2005, Tiny Pictures sold to Shutterfly on Friday for $1.3 million in cash and another $1.3 million in restricted stock to employees, which has some performance triggers. If you back out the earnout, investors only got back about a tenth of what they put in.
Those investors include Mohr Davidow, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and angel investors Reid Hoffman, and Joi Ito. The company’s last venture round was $7 million led by Draper Fisher in February, 2008. But Mohr Davidow, which held preferred shares, might have been the only investor to see any of those proceeds at all. Shutterfly disclosed the acquisition in an SEC filing, which only mentions Mohr Davidow as a recipient of some of the $1.3 million in cash.
It also mentions that Nancy J. Schoendorf, a managing partner at Mohr Davidow, sits on the boards of both companies. Although she did not vote on the acquisition, the connection raises the question of whether or not Mohr played a role in bring the deal to Shutterfly in the first place. → Read More
I came across a post written earlier this week by A History of Violence screenwriter Josh Olson titled I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script. It’s worth a read because it is funny as hell. But I also can’t help thinking about how it all applies to our Silicon Valley community. Are we any different than Hollywood? Should we be?
Olson writes:
I will not read your fucking script…If that seems unfair, I’ll make you a deal. In return for you not asking me to read your fucking script, I will not ask you to wash my fucking car, or take my fucking picture, or represent me in fucking court, or take out my fucking gall bladder, or whatever the fuck it is that you do for a living…Yes. That’s right. I called you a dick. Because you created this situation. You put me in this spot where my only option is to acquiesce to your demands or be the bad guy. That, my friend, is the very definition of a dick move.
He goes on, giving a specific example of one time that he read someone’s script and how it all turned out badly anyway.
And, he’s right. Dead on right. Asking a writer to read your script is no different than asking a painter to paint your house for free. Except for one crucial thing – The person isn’t really asking Olson to read his script. What he was really asking for is access to the Hollywood power structure. A way in to a very closed off world. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
