It appears that Foursquare hit the three million user mark sometime over the weekend. The location based social network has been adding users at impressive rates, and only hit 2 million users in early July. It took a year to reach one million; three months to hit 2 million, and a month and a half to hit 3 million.
Some thought Foursquare was doomed when Facebook rolled out its location-based feature, Places, a few weeks ago. In turns out that via the Places API, the feature serves as a platform for services like Foursquare and Gowalla. But Foursquare’s co-founder Dennis Crowley reported that Foursquare had its biggest day of signups following Facebook’s announcement. And Crowley told the LA Times recently that the startup is growing at about 180,000 users every 10 days. → Read More
There’s a growing debate in Silicon Valley as to whether the rise in angel investors coupled with robust deal activity (from the likes of Google, Facebook, Zynga, etc.) is fostering an unhealthy environment for the industry.
It’s not that founders aren’t making money (indeed many are cashing out early) the real issue, as posited by our editor, Michael Arrington, is if this new dynamic is stifling the next Zuckerberg or Brin—- the entrepreneur that doesn’t just want to sell to Google, but wants to be Google. On Thursday, we explored this issue further, inviting David Hornik and Howard Hartenbaum of August Capital to sit down with Arrington on TechCrunch TV, to discuss the state of investing and why once-bold tech warriors seem to be giving up. See video ahead. → Read More
For any entrepreneur, the challenge of taking an idea to launch can be a daunting and expensive journey. Fortunately, Adeo Ressi, founder of TheFunded and startup accelerator, Founder Institute, has a ten step plan.
While there is no foolproof recipe for every launch, Ressi says his template will help any tech entrepreneur get a business off the ground for less than $2,000. The program, which Ressi recently presented at the Founder Institute’s Boston location, is a bare bones guide to securing your startup’s online identity, enhancing your appearance of legitimacy (through low-cost but well designed logos and marketing materials), understanding your startup’s priorities and target consumer, and finally, getting it to the point of a rough web launch.
Click ahead for steps one through ten and Ressi’s video. → Read More
Success in Silicon Valley, most would agree, is more merit driven than almost any other place in the world. It doesn’t matter how old you are, what sex you are, what politics you support or what color you are. If your idea rocks and you can execute, you can change the world and/or get really, stinking rich.
For the most part I’ve sat on the sidelines over the years during the endless debates about how we need to do more to encourage more women to start companies. What I mean by “sat on the sidelines” is this – until today I haven’t really said what I felt. Now I’m going to.
Here’s why. Yet another article, this time in the Wall Street Journal, takes a shot at us and others for not doing enough to help women in tech. Says Rachel Sklar, a perennial TechCrunch critic: → Read More
In terms of brand recognition, it’s hard to top a huge live display billboard in Las Vegas. But Foursquare has managed to do it. As you can see above, they now have a massive, multi-level and multi-angle display practically screaming about the service to all those in Times Square in New York City.
“Check in, find your friends, unlock your city,” the ad reads. In smaller print at the bottom it talks about checking in to American Eagle for some kind of special. Foursquare head of business development Tristan Walker confirms that American Eagle is behind the ad, which he says is the “largest digital billboard in Times Square.” → Read More
This is a guest post by Hunter Walk (@hunterwalk) who conducted a survey of 500 Foursquare users to better understand their check in behaviors and motivations. His obsession with Foursquare is unrelated to his day job leading the consumer product team at YouTube, although he did at one point hold the Mayorship of their San Bruno headquarters.
Have you noticed “Off the Grid” [OTG] appearing in your Foursquare feed recently? No, it’s not the latest trendy West Hollywood club or SF food cart. OTG is Foursquare’s “privacy” feature where you check in to a location but don’t disclose it to your friends (while gaining any applicable points, badges, etc). What purpose does it serve to notify your friends that you’re out on the town but to hide the location? And what does it tell us about the future of location-based services & privacy? This was the question I set out to answer by surveying nearly 500 Foursquare users. → Read More
We’ve written about Fanvibe (formerly FanPulse) a few times because they do a nice job mixing some of the hottest elements of the web these days (tweets, check-ins, gaming elements) with sports. And now we’re about to enter the peak time for sports in the U.S. with the NFL season about to kickoff. With that in mind, the guys behind Fanvibe have come up with a new football-specific iPhone app called TweetQB.
The idea is as simple as can be: you load up the app and you see a list of all the current NFL games. If the games are currently in progress, you see an up-to-date score. If they have yet to start, you’ll see when they do. Clicking on any of these matchups takes you to a screen filled with tweets about that specific game. From here, you can respond to any of these tweets, or start tweeting yourself. → Read More
It’s no secret that Google, Apple and even RIM want a piece of the $1 billion-and-growing mobile advertising market. The fight over share of ad dollars is even resulting in possible anti-competitive practices. Apple’s developer licensing agreement update in June basically says it reserves the right to block Google’s AdMob from serving ads on the iPhone and iPad, allowing only “independent” ad-serving companies to serve ads on the devices. But in July, AdMob founder Omar Hamoui said that Apple had not yet enforced the policy, allowing Google to continue to serve ads on Apple devices. Perhaps the FTC’s recent interest in Apple’s ad policies delayed the blockade, but multiple industry sources take it as a foregone conclusion that it’s only a matter of time before Apple prevents Google completely from serving ads. If and when that does eventually happen, the mobile ad space could change irrevocably.
Clearly, there is a very real danger that Apple will create a domino effect across the mobile advertising industry if it turns off the switch for AdMob. Let’s just think this through. → Read More
Editor’s note: The following guest post is by Nikhyl Singhal, the co-founder and CEO of voice-application startup SayNow.
Is it conceivable that one of our greatest inventions, the phone number, is about to face extinction?
Just ask Mark Zuckerberg. Earlier this year, when asked if Facebook would be around in 100 years, as long as Ma Bell has been around, Zuckerberg responded, “I don’t know. But I don’t know how long telephones will be around for.” Will they be around for ten more years? I’ll go even further. It may not even take 5 years for the phone service, as we know it, to meet its demise.
Who’s going to lead the charge? Voice on Gmail and Skype are just the beginning. What are Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, and Microsoft doing? As AT&T, Verizon, Apple and Google spent this summer hashing out plans for world domination, it seems that Facebook is best positioned to strike the fatal blow against our beloved carriers. And it starts with those phone digits. → Read More
Japanese watch maker Haruo Suekichi is famous for his unique, steampunk style timepieces. Each of the amazing watches is handmade by Suekichi himself, even though he doesn’t have any formal education and actually started his career by hawking the first watches at flea markets. Guest writer Natsuki Yamada sat down with Suekichi in his studio in Tokyo earlier this month to conduct the following interview for CrunchGear. Your watches have an antique, yet very futuristic form and design. Where do they come from? What inspires you? – When I make watches, it doesn’t usually start with design but with “fun”: fun gimmicks, fun looking, unique way of wearing them. They need to be fun, because they are more gadgets than watches to me. So the inspiration comes from everything that I find fun or interesting. My latest watch is based on my latest experience of watching the birth of cicada nymphs. → Read More
An interesting paradox in the technology world is that there is both a shortage and a surplus of engineers in the United States. Talk to those working at any Silicon Valley company, and they will tell you how hard it is to find qualified talent. But listen to the heart-wrenching stories of unemployed engineers, and you will realize that there are tens of thousands who can’t get jobs. What gives?
The harsh reality is that in the tech world, companies prefer to hire young, inexperienced, engineers. And engineering is an “up or out” profession: you either move up the ladder or face unemployment. This is not something that tech executives publicly admit, because they fear being sued for age discrimination, but everyone knows that this is the way things are. Why would any company hire a computer programmer with the wrong skills for a salary of $150,000, when it can hire a fresh graduate—with no skills—for around $60,000? Even if it spends a month training the younger worker, the company is still far ahead. The young understand new technologies better than the old do, and are like a clean slate: they will rapidly learn the latest coding methods and techniques, and they don’t carry any “technology baggage”. As well, the older worker likely has a family and needs to leave by 6 pm, whereas the young can pull all-nighters. → Read More
Editor’s note: The following guest post is by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, the CEO of WatchMojo, a producer and distributor of premium video content.
Last week, Erick posted an article on TechCrunch titled “Industry Insiders Say Online Video Advertising Is Reaching A ‘Frenzy Point.’” It was a surefire way to get online video entrepreneurs excited, right? Not so fast.
The article quoted two CEOs of large online video businesses—namely Keith Richman of Break Media and Jason Glickman of Tremor Media—whose basic argument was as follows: It very well may just be the big ad networks and properties like Hulu that are seeing the vast majority of new ad dollars.
While one might think that the top 10 firms in a given industry will prevail, it’s important to think of legendary General Electric CEO Jack Welch’s rule that a company should be either No. 1 or No. 2 in a particular industry, or else leave it completely. Online video frequently draws comparisons to search, which today has become a two-horse race between Google and Microsoft. Considering that the high-profile and defunct Veoh was a perennial top-10 competitor in video, one wonders: is anything other than No. 1 or No. 2 in video really a winning a strategy? → Read More
One of the big problems with drug and prostitution transactions is that they tend to involve a lot of cash, and cash is hard to launder. Taking credit card payments has never been easier via Square, which lets anyone swipe credit cards with their iPhone.
Sure, it leaves one heck of a paper trail, but you have to wonder if at least a few of those person to person transactions aren’t being done via that sexy startup. I certainly have. → Read More
A unique spin on the concept of co-working space, Sunfire Offices was started three months ago by ex- Google engineering manager Niniane Wang and and ex-Facebook engineering manager Yishan Wong. While there are plenty of other co-working spaces in downtown Mountain View, like Hacker Dojo and Plug In Play, Wong and Wang, not satisfied with the available options, decided to create one of their own.
So they rented office space and got funding from a number of angel investors including Keith Rabois and James Hogan, who completely sponsored the space, meaning that Wong and Wang were then able to offer it rent free to other startups and individuals working on personal projects,“Our goal was to build a co-working space focused on top-tier talent.”
→ Read More
Ricoh has a sort of aesthetic going on here. I only just realized what it is the recently-released CX4 reminds me of: one of those disposable cameras. This new G700, although it looks like a totally solid camera, definitely looks like you’d throw it away when you were done. → Read More
Some things just amaze me. Despite the fact that people are paying more for theater tickets then ever, the MPAA and their ilk are crying about how they aren’t making as much money due to piracy. I suggest that the real pirates here are the theater owners, who are raising ticket prices at the highest year to year rate ever. → Read More
As the video card wars continue, the as of yet unreleased AMD Radeon HD 6870 looks to be a serious weapon. How do we know? Well, the Chinese website PCinLife.com managed to get a benchmark showing some very interesting information about the new card. A 3DMark score of 11,500 is about 2,500 more then the previous high end card, the Nvidia GTX 480 and the HD 5870. This reflects what appears to be a serious performance increase, placing the advantage in AMDs corner once again. [via PC Perspective] → Read More
The Mac Pro isn’t exactly known for being a terribly loud computer, but I guess you can make it even quieter by adding liquid cooling. Of course, it’s not Apple approved so adding this type of technology will no doubt void your warranty, but it would give you the ability to overclock your machine. In fact, this is exactly what someone from Asetek did; added liquid cooling to an 8-Core Mac Pro, and then overclocked it from 2.8Ghz to 3.16Ghz. The end result? An extremely fast workstation that generates almost no noise. Check out the video (with a performance comparison) after the jump: → Read More
I promise this is my last word on the subject.
I had already promised myself, actually, that I wouldn’t write any more about my decision to quit Facebook, Linkedin, Foursquare, Blippy, Yammer, Dopplr and every other social network other than Twitter. But then I added Twitter to the list – deleting my 10,000+ follower account and returning to more traditional blogging – and suddenly all (social media) hell broke loose.
For reasons I can’t quite understand – it’s not like I’ve quit food or oxygen – my inbox has since been flooded with emails. Some are just standard notes of congratulations for cutting the cord while others scream that I’m a Luddite who doesn’t ‘get’ Twitter (by and large these are the same people who describe themselves as “social media ninja”s on their profiles: the modern day equivalent of those “My other car is the Batmobile” bumper stickers).
The majority of messages, though, are from people who are strongly considering following my lead, but are worried that their body or mind might not be able to cope with the shock. How do I feel since quitting? Can I offer them any advice? → Read More
While the following research definitely falls under the category of “wait and see,” it’s certainly interesting, if only because of a completely different way of going about creating color and pixels. A team at the University of Michigan has put together a new display tech that uses incredibly thin slits in a sheet of metal to permit only light of certain wavelengths through. → Read More
