Looking to turn yourself (or your show) into a YouTube star but don’t know where to begin? YouTube’s looking to help — the video portal has launched a comprehensive guide outlining how content producers should be approaching the platform and which features they can take advantage of. The 70 page guide has a fitting title: The Creator Playbook.
The new document was discussed today at the VidCon conference in Los Angeles, and is part of YouTube’s broader goal to help creators produce high quality content (YouTube’s recent acquisition Next New Networks is the driving force behind this mission). → Read More
BigCommerce, a company that provides e-commerce software to online retailers and merchants, has raised $15 Million in Series A funding from General Catalyst Partners.
Launched in 2009, BigCommerce provides a comprehensive SaaS for retailers and merchants to manage e-commerce online. BigCommerce helps small businesses power anything and everything related to an online storefront from search to inventory to online payments to marketing and SEO. And the price for the software is affordable for small businesses, with basic plans starting at $25 per month. → Read More
It’s time to bring TechCrunch Disrupt back home to San Francisco. We are accepting applications for startups to launch at the Disrupt Startup Battlefield until midnight tonight. Applications for the Startup Battlefield can be submitted here.
Does your startup have what it takes to be the next Getaround, Qwiki, or Soluto—and make it through the judges gauntlet to claim the top prize of $50,000, the “Disrupt Cup” and accolades of the crowd? If you think so, make sure you apply.
Disrupt is the premiere startup launch competition where the most promising founders and entrepreneurs vie to launch their companies on technology’s biggest stage in front of all-star judges. We will have some of the most influential innovators, angels, and VCs judging in front of an audience of 2,000 investors, technologists, and press.
Google+ is not on this list, yet. Mostly because I haven’t got a handle on its core value as a news trigger. If you’re Scoble, the value is obvious as he is now demonstrating by turning it into his blog. But sooner or later the service will have to decide what it wants to be when it grows up — a conversation hub with no tools for rapid synthesis of knowledge, a social graph to challenge Twitter (it’s getting there fast), or some other thing perhaps more substantial than currently appreciated, like a stalking horse for YouTube live streaming aka the social broadcast network. → Read More
This last week we’ve all watched in horror as the story unfolded about an Airbnb user who had her home ransacked a month ago.
Other than the sideshow of us getting dragged into the story, it seemed to be winding down yesterday. The company appears to be bending over backwards to compensate the victim and avoid another of her blog posts where she writes about how scared she is, still homeless and shaken after the ordeal.
Now another victim has come forward. → Read More
We’re back for a new episode of OMG/JK — featuring both of your hosts reunited in the TCHQ studio (I was back in SF for our Mobile First CrunchUp). Oh, and this episode also includes a cameo by a man in a large yellow jacket. I won’t spoil it.
We kick off this week’s episode by diving into Twitter’s new ad format, which allows brands to place Promoted Tweets at the top of their followers’ streams. Twitter has long been toying with various ad formats — will this one please users, or just annoy them?
Next up we have Facebook’s secret iPad application, which leaked out as part of an official update to its iPhone application. MG got his hands on the app and tested it before Facebook cut off access, and his first impressions are good — tune in to get the details.
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Flush with $100 million in new funding, Square is continuing to grow like a weed in the mobile payments space. After passing the $3 million mark at the end of May, Square is now processing $4 million in mobile payments daily, and is on track to reach over $100 million in transactions in July. And COO Keith Rabois tells us that he expects the company to double this volume by October.
In late June, Square raised a massive round of funding, which valued the company above $1 billion. At the time of the announcement, it was revealed that Square was processing nearly $4 million in payments per day, but the company has surpassed that mark a month later. Rabois tells us international expansion is part of the next phase of growth. He expects to initial launch payments capabilities outside of the U.S. in 2012. → Read More
After 3.5 years, I’ve finally re-joined the community of car owners.
Between February 2008 and last week, I was car-less. I borrowed and rented cars, took taxis and Zip cars, and occasionally biked. I also bummed a lot of rides (thank you very much – you know who you are). It had started when the warranty on my fancy German gas guzzler expired; I sold the thing, and never really found the time to shop around for a replacement – Who Has Time For This?
I felt a lot more excited about the prospect of driving an electric sedan, which should be greener, potentially faster, simpler to operate, and cheaper to fuel. Most importantly, I’d never have to kill ten minutes stopping for gas – Who Has Time For This? → Read More
Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Dave Chase, the CEO of Avado.com, a health technology company that was a TechCrunch Disrupt finalist. Previously he was a management consultant for Accenture’s healthcare practice consulting to 25 hospitals and was the founder of Microsoft’s Health business. You can follow him on Twitter @chasedave.
Since the latter half of the 90’s, the handwriting has been on the wall for newspaper companies that media’s future was digital. Heck, the newspapers’ own business sections reported on this trend. Despite this, the majority of the industry focused on traditional strategies such as taking on debt to acquire other newspapers or investing in new printing presses, leading to disastrous consequences. → Read More
‘”Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing his hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”‘ – A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
I know, I know. I’m old. Worse than that, I’m nostalgic. In the past few months, I’ve written about my love for fountain pens, and traditional publishers, and paper books, and handwritten letters, and live theater, and downtown Las Vegas. Those who follow me on Twitter will have read about my enthusiasm for the New York Times Crossword, and hotel writing paper, and socializing with friends sans mobile phones.
It’s cute to be the token Luddite at TechCrunch — but it’s also hugely disingenuous. I’m writing this stuff on Twitter, and on a hugely popular technology blog. You could cut the irony with a knife.
The truth is, I love technology. It’s rare that I dismiss or disparage a new gadget, app or company without trying it out at least once; and I certainly believe that – on balance – the more technologically advanced we become as a society, the better the world becomes.
And yet increasingly I wonder whether, for the sake of humanity, it might not be a bad thing if the earthquake comes and tips all of web 2.0 into the sea. → Read More
We had a blast yesterday at our Mobile First Crunchup and 6th Annual Summer Party at August Capital. At our CrunchUp, we had some amazing speakers and special guests. Even Chamillionaire managed to make a certain speaker sweat and started a debate on why Android doesn’t have a decent phone.
Later in the day, the drinks were flowing at August Capital and even Ron Conway was spotted enjoying a margarita or two. Our summer party was a huge success and we want to thank everyone who came. We hope you had as much fun as we did. → Read More
Startups love to point to big growth numbers, and the press loves to publish them. We are as guilty as anyone else in this regard: one million downloads, 10 million registered users, 200 million tweets per day. These growth metrics can often be signs of traction (which is why we report them), but just as often they are not. It is important to distinguish between real metrics and what Lean Startup guru Eric Ries calls vanity metrics.
Vanity metrics are things like registered users, downloads, and raw pageviews. They are easily manipulated, and do not necessarily correlate to the numbers that really matter: active users, engagement, the cost of getting new customers, and ultimately revenues and profits. The latter are more actionable metrics. As First Round Capital’s Josh Kopelman recently advised on Founder Office Hours, “The real data is retention and repeat usage.” Startups that focu → Read More
The Gillmor Gang — Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — covered the gamut between Google+ and well, Google+. The new social platform continues to delight and confound the early adopters in record numbers. @scobleizer remains optimistic that the search giant will roll out filtering features to cut down on the noise of squids, kittens, and well, Scoble comment farms.
@dannysullivan would prefer Google unleash the hounds of celebrity and brands, surprised as he and we are that the Plus team was caught flatfooted by the viral adoption of the field trial, or whatever Danny calls it. When we (Danny and I) started complaining about the lack of iPad support and Robert about the perils of high speed Scoble flow via the iPhone, @kevinmarks pointed out the ANdroid support sucked for tablets in general. All in all, much to look forward to and little or no competition from Facebook for Google to worry about.
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Oh, how embarrassing. Earlier this week, Elizabeth May, the leader of Canada’s Green Party, took to her Twitter account and declared war on wi-fi. To think I very nearly voted for these clowns in our recent election. Lesson for my American friends: just because you find all the major parties unpalatable doesn’t mean that the fringe parties aren’t even worse. Meanwhile, can someone please get an environmental movement going that isn’t anti-science and anti-technology?
Give her credit: she did manage, with rare ability, to hit not just one but all of the “idiot politician talking about science/technology” notes: 1. Moral panic: “It is very disturbing how quickly WiFi has moved into schools as it is children who are the most vulnerable.” 2. Deluded citation of long-disproven theories: “It is one prevailing theory re disappearance of pollinating insects.” 3. Misleading deception that comes this close to outright lying: “The World Health Org lists EMF as a possible human carcinogen.” → Read More
Here are some of yesterday’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: → Read More
You’ve doubtless heard about the Airbnb fiasco – being dubbed #ransackgate by some – that’s been exploding the last couple of days. If you’re not familiar with the story, we first covered it here, and there’s some terrific source material from the woman who’s home was ransacked and robbed here and here.
Today Y Combinator founder (and Airbnb investor) Paul Graham wrote this: → Read More
Last November, TechCrunch’s own Sarah Lacy sat down with Vineet Devaiah from “social streetview” startup, Phototour.in, which, at the time, had just received term sheets from a number of high-profile U.S. investors and had recently been awarded the “Top Emerging Technology Company of 2010″ by Nvidia. The startup was the first international, non-funded, under-20-member company to win the award, according to Devaiah.
Since then, Phototour added Academy Award certificate-winner and entrepreneur Bala S. Manian as an advisor (who was honored for “technical achievement” for his contributions to optical technologies used in films, including Star Wars) and has gained more than 47,000 users for the alpha version of its image and panorama crowdsourcing app, “360″, on Android. Users have logged more than 75,000 panoramas, so considering the rumor that iPhone 5 will have a native panorama app, sources tell us that 360 may well be a candidate for being the app that makes Android competitive in the space. → Read More
Today at Aol West Headquarters, a number of entrepreneurs, VCs, and executives gathered to discuss the state of the mobile industry and mobile technology. After a series of individual panels, the day concluded with the crowd of panelists gathering together for a lively discussion about the future of mobile, current mobile trends gaining legs, as well as what’s missing. Chi-Hua Chien of Kleiner Perkins stepped in to give an example of what’s missing in the industry by sharing three particular business models that he’d like to see make their way into the space. → Read More
As we closed out today’s Mobile First CrunchUp, all of our speakers took the stage for an extended roundtable discussing a variety of topics affecting mobile: design, gaming mechanics, and, of course, iPhone vs Android.
One of the last questions posed during the roundtable came from Wired’s Mike Isaac, who asked how the next version of Android, which is called Ice Cream Sandwich, would help developers produce applications that look nice across the multitude of form factors Android will spread to.
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