Good startups often emerge from situations where the founder is attempting to solve a problem they themselves have. That was certainly the case with collegiate events site Fampus, created by 22-year old Brittany Brody, now a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
As a new arrival to the university in 2008, Brody wanted to get involved on campus, but was frustrated by the lack of a dedicated site that listed both on-campus and nearby community events. So she created Fampus. → Read More
I’m sitting here at #F8 with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and he’s just told me that Spotify will no longer be invite only in the US, and that the service will have no limitations (essentially be free) for an unpaid user’s first six months using the service — the clock will start ticking, and be retroactive, after a user signs up. This six months leeway will be available both internationally and in the US.
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This guest post was written by Joe Green, the Founder and President of Causes. Causes is the largest online platform for activism and one of the original Facebook Applications. Green’s approach to building online tools is rooted in his offline experience as a grassroots political organizer for federal, state, and local campaigns. He recently wrote a guest post on Facebook Smart Lists, and, as a launch parter at today’s f8 conference, has significant insight into how Facebook’s announcements will impact its developer platform. Disclosure: Green was an early advisor to Facebook and has a small amount of stock.
I was one of the first people to join Facebook in February of 2004, and launched one of the inaugural applications on the platform in May 2007. The new Facebook profile and Open Graph announced today, along with the launch of smart friend lists last week, is going to usher in a new era of the Facebook platform. And I believe entire industries will potentially be revolutionized by social, from travel to reviews to health to e-commerce, and of course charity.
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Leo Apotheker was made the president and CEO of Hewlett-Packard on September 30, 2010. Today, just shy of a year later, he has stepped down from his post and HP’s board of directors appointed Meg Whitman as his replacement. Big surprise, right?
Under the leadership of Apotheker, HP’s stock lost nearly half of its value, basically squandered Mark Hurds $1.2 billion investment in Palm and announced that the company was considering cancelling or spinning off its consumer PC business. In short, HP lost its way within the last 357 days. → Read More
This morning Facebook announced Timeline, a crazy (and kind of creepy) omnibus look at everything that has ever happened in your Facebook lifespan. It’s like a story book of your life — or at least the online, documented parts.
Facebook said that Timeline would be on the way for everyone sometime in the coming weeks… which is great and all, for everyone else. You’re the type of person who reads TechCrunch, and are thus likely the type of person who likes their new and shiny things right now.
That’s okay. We can make it happen. → Read More
Just over a week ago, Apple filed requests with the Western District Court of Wisconsin and the Southern District Court of Florida to put their current patent battle with Motorola at a stand-still. In the request, Apple argued that Motorola’s acquisition deal with Google created a situation in which Motorola does not have standing to litigate or settle legal disputes, as it has ceded its patent control over to Google.
Well, Motorola wasn’t cool with this plan and has asked the court to keep things moving along. In the 15 pages of legal jargon, Motorola says that if the court is leaning toward granting the stay for Apple, then Motorola would like the opportunity to fix its standing issues. → Read More
Today at Facebook’s f8 conference in San Francisco, CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off a huge change to the service: Timeline. It’s the Profile reborn, and it looks great. Later, Facebook’s head of product Chris Cox took the stage to talk about the feature’s inception.
Cox largely credits two people: Nicholas Felton and Sam Lessin.
Cox waxed poetic about Felton’s history. He gushed about Felton’s Feltron Annual Reports, which stared in 2005. “14 pages. One year. One book,” Cox noted. It was all about organizing the years of his life in a beautiful, visual way. “It was hard to call it anything other than what it really was — art,” Cox continued. → Read More
Have you ever had a song stuck in your head to the point where you just need everyone else in a six-block radius to hear it? Apparently that’s a common affliction in my neighborhood. Last time it was Paul Simon at 4 in the morning. But at least they were only playing it on a boombox, not a 4000-watt sound tank.
Berlin-based artist Nik Nowak has created an actual track-based vehicle, as in a tank, with over a dozen speakers on it. Built on the frame of a Japanese industrial dumping vehicle, Panzer is the final answer in the boombox wars. → Read More
Yahoo News, one of the most popular news portals on the web, is deepening its integration with Facebook. Yahoo has formed integrations with the social network in the past with its products, but we’re told this is one of the most in-depth implementations to date. That’s because Yahoo is working with Facebook’s open graph to integrate your friends’ activity into your Yahoo News experience.
The new Yahoo News friends’ activity feature lets people discover and connect around the news and information they are enjoying on Yahoo through updates on Facebook. Once Facebook users opt-in to sharing conte, you’ll be able to see your Facebook friends’ on Yahoo News and the recent articles they’ve read. People’s activity will also be featured back on their Facebook profile as it happens. → Read More
Netflix is coming to Facebook in a really social way. At Facebook’s F8 developer conference today, Mark Zuckerberg previewed how Facebook members will be able to see what movies or TV shows their friends have been watching on Netflix and click on the movie to watch it right there in Facebook. An overlay player pops up, and you can watch the movie without even leaving Facebook.
Netflix CEO and Facebook board member Reed Hastings spoke as well, and compared the experiencing of discovering new TV shows and movies on Facebook to Netflix’s own recommendation algorithm. “My friend did trumps the algorithm ,” says Hastings. If you’ve ever clicked on a YouTube video because you saw it in your Facebook News feed, you can imagine how you might click on a Netflix video as well (if you have the time to watch a longer video). But if you live in the U.S., you will have to imagine it because a privacy law in the U.S related video viewing data prevents Netflix from turning the app on in the U.S. It will, however, be available immediately in 44 other countries. Hastings noted that the law is in the process of being reviewed and might be overturned in the U.S.. → Read More
Color.
That one word is enough to elicit a remarkably strong response from anyone involved in tech startups — and oftentimes that response consists of a lot of derision and talk of a bubble.
The startup that famously raised $41 million only to see its first app promptly flop has been almost completely silent for the last six months, heads down on a project that was codenamed Blue, which we’ve reported on several times.
Today, timed to coincide with Facebook’s f8 conference, Color CEO Bill Nguyen is unveiling the new version of their service. And I had a chance earlier this week to see it for myself. → Read More
In typical RED fashion, the company’s founder Jim Jannard has posted vaguely on the Reduser.net forums regarding an upcoming product. No renders this time, though, just some laudatory quotes from industry people who have seen the device. And what is it? A 4K laser projector, and apparently a very good one.
Actual details as scarce, but we know it is not based on TI’s DLP technology and that it produces an image that can be used for passive 3D — i.e. with polarized light. It’s for “theater and home,” though at RED prices it would probably be more accurate to say theater and exquisitely-appointed mansion. → Read More
It’s an age-old scenario: You’re building a company, you have a product idea, and you’ve got the framework laid out in your head, but you want some expert advice and guidance on how to take the next steps. So, you go out to find a veteran entrepreneur, ask him or her to be an advisor in your fledgling company … and then what?
This is where a lot of founders get stuck. Entrepreneurs want to compensate their mentors and advisors for the time they dedicate to helping their businesses grow, but they have no idea how much equity to offer. So, the Founder Institute has developed a solution to this long-standing pain in the ass that all startups experience — a free document designed to provide founders and advisors with a simple legal framework to formalize their relationship without all the legal chaos … and the team wants you to weigh in. → Read More
Facebook has just used their keynote at f8 to unveil a major new feature: Timeline. It’s your Profile re-imagined in a more visual way. “It’s the heart of your Facebook experience, completely re-thought from the ground up,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted.
So what does it look like? Check it out below. → Read More
Space buffs like me are sure to get a kick out of this one: NASA has released a score of historical sound bites from the space program for use as ringtones or system sounds.
I ask you, what could be more appropriate to herald an error on your PC than Jack Swigert’s “Houston, we have a problem” from Apollo 13? Or, alternately, what better way to celebrate a successful boot than listening to the ground crew celebrate Apollo 11′s liftoff?
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Hey look! It’s Mark Zuckerb.. wait a second.
Mark Zuckerberg opened the Facebook F8 conference keynote with some laughs this morning — or at least, SNL’s Andy Samberg dressed as Mark Zuckerberg (complete with hoodie, sandals, and slightly awkward vocal cadence) did. Zuckerberg himself rolled in to boot Andy from the stage after a few minutes — but not before Samberg had announced some completely-not-real features. → Read More
If you’ve been on Facebook for more than a year or two, you probably remember a time when it was possible to embed third-party applications in your profile. Initially it was possible to actually embed application widgets on your profile (remember when everyone had a Graffiti drawing?), but they were later relegated to separate tabs because they led to MySpace-like clutter. And eventually, they were removed from profiles entirely.
Today during his keynote at f8, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg just announced that Facebook applications are going to be reintroduced into user profiles as part of the new Timelines feature (which, as it happens, makes your profile look a lot like a Tumblr blog).
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Today at Facebook’s f8 conference in San Francisco, CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stage to unveil the next evolution of the service. The first major change? The Profile.
Zuckerberg noted that the original Profile was sort of like the last five minutes of your life. The updated Proile from 2008 extended that to show what was sort of like the last 15 minutes or your life. The new Profile unveiled today is “the rest,” Zuckerberg noted. He calls this feature Timeline. → Read More
At Facebook’s F8 conference today, Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the network is passed an important milestone last week—500 million people used Facebook in a given day.
Facebook has publicly said that it has more than 750 million active users. But interestingly, the company has also revealed in the past that 50% of its active users log on to Facebook in any given day. While Facebook probably doesn’t have 1 billion active users right now, it’s more likely that more of the site’s users are logging on to the social network daily.
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So, I asked the legendary Israeli investor Yossi Vardi, is the boom in social finished?
“Social didn’t run out of steam since the birth of civilization,” Yossi shot back. We were, appropriately enough, in the very cradle of civilization, in Athens, at Stream, the annual unconference that Yossi and Sir Martin Sorrell jointly host each year. And Yossi, who of course was the original investor in ICQ, was as bullish on social as he’s ever been, predicting to me that social television would be the next major “paradigm shift” over the next three or four years.
Having already achieved three exits from investments with Answers.com, Wibiya and the eBay acquisition The Gifts Project, Yossi is having a super year. Thus, in spite of his hilariously bad Jewish mother jokes and his habit of lying like a Greek goddess on the grass, it is never wise to completely disregard Yossi. So is he right – is social TV the next big thing? → Read More
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