Josh Constine is a technology journalist who specializes in deep analysis of social products. He is currently a writer for TechCrunch.
Previously, Constine was the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, where he covered Facebook product changes, privacy, the Ads API, Page management, ecommerce, virtual currency, and music technology.
Prior to writing for Inside Facebook, Constine graduated from Stanford University in 2009 with a Master’s degree in Cybersociology, examining the influence of technology on social interaction. He researched the impact of privacy controls on the socialization of children, meme popularity cycles, and what influences the click through rate of links posted to Twitter.
Constine also received a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from Stanford University in 2007, with a concentration in Social Psychology & Interpersonal Processes. He became fascinated with social networking theory after joining Facebook as a freshman a month after the service first launched.
Josh Constine has spoken at the South by Southwest Interactive conference, and has been quoted by TechCrunch, The Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, The Atlantic, MSNBC, ReadWriteWeb, and more.
Facebook’s $5 billion S-1 IPO filing includes a detailed assessment of business risks. These include: its lack of mobile monetization and the fact that it doesn’t own a mobile platform, government censorship and privacy scrutiny, inability to maintain its growth rate, and competition from Google+ as well as Twitter and Microsoft.
Here’s a closer look at these risks, followed by the full text of the risk summary, and you can see the whole Risk Factors section starting on page 10 of the S-1 filing to the SEC. → Read More
Facebook has just filed its S-1 to IPO. Below is the letter from founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook’s purpose, in which he explains “Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected. We think it’s important that everyone who invests in Facebook understands what this mission means to us.” → Read More
Facebook has an answer to those wondering how it will justify its IPO price and keep revenues growing as it saturates key markets: a new behavioral ad targeting system. Facebook has been quietly rolling out the beta of “Open Graph action spec targeting” which allows advertisers to target users by what they listen to, where they travel, what they buy, and other in-app activity.
These behaviors can more accurately denote conversion potential than a user’s biography or interests, That means Open Graph action spec ad targeting could turn finding a needle in a haystack into shooting fish in a barrel. The targeting options could improve the ROI of Facebook ads, and thereby attract a new class of advertisers, get existing ones to spend more, and pull in dollars from search, display, and offline channels. → Read More
This year’s fifth annual Crunchies Awards have just finished up at the classy Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, and it was a smashing success. We poked fun #humblebraggers, got cussed at by Siri, honored former TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde, and gave wild monkey trophies to tech’s greatest innovators. If you missed the event or our livestream, check out the full list of nominees and winners below. → Read More
Wait, what group? A bug has caused a significant percentage of Facebook users to see a message atop their news feed announcing “This group is scheduled to be archived”. But don’t worry, your news feed is safe. The alert shouldn’t have appeared there, and only belongs on old groups set up prior to October 2010 which Facebook is migrating to the new format used today. → Read More
Electric car drivers deserve to see their positive impact on the environment and their wallets, but the official mobile apps for the Nissan LEAF and Chevy Volt only display remaining battery. GreenCharge is a new iOS app released today that displays your car’s remaining charge, but also its current range, the local energy price, a log of its usage, and your cost and carbon reduction versus driving a gasoline vehicle. Finally, an app that shows how you’re saving both kinds of green. → Read More
Online content, portal and comprehensive front-end technology solution Synacor filed its amended S-1 today for an IPO looking to raise $75 million. The filing revealed that this month Synacor acquired Carbyn, an HTML5 operating system that lets users put their files, applications and more in the cloud and access them from any device. It paid $1.1 million total for the company, $600,000 up front with $500,000 deliver in April 2013, and it hired 7 Carbyn employees. → Read More
How did Facebook become worth so much money that it could file for the biggest IPO in tech history? By building a highly defensible product, platform, and advertising business on top of brilliant talent and valuable data. It now has several competitive advantages that protect it from disruption and could give it a long life as the primary online identity provider. Here are the 5 components that make Facebook a smart long-term bet for investors, regardless of its exact IPO pricing. → Read More
A single entrepreneur alone is vulnerable to shortsightedness, to fatigue. But with a team comes diverse perspective, encouragement, and the wherewithal to push through problems. That’s why a group of Stanford computer science and business students started the Andreessen Horowitz-backed FounderSoup program. It’s designed to give entrepreneurs with an idea or a fledgling company a chance to pitch — not to raise funding, but to recruit co-founders.
At its first full-scale event on Thursday night I saw an effective model for fostering startups, and several brilliant ideas in healthtech and energy (reviewed here) that could turn into successful companies. → Read More
7 of the world’s most powerful tech companies have been accused of forming an antitrust conspiracy to suppress the compensation of their employees by entering into “no poach” agreements. Today, a San Jose judge heard a motion to dismiss a class action civil lawsuit in which former employees seek damages from defendants Apple, Google, Adobe, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, and Lucasfilm.
The damning evidence against the defendants from a 2010 Department of Justice investigation and the plaintiffs’ statement indicate there is more than sufficient evidence for the case to proceed towards trial. If the defendants lose to or settle, tens of thousands of full-time employees of these companies could be compensated. [Update 4:30pm PST : The judge says “This case is going to survive the motion to dismiss”, meaning she’ll almost surely deny the defendants’ motion to dismiss the case when she soon files her official ruling. → Read More
Buy a hamburger and get rewarded with Facebook Credits to spend on a virtual cow. That’s the mouth-watering promise of startup Plink, which is launching a virtual currency loyalty rewards system for restaurants. You register a credit card with Plink, and then when you make purchases at Taco Bell, 7-Eleven, Dunkin Donuts, or one of Plink’s other clients you’ll get Facebook Credits automatically deposited into your account. As demand for Facebook Credits to spend on social games and media increases, expect more virtual currency incentive companies like Plink to pop up.
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4 months after it launched its Twitter-style asymmetrical Subscribe feature, Facebook and its Journalist Program Manager Vadim Lavrusik’s efforts to weaken Twitter’s stranglehold on breaking news are paying off. The company just announced that thousands of journalists now use Subscribe, including 50 reporters from The New York Times and 90 from the Washington Post. If Facebook can get your favorite journalists publishing through Subscribe, you’ll have less need for Twitter. Next I hear it’s setting its sights on getting celebrities and entertainment tastemakers onboard.
Additionally, Facebook released some best practices for how journalists can maximize the engagement (Likes, comments, and shares) on their posts. → Read More
With 300 new big brand customers and 2.5X revenue, 2011 was a landmark year for social media marketing software developer Buddy Media. As CEO Michael Lazerow told us that Buddy Media was on track to hit $20 million in revenue in 2010, it could have pulled in $50 million during 2011. It attracted premier clients such as Citibank, IBM, and the NFL with its reputation for helping brands promote through Facebook. The company grew from 100 to 225 employees, and opened new offices in London, SF, and Singapore. In short, brands are getting serious about social marketing, and Buddy Media is a tool they trust. → Read More
Checkins are not the future. They interrupt the moment and quickly become outdated. Highlight, a mobile app launching today, offers a better gateway to serendipitous meetups. All you do is download Highlight, turn it on, and let it run passively in the background. Then when you come within a few blocks of another Highlight user who’s your Facebook friend or that you have friends or interests in common with, Highlight sends you a push notification and lets you message them.
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The TechFellow Awards is different. Rather than just recognizing outstanding innovators, each of its 20 winners receive $100,000 to invest in a startup of their choice. Its purpose? To fund the next generation of high-tech entrepreneurship.
Today, Founders Fund, TechCrunch, and New Enterprise Associates (NEA) announce the opening of nominations for the third annual TechFellows Awards. From now until February 17th, visit the new TechFellows website and click “Nominate a TechFellow”. There you can submit the name of a great leader, disruptive visionary, product genius, or engineering wizard who deserves a greater chance to shape the future. → Read More
Google has more than 40 core products, and hundreds depending on how you count them. Even with over 30,000 employees, that’s a lot to support. In the name of refocusing, today the company announcedthat Picnik, Sky Map, Urchin, Needlebase, Google Message Continuity, and the Social Graph API are all headed for the deadpool, open source, or absorption into more central divisions. → Read More
Delicious has just announced 4 new features to make its stacks, or collections of links, more social. Because the only thing better than a bundle of your favorite kitten websites is bundle co-created by you and your friends. You can now collaboratively build stacks, comment on whole stacks, respond to a stack with a stack similar to a YouTube response, and create private stacks. The features will permit new use cases like stealth cooperation and give Delicious an advantage over Pinterest which doesn’t offer private boards yet.
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Next week a class-action civil lawsuit will be heard in San Jose to determine if Google, Apple, Pixar, Lucasfilm, Adobe, Intel, and Intuit conspired to eliminate competition for skilled labor. In anticipation of the hearing, TechCrunch has obtained evidence from the Department of Justice’s investigation in 2010 which was made public this evening for the first time. It appears to support the plaintiff’s case that the defendant companies tried to suppress employee compensation by entering into “no poach” agreements. → Read More
Yesterday the Internet the internet cried out in protest of SOPA-PIPA, and congress heard us loud and clear. At the beginning of Janaury 18th, there were 80 members of congress who supported the legislation, and 31 opponents. Now, just 63 support SOPA-PIPA, and opposition has surged to 122, according to ProPublica.
Now lets look at the breakdown by House, Senate, Democrat, and Republican, and see if there’s enough opposition to defeat the bills. Currently there are still enough stated supporters for PIPA to pass in the Senate…
By blacking out the default Firefox start page and using social media, Mozilla reached 40 million people with its anti-SOPA/PIPA message. According to a stats wrap-up just posted to the Mozilla blog, 30 million people in the US saw the start page’s call to action, 1.8 million visited its mozilla.org/SOPA info page, and the effort generated 360,000 emails to Congress.
Here’s how it stacked up against the impact of Google and Wikimedia’s protests: → Read More
