Company culture is a huge competitive advantage: That’s why Zuckerberg obsesses over Facebook’s hackathons and why Yahooers “bleed purple.” Of course, anything that causes people to feel loyal to organizations that encompass thousands of people is a force to be reckoned with, right?
At Foursquare they name their conference rooms after Foursquare badges, like ‘Gossip Girl’ or (Yes!) ‘Wino.’ Twitter has so many projects named after birds that it’s built an internal Wiki in order to keep track of them all. At TechCrunch we’ve gotten hung up on a “Sharks” metaphor lately; i.e. we’re a team of sharks that devours our prey (news, lol).
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If you’re following Foursquare on Twitter, you’ve probably noticed that the check-in champions have been teasing the release of the “all new Foursquare” app for the last few days, dropping hints that it was coming soon to app stores near you.
Continuing to use the hashtag #allnew4sq, Foursquare last night dropped the news on Twitter that it will be releasing its big new redesign at some point next week. [Photos below.] Now, while that may seem like a ho-hum revelation for some, this is likely to be the culmination of a new direction for Foursquare. → Read More
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Woofound, a Maryland-based startup aiming to match your personality to things you want to do, is today launching its iOS application nationwide. The app turns rating activities, places and restaurants into a simple, visual game in order to serve up highly personalized recommendations. You rate things by tapping or clicking “Me” or “Not Me” on the items suggested – it feels something like a “Hot or Not” for your interests, in fact.
In addition to today’s launch, the company is also announcing it has now raised over $1 million in funding, from private investors and angel sources. → Read More
Launched just about a year ago, live streaming site TwitchTV has very quickly established itself as one of the top destinations for e-sports enthusiasts who want to broadcast their gaming sessions to the world. Pretty soon it’ll be even easier for TwitchTV users to broadcast their game sessions, as the company is announcing its first in-game integration. It’s also helping to groom some new competitive gamers, thanks to a scholarship that it is launching in partnership with Alienware and SteelSeries.
At the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), Paradox Interactive is announcing that upcoming game title The Showdown Effect will have TwitchTV built-in. That will let users instantly launch TwitchTV’s streaming dashboard from directly within the game, so they can start broadcasting their gameplay without jumping between applications. Paradox will be showing off the capability from TwitchTV’s booth at noon on Tuesday. → Read More
Last October, Kimball Thomas and Davis Smith launched Baby.com.br with $4.4 million in backing from an impressive group of Silicon Valley and international investors, including Tiger Global Management, Monashees Capital, SV Angel, Felicis Ventures, Chamath Palihapitiya and Thrive Capital. For SV Angel and Felicis Ventures, this marked the first time that either firm had invested in a startup based in Brazil.
Why the interest from these top investors? Well, for starters, the co-founders had started PoolTables.com with $20K right out of college, were able to turn a profit in their first year, and, since they didn’t raise any outside funding, were able to sell it in early 2011 for what Smith says was “a nice little profit.” But, more importantly, it gave them experience with how to work with international investors (many of which were in China) and how to run an eCommerce site. → Read More
Details are still just mainly technical, but Nintendo just took the wraps off the final version of the Wii U’s controller, now named Gamepad. This came during Nintendo’s somewhat surprising pre-E3 press conference. The controller itself looks somewhat similar to the prototype unit Nintendo unveiled at last year’s E3.
This pre-briefing speaks to the confidence of Nintendo. These sort of details are generally reserved for Nintendo’s big E3 event. It’s sort of brilliant, really. The last few years Microsoft has generally kicked off the festivities with the first major press conference of the show. But just a few days ago, Nintendo announced today’s online press conference, effectively stealing a bit of Microsoft’s E3 swagger with the announcement of the Wii U hardware prior to the start of the trade show.
Now that the Wii U hardware has been unveiled, Nintendo can spend even more time during its Tuesday morning press extravaganza showing off the games. Brilliant. → Read More
Editor’s note: Location is key to monetizing mobile ads, ThinkNear chief executive Eli Portnoy wrote in a guest post for us yesterday. Now James Hritz weighs in with some further thoughts on the matter, focusing on how app publishers view the matter. He’s a veteran monetization specialist who worked at Fox for years, and is now the Vice President of monetization at Tunewiki.
Interesting and thoughtful mobile monetization article by Eli Portnoy.
Sure, Eli speaks a lot of truth about the current state of advertising in mobile and for advertisers, geo-targeted local ads seems like nirvana. The real challenge is going to be for mobile publishers and the nature of their inventory. → Read More
“Where are Facebook’s friends? Stock slide deepens,” the Associated Press wondered recently. “Facebook’s flotation: more pokes than likes,” The Guardian quipped. “Status change for Facebook’s IPO?,” MSNBC questioned. After all the awful Facebook puns in headlines over the last few weeks, TechCrunch couldn’t hold back any longer — “After Years Of Flirting, Facebook And Apple Set To Achieve Relationship Status In iOS 6.”
But do not fear, dear readers. A champion has emerged to hold the perpetrators accountable. And you may know him. → Read More
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Pocket God is best-known as a hit game for iOS and other smartphone platforms, but Dave Castelnuovo, head of developer Bolt Creative, says the story and characters have been embraced in another medium, too — namely, comic books.
Ape Entertainment started publishing the Pocket God comic series (both in print and on iOS) in August 2010, with a total of 16 issues so far, plus a digital-only series featuring bonus content. All told, the series has sold more than 600,000 digital copies, Castelnuovo says, with issue number one seeing more than 200,000 sales. → Read More
If Appsplit is any indication, either crowdfunding is the future of everything or there’s a crowdfunding gold rush. I’m going to bet it’s a little of both.
This new service allows programmers to crowdfund their projects. Why not use Kickstarter, you ask? Beats me, but here’s what’s up. Appsplit is first and foremost a place to put your app campaigns. You tell folks what you’re building (“An app that tells you what time it is in Fiji.”), how you want to be funded (an “Open” project allows folks to keep the money even if the project isn’t funded), and how much you need. You then do a little marketing, tell your friends, and you’ve got an app. → Read More
Any.DO, the gorgeous to-do app for Android, has finally made its way to the iPhone and the web today. Developed by the team behind Taskos, one of the most popular to-do list applications on the Android Market, Any.DO launched last November backed by $1 million in angel funding, making a few iPhone users (ahem *clears throat*) jealous of something on Android for a change.
Besides the basics of t0-do list management, the app supports gestures, auto-predictive text, and voice-to-text recognition, all of which are packaged in easy-to-use and attractive interface. → Read More
The recent Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman got me thinking about the differences between the pitches I hear from entrepreneurs, and why some succeed and others don’t.
Willy Loman’s character did much to lower our society’s already low opinion of sales and selling, but the fact remains that the concept, if not the actual act, of selling is a vital process in our economic system. For example, if you’re an entrepreneur looking for financing, you are selling an idea to a buyer – usually a venture capitalist like me.
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Last summer when I started working on Undrip, I was in a tough spot. I grew up doing web and graphic design so I was a pretty good front-end developer and designer. But I knew nothing about back-end web development – loops, branches dictionaries or functions were all foreign concepts to me. I was a single founder who couldn’t code.
Against the Odds
Every week I get emails from entrepreneurs seeking my advice asking how I did it before, and how I’m doing it now. They find themselves in similar situations in that they’re looking to build a tech startup with little to no technical skills. They’re frustrated by their inability to make forward progress and they usually either give up and fail, or outsource if they have some extra cash (which usually leads to failure).
If you’re a single founder who can’t code, your chances for startup success are near zero. However, there’s still a chance.
And a chance is all you need. → Read More
Mary Meeker’s presentation this week on mobile shone light on the mobile monetization problem and argued that “ad $ follow eyeballs, it just takes time.” However, she failed to address the reason for the mobile monetization issue and missed the clear implications for anyone looking to seize the opportunity.
Mobile is exploding. Over 100 million people in the US have smartphones, consumers are spending over 60 minutes a day consuming media on these devices, and people glance at their phone about 40 times a day. That is a massive and very active user base. You would think that advertisers would be rushing to take advantage of this untapped goldmine of an opportunity to reach consumers. However, as Meeker showed there is a huge discrepancy in the amount of time people spend on their phones and the number of advertising dollars allocated to mobile. The mis-equilibrium numbers vary, but estimates range between consumers spending 10% to 24% of their media time on mobile and advertisers putting only 0.5% to 1% of their budgets there. → Read More
StartX, the startup accelerator for Stanford University students, held its Spring 2012 Demo Day this past week at AOL headquarters in Palo Alto, California. Seven very diverse startups presented to a room of investors, media, and tech industry folks — the latest batch of StartX startups range from a new method of doing DNA sequencing, to truly educational children’s toys, to a new way for women to buy jewelry, and more.
TechCrunch TV was there, and in the video embedded above you can see the general scene and also our interview with StartX’s founder Cameron Teitelman. We also got six of the presenting companies to give TechCrunch their pitches directly… → Read More
PicPlz, the mobile photo sharing app that is perhaps known best for being an early and direct competitor with Instagram, will shut down permanently on July 3.
PicPlz delivered the news through a short post on its company blog as well as in a brief email to users that read: → Read More
A couple weeks ago I ran this post showing how one Hong Kong developer, Animoca, tests its Android games. The company, which has had more than 70 million downloads, tests every one of their apps on about 400 different devices. The photo above is from their headquarters and is just a taste of all the Android phones and tablets they use.
Needless to say, that post pissed Android fanboys off. Some commenters said it intimidated would-be developers, who might get scared off by Android fragmentation and the perception that you have to support hundreds of devices, screen sizes and densities and versions of the OS.
So, I asked around to see how other mobile game developers do quality assurance testing for Android. This is what I got: → Read More
My son recently tried to call one of our older relatives. He dialed the number and quickly hung up with a confused look on his face. I asked him what was wrong and he replied, “I don’t know. There’s something wrong with their phone, it kept beeping.” I called the number and was amused to hear a landline busy signal, something my cell phone centric pre-teen had never encountered.
My son is similarly unacquainted with cable TV. Other than the occasional NBA game, he consumes his video content via our iPad and Xbox. Most of his online viewing is spent on YouTube. He is not alone.
Mark Suster, fellow venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur, has written extensively about YouTube’s evolution from dogs-on-skateboards to its current status as an entertainment medium rivaling cable television networks. Mark provides an excellent primer regarding the future of Internet TV HERE. → Read More
The Evo 4G LTE is a fine phone. There certainly aren’t any glaring issues: Sense has been considerably streamlined, and it’s really good at what it was made to do, which is entertain. The design language is a little loud, though maybe that’s what it takes to shake things up in the land of Android. (LAndroid.) But unlike the Evos that have come before it, this latest iteration doesn’t really bring any truly special features to the table.
I mean, consider the name. It’s the Evo 4G LTE, yet Sprint’s 4G LTE network isn’t set to go live for another month, at the very earliest. And even if that weren’t the case, LTE is no longer a wow factor. It’s a soon-to-be norm, which means that the Evo needs something more than fast data to be a big deal.
Does it have what it takes? Let’s find out together, yes? → Read More
There’s no shortage of robust, full-featured file storage and sharing services out there, but where do you turn when you want the quickest, simplest way to go? Crate costs money, JustBeamIt requires both users to be online at the same time, but newcomer Dropcanvas? They may be onto something.
The beauty behind Dropcanvas is that it requires virtually no thought or effort to use properly. Upon navigating to the site, users are told to drag and drop a file onto the page. Once a file has been dragged onto the so-called “canvas” — there’s no set file size limit though canvases are capped at 5GB — users are provided with a link to spread around and a share button for easy access to Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. → Read More
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