The nominations have been tabulated and the votes are in. Over 300,000 nominations were calculated across 20 categories. Along with our partners GigaOm and VentureBeat, we are very proud to announce the finalists for 2011′s best in technology. Voting begins now.
For 2011, we’ve added some new categories. Best Location App, Best Cloud Services and Biggest Social Impact join the Crunchies ranks this year. You’ll also find Best Social App (Google+ is up against Facebook Timeline, the New New Twitter, Instagram, and Path 2.0), the NYC-dominated category of Best Shopping App, Best New Startup and the year’s best VC’s and Angel Investors. Newcomers like Task Rabbit’s Leah Busque and Keith Rabois for his angel investments (Airbnb, LinkedIn, Yammer, Path, YouTube) made the list of finalists, as well as industry favorites such as Marc Andreessen, Jack Dorsey, Mark Pincus and Ron Conway.
In addition to today’s announcement of the Finalists, we are happy to release our next batch of tickets through Eventbrite. The release begins now, so act fast and get them while you can. → Read More
Internet radio service Pandora has posted its November listening stats in the top ten radio markets in the U.S. The company says that it has seen Average Quarter Hour (AQH) gains in each of the top ten U.S. radio markets since September.
Pandora says the gains ranged from 13 to 25 percent listening increases in each market with the biggest AQH gain of 25 percent occurring in the New York metro area. An AQH rating of 1.0 means an average of one percent of a target population was listening to Pandora for at least five minutes within a quarter hour window between 6.00 a.m. and midnight. → Read More
This afternoon at The Web 2.0 Summit, Pandora Co-founder Tim Westergren sat down with Fortune Editor Adam Lashinsky to talk about what’s going on at everybody’s favorite personalized radio platform. For those who may have missed it, Pandora recently enjoyed a relatively high-profile IPO, putting its “P” ticker symbol right smack in the middle of “IPO” — and the NYSE. And its stock has remained pretty high, both literally and figuratively, pricing at over $16 a share on its opening day, and is today trading around $15.20 per share. So far, so good.
Furthermore, today the company counts 37 million active users and, as Westergren has said on multiple occasions, is finally hitting scale. Part of the reason that the co-founder believes that the company has been able to reach scale, and continue to grow across mobile and the web, is due to the fact that the entire industry is shifting from broadcast/terrestrial radio to personalized radio. → Read More
Popular personalized radio service Pandora, which went public in June, has just announced that it’s rolling out its overhauled, HTML5-based music player to everyone. The service has been testing the player since July, and it’s a huge improvement over the old Flash-based experience. Everything looks much more modern, it’s faster, and it’s easier to use.
The other big piece of the news: Pandora is removing the cap on how much music ‘free’ users can listen to every month. Historically Pandora has let users stream 40 hours of music a month, at which point they were prompted to upgrade to a premium ‘Pandora One’ account (which run $36 a year). Starting today, that cap is gone, so users can listen to as much as they’d like. There’s still a significant incentive to upgrade though, as Pandora One users never have to deal with ads.
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Pandora announced a significant redesign this morning, and paired with this announcement comes a number of user milestones for the music streaming and personalized radio service. The company now has 100 million registered users and 36 million monthly active users across its platform.
The company is announcing these stats at its first Analyst Day, a month after the company debuted on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “P”. As we initially reported, Pandora got a strong start in the public markets but shares quickly fell to below the company’s initial pricing of $16 per share. But Pandora’s stock was able to rebound recently, and closed at $19.26 yesterday afternoon. → Read More
Perhaps you noticed that TechCrunch went through a bit of a redesign yesterday. Well, we’re not the only ones undergoing a major facelift this summer. Another site you all know and love will soon look completely different. More importantly, it will soon function much better. It’s a change that will affect millions. Get ready for New Pandora.
Yes, after years of familiarity, Pandora will begin a massive metamorphosis on the web this week. At first, subscribers of the Pandora One service will begin to get access to the new site (on a rolling basis). And over the next several weeks, everyone will. The transformation is pretty stunning — and I mean that entirely in a good way. New Pandora is beautiful. I cannot think of a single thing I like better about the old site. → Read More
Bubble or not, 2011 may go down as the year of the tech IPO. Not since the last bubble have we seen so many technology companies clamoring to go public. And halfway through the year, we still have many more companies who will be listing on either the NASDAQ or the NYSE in the next six months. Here’s a roundup of the tech companies that have gone public, where they are trading now, and who we can expect to see ringing the bell next.
Professional social network LinkedIn probably had the biggest IPO in terms of hype this year because it was one of the first big social media companies to go public. After pricing its IPO at $45 per share on the New York Stock Exchange, LinkedIn began trading at $83.00 per share on May 19, giving the company a $7.8 billion market cap. In the first day of trading, shares popped up to as high as $122.70, soaring past a $10 billion valuation. → Read More
Zynga filed for its much awaited $1 billion IPO this morning, revealing some impressive revenue and profit numbers. And it looks like recent tech IPOs Pandora and LinkedIn are seeing some major increases in stock value in morning trading after a rocky few weeks.
LinkedIn, which opened at $83 per share in May, has hovered between $60 and $75 per share for the past month, dipping as low as $60 per share. Over the past few days, LinkedIn stock has climbed upwards, closing at $89.94 yesterday. And today, stock reached as high as $94.99 this morning, giving LinkedIn a $9 billion valuation. → Read More
After popping 60 percent yesterday in the first day of trading, shares of streaming music company Pandora are back to around $13 to $17 per share in morning trading. Pandora was priced at $16 per share on Tuesday evening, but opened at $20 and closes at $17.42 yesterday afternoon. Today, Pandora opened at $16.99 and dropped as low as $12.99 in trading. Pandora’s stock closed at $13.26, a 17 percent from Pandora’s pricing of $16 per share.
For basis of comparison, LinkedIn’s IPO popped by 100 percent on its first day of trading, and has also settled below its opening trade of $83. LinkedIn is currently trading at $72 per share. → Read More
Three years ago, I got a phone call — Pandora was about to die.
Things were not going well for the Internet radio service at that point. The economy was collapsing, Sequoia would soon give its infamous “RIP, Good Times” presentation, and most importantly for Pandora, it was starting to look like the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) may not lower their rates. This led founder Tim Westergren to suggest that they may have to shut the service down. And we wrote that sadly, it was looking like Pandora may have to be a “sacrificial lamb“.
That’s what makes today so fascinating — and perhaps the feel-good tech story for this generation of web startups. Pandora IPO’d this morning, listing itself on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “P”. While the orignal IPO share price had been set at $7 to $9, the company revised that to $10 to $12, and then set it yesterday at $16. The stock opened today north of $20 a share, where it remains. The market cap is now over $3 billion. Again, this was a company that was going to die. → Read More
Yesterday, music streaming service Pandora priced its IPO at $16 per share (valuing the company at $2.6 billion). The company originally set the range of its IPO at $7 to $9 per share, at a market cap of $1.3 billion; but upped the range last week to $10 to $12 per share, giving the company a valuation of $1.9 billion. Today, Pandora debuted, under the symbol ‘P’ on the New York Stock Exchange, opening at $20 per share (up 25 percent), valuing the company at $3.2 billion. Within minutes of trading, shares reached as high as $25, giving the company a $4 billion valuation.
The company raised $235 million in the IPO, offering approximately 14.7 million shares of common stock. A total of 6 million shares are being offered by Pandora, with selling stockholders offering 8.7 million shares. In addition, Pandora has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to approximately an additional 2.2 million shares to cover over-allotments. → Read More
As we reported earlier, Pandora will start trading tomorrow on the New York Stock Exchange under the single letter symbol “P”. By doing so, it becomes the first Silicon Valley consumer Internet company to join the exclusive one-letter stock ticker symbol club.
That club was once reserved for the big blue-chip industrial companies: Chrysler (C), Ford (F), Sears (S), U.S. Steel (X), and Woolworth (Z). Of that list, only Ford and U.S. Steel remain. Chrysler was acquired by Daimler and lost the C to Citibank. Sears lost the S to Sprint Nextel. Woolworth went out of business.
Of course, there are already several tech companies in the single letter club. Agilent Technologies (A), NetSuite (N), Sprint Nextel (S), and AT&T (T). But none are pure consumer-based Internet companies. → Read More
Music streaming service Pandora has priced its IPO at $16 per share, valuing the company at $2.6 billion. The company originally set the range of its IPO at $7 to $9 per share, at a market cap of $1.3 billion; but upped the range last week to $10 to $12 per share, giving the company a valuation of $1.9 billion.
Pandora’s stock will begin trading tomorrow morning on The New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “P.” The company expects to raise as much as $235 million in the offerring and will offer 6,000,682 shares of its common stock with the selling stockholders are offering 8,683,318 shares of common stock in the IPO. → Read More
Music streaming service Pandora has just filed a new version of its S-1 that indicates the company will be upping the price range of its stock to $10 to $12 per share, giving the company a valuation of $1.9 billion. That’s up from Pandora’s recently pricing of its stock at $7 to $9 per share, at a market cap of $1.3 billion. Pandora’s stock will be traded on The New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “P.”
According to the filing, Pandora aims to raise as much as $202.6 million in the offerring (up from $141.6 million), and will offer 6,000,682 shares of its common stock with the selling stockholders are offering 8,683,318 shares of common stock in the IPO. → Read More
In Silicon Valley the terms of venture capital deals, the prices of valuations and the real stories of ousters are routinely dished, whether they always show up in the press or not. Sure it’s all off the record or on background or whispered at a coffee shop, but people who live here love what they do and when companies and valuations grow this quickly, it’s hard to keep the juicy details under wraps.
So when they can’t dish, what do they do? Hide. → Read More
Music streaming service Pandora has just filed a new version of its S-1 that indicates the company will be pricing its stock at $7 to $9 per share. Pandora’s stock will be traded on The New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “P.”
According to the filing, Pandora aims to raise as much as $141.6 million in the offerring, and will offer offering 5,000,682 shares of its common stock with the selling stockholders are offering 8,683,318 shares of common stock in the IPO. The pricing of the stock puts Pandora’s valuation at over $1 billion. → Read More
Personalized radio service Pandora has reached a major milestone: last week it recorded its 10 billionth thumb (and it was a thumbs up).
Avid fans of the popular service already know what that means — for the rest of you, Pandora lets users mark the song that’s currently playing with a Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down. The effect is pretty straightforward: hit a thumbs up and Pandora will try to play more music that sounds like the song you’re listening to, thumbs down and Pandora will immediately jump to the next song and send a minor electric shock to CTO Tom Conrad.
In other words, these thumbs are explicit signals that users are sending to Pandora to help fine-tune their radio stations, and it shows that plenty of people actually try to take advantage of the personalization features as opposed to just letting the radio play in the background all day. → Read More
I just read that Spotify is coming to the U.S! Oh, wait. That was an article from 2009. I hope they really mean it this time. I love the product. To grease the skids for them a bit, I’ve put together a little travel guide for what they can expect in advertising and media circles when they do arrive.
Being Swedish I’m guessing they’re fantastic dressers and that their accents will make even the Brits envious. American agencies all have European envy, and Spotify is certifiably a big deal abroad. Agency status meetings will be preceded by Absolut and herring in honor of Spotify’s arrival. → Read More
In Silicon Valley it’s not just who you invest in that matters– it’s also when you invest in them. The earlier the investment, the riskier the bet. But the more jawdropping the returns if the company hits it big. It’s so lopsided, that typically just 5% of those unsure early bets create some 95% of the entire venture industry’s returns. Miss one of them, and it haunts you for years. Snag it, and you can brag for even longer. This simple reality is precisely what makes the venture business hard, and the justification for why partners make such huge fees.
So what’s up with the surge of the strongest early stage firms jumping so heavily into late stage mega-deal fray? Have the Valley’s superstars lost sight of these rules or are the rules changing?
Earlier this year, we wrote a lot about the shift in power at the early stages with the rise of super angels, but you could argue there are far greater ripple effects to this new late stage frenzy. That’s not only true for the Valley, it’s true for the stock market. And you could argue, those ripple effects are less well-understood. → Read More
In case you missed it, being a super angel is officially passe. The new hotness is having a late-stage growth cash. Sequoia Capital is doing it. Andreessen Horowitz is doing it. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is doing it. Accel is doing it. Hell, even Chris Sacca is somehow doing it.
Greylock is the latest to officially join the club, with news today of an expansion to its current fund, bringing the total to $1 billion– almost double its original $575 million size. The firm will be able to invest up to $200 million per deal. But other than having more cash on hand, not much else at Greylock is changing. The firm has been doing growth deals already, most notably Pandora, which has filed to go public and the recent Groupon mega-deal. → Read More
