Alex Wilhelm
Alex Wilhelm is a writer for TechCrunch. In the past, he helped grow The Next Web into a leading publication. Alex also worked for midVentures in Chicago, where he attended school, and co-founded Contenture, a startup focused on micropayments and the monetization of digital content.
Alex lives in San Francisco.
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Latest from Alex Wilhelm
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Windows Phone Surpasses BlackBerry In The US Despite Flat Market Share
The dogfight between BlackBerry and Windows Phone in the U.S. has a new leader. Microsoft's smartphone platform now controls more market share than that of the Canadian firm. But there is more to the story. New Comscore data indicates that even while besting BlackBerry at last, Windows Phone's market share in the U.S. isn't budging. Read More
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FireEye Drops 9% As Its Stock Price Catches Up With Its Massive Secondary Offer
Today technology security firm FireEye sold a massive set of stock in a secondary offering, following up on its very successful IPO. The company recently purchased Mandiant for ten figures, so the capital is welcome. A total of 14 million more shares in FireEye are now in free flotation. The company itself sold 5.6 million shares for income of $460 million. The total sale was worth more… Read More
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Purported Registry Tweak Allows Windows 8.1 Users To Snag Update 1 Before Its Public Release
We aren’t supposed to get our mitts on Windows 8.1 Update 1 for more than a month yet, but it seems that a simple registry tweak is letting folks not only get their hands on the new code, but also get it straight from the source: Microsoft via Windows Update. TechCrunch has confirmed with a trusted source that the tweak works, and that the update is material. The only potential issue at hand… Read More
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Bloodhound Evolves Its Events App To Focus On Its Most Popular Feature: Lead Capture
Bloodhound, a company previously focused on providing software tools for the conference space, today released Android and iOS applications focusing on mobile lead capture. In short, Bloodhound built a set of tools for event planners and attendees. Part of that suite was the ability to quickly take down the information of someone you just met, and then follow up with them quickly. Lead capture, in… Read More
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Sean Parker Leaves Founders Fund
On the heels of the news that Founders Fund has raised a massive $1 billion for its fifth fund, the venture capital firm is slimming down its top ranks, with now-former partner Sean Parker stepping down. While the split is perhaps surprising given that Founders Fund is more than able to line up capital to invest, according to the firm, Parker’s exit is neither immediate nor… Read More
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Convo Refreshes Its Android App, Launches Chrome Extension
Convo, a social tool for companies to collaborate in real-time, today released new tools for its growing userbase: A Chrome extension, and a refresh of its Android application. As an app, Convo is something that I've known for a long time. Through a chunk of my tenure at The Next Web we used Convo -- even back when it was known as Convofy, of all things -- and as the company trumpets on its… Read More
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Gracenote Teams With Musicmetric To Bring Social Data To Its Rhythm Music-Recommendation Platform
Today Gracenote announced that Rhythm, its Internet radio and music recommendation service, is becoming a bit smarter with new inclusion of social data from Musicmetric. Rhythm is a white-label service that helps companies and brands create Internet radio solutions, but doesn’t provide music licenses. Gracenote is more than willing to help connect you to a raw music provider, but is more… Read More
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Yahoo Buys Social Data Visualization Firm Vizify, Will Shut It Down
Today Vizify announced that Yahoo has acquired it, adding yet another small company to the purple acquisition machine. Vizify helped its users better visualize and graph their social lives in the format of a personal website of sorts. Vizify, a company founded in 2011, had raised $1.46 million in its life. Given that its last round of funding came in 2012, the timing of the exit-ish makes sense. Read More
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10M Mobile Downloads Strong, Twitch Launches A Smartphone SDK To Diversify Its Live Streaming Platform
Today Twitch, a video game live streaming platform, announced that it has accrued 10 million downloads of its mobile applications on the iOS and Android platforms, and that it has released a mobile SDK that may expand its reach into the on-the-go world. Simply put, Twitch has become known as the platform for desktop games such as League of Legends, and StarCraft 2, to broadcast their tournaments… Read More
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The PC Market And The 300 Million Mark
Today IDC predicted that the PC market will contract by 6% in 2014, and will continue to decline at least into 2018. Unit volume according to IDC would slip from 315.1 million units in 2013, to 291.7 in 2018. The figures include traditional PCs — laptops, desktops, and so forth — but exclude Surface devices, Android tablets, and iPads. In short, IDC’s predictions now expect PC… Read More
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Comcast Deal Doesn’t Change Netflix’s Earnings Forecasts
Yesterday at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco, Netflix CFO David Wells reiterated his company's financial forecasts. This means that the Comcast deal, recently signed, is not expensive enough for Netflix to change guidance on its future financial performance. Read More
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Windows XP’s Lingering And Troubling Market Share
Market share numbers for February are out, and it looks like XP is set to die standing up with nearly a third of the global OS market in its grip. NetMarketShare numbers for the second month of the year indicate that Windows XP controls 29.53 percent of the desktop operating system install base. Read More
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HTC’s Weak February Revenue Tally Points To Coming Q1 Top Line Miss
HTC posted its February revenue tally (unaudited), and the number looks weak. The company had NT$7.22 billion in top line during the month, or $238.1 million USD. That's down 36.5 percent from the same month a year ago, and down 25.29 percent from January, the sequentially preceding quarter. Read More
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Zuckerberg-Linked Group Releases Ad Blasting House GOP For Immigration Reform Intransigence
The Council for American Job Growth, an affiliate of the Zuckerberg-founded and financed Fwd.us group, has released a new ad blasting House Republicans for slowing the path to immigration reform. Fwd.us is controversial in Silicon Valley, where its tactics have caused a stir. After the group financed advertising praising the Keystone XL Pipeline, it lost Elon Musk as a supporter. The efficacy of… Read More
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Microsoft’s OneDrive For Business Throws Down Gauntlet For Box, Dropbox
Microsoft announced today that the business end of OneDrive, its cloud storage offering, would be unshackled from its other services, and sold as a standalone cloud storage solution for corporate customers. Cue a surprised gasp from the audience. Read More
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Microsoft Confirms Executive Changes With Reller, Bates Out The Door
Today Microsoft confirmed the raft of executive changes that leaked yesterday. Senior executives Tony Bates and Tami Reller will exit the company, Mark Penn will move to a more ‘strategic’ role away from advertising, and the company’s ad efforts will be headed by Chris Capossela, who will be the executive vice president of marketing. Eric Rudder will take Bates’ job on an… Read More
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After Losing A Half Billion In Q4, Twitter Buys Two Real Log Cabins To Serve As Lunchrooms In Its HQ
Twitter has purchased two real, more-than-a-century-old log cabins to serve as dining areas for its employees inside of its headquarters in the heart of San Francisco. The recently public company has taken dings for its extensive employee-maintenance efforts, but if anything, it seems to be treating those criticisms as a challenge to offer ever-more elaborate perks. Log cabin lunchrooms are… Read More
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It Took 122M Commands And 16.3 Days, But A Collaborative Horde Beat Pokemon Together
Well, they did it. A group of more than 1 million gamers managed to work in chaotic fashion to beat Pokemon. Over on the Twitch game-live-streaming platform, crowds swarmed for more than two weeks to control a game of Pokemon as a group, with each user shouting out different commands at once. Read More
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Early Shakeups In Nadella’s Microsoft
Earlier today Kara Swisher reported that Microsoft’s Tami Reller, executive vice president of marketing, and Tony Bates, executive vice president of the company’s Business Development and Evangelism group will both depart. A reportedly formal announcement date of Tuesday now appears to be little more than a coming perfunctory exercise in rehashing. If nothing else, the changes indicate… Read More
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A Few Thoughts On Free Windows
Hot damn, changes. ZDNet and The Verge reported on a story that, at first blush, sounds downright strange: Microsoft may do away with charging for Windows in the future. Read More
