Well, That Was Fun
4:22 pm PST • February 27, 2012
This is my 4,212th post on TechCrunch, and my last as editor in chief. The past few months have been a whirlwind for everyone at TechCrunch. We’ve had a lot…
Jason, May The Force Be With You
10:29 am PST • February 24, 2012
One of the marks of a great blogger is following your convictions and convincing the world of the truth you know in your heart. Jason Kincaid is that blogger, whether…
Venture
Pseudonymous Mobile Messaging App Vibe Acquired By Betaworks
8:01 am PST • February 23, 2012
Back during the heyday of #OccupyWallStreet in New York City (before winter dispersed most of the protestors there), an iPhone app called Vibe became popular among that community. It allows people to…
Exclusive First Look At Spin’s New Music-Playing Website
9:45 am PST • February 21, 2012
Music magazines are getting hit with a double whammy in the age of digital media. Like all print publications, their audience is going online—but so is the music. Why read…
Media & Entertainment
Chart: In Four Years, Apple Sold More iPhones Than All Macs Ever
10:48 pm PST • February 16, 2012
If anyone has any doubt that iPhones, iPads and other iOS devices are the future if Apple, just take a look at the chart above from Asymco. It shows all…
Venture
With New $27 Million Fund, ff Venture Capital Is On A Roll (Interview)
2:44 pm PST • February 16, 2012
New York City seed investors are growing up, and raising bigger funds. IA Ventures just raised $105 million and ff Venture Capital closed its second $27 million fund last November (which I am…
Ever since Apple released OS X Lion, its desktop operating system started the long trek towards iOS, Apple’s other, more popular operating system. With the next version of OS X,…
Diller Explains How Tiny TV Antennas Will Change Everything (Video)
2:59 pm PST • February 14, 2012
Earlier today, Barry Diller introduced Aereo, a company backed by IAC, at a press conference in New York City. Aereo streams broadcast TV to your browser and provides a DVR…
Ingrid Lunden Now Writes For Us From London And Colleen Taylor Will Be Our TCTV Reporter
11:28 am PST • February 14, 2012
Silicon Valley thrives on change. At TechCrunch, we chronicle change, honor it, and, lately, we’ve been living it. As we rebuild TechCrunch, it’s the talent of our writers that sets…
Startups
Barry Diller Wants To “Transform Television” With Aereo, A DVR In The Cloud
8:47 am PST • February 14, 2012
Barry Diller always enjoys riling the media industry from which he sprang. A few minutes ago at a press conference at IAC headquarters in New York City, Diller introduced a…
Drum Roll, Please. Apple’s Stock Closes Above $500
3:13 pm PST • February 13, 2012
Shares of Apple (AAPL) closed above $500 today for the first time, ending the day at $502.60. Apple, the world’s most valuable company, now boasts a market capitalization of almost…
Blinkx Replaces Truveo To Power AOL Video Search
6:46 am PST • February 13, 2012
British video search company Blinkx saw its stock spike briefly this morning, following an announcement that it will power AOL’s video search. AOL is one of the largest video destinations…
Fly Or Die: The Nokia Lumia 800 “Flagship” Windows Phone
9:25 pm PST • February 12, 2012
Two weeks ago at the Crunchies, Dan’l Lewin, Microsoft’s top executive in Silicon Valley, came up to me and handed me a Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone. It was out…
The Only Reason Companies Delete Emails Is To Destroy Evidence
8:14 am PST • February 12, 2012
The News Corp. phone-hacking scandal continues to spiral out of control, sweeping up more and more of the companies employees and executives. In the UK, 8 people were arrested, including five…
Media & Entertainment
Moshi Monster Madness (In Which I Get A Snookums Tattoo)
11:29 am PST • February 11, 2012
It’s February, which means Toy Fair in New York City. Every year, Mind Candy CEO Michael Acton Smith comes to town to peddle his little monsters. Those would be Moshi…
Media & Entertainment
Andrew Mason’s First Earnings Call: “Stop Sending Me Pole-Dancing Deals”
3:13 pm PST • February 8, 2012
Groupon CEO Andrew Mason just finished his first post-IPO earnings calls with Wall Street analysts. (We covered it live and looked at the numbers). “We believe we are on the…
Media & Entertainment
Groupon Ends The Year With $1.6 Billion In Revenues, Up 419 Percent
1:31 pm PST • February 8, 2012
Groupon just announced its first earnings report after going public last October (it missed, read our liveblog of the earnings call here.). For the full year, Groupon’s revenues were $1.6…
Before big data was a hot investing theme, Roger Ehrenberg was one of the first seed investors to focus almost exclusively on startups using data as a competitive edge. His…
Blip.tv is going through some changes, with founder Mike Hudack gone and a search for a new CEO still ongoing. But the company raised a $6 million C round from…
Yahoo Board Shakeup: Chairman And Three Others Step Down, Webb And Amoroso Step Up
1:33 pm PST • February 7, 2012
Yahoo has its new CEO, Scott Thompson, and founder Jerry Yang stepped down from the company and the board a few weeks ago. But all along, people have been asking…
Brands love marketing across social media, but it is a little like TV advertising in that it is hard to measure how effective it is. Sure, you can count retweets,…
Media & Entertainment
Pedestrian Map App, Lumatic, Raises $800K From Joi Ito And 500 Startups
10:10 pm PST • February 5, 2012
All the major map apps like Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Mapquest have walking directions as a standard feature, but the folks at Lumatic don’t think they are good enough.…
Media & Entertainment
How Facebook Really Stacks Up Against Pre-IPO Google
8:21 am PST • February 5, 2012
Now that Facebook is preparing the biggest tech IPO in history, it is possible to compare its financials and potential market value to Google’s when it went public. At first…
Following in the tradition of “Shit Silicon Valley Says” and other Shit ______ Says memes, August Capital’s David Hornick has made “Shit VCs Say.” There are some gems in here,…
Yammer grew like crazy last year. How crazy? Product VP Jim Patterson just tweeted out the Yammer 2011 Year in Review infographic below with the comment: “Pretty much everything tripled.”…
We learned a lot of things about Facebook today from its IPO filing. But there is one detail that sticks out for its improbable exactness: The $1.000 billion in profits…
Facebook just filed its IPO registration (SEC doc here) and its financials are off the charts. Facebook’s IPO document provides the first peek at its financials. The company did $3.7…
Startups
The Birth Of An American Giant—Basic Clothing Sold On The Web
5:45 am PST • February 1, 2012
Nothing is made in this country anymore. In terms of actual manufacturing, America is increasingly at a disadvantage. The logic of the global economy moves jobs overseas. Get used to…
Venture
Ben Horowitz: “It Took About 3 Weeks” To Raise Our $1.5 Billion Fund
10:51 am PST • January 31, 2012
Andreessen Horowitz is definitely killing it these days. The unconventional VC firm founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz is less than three years old, but just raised its third…
Startups
Jason Kilar: Hulu’s 2011 Revenues Of $420 Million Was Actually Above The “Board Plan”
9:03 am PST • January 31, 2012
Last year, Hulu brought in $420 million in revenues, with was 60 percent above the year before. The news, however, was seen as a miss because Hulu earlier in the…
