RealTime CrunchUp: Where’s The Money In RealTime?

For our last discussion at the RealTime CrunchUp, we’ve got a panel on actually generating revenue from these services. Participating in the discussion are some of the Valley’s top VCs and veterans of the space.
Brian Singerman — Founders Fund
Ron Conway — Angel Investor
Dan’l Lewin — Corporate VP for Strategic and Emerging Business Development at Microsoft
George Zachary — Charles River Ventures
Paul Buchheit — Facebook/FriendFeed
Andrew Braccia — Accel Partners
Michael Arrington — Editor and Founder, TechCrunch
Moderated by Steve Gillmor and Erick Schonfeld

Video by Ustream

ES: We talk a lot about the overflow of information. Lots of interest in geo-stream. Where do the money making opportunities lie here? We have lots of consumer use cases.
GZ: That’s a broad question. We’re investors in three companies now starting to accrue rev. in this space: Twitter, Yammer, and SMSGupshup (Twitter of India). Regarding Yammer: In 0 for marketing, over 10% conversation of the install base for Yammer. The company has around 550k installed enterprise seats in 14 months.
MA: It’s this insidious product where it’s very sticky and you hae to start paying. It’s a good thing.
GZ: It’s a good thing for the company, and investor..
DL: Good for customer too. Company stays around.
GZ: In response to Marc Benioff copying Yammer, we got lots of calls saying Chatter copied Yammer.
MA: There’s 550k installed enterprise seats, over 10% of new seats convert. There’s below 100k paid seats. Near 100k paying users.

GZ: Marc Benioff setting price at 50 per user gives us some room…
ES: What’s yammer’s strategy to ingest other enterprise data systems.
GZ: I think yammer is going to be the future of enterprise messaging. There’s going to be serious competition and we know that.

ES: FriendFeed was the first sig. acqusition in this space. Wasn’t the size of what people were talking about with Twitter, but it’s a milestone. From a founder perspective you were building this system, can you tell us about, what you thought was obviously the future.
PB: Facebook kept talking to us, they were very persistent. We were never looking to sell, even when we did. What happened is we started talking to them more, learning where they’re going. As we put more thought into the future of Facebook it started seeming like an intriguing possibility. The opportunity at Facebook is very substantial. Nobody has ever announced the deal. The biggest component is what is the value is Facebook. I think the value of Facebook is going to be huge. It is going to get more successful.

ES: Brian can you talk about what you guys are interested in?
BS: We’re also in Yammer. We’re also interested in where real time can go in non consumer/enterprise. There’s lots of room in devices, biotech. Lots of cool companies being able to figure out on the fly if there is E Coli in a substance. You can leverage tech to do lots of stuff that used to take a long time.
…
AB: We’re taking a wide approach.

MA: Kimball Musk this morning said there are gobs of money in search. When Twitter bought Summize, I think they gave them like 8% of the company, not sure if that’s been reported, it was a huge part of the company. I think they realized it was still very hard and passed it to Bing/Google. The places where the money is with Yammer, which touches on things like Echange. And search. But where else are people making money. Where are startups making money if not one of those two buckets?

RC: Those are good buckets. I agree, what you’re seeing with the programmable web. Some business is going to take off, we’re seeing things that haven’t been created yet that are going to see a huge amount of value in things being created.

RC: Coupons alone to inventivize users to go to a nearby place, revenues from that alone could be massive. This is going to happen in 2010.

BS: We’ve seen a huge amont of traffic on real-time coupons/offerings.

ES: How does microsoft look at this.
DL: he first thing for us is to build the infrastructure out, and look at the big information flows, like we did for the Twitter relationship. Some of these things will be things we’ll be interested in. We have been and will continue to be inquisitive. It’s been around 20 companies a year on avg. about 10 of those are bubble up like this and become important parts of a broader strategy. RealTime goes way back to the very beginning of data exchange. Who carries the flow, where is the value at what moment in time of the flow of information. These are all indications of inevitability of realtime. What we’ve done with Twitter/Bing those are foundations for much bigger connections. There’s a little company doing math in the cloud, seven guys optomizing POS information. 5k retail points, 20k units inventory in a warehouse.

SG: What do you know about deal with Twitter.
DL: Which deal?…
MA: What’s the other deal?
DL: They did one with us.
SG: Question is licensing of feeds?
DL: Why would I offer details on this.
RC: Yon can tell Dan’l likes this job.
MA: I feel like panelists know the answer to this.

RC: The companies we’re investing in today that TC writes about are indiciation of where the market is going. COtweet. Retime search companies. That’s going to be a hell of a horse race. I think one of the real time search engines that exists today will win out.

AB: Realtime search is a tough space. I think Google does a pretty good job at information retreival. Facebook has search in a different way (more discovery serendipitious). I look at it, if you go back 4 years ago, most of the companies you would see that were web enabled, you could see the same traffic refeeral chart. 30% google SEO. 40% SEM. the rest direct. Today out of nowhere Facebook/Twitter have become huge reffers.

ES: Paul, you’re both a buyer and seller because you’re an active angel investor. To what extent do the companies you invest in fall in this theme.
PB: I don’t know if I’ve invested in too many real time. I think real time is valuable because… basically the word relevance. Search is valuable because it’s relevant. Realtime enables that across a lot of other domains. If right now I say I am sitting right here and I get a coupon, it works because it’s relevant to me. If I got it tomorrow it would no longer be relevant. One of the companies I recently invested in. They do car sales/car business. They look for intention are you looking to buy a car, are you having trouble, that’s a good opportunity to contact them.

MA: There’s another angle to FB search. Forget where you are, what you’ve done. I found when I look people I know, search results are really good. Reason is because they are ranked based on people who have mutual friends. Google doesn’t address that at all. Applies to more than just people. Who you are is really relevant to almost all searches.
PB: Relevance has multiple dimension. Google got keywords. There is time relevance. All are opportunities.

ES: As we look forward at where all this is going. Seems like there are a lot of different approaches. Is there danger of confusion here. Do I build on top of Twitter/Facebook, quasi open systems Google is pushing.

MA: Stocktwits built on Twitter and now they’ve moved almost completely off it. Zynga is doing it with Farmville now.
BS: If you need to move off, all startups pivot. They can pivot. But I suggest starting with something, pick best thing for the job, and don’t be afraid to pivot.
RC: Start with one with cheapest cost, highest number of users, off you go.
AB: I think good entrepreneurs will find their way. Omar at AdMob.. even before iPhone launched he was focused on that as an opportunity for a business. They’ll find their way.

DL: Big question is whether company that rises as a company like Twitter. Or one like Facebook becomes core platform. Pick starting point but it’s hard to argue that anyone can anticipiate which one is going to get lift like a Twitter. Why Twitter and not someone else.

ES: George, maybe you can answer that. Twitter, Facebook, Google each platforms taking different approaches.

GZ: The concept of a social network has been around for a long time.The one difference is twitter is unlike geocities etc. Twitter is an example of a horizontal network. They own namespace, let third parties build it out.

ES: FriendFeed was ultimate twitter client. Paul, you built it partially on back of Twitter. But then when you sold to FB you bet on FB model.
PB: I think both companies have promising future. I don’t see it as once vs other. I don’t know how the future will play out. They’re both incredibly well positioned. I’d love to own either (or both). FB had all these features, for API had to allow access to each, more complex. Twitter only had a few features so it was very easy to build a Twitter client. Set up this whole ecosystem of twitter apps. Everyone filled in the little pieces by themselves. I’m curious if anyone else can do this. They’ve managed to outsource this.

SG: Does anyone have an opinion if lists, RT, etc are going to be plus or minus.
RC: Huge plus. People have been screaming for ecosystem for lists for a year. Whole ecosystem of companies built off lists themselves. Twitter is building a platform. in the next year there will be 100 apps built off twitter lists.

DL: I think most of the money will be made in enterprise communications.

ES: What will be the biggest real time exit next year?
DL: I think a number of things sub 100, 50. One thing that will be a billion dollar thing. Not even sure there will be exists. It think opportunities for big things will be able to stand alone.
GZ: I can’t even predict what’s going to happen next year. I think most of the companies in this space in terms of revenue are fairly immature with the exception of FB. I think more likely for big exists in 2010/2011.
RC: This market is in its infancy. I think a couple max in 50-100. Acquisitions in 2010 will be for IP and great teams.
MA: Do you think Zynga is doing more monthly rev than Facebook?
RC: Interesting question.
PB: I’ve heard rumors of Zynga IPO.
AB: I agree with the panel.

Q: Who is Twitter disrupting?
RC: Dick Costolo had some fascinating adjectives. “non tradional” “unique” “organic” “people will love it”. That’s a pretty interesting drum roll.
The next wave of disruption in technology will come and disrupt the big ones.

DL: I think Michael has a POV of our position on the web. Not sure if anyone paid attention to what we announced at our dev conf.

————

Full transcript:

>> So this is the last session that we’re about to start.

And let’s stay here and we can get this one wrapped up on time.

>> So if everyone on the final panel, if they’re not behind there, are they all back there?

Should we give away the

okay.

So at the end of this panel, we’re going to give away the sailing trip again.

So I’m not going to do it now because everyone left.

If everybody who is on this panel can come up.

Brian Singerman, Ron Conway, Dan’l Lewin, Paul Buchheit and Andrew Braccia.

If you’re back stage, come on up here.

>> All right.

We’re going to get started.

Can you find the other panelists.

We’ll have drinks afterwards.

So we’ll get started.

Okay.

Yeah, George, are you giving a demo?

>> He’s around.

>> George Zachary.

You want to come up on stage, guys.

All right.

Ron Conway.

All right.

Someone find Ron Conway.

He’ll show up.

Okay.

>> Let’s have everybody introduce themselves and say a little bit about why they think that

They have an opinion about real time or not.

Let’s start on this end.

>> Andrew Braccia, Accel Partners, have no opinion.

>> Paul Buchheit, Facebook at the moment, I guess, previously Friendfeed, and

>> Facebook, I guess, at the moment?

[LAUGHTER]

>> That came out wrong.

[LAUGHTER]

I was trying to decide whether Friendfeed or Facebook part was more relevant.

They’re both very relevant since obviously I think realize is a big time where we’re headed

In the future.

And in particular not just the technical aspect but the human aspect of how we relate to each

Other.

>> George.

>> George Zachary, Charles River.

I’m known to have opinions.

I missed the question.

I’m sorry I wasn’t paying attention.

>> As it goes, who are you.

>> I’m Dan’l Lewin, I’m with Microsoft.

I’m here in Silicon Valley, and oversee our outreach to the start-up community in general.

>> Great.

Brian Singerman, I’m at Founders Fund.

>> Okay.

So we kind of want to use this panel to, A, wrap up some of the themes that we’ve been seeing

Today.

And really kind of focus on what both the business and investment opportunities are in the

Future.

So we’ve seen talk a lot about sort of filtering this overflow of information that’s being

delivered in streams.

If you would like.

You can be Ron Conway.

We’ve seen that there’s a lot of interest in geo stream information, lots of start-ups working

On that.

>> By the way, the doors were locked and there are a bunch of people trying to get in, they

Couldn’t get in because the doors are locked.

>> Could somebody open the door.

>> In real time, please.

>> All right.

And we’re seeing these streams becoming sort of new distribution mechanisms for both private

And public communications, media content, etc..

So where do the money-making opportunities lie here?

We’ve got a lot of consumer use cases.

Where is the money?

George.

>> That’s a pretty broad question.

Well, we’re investors in three companies that are now starting to accrue revenues in the space.

One is Twitter.

The second one is Yammer a third in India SMS group shot, people in India call the at which

Twitter of India, which is kind of a Twitter and e-groups blend.

>> Can you talk about how well Yammerer is monetizing, it’s unclear.

It would be good to understand.

What percent of customers turn into upgrade into a paid account and what are they paying on

Average?

What’s total revenue?

>> I won’t tell you that level of detail.

But I will tell you

>> Their advantage is being a private company.

>> I will tell you that with a salesperson who is promoted from customer support, no other

Sales infrastructure, in zero four marketing we have over10 percent conversion of the install

Base.

>> They’re paying it

is it $12 a month per user?

I forgot what is it they charge?

>> I can’t remember right now.

>> George

$1 per use per month.

>> You told me in the hall once salesforce announced chatter you started getting a lot of

Calls.

>> Just to partially answer your question without getting a raft of crap from the company.

The company has about 550,000 installed seats up from zero in 14 months.

[APPLAUSE]

So I think

>> Was that David Sacks.

>> Has anyone

who here has used Yammer and uses it

more than what I thought.

>> We started using it after TechCrunch after they won the event.

At some point we moved the paid.

We have to move to paid.

Cleared out old accounts and got control of it.

It’s an insidious product where you get very sticky.

You’re like we have to start paying.

And so it’s a good thing.

>> It’s a good thing.

It’s a good thing for the company and me as an investor.

So to answer your question

>> It’s good for the customer because you’ll be around for a while, then.

>> That’s correct.

To answer your question, you know, post Marc Benioff getting up saying we’ve blatantly copied

Yammer but I’m not going to tell you because we claim everything.

We started getting calls from investment bankers saying since salesforce has chatter I bet

All these other companies are going to want Yammer.

But we haven’t responded to the calls.

>> There’s an interesting thing we’ve noticed at least I’ve noticed in terms of Yammer, as

They keep broadening their platform across different devices, like, for example, when the iPhone

3.0 software came out it supports push notification.

And all of a sudden if you send an at Steve or at Mike or editor, it shows up, if you have

An iPhone still, which Mike doesn’t, it shows up on the, it alerts you.

Literally it pushes to the top of the stack.

>> It synchs across devices which Twitter hasn’t come close to doing.

>> You said there’s 550,000 seats.

$1 a month.

>> 550,000 installed enterprise seats over 10 percent of new seats convert every month.

>> So it’s like 20, 30, 40,000 paid seats.

>> No, it’s below 100,000.

>> And that’s

below $100,000 in revenue per month.

>> Near 100,000 paying users.

>> It’s $1 per month per user.

>> Actually, it’s three to five.

>> Okay.

So it’s actual revenue.

It’s not huge yet but it’s proving it’s a business model.

>> Marc Benioff is setting the price, his price at 50 bucks per user gives us some you mean

Umbrella for

>> But he ties into all this other CRM data, right?

So are you saying that you’re going to

what’s Yammer strategy to kind of ingest other, you

Know, enterprise data systems and make those, you know, alerts within Yammer?

>> That’s correct.

That’s correct.

And just to pick on Marc a little bit, salesforce is a company with more P than E in their

P to E and existing off of CRM is not a good way to maintain the company.

So he has to spread into the space.

And my belief is that the core of all enterprise IT is going to be messaging.

I mean, huge franchises have been built off of messaging, specifically e-mail and Dan’l you

Would know this well, and I believe that Yammer is going to be the future of enterprise messaging.

So I’m very excited about it.

There’s going to be serious competition, we know that.

>> So, Paul, Friendfeed was the first really kind of significant acquisition in the space.

You know, definitely wasn’t in terms of size of what people were talking about Twitter, but

Twitter never sold.

But in terms of the impact you guys are having, within Facebook, I think that it’s a milestone.

And $50 million is nothing to sneeze at.

So to what extent, from a founder perspective, right, you’re building the system, can you tell

Us a little bit about what extent were you sort of off in the woods doing what you thought

Was obviously the future, and at what point did sort of the bigger companies, the acquirers

Start sniffing around?

>> You know, Facebook kept talking to us.

Like from the very beginning.

They’re very persistent.

And so pretty much always there were people looking.

But we were never looking to sell.

Even when we did sell.

It was a surprise even to us.

So but really what happened was that we did start talking to them more closely and got to meet

More of the team and learn more about where they saw things going.

And you know as we started putting more thought into essentially the future of Facebook, it

Started to seem like a very intriguing possibility.

And ultimately that was obviously what we did.

>> So your motivation for selling was primarily what?

>> The opportunity at Facebook is very substantial.

You quoted a number which we’ve never

no one has ever announced the deal, but obviously

The biggest component is the question of what is the value of Facebook.

And I think that the value of Facebook is going to be huge.

It’s a very successful company.

It’s going to get more so I think in the future.

There’s really a lot of opportunity in the whole area of all the social and the real time and

Everything.

And they’re in a somewhat unique position which I think will prove rather lucrative.

>> Brian, can you tell us a little bit about your involvement in real time, what kind of real

Time companies have you invested in?

>> Yes, we’re also in Yammer along with George.

And supporting David for a while.

But I actually think.

>> What kind of revenues is Yammer doing.

>> Last time I saw Mike he asked me exactly what the Facebook revenues were.

I gladly volunteered that information as well.

No.

We’re interested in that kind of stuff.

But we’re also interested in where real time can go from nonconsumer or enterprise apps.

We think there’s a lot of room for real time in devices, and there’s lots of room for real

Time in biotech applications, and everything else.

>> Biotech, like what?

>> Like for instance there’s lots of cool companies doing things like being able to figure

Out on the fly if there’s E. Coli in a given substance.

And stuff like that.

So I know it’s not the exact same type of real time that we’re talking about, but technology

Is able to

you can leverage technology to do lots of cool stuff that used to take a long

Time.

Like how news before

>> It’s real time in the sense that if you find out before you eat the hamburger, that’s good.

>> That’s right.

It’s a lot better to find out beforehand.

>> But there’s an application in India right now, there are huge issues on global health where

People take medicines, drugs, which are purported to be clean and prescribed, but they’re actually

Counterfeit.

And a third of the time you have a chance of dying from taking the drug.

Because it’s not real and it’s not clean.

So there’s a public/private key.

Real time example of you scrape off a little piece of hidden thing like you do on the prize,

And you SMS the code and you get a real time check, is this a real drug or not.

And then you choose to take it and live.

So there’s a ton of examples outside of many noisy things that are real world applications.

in healthcare bio, life sciences, simple things like that.

Lots of opportunity.

>> I agree.

Absolutely.

>> That’s one of those things, it’s one of those areas that’s really exciting to us right

Now.

Just basically taking stuff that used to take a long time and require a lot of capital, making

It not require a lot of capital, and having instant gratification.

Like in general that’s the theme of real time, and we’re huge fans of that.

>> Andrew, can you talk a little bit about in terms of what percentage of pitches that you’re

Seeing now either they use this term or that you

I mean, is this becoming the new Web two

2.0.

Are people using it as a branding mechanism?

Is there something real here?

>> It’s a very popular part of a lot of the presentations.

Both from the perspective of new companies, presenting their ideas, with that lens, but also

With existing companies, you know, pivoting around the trends of what’s happening around real

Time information.

And I think we have a bunch of different thoughts on the space, and I think like Brian was

Talking about, and Dan’l, we think that real time has an impact in just about every business

That we invest in.

You know, whether it be a business that is, you know, in the data storage space, where more

Information, you know, is only growing the need for the next level of data center infrastructure

Around information retrieval and we have a company that we’re investors in with Ron called

Cloudaria commercialization of Adoop, important for the data infrastructure.

If you look at a lot of the advertising business and look at the importance that real time

Is playing in terms of targeting you look at the rise of demand side platforms that are using

Real time exchanges, like right media, double click, Google, OpenX.

Those are areas we’re interested in.

I think you look at the real time communication aspects of social networks, and you look at

Those businesses as next generation platforms for commerce.

If you think about Google, you know, Google organized all the world’s information.

If you look at Facebook in many ways Facebook is organizing humanity, and in many ways people

Are exchanging information and businesses are being built off of that.

If you look at social commerce and you look at the frictionless nature of getting offers in

Front of people and the virality of that and you see it in social gaming and other applications

As well.

So we’re taking sort of a wide purview and wide approach to investing.

>> I think Mike has some ideas about the offers.

>> Social gaming offers?

>> I’m not necessarily talking about those types of offers.

>> If you look at Kimball Musk from OneRiot in the panel this morning said that there are

Gobs of money in search and I think when Twitter bought suchld ummize last summer I think they

Gave them eight percent or something like that of the company.

I don’t think that was ever verified.

I’m not sure if it’s ever been reported.

But there’s a huge chunk of the company that Twitter gave to do search.

I think they realized that it’s still very, very hard and sort of passed it off to Bing and

To Google.

But it seems to me like the only places I’ve seen, maybe you disagree, I’d love to hear if

You do.

The places where the money is a little bit like with Yammer where you’re selling something

To the enterprise and you’re convincing they want it and touching on exchange and that huge

Potential pot of money, and in search where people are, as Kimball said, using his words, people

Are expressing intent right now what they want and you can throw ads against and clearly there’s

Lots of money to be made there, too, but where else are people making money.

You put Facebook in another bucket and they’re so huge now they’re able to make money more

Traditional ways.

But for your start-ups you’re investing in, where are they going to make any money if it’s

Not in one of those two buckets?

>> Those are two pretty good buckets.

Those two buckets are going to be a couple of billion dollars a year.

But they’ll be new buckets as well that are unique.

>> So what are the buckets?

>> I completely agree.

I think what you’re seeing with the whole programmable Web out there with all these APIs out

There and you’ve got a bunch of people on your panels, some business is going to take off that

Uses some of these APIs and very interesting unique ways and we’ll see things that haven’t

Been created yet that generate a huge amount of traffic and a huge amount of value in that

Space to people who are creating these building blocks for the programmable Web.

>> Just the location based opportunity with Twitter doing the location API, which is going

To help people like Foursquare Goola and Hot Potato, these are companies in their infancy,

And they’re huge, huge markets.

>> Can you talk a little bit more about that?

We just had a geo panel.

I know you were in another commitment.

We tried to talk a little bit about this.

But what’s your sense of how

once we get geo data into all these apps, what are the, some

Of the business opportunities that that makes possible?

>> Just couponing alone to incentivise you to go in and replace a business that you’re within

Two to three blocks of, just that in and of itself and the rev share from that could be mass

Ive.

>> And newspapers used to be the Sunday paper was the home of coupons.

And that’s gone.

So there’s an opportunity to be replaced.

>> And it’s a huge opportunity.

This is going to happen in 2010.

You’re going to see it on gooala and Hot Potato and Foursquare and five other companies that

We’re talking to next week.

>> We’ve seen a huge amount of traffic, deal flow traffic on people doing the real time where

You are-based coupons and offerings and doing intelligent targeting based on location on the

Coupons.

>> How does Microsoft think about this in you want to buy companies that are sort of invent

you wait for companies to get critical mass to prove it up?

>> The first thing for us is to build the infrastructure out, which we’ve been doing.

And looking at the big information flows like what we did with the Twitter relationship.

But I think that the inevitability is that some of these things that are bubbling up will be

Things that we’ll be interested in.

I can’t obviously comment on specifics but there’s no question that we have been and we’ll

Continue to be inquisitive.

Generally speaking, if people don’t know, it’s been about 20 companies on year on average,

Probably 10 of those, half of those deals are bubble up like this if you will and become important

Parts of a broader strategy that we’re clearly building out as it relates to the infrastructure.

The enterprise infrastructure is really important to this.

Location, as Ron points out, is fundamental to it as well.

But to me, I think, the biggest picture for the company, I know Lili was on a panel earlier

Today, probably mentioned some of these things.

I’m sorry, I personally missed it.

I had to be off site this morning.

But real time, it goes way, way back in my mind to the very beginning of data exchange and

EDI where who carries the flow?

Right?

Where is the value at what moment in time in the flow of information.

Whether it’s money, or inventory, which equates to money, etc..

So what we’re seeing with the real streams and user-generated content for the most part today

Or from what I’ve heard since the noon hour, these are all indications of the inevitability

Of real time in a broader customer hall sense.

How much will be monetizable and absorbed into infrastructure like a Facebook infrastructure,

Which I think is fundamental as Andrew pointed out, and is mapping a very important space,

Humanity, if you will.

And all of those organizational dynamics around big, broad systems of record, whether it’s

Information that Google organized or Facebook has done or we’ve done with Bing etc., those

Are foundation points for much more rapid connections and the monetization will come about

Where there’s a commercial opportunity.

Create a advertising base.

>> Do you agree it’s those two buckets, the search and what was your other bucket?

>> Search and personal identity and flow, and information flow.

There’s huge opportunity in the

>> Commerce.

>> Huge opportunity in the enterprise.

There’s a little company that we’re working with right now that’s building out seven guys doing

Math in the cloud using Asher we just worked with them at our developers conference this week.

Seven guys optimizing for point of sale information.

5,000 retail points.

20,000 units of inventory in a warehouse.

There’s massive inventory opportunity.

>> Does the coupon thymine as I’m driving by a mini mall 18 coupons are going to pop up.

>> In an ideal world you’ve presented it in a natural way.

>> You want to put the filters in place.

>> You’re already starting to see this with Foursquare, where

>> Exactly.

>> In your hand well since you’re here, go in the store, get this.

>> I would absolutely add commerce to one of the buckets, to one of Mike’s buckets.

I think you have to.

>> Can I go through my top 10 list again?

>> We did that last time.

>> Is it the same.

>> Ron’s going to go through his top 10 list.

>> Lead generation.

Analytics.

I’m going to pass over the repeats.

CRM.

Payments.

User authentication.

Licensing of feeds.

And acquiring followers.

>> Licensing of feeds.

Dan’l, what do you know about the deal with Twitter?

>> Which deal?

>> Wow, they did more than one.

>> You paid a certain amount of money, allegedly.

>> I don’t know

>> Let’s go down this which deal.

>> Well, you’re asking about a deal with Twitter.

>> That deal.

>> I think she answered that question.

>> Ron Conway is like ask him, ask him, what’s the other deal.

Am I disrupting the panel again.

>> It’s your prerogative.

>> I was asking a simple question.

>> Which deal did Twitter do?

They did one with us, right?

>> Right.

The question is licensing of feeds.

That seems to be a pretty big license of feeds.

What are the details of that license?

>> Why would I offer details?

[LAUGHTER]

>> To a conversation that was a private conversation.

>> Okay.

I can try.

>> You can tell Dan’l likes his job.

[LAUGHTER]

>> I feel like the panelists up here know the answers to the questions but it’s like, well,

They don’t want to share it because they’re venture capitalists and this one company we’re

Not going to talk about the fact that they’re

>> We kind of got ourselves into this by putting venture capitalists on the panel.

>> Exactly.

>> So does anybody want to say anything?

[LAUGHTER]

>> The companies, the venture capitalists are investing in today are going to be, you know,

The $100 million companies of tomorrow, or we wouldn’t be investing in them.

So the companies we’re investing in today that TechCrunch writes about are an indication of

Where this market’s going.

You know, we have CoTweet in the corporate space.

We have a whole raft of real time search companies.

And that’s going to be a hell of a horse race, because they’re going to have to integrate more

Relevancy and intent so they deliver better results.

But there will be a big winner come out of that.

>> How many real time search companies do we need?

>> We have quite a few right now.

So I would encourage people to go elsewhere.

>> Nobody’s won the space yet, though.

>> Yeah, there’s room.

>> I think one of the ones that exists today will win out.

Because their IP will mature.

>> Is it going to be Bing or Google?

>> No, no, I’m talking scoopler, topsly, Eller Dale, the scrappy ones.

>> This is the man that invested in Google.

>> Andrew, do you agree with that?

>> Real time search is a tough space.

I think it’s

Google does a pretty good job at information retrieval.

And I think a lot of the real time information that’s being exchanged where relevancy is no

Longer page rank, it’s the people you know.

Facebook does a pretty good job of enabling that.

So

>> Facebook has search?

>> Sure.

>> I think search in a different way, in sort of more of a discovery sArn dip to us way, but

I think I kind of look at it from the perspective of if you go back six

go back three or

Four years ago, most companies are companies that you would see that were Web-enabled and business

Their businesses off the Web.

Literally, you could see the same traffic referral chart for just about every company except

For a couple of well-known destinations.

It was 30, or 33 percent Google, SCO.

It was 35 or 40 percent SCM and 20 percent or whatever the number that’s left over there direct.

And referrals to the website.

You look at today, most of the companies that I see, whether it be existing companies or new

Companies that are popping up, out of nowhere you know, Facebook has become sort of the number

Two or number three referral source for those companies.

Twitter is all of a sudden become a very significant resource for those companies.

So that to me is a lead indicator in many ways of how people are discovering information on

The Web and how that’s changing.

>> So, Paul, you’re both a buyer and a seller, right, because you’re very active Angel Investor.

To what extent the companies that you invest in, fall within this same kind of theme, or do

You diversify away from like what you’re doing?

>> You know, I don’t know that I’ve invested in too many real time companies.

But I think it’s a component of probably most businesses going forward.

In that the reason that I think real time is really valuable is basically the word “relevance”.

Like, the reason that search is valuable is because it’s relevant.

Someone does a search, you can give them a response that’s relevant to what they’re asking

For.

And what real time does is that that enables that across a lot of other domains.

Like if right now I say I’m sitting right here and I get a coupon for the restaurant next door,

That works because it’s relevant to me.

If I got the coupon tomorrow, it would no longer be relevant.

So I think that’s the thing that made search really go.

And I think that same dynamic is going to drive real time.

>> So when we talk about real time search and monetization of it, how much of that opportunity

Is tied to location versus other types of real time.

>> Certainly location is the easier one because of the example of coupons.

But I think if I’m sharing what I’m thinking right now, if I’m thinking about

whatever it

Is I’m thinking about, there’s probably a relevant, some relevant information that could be

Provided to me.

One of the companies that I recently invested in is

I can’t remember if they launched so

I won’t say who.

But they do car

they’re in the car business.

So one of the things they do is look at like, look for intention of are you selling, are you

Looking to buy a car, are you having car trouble, and that’s a great opportunity to contact

That person and say, hey, we can help you get a new car.

>> There’s another angle to Facebook search, in particular, I find really fascinating.

Forget what you’re searching for and maybe even what you’ve recently done on Facebook or even

Where you are, when you query.

I found that when I’m looking up old friends from high school or just people I might know that

The search results are really, really good and the reason they are, even though there’s so

Many people with the same name, is that they’re kind of

they’re ranking it based on people

That maybe have mutual friends or somehow they’re figuring out who I’m probably thinking of

Based on that.

And Google clearly doesn’t address that dimension at all.

But that applies to more than just looking for people, you know.

Just who you are and who you know is really relevant to almost all searches.

>> They do it.

>> Relevance has these multiple dimensions.

Google got it on like the keywords.

But there’s time relevance, what I’m thinking of, social relevance, and all these other elegance.

>> Personalized relevance.

>> Time.

>> So all those dimensions I think are opportunities for revenue.

>> We’re going to start to wrap this up in a few minutes.

So if you want to ask some questions, please come to the mics.

>> So as we look forward where all of this is going, it seems that there are a lot of different

Approaches.

There’s sort of a lot of different platforms that developers can build their apps or their

Businesses on top of.

Is there

is there a danger of confusion here?

Do I build my

do I build my business off of Twitter or on top of Facebook, do I build it

On top of quasi open systems that Google is pushing?

Like stock Twitter todays they built off of Twitter but they’re still called stock Twitter

Todays but they have their own system.

They use Twitter to get all the systems and then moved off.

It’s fascinating.

And Zinga is doing it with farmville.

>> Because they have more control.

>> You can take advantage of these platforms, get being enough and then ultimately, right,

The most value, you can capture enough attention, people to come to use your application or

Come to your website.

You know, ultimately that would be the biggest win, I would think.

>> I would suggest having a pretty good idea of where you want it to start.

Then researching what’s out there to help you.

Like some of these geo APIs that we looked at today.

I know I’m doing a side project right now I’m using one of the geo APIs just because I needed

It and it’s very useful for me.

And if you need to move off. You need to pivot like all start-ups pivot and figure out this

Is what is really working for me they pivot.

But I would suggest starting with something pick the tool that’s best for the job right then

And don’t be afraid to pivot.

>> Start with the platform that gives you the most leverage for the cheapest cost for the

Highest number of users. Build your own brand and off you go.

>> Exactly.

>> I think if you’re fortunate enough to work with great entrepreneurs, they’ll find their

Way, right?

You look at Omar at addmob and it was built off of sort of a WAP.

As soon as the iPhone launched before iPhone launched he was very focused on that as another

Opportunity for that business.

And they took resources.

They moved things very quickly to go and take advantage of the iPhone ecosystem.

Very early on.

And they benefited from it greatly.

So I think when you have great entrepreneurs, great ideas, I think they find their way.

They’re scrappy.

>> Question: Peter.

To me it’s really not a question at all if those platforms like Twitter and Facebook or partner

Companies that built their business on it are going to make money.

The really interesting thing for me would be is it going to be the first route to take the

Low-hanging fruit and in licensing deals, for instance, with Google and Bing and so on, and

Are they going to become co-dependent on those, or are they going to in parallel build out

Their own direct revenue streams, and to see this through, sort of through the end as their

Own companies.

>> I hate to be flip.

But it depends on how long those contracts are.

I hope they’re short.

But who knows how long they are.

>> It’s a very good question.

Very good question.

>> I think that

I mean, that there is money that’s not the question anymore.

I mean, the question is are those companies going to be able to become as big as the ones that

>> Some things are catalysts and they continue to exist and reform.

And other things are catalysts they instigate connections and dissipate and go away.

There’s a big question about whether a company that rises very, very rapidly as a connection

Point between two things and builds their platform up like what Twitter is doing in placing

Their particular bets and someone like Facebook that turns into a phenomena, that it becomes

A core platform around which someone can do something like what ad mob did with a platform

They bet on it in some form and leveraged that point.

You pick your starting point, but it’s hard to I think argue that anyone can anticipate to

Ron and the other investors who place a broad array of ads.

Anticipate which one is going to be the one that gets to live like Twitter.

Why Twitter and why not someone else.

>> Yeah, why Twitter.

Maybe George you can answer that from a perspective of, Twitter, Facebook, even Google, they

All have platform ambitions but they are platforms, taking different approaches, Twitter lean,

They want to take the communication layer and everyone to build on top of it.

Whereas Facebook is more feature-rich on its own.

Tell us from like in your investment in Twitter, so you have a point of view, but how do you

See these different approaches playing out and what’s at stake here?

>> It’s a very fascinating question.

And I’ve thought about this quite a bit.

You know, the concept of a social network has been around for quite a long time.

You could posit that geo cities was a cromagnon version followed by e friends and Facebook

And followed by Twitter.

The one difference with Twitter all the networks are vertically integrated.

They owned the name space for the users and then the messaging and then the features above

Them.

Twitter is an example of the first horizontally distributed network, where basically their

Goal was to own the name space and the messaging and control of that.

And then let third parties take the risk of basically building out products on top of that,

To basically fill out the entire stack.

But it’s a horizontal plane.

And I think it’s a very cost-effective play from an investor perspective.

And as well as user risk perspective.

>> Paul, why does Facebook win?

You’ve got an interesting perspective because in a sense Friendfeed was the ultimate at which

Twitter client.

A lot of people kind of said that.

Half jokingly, but it was also true.

So you built Friendfeed partially on top, on the back of Twitter because that was a very big

Portion of the feed that was going through Twitter or through friend feed.

And but then with the

when you sold to Facebook, you bet on the Facebook model.

So why?

>> You know, I think both companies have very promising future.

I don’t see it as one versus the other.

Obviously I don’t like know exactly how the future is going to play out.

But they’re both incredibly well positioned.

I think that

I would love to have

or both.

>> Right.

But can you contrast the platform like

>> I think there’s a lot to learn.

They have taken very different approaches.

But I don’t know that it’s entirely like a conscious thing.

I think it’s to some extent like a historical accident, the approach that Facebook took original

Ly I think was they looked at

obviously I wasn’t there at the time.

They looked at the apps that they had already built themselves and said how can we enable other

People to do the same thing that we’ve done.

So they basically tried to open up all of the capabilities that the native apps like photos

Or whatever had to third-party developers.

And Twitter, I guess, to some extent did the same thing but they only had a couple of features.

So consequently it was extremely easy to build these Twitter clients who grow the site.

So they didn’t really make any accept to occasionally remove features.

And that

I think that worked out very well for them.

It’s like a wonderful

it’s a great example of like how things can play out differently just

Depending on the initial conditions.

But what that did was it set up this whole ecosystem of Twitter apps, where you have all the

Clients, you have tweetty and Twitter today pick and everybody filled in an amazing example

I’m curious if any other company is able to replicate that, because they’ve managed to essential

Ly outsource the innovation.

>> Does anybody on the panel have an opinion about whether the new stuff that Twitter’s been

Building out lists, retweets, etc., is that going to be, a plus for them, neutral, or a minus?

Ron?

>> It’s going to be a huge plus.

People have been screaming for lists for over a year.

In the Twitter community.

And there’s a whole ecosystem of companies being built on top of the Twitter lists product

Itself.

So people were saying, oh, is Twitter going to go into the list space?

No, they’re building basically a platform and in the next year they’ll probably be 100 applications

On top of

>> It’s kind of a Microsoft play, isn’t it?

>> Twitter lists.

>> It’s kind of a Microsoft play where they build the infrastructure and then let people party

On it.

>> I don’t know

I think of Office and the operating system.

I don’t know the infrastructure products.

>> There’s various ways

people talk about platforms in loose ways, and I think that the

Early stages of the business, Microsoft, I was not there then, but I was at Apple working on

The Mac stuff.

And it’s one thing to build a lower level platform on which for the first generation people

Built content-less productivity tools, office automation things.

E-mail which was talked about earlier as an communication exchange.

Things didn’t take off until there was an appropriate standardization, you could then interoperate

And move mail around effectively.

And then the newer platforms that we’re talking about today in this context, I think, for the

And then either bolting on to infrastructure that exists like what Yammer has done in the enterprise

Infrastructure for monetization, or very high risk, high return bets like what the at which

Twitter guys are choosing to do to partner but at the same time build out and totally open

Up the ecosystem for others to add value on top.

This is a new

it’s a new phenomenon that’s happening in real time and we’ll see the results,

I think, as Ron says, year over year, with some interesting brand new winners that have probably

Already been funded and then many things that will get absorbed into the platform plays like

What a Facebook would do or what Microsoft or Google or anyone else would do that has infrastructure

Upon which this stuff connects and moves.

So it’s happening ever faster.

I think personally, though, to my earlier comment, I think most of the money is going to get

Made in enterprise infrastructure.

There’s just too much money in enterprise to be as inefficient as enterprise communications.

>> To wrap up with predictions.

What’s going to be the biggest real time exit in the next year, in terms of just dollar value?

Where do you expect, like where are we in this stage?

Are we going to see more $50 million deals?

$100 million deals, billion dollar deals?

What’s your expectation and what’s the time frame?

>> You just look at past performance in these areas.

I think there will be a number of things that are sub hundred million in the 50 million dollar

$50 million range, and I think there will be, if everyone’s lucky, one thing that will be a

Billion dollar kind of thing.

That’s typically what

and it’s happening faster, right?

But not even sure there will be exits.

I think the opportunity for the big things will be to stand alone, if they’re really going

To be big.

And witness Ace Book, you were questioning what’s the value of Facebook.

It’s big.

What’s the

who knows.

>> George?

>> Well, I can’t predict what’s going to happen next year in terms of exits.

I think most of the companies in the space are, in terms of revenues, are still fairly immature

With the exception of Facebook.

So I think it’s more likely that big exits will occur in 2011 and 2012, than 2010.

>> I wish that company that you and Ron are putting together could have launched here today.

The one that I tweeted out yesterday or the day before that was going to enrage half the audience

And make the other half want to basically invest, because that’s the one I think

well, it

Either completely fall flat and go nowhere or it will potentially just has such a huge mon

Etization opportunity.

>> This is the one that replaces the U.S. Government.

>> That eventually will.

Amazing.

>> Everyone’s got an option on that.

>> I have to clarify.

I’m trying to invest in that particular company.

George has done all the lifting on that company.

So I don’t want to take any credit.

Exits in 2010.

This market is in its infancy.

I think from 15 to $100 million range.

Teeing up exits, in 2011 and 2012, there could be a billion.

But we have to remember, this is a market in its infancy.

The acquisitions that get made in 2010 will be for intellectual property and great killer teams

Of people.

>> That’s exactly right.

>> And Paul Buchheit’s company is a great example of that.

>> ZInga is doing more monthly revenue than Facebook right now?

>> Wow.

>> I’m not privy to either company’s financials but it’s an interesting question.

>> Paul?

>> Hesitant to make any predictions.

I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ve heard rumors of Zinga’s IPO.

That would be exciting.

>> Andrew?

>> No, I agree with the panel.

[LAUGHTER]

>> He wants to go get a drink.

>> One question from the audience here then we’ll wrap it up.

>> Question: I don’t know too much about, have too much insight into Facebook and at which

Twitter’s monetization models, but it seems to me that Facebook fundamentally disrupts double

Click impression ad model and their dollars come from there.

What market will either be disrupted or created by Twitter, do you think?

>> Who is Twitter disrupting?

>> Well, we don’t know yet.

But Dick Costolo this morning, I thought, had some very fascinating adjectives.

And one of them was that they’re going to

their business model is going to mature in 2010.

It’s going to be fascinating.

Nontraditional.

I took lots of notes.

Unique and organic.

And it was going to be very, very cool and people would love it.

>> Who was it that said that

that’s a pretty interesting drum roll that 2010’s going to

Be a very interesting year in this space.

>> Who said Microsoft is afraid of Google

maybe

is afraid of Facebook, is afraid of

Twitter.

There was somebody that said that quote last year.

I wish I would have thought of it.

It’s sort of true Twitter disrupting Facebook, disrupting Google, I think that’s very real

Facebook disrupting Google and Google disrupting Microsoft because Microsoft still trying to

Figure out the Web stuff.

>> Sprinkle all the little start ups underneath that and one of them is going to

one of

Them is going to disrupt that crowd, the big crowd.

Three years from now it’s going to be

there’s going to be another company.

I hope I invested in it this year.

>> [LAUGHTER]

>> That is the next wave of disruption in technology.

>> You invest in several of those people on that list.

Google.

Twitter.

>> List right there.

>> I missed Microsoft.

>> All but Microsoft.

>> So Dan’l, you were shaking your head.

>> I was shaking my head.

I think Michael has a point of view about our position on the Web.

And I always respect Michael’s opinions, but I don’t know if anybody was paying attention to

What we announced this week down at our developers conference, but I encourage you to take

A look.

>> I think we were still reeling from the Don Dodge layoff.

Hire him back but he’s gone now.

I think that generally we loved him.

So he’s going to be hard to replace.

>> We’ve got to liven up the ending.

[LAUGHTER]

>> So please give the panel a big round of applause.

I’m going to give away a sailing trip, I think, maybe.

[APPLAUSE]

Maybe not.

If nobody is here I think I might give it to Dan’l as a consolation prize.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Ruby shining on Java, Windows, and Mac OS (InfoWorld)

Time to trade up to a new GPS unit

TomTom wants you to buy a new PND (personal navigation device) this holiday season. So much so, that they will buy your old device from you via a mail in rebate.

How does it work? Well, you buy a TomTom PND, then go to this website to complete the process. You’ll ship TomTom your old GPS (along with the appropriate form, of course) and then you’ll get your check in about 7-14 days. Pretty easy.

[via Twice]

UPDATE 1-Axiant files bankruptcy, to be bought by NCO Group

InfoLogix Announces Closing of Restructuring of its Outstanding Debt with Hercules; Believes Compliant with NASDAQ's Minimum Stockholders' Equity Threshold

iPhone Game Piracy "the Rule Rather Than the Exception"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Black Friday 2009: Radio Shack’s Black Friday deals leaked

Section: Gadgets / Other

Radio Shack’s Black Friday deals have been leaked and here’s what you can expect. There are no Early Bird deals, but I still recommend you get to the store early as quantities will likely be limited!

Camcorders:

Sanyo Xacti VPC-CG10 10MP HD Flash Camcorder (Red)  $169.99
Vivitar DVR 865HD Flash Camcorder $69.99

Computer Accessories:

Gigaware Wireless Optical Mouse   $12.99
Netgear Basic Wireless-N Router $34.99
Pinnacle PCTV USB HDTV Tuner $39.99
Iomega Prestige 320GB Portable Hard Drive $49.99

Digital Cameras:

Casio Digital Camera Gift Bundle - 10MP, 3x Zoom, Leather Case $89.99
Kodak Easyshare M381 Digital Camera - 12MP, 5x Zoom $99.99
Nikon Coolpix Digital Camera - 10MP, 3x Zoom $129.99
Olympus Digital Camera - 12MP, 7x Wide-Angle Zoom $149.99
Vivitar ViviCam 8225 8.1MP Digital Camera $49.99

Cell Phones:

LG Xenon (2 Yr. AT&T Contract Required)  FREE
Motorola CLIQ with MOTOBLUR (2 Yr. T-Mobile Contract Required) $79.99
Motorola i776 Prepaid Phone (Boost Mobile) $69.99
Nokia 2720 No-Contract Mobile Phone $9.99
Palm Pixi (2 Yr. Sprint Contract Required) $99.99
Palm Pre (2 Yr. Sprint Contract Required) $99.99
Samsung Impression (2 Yr. AT&T Contract Required) $29.99
Samsung Instinct s30 (2 Yr. Sprint Contract Required) FREE

GPS:

Garmin nuvi 255W GPS Receiver $119.99
Garmin nuvi 265WT GPS Receiver w/ FREE Lifetime Traffic Updates $169.99
Mio Moov M400 GPS Receiver   $79.99
TomTom XL 330-S GPS Receiver w/ FREE Dash Mount $99.99

Laptops:

Acer 15.6” Laptop - AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core, Windows 7, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD $399.99
Acer Aspire One 11.6” Netbook - Atom, 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD, Vista $249.99

iPods:

Apple 8GB iPod nano (FREE $15 RadioShack Gift Card on 11/27)  $149.99 Apple 8GB iPod touch (FREE $20 RadioShack Gift Card on 11/27) $199.99

Televisions:

AUVIO 3.5” Portable Digital TV $79.99
AUVIO 7” Portable Digital TV $119.99
Envision 22” 720p LCD HDTV $199.99
Samsung 32” 720p LCD HDTV $399.99

Video Games:

XBox 360 Elite Bundle Deal w/ LEGO Batman and Pure $299.99

Read [BFAds.net]

Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

RealTime CrunchUp: The Rise Of Geo Streams

Today at the RealTime CrunchUp, representatives from some of the top companies involved in location based services came together to talk about the current state and future of geo-based services.

Participating in the panel were:
Matt Galligan, co-Founder of SimpleGeo
Ryan Sarver, Director of Platform at Twitter
Tristan Walker, VP of Business Development at Foursquare
Steve Lee, Group Product Manager Google Maps for Mobile and Google Latitude
Justin Shaffer, Founder of Hot Potato
Elad Gil, CEO of Mixer Labs
Moderators were our own Erick Schonfeld and MG Siegler.

Video by Ustream

Early in the panel, the conversation turned to SimpleGeo, the new infrastructure for location that was revealed earlier this week. Shaffer spoke about how excited he was about the new service. When asked if anyone could copy what Foursquare was doing, Walker talked about Foursquare’s efforts to filter content (which is harder to reproduce).

MG then steered the conversation toward bridging the gap between social networks and the real world, noting that mobile devices are paving the way for this change. But he wondered how services other than Foursquare (which has a game mechanic) would entice users to share their location on a regular basis.

Lee addressed concerns over Latitude’s continuous location sharing, explaining that you can share your location with certain people who you specify, but that Latitude’s approach to constant tracking leads to the ability to offer interesting services. He says that without continuous sharing nearby alerts wouldn’t be possible (or at least as effective). He says that the check-in model and the continuous model will likely coexist (and that check-in can even help give more context about where you are) but that there’s things you can’t do without continuous tracking. Regarding Checking in verus continuous mapping, Elad Gil says he’s seeing about a “nine to ten” relationship between them.

Galligan chimed in by saying that there will be a point when we know where everyone is, but that the context won’t necessarily be known. Galligan then revealed a new technology they are working on involving four dimensions of geolocation that SimpleGeo has created, which allows them to compress location and time stamps into a datapoint, allowing apps to look into the past for the same location.

Sarver talked about why Twitter was interested in location, describing how it would help filter through the noise. He mentioned TrendsMap.com as a great way to visualize geotagged tweets.

Shaffer said that HotPotato is looking to integrate location into their service, but that another key element is what brings conversation together. He says that just location data isn’t necessarily enough (he points out that people watching a baseball game may actually be at the game, or watching on TV.)

In terms of advertising, there seemed to be a broad consensus that geo-based advertising had the potential to be extremley successful. Galligan brought up the potential of special ads and deals, pointing to Yowza as a great example. Saffer later commented that there’s a fine line that these services have to work with — it would be a negative for ads to actually feel like ads (instead it would be better for them to feel like deals).

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Shh! World’s largest radio telescope network goes live

The world’s largest array of radio telescopes are joining together for 24 hours in order to observe some quasars.

In the next 24 hours, 35 telescopes on all seven continents will be linked to listen to 243 specific quasars. The point is to establish a baseline for further observations, since the quasars are stationary in the night sky, and provide a good basis for mapping.

The last time this attempted, the total number of 23 telescopes were used. These quasars are also used to set up the GPS system.

EZ Cracker egg cracker

This looks like a truly useless, and depressingly ugly device for cracking eggs (which this TV commercial would like you to believe is a big problem).


Source: Boing Boing | 20 Nov 2009 | 5:26 pm

UPDATE 4-GE, Vivendi make progress on NBC Universal

Pfizer to pay $6.3 mln to patient in Prempro lawsuit

UPDATE 2-US FDA reviewing Abbott diet drug risks

Moody's downgrades Liberty Media LLC ratings (AP)

5 Nifty Apps That Turn Your Android Into A Universal Remote

With all the gadgets, remotes, and thingamajigs piling up on your coffee table, finding the right remote can sometimes be a real pain. But thanks to a few heroic Android developers, there are tools to consolidate some of those pesky remotes … into your Android phone. While you can’t use an Android app to turn your TV on or change the channels (because of the lack of an infrared emitter in the Android phones on the market today), the following apps let you control a home theater PC, Tivo, Squeezebox and other devices via your phone. And at the very least you can save a few bucks when it comes to media center accessories.

The following 5 apps are neat demonstrations of what you can do with a flexible, app-friendly phone like the Verizon Droid, the T-Mobile G1 or the Sprint HTC Hero.

1. RemoteDroid

This app transforms your Android into a wireless keyboard and mouse. It consists of 2 components: the RemoteDroid app on your phone and a server application for your computer. The difficulty level for set up is low; hop on a Wi-Fi network, run the server application and enter an IP address into the phone (the server app even displays it for you). Best of all, the app is free, so you’ll have that much more money towards a custom home theater PC.

2. Boxee Remote

It’s too bad you can’t call your lost, wee Apple remote when it’s disappeared and you know it’s gotta be around somewhere. But if you’re using Boxee, you’ve got a backup: The Boxee Remote app makes a great, free backup remote if you use Boxee as your primary means of streaming television and movies from your computer.

3. TivoRemote

A note to Tivo Series 3 and Tivo HD people: Forgetting to record your favorite shows on Tivo is a thing of the past. Put your medium-savvy tech hat on, dish out $1 and remotely control your Tivo from anywhere using Tivo’s Network Remote Control setting and TivoRemote. Since I don’t have a Tivo myself, I wasn’t able to personally test this application, but the reviews are positive and the community feedback are hymns of praise. One commenter on the market also found a ninja-like purpose for the pocket-sized remote, “My wife finds this highly irritating… thanks!”

4. SqueezeControl

SqueezeControl is a free app that taps into and controls your Logitech SqueezeCenter, a handy wireless network music player. We are all accustomed to lugging our phones around, so any app — like this one — that eliminates the fumbling of pockets for an additional device has a place in our world.

5. Gmote

Similar to RemoteDroid (and, like it, totally free), this app becomes a wireless keyboard and mouse for your computer or HTPC set up. It’s not too hard to set up: All you need is the phone app along with the server application on the computer you wish to use. Gmote pulls music, movies, and other media and organizes it all in convenient folders. In addition to it’s wireless keyboard/mouse functionality, it offers a remote control screen to quickly control your media.

What apps do you use to control your media? Post your suggestions in the comments below.

See Also:

• Android Version of Foursquare Combines Function and Fun
• Android Army Pumped for All-Out Attack on iPhone
• Photoshop for Android Phones Now Available
• 12 Phones Strong, Android Army Mobilizes for Explosive Growth …

Photo Credit: Roselyn Roark

This week in search 11/20/09

New Microsoft Silverlight Features Have Windows Bias

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Teen calls police because his parents took his Xbox

FROM GAMERTELL - A 15 year old boy in Buffalo Grove, IL called police Sunday, November 15, 2009, to report that his parents had taken away his Xbox.
MORE »

Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Sun-Times Media names John Barron group publisher (AP)

Delete Browser Cookies, Clean Up Your Trail of Crumbs

Rippol’s Video Discovery Engine Launches To The Public

Rippol, the video discovery site that combines both complex algorithms with user suggestions to surface interesting content, has launched to the public at today’s RealTime CrunchUp.

We recently took an in-depth look at the service, but for those who haven’t seen it yet, here’s a recap: Rippol looks at your video watching activity on the site, as well as that of your friends and people in your demographic. It then looks at meta data from video content ingested from sites like YouTube and Hulu, and uses machine learning to identify videos it thinks you’ll like. From there you can browse through various genres to look at recommended videos

But the site also has a social component, allowing users to identify each other as friends by importing their social graphs from services like Facebook and Gmail. You can use Facebook chat to talk with these friends in real-time. And today, it’s launching a new feature: Friendcasting, which allows users to share a interesting video in real-time with your friends on the site. There’s also a ‘global view’ that lets you see a stream of videos that are being watched by other users on the site, which helps surface content your friends haven’t come across.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Video of Tiny Tim performance mentioned in Pynchon's Inherent Vice

Gary says:

I’m reading the latest Thomas Pynchon book, Inherent Vice, and he makes reference to this song.

It’s like Tiny Tim is tripping on acid, entertaining children, and predicting global warming — all at once.

Shroud of Turin May Hold Death Certificate

RealTime CrunchUp: Media Streams As The Ultimate Marketing Vehicle

At our Real-Time CrunchUp today in San Francisco, we are hosting a panel titles “Media Streams: Are These The Utlimate Marketing Vehicle?”

Panelists include Sean Rad, CEO of Ad.ly; Ryan Amos, co-founder of DailyBooth; Jesse Engle, CEO of CoTweet; Robin Bechtel, a celebrity agent and Philip Nelson, SVP of strategic development for NewTek.

Below find my live notes (paraphrased):

ES: What are celebrities doing to leverage the social streams?

RB: I oversee Britney Spears’ digital properties and we are using Twitter to build up buzz around her concerts. Using Twitter, we were able to get 8,000 people to Times Square all by herself.

PN: Fans can feel like they are an intimate part of your lives. For example, Heidi and Spencer did a live webcast, that we did, from the Bahamas from their hotel room. They had over 50,000 people watching that.

ES: To what extent is Twitter a Marketing vehicle and to what extent is it an entertainment and marketing vehicle itself?

RB: One thing that’s interesting is that we work with Facebook to sell virtual charms for Britney. We just Twittered that we were doing and it was in the press within a matter of hours.

JE: Twitter is the focal point where a lot of elements come together. Twitter is a focal point to stay connected to the public.

ES: To what extent can ads and promotions appear within the Stream. Sean?

SR: Publishers in Ad.ly don’t feel like they are just marketing their own message, they feel like content producers.

ES: But more often than not, that’s just promotion.

SR: With Ad.ly we monitor what content is appropriate for consumers. If you are tweeting things that is not valuable to your audience, your value as a content creator goes down. We limit to one ad per day to each publishers. The cool things about Ad.ly and Twitter is that when it comes to advertising, you can get creative and experiment with it.

PC: Retweets don’t seem like a metric of success, it seems like a metric of idiocy.

SR: If you look at Twitter as an ecosystem, its about sharing information and discovering information.

ES: What are the types of content that works?

RB: It has to looks like it isn’t an ad, that’s its real.

PC: Twitter is unique because its a conversation which makes putting any advertising in the stream hideous.

ES: Marketers are experimenting with different ways to use this channel. Until we hear about how Twitter is going to advertise, there’s definitely a feeling that Twitter doesn’t want to pollute the stream.

Video: Recording can be seen here.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

YouTube Blocks Non-Partner Device Syabas as Allegations Fly

How Heavy Is the Internet?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Almost Famous: Elemental Technologies' Sam Blackman [Voices]

By Drake Martinet, Intern, All Things Digital

A new feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative start-ups you should know about.

This week: We caught up with Sam Blackman, CEO of Elemental Technologies at the San Francisco NewTeeVee Live conference.

Elemental Technologies hopes to become a major player in the future of online and over-the-air video through its high-performance encoding technology.

Who: Sam Blackman

What: CEO and Chairman of Elemental Technologies.

Why: People want to watch live video on all their devices. Making a new version of a given video for every device is time- and processor-intensive. Elemental says it can replace up to five existing dedicated servers with one of its own, based on its proprietary software.

Where: @elementaltech (Twitter); company blog; Portland (analog place).

Who else: Sam says, “We’re the first-ever company to take advantage of GPUs for video processing,” but Nvidia (NVDA) is the key hardware player.

Five Stats You Won’t Find in His Facebook Profile

Worst Job: Barista. Late for the Trolley coffee. It had this really abusive owner. He’d yell at us if we gave a half-pump too much flavoring.

Gadget of the Moment: Lenovo X301. It’s all about the keyboard.

Early Geek Influence: Jack Dudman. He was a neighbor growing up and was Steve Jobs’s math teacher at Reed College.

Wishes There Was an App for That: A really smart public transit app. Like one that knows where I am and can tell me which of the options near me I can go to, to get to my destination fastest.

Sport You Can’t Live Without: Ultimate Frisbee

Bio in 140 Characters

Raised in Oregon. EE at Brown. Time at Intel, then Pixelworks. Left to start Elemental Technologies. Loves work, kids and Ultimate Frisbee.

The Five Questions

Elemental’s products seem pretty hardcore geeky. Break it down for me.

The man on the street today wants to view video on any device at any time. The content owners of that video need to be able to format the video differently for each type of device ["transcoding"]. We make that process much cheaper. At the beginning, we saw that there was going to be a huge increase in the amount of video produced out there, but that it was hard to distribute.

Right now it’s really hard [lots of equipment and time] to create, say, 240 versions of every video [so that they can be viewed quickly on an iPhone and in HD on a laptop, for instance]. Four to five regular CPU [central processing unit] servers can be replaced by one of our servers with a GPU [graphical processing unit] and our software. That means far less cost for businesses and many more video options for the consumer.

Device variations are just exploding. How do you see the changing landscape moving your business?

I don’t see the number of video formats decreasing at all. Every company that [produces] a device wants to control delivery to it. No one is going to dominate the cellphone market. It’s just too big. You can get three percent and have a nice business. As long as that is the way the game is played, our products will be very desirable.

Why are you going to be the first software company to acquire an auto body shop?

That’s my dream. The way our product works is, when we take an order, we just submit the hardware request to Dell (DELL). They plug in a GPU. We take the box and add our software.

The funny story is that we wanted a more custom look, so we found this auto body shop in Portland that takes the bezels [rack server face plates], sands them, cleans them, repaints them and sends them back. They look beautiful, like tons of engineering went into it. Dell will do that for you, but its 20 grand, and we’re a start-up. That’s my dream, a company that doesn’t have any employees who drive to work but owns an auto body shop.

Every geek has a memory where they saw something new and had to say to themselves, “Dang, I love living in the future.” What’s yours?

I know exactly what that was. Turtle graphics. My mother put me in a programming class in kindergarten, and there was this thing called LOGO [where you could use computer instructions to make an onscreen turtle draw something]. I had an hour class where I figured out how to draw a square. I went home that night and wrote down on paper a program that would draw the American flag.

My neighbor had an Apple (AAPL) IIc that I used to input that first program. I probably stayed up all night as a six-year-old doing that and that was it for me. What a genius idea. I mean, kids love seeing results, and there were no visual results [from programming] for a long time. LOGO was the first thing where you could spend about an hour and get visual results.

What tech war are you watching most closely?

There’s a battle looming between Intel (INTC) and Nvidia, as Intel releases their own GPU architecture. We’re trying to be really well-positioned to benefit from that arms race of the FLOPS [the processing performance unit].

The In Living Color Interview

Gift Guide: Peripherals

• Intro
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• Fancy Mouse
• HD Webcam
• Rugged HDD
• Secure HDD

Peripherals, they say, are the spice of life. Well, maybe they don’t say that, but they do say it about variety, and peripherals add variety to your computing life. If you’re reading this on a stock HP desktop, clicking on links with the mouse that came with it, and trusting your data to that 512MB USB stick they gave you at work, then you should consider accessorizing.

There are lots of things out there that make your computer better, more secure, or more comfortable. Why not treat yourself or a loved one to one of them?

Logitech G110 keyboard: $80

Now, I haven’t used this keyboard specifically, but I did review its big brother, the G19. The essential difference is that the G110 doesn’t have the big, expensive LCD on it, which, while cool, wasn’t really adding much to what was otherwise a great keyboard. It’s comfortable, good-looking, and full of extra stuff like macro keys for games or frequently typed phrases, colored backlighting, and handy media controls. Logitech makes great keyboards, and this one is probably their best deal.

Product Page | CrunchGear Review (kind of)

Logitech G500 Gaming Mouse: $70

Anyone who spends a lot of time with a computer likely spends a lot of time with their mouse. So why should they be stuck using whatever $5 piece of junk came with the computer, or whatever was in the impulse buy section at Radio Shack? There’s a world of mice out there for differently sized and shaped hands, and it can make a huge difference in terms of comfort and efficiency. The G500 is a great mouse with a proven and familiar shape, and at $50 (street price) it’s a bargain as well. Any gamer or big PC user will appreciate it.

Product Page | CrunchGear Review

Razer Mamba: $130

The Mamba is the final word in mice at the moment. A revision of the Death Adder shape, which was popular for a reason, the Mamba adds two extra buttons and wireless operation to the mix. I found it comfortable, accurate, and extremely good-looking. If you’re willing to spend the dough, this is the best mouse you can buy.

Product Page | CrunchGear Review

Chances are if you or anyone you know has a webcam, it’s either built into your display or a cheapie one that’s no better than that. Well, a new generation of webcams is coming out that support high-def video, and the first representative is Microsoft’s LifeCam Cinema. It’s got a nice wide angle on it, has more clarity than those pinhole webcams, and the clamp it uses is really convenient. One for you and one for a kid going off to college would be a great way to stay in touch; Microsoft’s video chat software is pretty decent. You can find it for around $60, which isn’t bad at all if you use your current webcam much.

Product Page | CrunchGear Hands-On

Lacie Rugged XL 1TB: $160

Lacie’s Rugged series isn’t so much rugged as merely protected from everyday life. While your average external hard drive would probably go belly up if you spilled on it or dropped it, the Rugged XL will take a (minor) licking before rolling over. I’d be much more comfortable bringing this on a long trip than any other drive. There’s a premium for the ruggedness (street price is around $140), but whoever get this will thank you later when the dog knocks it off a table.

Product Page | CrunchGear Review

For your loved ones that are security-conscious, or simply paranoid, I recommend this great drive. Spacious it’s not, and you’re paying a lot for the gigs you’re getting, but the built-in keypad is just too cool to pass up. Not only is it very secure, but it’s also very well-designed. Since you’re actually pressing buttons, there’s no need to worry about administrating it or security software — just set it up once (keep the instructions just in case) and you’re good to go. You can also get a 320GB version for around $200.

Product Page | CrunchGear Review

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