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Google Unleashes Native Client Into Chrome, Next-Gen Web Apps To Follow?
For well over a year now, Google has been hyping up something called Native Client. It’s an open source technology that allows a web browser to run compiled native code. In other words, it’s Continue Reading...
Clever Girl: Facebook Lets You Export Friends’ Email Addresses, But Makes It Opt-In
It’s now possible to export your Facebook social graph. Your real social graph, complete with your friends’ emails, which means you can leave Facebook and import your social network into a rival site.
But only if your friends opt into it. And they won’t.
Facebook has ...
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Blaming the tools: Britain proposes a social-media ban
It seems totalitarian states like Egypt and Libya aren’t the only ones struggling with the impact of social media and the desire to muzzle services like Twitter and Facebook. In the wake of the riots in London, the Continue Reading...
Groupon Lost More Than $100 Million Last Quarter – Again – As Hiring Costs Jump
Daily deals juggernaut Groupon managed to significantly slash marketing costs last quarter, but its net loss in the second quarter of this year has almost tripled compared to last year as it hired more than 1,000 new employ...
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Startups On TV: TechStars Teams Up With Bloomberg To Offer An Inside Look At Building A Business
Move over American Idol, and move over Survivor? There’s a new reality show (okay, documentary-reality series) in town, but luckily no one’s getting voted off the island. In this tech TV version, it’s startups and their founders iterating, scrambling through feature sets, and competing for the affections of investors.
It’s a great premise, as the reality surrounding an early-stage startup can be a kinetic one: It may not quite be the Continue Reading...
Report: foursquare set to roll out automated brand page creation tool
Creating a brand page on foursquare has up to now been an entirely manual process that involves downloading an Excel file, filling it out and sending it to foursquare, whose staff then added them by hand. Need...
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The web sharing economy & its biggest risk
The Airbnb horror stories that have emerged in recent days expose the biggest pain point for the economy that has built up around using the web to share “stuff,” wh...
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The downside of accelerated investment decisions
There has been a lot of talk about how early-stage valuations have risen dramatically over the past few years. Financially, this is probably good for founders and bad for investors. But a side effect of this frothy market is that financings are occurring much faster. It is very common for investors to get introduced to founders with the proviso that a term sheet will be signed in the next few days. As a result, founders and investors are spending very little time getting to know each other...
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Cars.com Moves To Agile Development Approach To Spur Continued Innovation
Anchored in Chicago since 1997, Cars.com has been providing consumers with a complete set of tools, research and listings they can use to find...
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Google+: Fighting it is futile [Video]
Google+ is the talk of the (tech) town. It is on everyone’s lips even though not everyone has access to it. And despite Google’s stingy invite policies apparently 20 million have signed up. Google+ is drawing enough attention that Facebook backer Peter Thiel’s Founder’s Fund might post a thesis titled, We wanted flying cars and we ended up with + ...
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Boot To Gecko: Mozilla’s Open-Source, Mobile Answer To ChromeOS
Straight from the heart of Mozilla’s developer newsgroup comes news of an ambitious new project: a standalone, web-based operating system. If that concept sounds familiar, I’ve also just described the core of Google’s Chrome OS which we’re beginning to see pop up on netbooks. The big twist?
It’s currently being developed for mobile devices. And it’s partially Android-based.
<...Continue Reading...
On personal records and personal defeat
Thats totally me. I swear.
A few days ago I set a new personal record for the jerk and the clean-and-jerk. The numbers aren’t particularly impressive but my c&j was 145 and my jerk was 155. Noting that I do weigh a mere 170 pounds and have only been lifting for ~5 months, I guess I should be happier about this.
I’m not. ...
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Closing The Redemption Loop In Local Commerce
When it comes to local commerce, the ultimate prize everyone is going after right now is how to close the redemption loop. The redemption loop starts when a consumer sees an ad or an offer for a local merchant, and is completed when the consumer makes a purchase and that purchase can be tracked back to the offer. If you know who is actually redeeming offers and how much they are spending, you can be much smarter about tweaking and targeting those offers.
Groupon, LivingSocial, and...
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Working on raising a half-million dollar seed round. Getting commitments for half of said seed round. Feeling really good about the future. Networking. Making phone calls. Doing demos. Banging out Keynote presos.
Booking last minute tickets to San Francisco for pitch meetings with a couple of the most legendary personalities in the valley. Feeling proud of yourself and a little scared at the same time.
Having to multitask between coding and emails and phone calls with ...
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A Day in the Life of the Modern San Franciscan
My alarm clock goes off. Presumably on my iPhone 4, because it’s very important to me that I own the latest technology. I hit snooze. I can’t believe I have to get up by 9 a.m. to make it to my place of work before 10 a.m. where I am paid to be creative and knowledgeable about “the internet,” just in general.
I check Twitter.
I check Facebook.
I casually thumb through emails I’ve received since going to bed. I should have received something from Groupon...
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Ruby Creator “Matz” Matsumoto Joins Heroku As Chief Architect
In what must be an amazing day for the Heroku founders, the creator of Ruby, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto has announced that he will be joining the former Y Combinator startup as Chief Architect of Ruby.
“As a member of our platform development team, Matsumoto-san will continue his work on the Ruby language in close collaboration with the Ruby community, keeping the language open and advancing the technology in ...
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Ruby creator Matsumoto joins Heroku
Heroku might have expanded its embrace to include Node.js and Clojure, but its heart is still with Ruby. To wit, Ruby creator Yukihiro Matsumoto is joining the company as its chief architect for Ruby.
This type of hire is nothing new in the cloud co...
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The looming Series B funding crash
Much is being made lately of a new bubble potentially forming in the tech industry. A smattering of Continue Reading...
Netvibes Debuts Powerful Social Analytics Platform For Brands And Agencies
Netvibes, a company that provides social media dashboards and news aggregators for brands and agencies, is debuting a powerful new analytics platform tonight. Netvibes’ new social analytics and monitoring platform is launching in private beta but won’t be available to the general public until later in the month.
As we Continue Reading...
Facebook trapped in MySQL ‘fate worse than death’
According to database pioneer Michael Stonebraker, Facebook is operating a huge, complex MySQL implementation equivalent to “a fate worse than death,” and the only way out is “bite the bullet and rewrite everything.”
Not t...
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Bringing any idea from inception to execution can be a difficult, lonely journey. But particularly great ideas must run the gauntlet of tough criticism. Great leaders know how to selectively dismiss doubt about their vision.
Sometimes that doubt will come from yourself. When you start to explore a great idea you may think: “someone must have done this before” and “if they haven’t, why not… maybe I’m wrong.”
It is a truism in Silicon Valley that star employees are worth ten to one hundred times as much as ordinary employees. This calculus is especially true for software engineers, but also applies to product managers, sales executives, and other key employees. If you are a star performer, the sky’s the limit in terms of what technology companies will be willing to attract or keep you.
We’ve s...
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Editor’s note: This post was written by Alex Rampell, the CEO of TrialPay. Rampell is a regular contributor to TechCrunch – see his previous guest posts here.
What makes email, Facebook, a...
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Editor’s note: Guest contributor Semil Shah is an entrepreneur interested in digital media, consumer internet, and social networks. He is based in Palo Alto and you can follow him on twitter @semilshah.
While the tech world is buzzing about the launch and Continue Reading...
As we’re all well aware by now, Google did not win the rights to the 6,000+ Nortel wireless and mobile patents. Instead, a consortium featuring many of their main rivals did. That has to sting. But as more detai...
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Today we’re launching a brand new product called Intercom—a tool to help web app owners build and manage relationships with their users.
It’s all about relationships
Some time in early 2010 I wandered into a little Dublin coffee shop that seemed to sprout up out of now...
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We all need a good laugh for the weekend.
Solution Zero – Don’t Overthink Your Startup
“Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.”
– Peter Drucker
I get asked from time to time what I believe makes someone an entrepreneur, and invariably I respond by saying that an entrepreneur is someone who sees a proble...
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Google Gets All Designy With Updated Homepage, Search Results And Free Fonts
Oh, so you thought Google was done after it rolled out Google+, Circles, Sparks, Huddle, and Hangouts? No, no, no. Google will be done wh...
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Loopt Turns The Daily Deals Game On Its Head With U-Deals
Mobile social network Loopt is turning on the revenue streams by going after the daily deal space. It already partnered with Groupon to show users nearby Groupon Now deals via notifications, but today it is launching its own twist on daily deals. Loopt ...
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How Can Tech Get Rid of Its Unsightly “Blubble”?
Color got some big print recently. Not for technological advancements, mind you. Color is highly regarded as the Continue Reading...
Mark Suster: Raise Money Now So When The Party’s Over You’re Sitting Pretty
Earlier this week GRP Parter VC and VC blogger Mark Suster gave the keynote talk at the Founder Institute’s Founder’s Showcase on “Getting Funded In A Frothy Market.” Suster began the keynote with the declarative stat...
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Workaholism: an occupational hazard for web workers?
Among the joys of web work is the freedom to create a more porous boundary between your personal and working life. Need to pop out to take your kids to swim lessons in the middle of the day? If you’re a web worker, that’s not a problem. Or conversely, if you have a huge deadline loo...
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Former Groupon Employee Describes High-Pressure Tactics Culture And Merchants “Freaking Out”
Editor’s note:Guest author Rocky Agrawal continues his in-depth TechCrunch series looking at the daily deal industry. Agrawal is an entrepreneur who has worked on local products since 1995. He blogs at reDesign and Tweets Continue Reading...
Hell Yes, Mayor Bloomberg. I’m With You.
New York City Mayor Bloomberg calls for major immigration reform:
The Mayor proposed green cards for graduates with advanced degrees in essential fields; a new visa for entrepreneurs with investors ready to invest capital in their job-creating idea; more temporary and permanent visas for highly skill...
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Groupon Was “The Single Worst Decision I Have Ever Made As A Business Owner”
Editor’s note:This guest post was written by Rocky Agrawal, an entrepreneur who has worked on local products since 1995. He blogs at reDesign and Tweets @rakeshlobster.
“How much is your average sale here?”
“It’s ab...
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Let’s be honest: One of the reasons David Hornik actually agreed to be on camera at All Things D is that he didn’t have a startup about to file to go public Continue Reading...
White-Hot Flickr Alternative 500px Raises $525K In Series A
As the complaints about Flickr continue to pile on, scrappy Toronto-based service 500px continues to grow, going from 1000 users in 2009 to over 85K (around 45K of which have joined in the last three months). And after two years of bootstrapping...
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Mashape, The Etsy Of Cloud Services, Goes Beta; Lets You Monetize Your APIs In A Click
Mashape has a somewhat unusual backstory: The Italian startup spent two years looking for f...
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Let’s Not Get Too Cocky About The Blubble
It was just a little over a month ago that I wrote “We’re In The Middle Of A Terrible Blubble!” – a post about the difference between the Internet bubble of 2000 and the “blubble” (as I call it) that we’re in today. The short version of the post is this: venture capitalists like to declare valuation bubbles to fight rising va...
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For Badgeville, Gamification Is Big Business
Badgeville, the gamification technology startup, is on track to book as much as $10 million in sales for 2011, its first full year in business, according to CEO Kris Duggan.
The Menlo Park, California-based ...
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The Next 6 Months Worth Of Features Are In Facebook’s Code Right Now (But We Can’t See)
A few days ago, Facebook held a tech talk at their headquarters. The topic of the talk was pushing changes — bug fixes, new features, product improvements, etc. Every day, Facebook engineers push hundreds of these; some big, some little. Most of the 600 millio...
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Flashback: Two Years Ago, Twitter Killed A Feature — The One They Just Added Back
This past Thursday, Twitter rolled out a new small feature that garnered quite a bit of positive buzz. Essentially, they now allow you to see what other users see when they look at Twitter. In other words, if you click on the “Following” area in my profile, you can see the ...
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