Smart BLOG: января 2008

четверг, 31 января 2008 г.

StyleFeeder raises another $2 million

Personal shopping tool StyleFeeder has just secured another $2 million in Series A financing from Highland Capital Partners and Schooner Capital.

These are the same investors that provided StyleFeeder’s seed round last year, which was for $1 million. Since that seed round of funding, StyleFeeder has seen some significant growth on both its main website and its Facebook application, which has reportedly become the largest shopping app on Facebook.

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Automattic launches a Twitter style service for groups

Automattic has released Prologue, a Twitter style service for groups that is also being pitched as a distributed Twitter.

According to Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg, the new service is way for users to share short messages with a corporate structure, or with private messaging between different groups. Mullenweg says that although it’s not initially aimed at becoming a distributed Twitter, they are offering the template on an open source basis and that if people want to hack it for this purpose, “you’re welcome to.”

The concept is to decentralize a short message service, therefore overcoming the constant issues Twitter has with service provision, or in simple terms, many people host the service across many servers, and they all talk to one and other.

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среда, 30 января 2008 г.

Hot or Not for websites

Technorati founder David Sifry has just launched a website with investor friend Martin Varsavsky that is, in so many words, a Hot or Not for websites. Actually, it’s called Web Hot or Not, so you get the point right away here.

Much like the original Hot or Not (for humans), Web Hot or Not touts a simple interface that shows in image screen shot of the website in question, radio buttons to select your rating, the average rating and your rating. Comments display below.

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This is why Net Nutrality is important?

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вторник, 29 января 2008 г.

Warner Music files suit against music search engine Seeqpod

Warner Music has filed suit against music search engine Seeqpod for copyright infringement.

Seeqpod offers a music search engine that allows users to play music they find directly on the site. According to comScore the service had over 6 million page views in December 2007.

Warner Music claims in its suit that Seeqpod infringes on their copyrighted works by “making on-demand and unauthorized digital public performances of these works,” making a direct and material contribution to infringing content by presenting content from “pirate sites.”

What’s interesting about this case is that Seeqpod is a search engine; it links to content as Google would, although it does allow users to play the content from their site, but ultimately they never host any of the content.

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WeShow.com launches video focused Social Network

WeShow.com, the human-powered guide to the online video universe, today launched My WeShow, a video focused social network that enhances Internet users' online video experience.

My WeShow is designed to combine the best of video entertainment with social interaction on the web, enabling users to find video, create personalized video communities, share opinions and content while also potentially making money.

My WeShow gives users the power to become an editor and aggregator of their own video portal, not only finding videos from more than 100 video sites, but immediately adding them to their own My WeShow portal under new titles and descriptions that they have written themselves.

Since its launch five months ago WeShow has seen steady growth and this latest enhancement is likely to help continue their growth.

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понедельник, 28 января 2008 г.

Did you find who you were looking for?

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Last.fm launches largest global free-on-demand music platform

Last.fm is launching a service to allow anyone to listen to music on the site for free.

In launching this service, Last.fm becomes the first music website to offer free, global, on-demand access to the largest licensed catalogue of music built on partnerships with all four major record labels - including Universal Music Group, Sony/BMG, Warner and EMI - as well as CD Baby, IODA, the Orchard, Naxos and more than 150,000 independent labels and artists.

Last.fm's free-on-demand service will be advertiser supported, allowing clients many unique opportunities to reach a highly targeted and engaged
audience.

Last.fm was acquired by the CBS Corporation (NYSE: CBS.A and CBS) on May 30, 2007.

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воскресенье, 27 января 2008 г.

Netflix sees strong growth

Netflix today reported results for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2007.

"We achieved strong results in 2007 -- ending subscribers up 18 percent, revenue up 21 percent and net income up 36 percent -- despite facing tough competition for much of the year and investing strategically in our online video initiatives," said Reed Hastings, Netflix co-founder and chief executive officer.

"The emergence of a bundled service that enables our subscribers to receive DVDs through the mail fast and movies and TV episodes over the Internet instantly, positions us to achieve solid growth in 2008 and over the long term."

Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2007 was $302.4 million, representing 9 percent year-over-year growth from $277.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2006, and 3 percent sequential increase from $294.0 million for the third quarter of 2007. Revenue for fiscal 2007 was $1.205 billion, up 21 percent from $996.7 million for fiscal 2006.

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Google Health is coming soon...

Spotted by Google Blogscoped is a login page for Google Health, Google’s entry into the online health records space. At the time of writing the site isn’t allowing logins, but it does include this text:

With Google Health, you can:
* Build online health profiles that belong to you
* Download medical records from doctors and pharmacies
* Get personalized health guidance and relevant news
* Find qualified doctors and connect to time-saving services
* Share selected information with family or caregivers

The other thing to note is the logo (we’ve included it in this post), it would appear that Google Health is going straight to Beta and not through Google Labs.

Google Health has been hampered by chronic fatigue syndrome in terms of its development, with the site due to launch originally in May 2006. Microsoft even beat Google in the space, having launched its own online health product in October 2007.

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суббота, 26 января 2008 г.

Reddit adds ability to create your own “Reddits”

Social news site Reddit has launched, in closed beta, the ability for users to create their own “reddits”.

They plan to spend a week or so in a closed beta and will invite a handful of users to play around with the new feature so we can see how things work before we open it up to everyone.

You will be able to make three kinds of reddits: public, restricted, and private. A public reddit is just like the current reddits: anyone can view and submit to them. A restricted reddit allows anyone to view the content, but only invited members may submit, comment, or vote. A private reddit is like a restricted reddit, but with the additional restriction that only members can view the content as well. Moderators of a reddit will be able to remove posts and ban users from their reddits.

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SemantiNet raises $1.7 million for Semantic web search

Semantic web search startup SemantiNet has raised an initial round of $1.7 million from Giza Venture Capital.

The Tel Aviv, Israel based company is aiming to “make life easy again” by providing semantic web search that allows users “to take advantage of the variety and richness of information and services that exist on the Internet, but in a way that is simple, smart and intuitive,” with the ultimate goal of allowing users to “achieve more while working less.”

SemantiNet was founded in 2006 and includes Yossi Vardi as one of its investors.

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пятница, 25 января 2008 г.

Automattic raises $29.5M for WordPress

Automattic, provider of the WordPress open-source blogging software and spam filter Akismet, has raised $29.5M in a Series B round of financing led by True Ventures. Other participants in the round include The New York Times, Polaris Ventures, and Radar Ventures.

The large injection of capital will not only go towards the development of Akismet and WordPress (the downloadable software) but the development of Wordpress.com (its hosted blogging platform), Gravatar (its avatar offering), and BBPress (an upcoming hosted bulletin board product) as well.

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Meg Whitman to step down as CEO of Ebay

After a decade at the helm, eBay CEO Meg Whitman is preparing to retire. John Donahue, the president of eBay Marketplace, is said to be the front-runner to be the next CEO.

During most of Whitman’s tenure, eBay seemed unstoppable, but over the alst few years Ebay has lost its momentum and seen its valuedrop by a half.

The poor purchase of Skype has also not helped Ebay. While Ebay has maintained its strong position in the auction marketplace it has not been able to keep up with recent developments in social networking and online user trends.

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четверг, 24 января 2008 г.

Goodreads sees impressive traction from book lovers

In September, Goodreads, the social network for book lovers then had over 5 million book reviews and counted over 300,000 more members. Four months later, the site has reached past 10 million book reviews and now has 700,000+ members, with the 1m benchmark on the horizon.

And being named one of Time magazine’s top 10 sites of 2007 certainly added a nice feather to their cap.

Otis Chandler, the founder of the site, said recently that he wants to make it the “water cooler…for books.” He went on to say, “You can always go to work and talk to people about last night’s ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ but it’s harder to do that with books.” With GoodReads, you can easily find that other Jackie Collins fans any time.

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Macbook Air is amazing, check out this comparison for example

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среда, 23 января 2008 г.

Is Slide really worth $500 million?

Business Week and The NY Times are reporting that Slide has raised $50 million at a valuation of over half a billion.

A few months ago Slide was fishing aorund for a valuation of at least a $200 million valuation. The talk obviously got investors talking and this is now Slide's fourth round of funding.

As often happens in big later stage rounds, the well known Silicon Valley venture firms sat the deal out. Investors in this round include Fidelity Investments and T. Rowe Price.

The big questiosn remains as to what Slide are doing. At present they are simply a widget company with a 150 million users worldwid. While the user base is great, there is still little indication of a unique and clever route to turning the user base into revenue. While Slide is starting to move into ad sales, they are likely to need another source of revenue to justifiy this large valuation.

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In Google we no longer trust

A new study from the University of Southern California’s Center for the Digital Future has found that a growing number of people no longer believe that search results are reliable and accurate.

The survey found that only 51% of people trust information provided by search engines, down from 62% in 2006. Google, as the most popular search engine in the United States, isn’t trusted by nearly half (49%) of the people who use it, an interesting result.

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вторник, 22 января 2008 г.

Fastest growing sites of 2007

Compete has released a list of the fastest-growing (and fastest-declining) sites of 2007. Some of the fastest growers include Veoh, LinkedIn, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Six Apart, and WordPress. Some of the notable sinkers are Bolt, Xanga, Netscape, and Autobytel.

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Google expands lead in online video market share

Americans viewed nearly 9.5 billion online videos in November, with Google Sites once again ranking as the top U.S. video property with 3 billion videos viewed (31.3 percent share of all videos viewed), 2.9 billion of which occurred at YouTube.com (30.6 percent).

Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 419 million videos viewed (4.4 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 328 million (3.5 percent) and Viacom Digital with 304 million (2.6 percent).

In total, 138 million Americans – approximately three in four U.S Internet users – viewed online video in November. Google Sites also captured the largest online video audience with 76.2 million unique viewers, followed by Fox Interactive Media with 46.3 million and Yahoo! Sites with 37.3 million.

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понедельник, 21 января 2008 г.

Sun writes a $1 billion check for MySQL

Sun Microsystems has acquired MySQL for $1 billion. MySQL had raised a total of $39 million from Benchmark, Index, IVP, Intel, and SAP.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz wrote about the acquisition on his blog, lavishing praise on MySQL: “MySQL is by far the most popular platform on which modern developers are creating network services. From Facebook, Google and Sina.com to banks and telecommunications companies, architects looking for performance, productivity and innovation have turned to MySQL. In high schools and college campuses, at startups, at high performance computing labs and in the Global 2000. The adoption of MySQL across the globe is nothing short of breathtaking. They are the root stock from which an enormous portion of the web economy springs.”

Startups with similar business models - managing a free open source project and bolting for-pay services on as a business model, will be happy to see this. Wordpress and OpenAds are two that we follow closely.

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Facebook up, but MySpace still a long way ahead

New figures release by Hitwise show that despite Facebook’s rising traffic, MySpace still dominates US social networking traffic.

Facebook’s traffic grew 51% from December 2006 to December 2007, taking its share of social networking traffic to 16.03%. MySpace’s traffic declined 8% over the same period, to 72.32%, down from 78.89% in December 2006.

To have a little fun with these figures, if Facebook is worth $15 billion, on traffic ratios alone MySpace would be worth $67.67 billion, a nice earn on the $580 million News Corp acquired the site for.

Of course it doesn’t work like that, but given the gap in traffic between MySpace and Facebook, and more recently the $15 billion valuation for Facebook, MySpace would likely be worth more today than the $12 billion figure floated in June 2007.

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воскресенье, 20 января 2008 г.

Google checkout doubles adoption, but PayPal sees largest increase at 217%

A study completed by Brulant, one of the nation's leading interactive marketing firms, shows that 30% of 100 leading online retailers currently offer alternative payment methods (APM) — a 25% increase since February 2007.

Of those, Bill Me Later saw the highest adoption at 21%, with PayPal closely behind at 19% and Google Checkout at 10%, double the adoption it saw in February. 5% of the surveyed companies now offer all three options.

One of the most surprising findings in our most recent evaluation is the increase in retailers offering all three alternative payment methods.

As recently as February of '07, none of the retailers surveyed offered all three methods. Today there is 5% adoption of all three, and at a variety of retailers from Toys"R"Us to PetSmart and Rite Aid. This reinforces the 'customer is king' mentality, as retailers begin to offer a multitude of choices for checkout.

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Ask.com is being sued for click fraud

IAC search engine Ask.com is being sued for click fraud. A Class Action lawsuit is being brought against the search company for “failing to adequately detect and stop ‘click fraud’ or other invalid or improper clicks on online advertisements.”

Now click fraud is something every advertiser has to deal with, especially given the various account types and limits on advertising packages.

What the class members are asking for is advertising credits for online ads purchased from IAC Search Media Inc. and/or Ask Jeeves Inc. on or before August 1,2005.

That goes back a couple of years, and speaks to a heightened era for click fraud, when it was a central topic of discussion in regards to online advertising.

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Ask.com is being sued for click fraud

Now click fraud is something every advertiser has to deal with, especially given the various account types and limits on advertising packages.

What the class members are asking for is advertising credits for online ads purchased from IAC Search Media Inc. and/or Ask Jeeves Inc. on or before August 1,2005.

That goes back a couple of years, and speaks to a heightened era for click fraud, when it was a central topic of discussion in regards to online advertising.

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Ask.com is being sued for click fraud

Now click fraud is something every advertiser has to deal with, especially given the various account types and limits on advertising packages.

What the class members are asking for is advertising credits for online ads purchased from IAC Search Media Inc. and/or Ask Jeeves Inc. on or before August 1,2005.

That goes back a couple of years, and speaks to a heightened era for click fraud, when it was a central topic of discussion in regards to online advertising.

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Meebo sees strong traffic growth

Web-based IM service Meebo has seen some excellent traffic growth over the last year. The bulk of Meebo’s traffic comes from Meebo Rooms and other widgets embedded on other sites, including Facebook.

In October 2007, the most recent period available, comScore measured 6.3 million people in the U.S. who actively engaged with a Meebo widget, compared to 1.2 million who visited Meebo.com. Worldwide, Meebo widgets engaged 19.8 million people, compared to 4.3 million for the site. So in the U.S., Meebo is getting 84 percent of its traffic through its widgets, and 82 percent worldwide.

Meebo transfers 150 million IMs a day, and only about 20 million of those are generated in Meebo Rooms.

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суббота, 19 января 2008 г.

Criteo raises more finance to compete with Aggregate Knowledge

French startup Criteo just raised $10.4 million (7 million Euros) in a B round from Index Ventures. This is on top of a 3-million-Euro round in April 2006 led by AGF Private Equity and Elaia Partners.

Criteo sells recommendation-engine software to e-commerce and content sites. Competitors include Aggregate Knowledge, CleverSet, and ChoiceStream. Discovery is popular at the moment and Kleiner-backed Aggregate Knowledge has raised $25 million.

Criteo is probably best known among bloggers in the U.S for its AutoRoll widget that generates a linkroll based on the reading habits of a blog’s readers. Any blog that has the AutoRoll widget on it will show the other top AutoRoll blogs that its readers have also visited. There are 12,000 blogs with the AutoRoll widget.

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ProQuo secures $8 million in Series B funding

ProQuo, a company founded to give consumers meaningful choice over how businesses use their personal information, has received a second round of financing.

Mission Ventures led the $8 million round, with Series A investor Draper Fisher Jurvetson returning to invest again. Leo Spiegel, a managing partner for Mission Ventures, joins the ProQuo board of directors.

Founded in 2006, ProQuo helps consumers manage how businesses use their personal information―like their name, address, credit worthiness and buying habits―to market to them. The free service, available at www.proquo.com, helps consumers reduce paper junk mail and protect against identity theft.

Although ProQuo’s initial service is focused on postal junk mail, there is a much larger market opportunity. With a ten billion dollar industry profiting from the trading and selling of consumers’ personal information—without their knowledge or consent—ProQuo is well-positioned to build a business designed to serve consumers’ needs and interests in how companies market to them.

CEO Steven Gal joined ProQuo from ID Analytics, Inc., a leader in identity risk management, which he co-founded. The management team also brings strong experience from such companies as Experian, Visa, HNC Software (acquired by Fair Isaac), and AltaVista/Overture Services (acquired by Yahoo!).

ProQuo secured Series A funding of $5 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 2006 and launched its initial service in October 2007.

Americans get nearly four million tons of junk mail every year. By empowering consumers to get control of their postal mail, ProQuo is reducing their exposure to identity theft and protecting their privacy while helping the environment—and all for free.

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пятница, 18 января 2008 г.

Ask.com is being sued for click fraud

Now click fraud is something every advertiser has to deal with, especially given the various account types and limits on advertising packages.

What the class members are asking for is advertising credits for online ads purchased from IAC Search Media Inc. and/or Ask Jeeves Inc. on or before August 1,2005.

That goes back a couple of years, and speaks to a heightened era for click fraud, when it was a central topic of discussion in regards to online advertising.

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What happens when a public company relies on Google Adsense?

If you are a public company and rely on Google for a lot of your revenue, the last thing you want to hear is that your Adsense account has been “disabled.”

But that is exactly what happened to Israel-based IncrediMail, which saw its stock drop about over 40% when it announced that its advertising deal with Google had been terminated. The company was worth about $45 million on Nasdaq. The stock is now worth one third.

No reason has been given as to why Google dropped them, but it is likely to be fraud.
If Google dropped them for fraud or other bad behavior, the other networks (namely Yahoo and Microsoft) likely won’t touch them, either.

The moral of the story is if you rely on Google for your income, make sure you keep Google happy.

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четверг, 17 января 2008 г.

Tremor Media raises $11 million for video ad network

Canaan Partners and Masthead Venture Partners led an $11 million B round in Tremor Media, an ad network that runs video ads streaming in other videos and in banner ads as well. This brings the total raised by the New York City startup to $19.4 million, including a series A in September 2006. Canaaan and Masthead led that round as well.

Tremor’s video ad network reaches a cumulative 92 million people across more than 800 publishers. According to comScore, it is one of the top-20 ad networks by reach.

Focusing exclusively on video ads is a sure path to rapid growth, but at some point advertisers are going to want to go to one ad network to place all of their ads. Eventually, Tremor will either have to expand its offerings beyond video, or sell itself to a larger, full-service ad network.

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Drink lots of Pepsi, get DRM free music for free on Amazon

Amazon.com and Pepsi have teamed up for a new free music cross promotion that will see Pepsi drinkers earn free music with Pepsi purchases.

“Pepsi Stuff” is billed as a “massive collect-and-get program” where “consumers can download the most DRM-free MP3 music available anywhere.” In layman’s terms, drink lots of Pepsi, get DRM free music for free on Amazon.

Starting February 1, Pepsi users must “bank” their points on PepsiStuff.com to redeem them for music on Amazon MP3.

This move from Amazon shows how serious they are about to promoting its DRM free music store to a wider audience.

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среда, 16 января 2008 г.

How to work 10 hours per week and make $10 million a year

What’s it take to make $10 million in 12 months in these wonderful times of mighty Web growth? Apparently not very much.

The New York Times delivers a nice, sprightly memo about a 29-year-old coder based in Vancouver, Canada, who managed to put together a dating website, dubbed Plenty of Fish, which, because it is purportedly a self-sustaining entity, requires of its owner, Markus Frind, only about 10 hours per week of attention and care.

The site began as an educational exercise for Mr Frind designed to help him get closely acquainted with the programming language ASP.NET.

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Netflix to begin offering unlimited online movie streaming

Netflix will begin offering unlimited online movie streaming from a library of over 6000 movies to customers on their $16.99 plan starting Monday.

The move is said to be in response to the expected announcement by Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the Macworld Expo Tuesday that iTunes will offer movie rentals from most major studios. The expected price of the iTunes rented movies is $3.99 each, putting Netflix is a competitive position for high value regular movie watchers.

Netflix has previously offered limited movie streaming to its 7 million + customers, but capped the streaming access at 17 hours a month.

According to AP, the offer will not be available to Netflix customers currently on the $4.99/ mth 2 DVD plan.

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вторник, 15 января 2008 г.

Chinese blogger beaten to death by Government Officials

A Chinese blogger has been beaten to death by Government authorities for the crime of attempting to record a protest on his mobile phone.

When Wei was present at some sort of confrontation or protest by local villages against municipal authorities when more than 50 municipal inspectors turned on him, attacking him for five minutes.

According to CNN, the killing has sparked outrage in China, “with thousands expressing outrage in Chinese Internet chat rooms, often the only outlet for public criticism of the government.”

The Chinese Government has moved swiftly to detain those involved, arresting 24 municipal inspectors whilst investigating more than 100 others in relation to the incident. Notably (for China) the story was published by the official state news service Xinhua, in what is believed to be an attempt to head off dissent over the mater by demonstrating that the Chinese Government does not condone those involved in the beating.

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Mahalo is still not a business that can be taken seriously

Mahalo ranked 69th last week among Search Engines and received 0.02% of all US Internet visits to Search Engines compared with Google's 55.52%.

Mahalo appeals more to younger Internet users, 18-24 year olds in particular. The following chart compares Mahalo's visits by age group to the US online population. As you can see 18-24 year olds were 36.67% more likely to be on Mahalo.com than average.

Mahalo receives most of its traffic from Search Engines (76% last week) and sends most of its traffic to Entertainment (37%) and News and Media (19%) websites. Visitors seem particularly interested in games websites such as GameSpot, IGN Cheats and Game FAQs and News and Media websites, in particular, Google News and other online news sources.

Mahalo is the people magazine of the internet. It's filled with the popular stuff, and if you put enough popular stuff in close proximity you start to generate traffic. It'll be interesting to see what Mahalo becomes, and whether or not they'll be able to keep the information and links fresh. Maintaining Mahalo doesn't get cheaper over time.

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понедельник, 14 января 2008 г.

Cond?? Nast accepts Flip hasn't worked out

Cond?? Nast is changing strategies on Flip, its young-teen women social network that launched last February. They announced today that Flip will be ???reshaped as a flexible web application designed to live on social networking platform, starting with Facebook.???

As the graph above shows traffic has dropped significantly since a peak in April of last year.

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Condé Nast accepts Flip hasn't worked out

Condé Nast is changing strategies on Flip, its young-teen women social network that launched last February. They announced today that Flip will be “reshaped as a flexible web application designed to live on social networking platform, starting with Facebook.”

As the graph above shows traffic has dropped significantly since a peak in April of last year.

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воскресенье, 13 января 2008 г.

LiveMocha raises $6 Million for language learning social network

Bellevue, WA-based LiveMocha, a social network for learning languages, has raised a $6 million first round led by Maveron Equity Partners.

The site offers lessons that users can sign up for, as well as the ability to converse with other users for practice. Members can also offer tutoring services using the site.

The site, which launched in September, is hoping to offer an alternative to traditional at-home language learning packages that come on CDs or CD-ROMs.

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Popularity of YouTube and video sharing websites rises rapidly

The audience for YouTube and other video sharing websites has risen sharply in the past year, with almost half of online adults logging onto such sites, reports a study from Pew Internet & American Life Project.

In a national phone survey of 2,054 adults, 48 percent said they have visited a video sharing site, up from last year's 33 percent. Fifteen percent reported using a site like YouTube "yesterday", or the day before the respondent was contacted for the survey, compared to eight percent of users last year; this means the number of video site users has nearly doubled from the end of 2006 to the end of 2007.

Of the demographic groups, daily traffic among high school graduates, women and respondents aged 30 to 49 has increased the most:

-- The number of high school graduates using video sites increased 160 percent, jumping from five to 13 percent.
-- Women's use increased 120 percent, from five to 11 percent.
-- Use for those aged 30 to 49 increased 100 percent, from seven to 14 percent.

The study attributes this surge to popularity of video sharing sites among men and younger adults and broadband connection speeds. Now, nearly a third of young adults and a fifth of online men visit these sites, while 54 percent of adults now have high-speed internet connections at home, up from 45 percent last year.

It has also taken into account that there are now more YouTube-like sites than there were a year ago, so the rising popularity of amateur videos is partly responsible for the growth.

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суббота, 12 января 2008 г.

Social networking sites slow and inaccessible, Facebook is the worst

In recent research, WatchMouse found that many of the world's largest online social networks have poor site performance, leaving users waiting for sites to load or encountering errors.

Of the 104 sites monitored, the immensely popular Facebook (facebook.com) site was the worst performer; recording a slow load time and more errors than any other monitored site. Windows Live Spaces (spaces.live.com) also performed poorly while Friends Reunited (friendsreunited.co.uk) and MySpace (myspace.com) loaded well and recorded few errors.

Conductors of the research, WatchMouse, is a leading supplier of website performance monitoring. Combining industry expertise with 25+ global monitoring stations, WatchMouse provides many multinational companies with independent verification of site performance.

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Google is processing 20,000 terabytes of data a day

A recent white paper by some Google engineers puts some numbers around the massive amount of computation that Google does every day to index the Web, process search results, and serve up ads, among other things. As oflast September, Google was processing 20,000 terabytes of data (20 petabytes) a day. This large-scale computing capability is a big part of Google’s competitive advantage over Yahoo, Microsoft, and everyone else.

Niall Kennedy reports the breakdown of how Google’s large-scale computing has grown, and estimates that hardware cost for each large-scale computing job (known as MapReduce) is about $1 million. The number of such jobs grew nearly an order of magnitude (10X) between 2004 and 2006, and then another order of magnitude a year and half later. See the chart below:

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пятница, 11 января 2008 г.

Google cancels Adsense referral program

Google has cancelled its Adsense referral program for users outside of North America, Latin America and Japan.

Users who are still eligible to participate in the program will found their bonuses greatly reduced. Here’s the official word from Inside AdSense:

“About a year ago, as an experiment, we changed the pricing structure for AdSense referrals so that when a user you referred to the program earned $5 within 180 days of sign-up, you would also earn $5. When that publisher earned $100 within 180 days and removed all payment holds, you’d receive $250. We have decided to conclude this experiment and return to the original pricing structure. As a result, we’ll soon no longer be offering the $5 bonus or $2000 bonus, and the payout for referring a user who generates $100 with AdSense in the first 180 days will return to $100.”

The reason for all this is obviously poor performance of the AdSense referral program.

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MTV Networks signs distribution deals with major online video sites

Viacom has really decided to conquer the world of online video. After making the unexpected move by releasing Jackass 2.5 straight to the web and for free, MTV Networks has now signed deals with five online video sites: iMeem, Veoh, Dailymotion, GoFish and MeeVee - all well known names in the world of online video.

They will provide short clips and longer content from 10 cable and broadband networks such as MTV, VH1, and Comedy Central. The exact nature of these deals is not known, but it’s probably some kind of ad revenue split, with MTVN keeping the fat side for themselves.

Commenting on the iMeem deal, Greg Clayman, Executive Vice President, Digital Distribution and Business Development, MTVN, said that “iMeem offers a great platform for MTVN to promote and distribute our content to millions of fans through a deep and engaging social media experience. Using iMeem, fans can engage with our content in new and exciting ways, expressing who they are using video from the shows they love. We’re excited to make our content available to iMeem users.”

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четверг, 10 января 2008 г.

Earth Class Mail raises $13.3 million to kill traditional mail

Earth Class Mail has raised $13.3 million round of financing ($7.4 million of the round was closed last September and $2.84 million was previously raised convertible debt). The round was led by Ignition Partners and included angels from Keiretsu Forum.

With Earth Class Mail online postal mail, you can stay connected to your postal mail just as you do your voice mail and email today: you can check postal mail from anywhere, manage it, and respond to it.

Here's how it works. First, you pick a "Remote Address" for one of our locations, and have selected mail sent to that address. As a Commercial Mail Receiving Agency, they then receive your mail, instantly scan all the sealed envelope images, and then electronically deliver each envelope image to you online.

You view your envelopes in a secure online mailbox and tell them what you want to do with your mail.

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Microsoft to acquire Fast Search & Transfer

Microsoft has made an offer to acquire enterprise search company Fast Search & Transfer.

Norway based Fast Search and Transfer offers enterprise search to over 3500 companies, including many in the Fortune 500. Fast solutions cover areas including Corporate Operations, eCommerce, Information Management, Market Management, Mobile, Online Media, OEM Search Integration, Risk Management and Surveillance and Enforcement.

Microsoft has offered 19.00 Norwegian Kroner ($3.56) per share. The offer represents a 42 percent premium to the closing share price for Fast as at January 4 and values FAST at 6.6 billion NOK ($1.2 billion U.S).

Fast’s board of directors has unanimously recommended that its shareholders accept the offer. In addition, shareholders representing 35 percent of the outstanding shares have irrevocably undertaken to accept the offer.

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среда, 9 января 2008 г.

PubMatic raises $7 Million for meta ad server

PubMatic has taken $7 Million Series B in a round led Nexus India Capital that included original investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Helion Ventures.

PubMatic offers a meta ad server that sits between online publishers and online ad networks like Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network and Value Click.

Their service helps small and medium sized publishers manage and maximize their advertising inventory by communicating with multiple ad networks to help them find the optimal ad layout and the highest paying ad network.

They also provide users with a central dashboard to track all their ad networks and ad configurations.

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KeepYouSafe.com provides free Online Safe Deposit Boxes

KeepYouSafe.com provides free Online Safe Deposit Boxes that you can upload important documents to, or create important documents within. I

The system works like uploading attachments to e-mail or filling out an online form. The idea is to use KeepYouSafe to store all of your important documents — wills, property deeds, tax forms, banking information, birth certificate, passport, social security card—anything!

You can also use the easy Wallet Wizard to store credit card, driver’s license and banking information in case your wallet is lost or stolen.

Your Online Safe Deposit Box is accessible from anywhere in the world, and if you want, share your password with anyone and perhaps your lawyer to make things simpler in your absence.

The encrypted safe deposit boxes have military-grade security, so they are safe and secure – far more secure than storing highly sensitive material on your home computer or laptop.

While this service is clearly useful for some the pricing is likley to stop the service from reaching a large user base. They offer a free trial of our Online Safe Deposit Box(SM). This trial does not expire, but is limited in space to 10 records and a couple of small files.

Large boxes are available for only $4 per month (billed annually at $48) and include 500 megs of secure file space and room to store 500 text-based records.

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THE FROSTFIRE BUZZ TEST

1. Is this a unique product? 7/10

2. Is this business/product difficult to replicate? 7/10

3. Is this something that can appeal to a large global audience? 6/10

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вторник, 8 января 2008 г.

Is CNET about to be taken over?

According to New York Times, a consortium of CNET investors, led by large investment funds such as Jana Partners, are seeking to take over CNET’s board of directors. The consortium has a 21% stake in CNET’s ownership, and they’ve sent a letter with their plan to the CNET board approximately two weeks ago, but CNET has been silent so far, supposedly preparing to put up a fight against this initiative.

Although CNET hasn’t commented on the proposal directly, they’ve issued a statement on Saturday, claiming that the company has “made significant strategic, financial, personnel and operational progress.” However, Wall Street analysts don’t seem to agree: their almost uniform prediction is that CNET shares will slump, continuing the trend that has been going on for the last three years, in which the shares have lost 19% of their value.

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Liberty Media acquires a controlling stake in Bodybuilding.com for $100 Million

Liberty Media has acquired a controlling stake in online retailer and fitness website Bodybuilding.com for $100 Million.

Bodybuilding.com sells a broad range of fitness supplements, clothing and supplies as well as offering general fitness articles and a social networking service where over 100,000 users swap exercise goals or post pictures.

According to comScore, Bodybuilding.com had around 2 million unique visitors in November, and according to Liberty sales are expected to top $100 million in 2008.

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понедельник, 7 января 2008 г.

Amazon launches software download store

Amazon has just launched an online store for downloading software. The selection is currently limited to Turbo Tax, but iis likely to add many new downloads soon.

As with the company’s MP3 store, you first need to install a download client, and then you can grab your purchases. Once done, your new software is on your PC and added to your Amazon Media Library on the chance you may need to download it again someday.

To top off the launch, Amazon put up a free-of-charge software sample for those of us who just want to try the new feature, but have…you know…no interest in a copy of Turbo Tax.

Amazon global retail domination continues...

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Yoonew creates electronic exchange to trade tickets

Yoonew is an electronic exchange that allows buyers and sellers to trade tickets and ticket derivatives like stocks.

For now Yoonew is focusing on football tickets, and the Super Bowl is their big event. People pay $2,000 or more for Super Bowl tickets. If you want a good seat, and buy from a reputable broker, you are quite simply going to be paying a staggering amount of money. If you wait to the last minute you might get a deal, particularly if the teams aren’t a draw. But you also run the risk of paying a lot more, or not getting in at all.

Behind the scenes are the market makers - the very select few individuals who actually have their hands on the tickets. These include players and NFL officials, official partners to the NFL, and the people who purchase tickets from them. How much they pay for those tickets is based on their analysis of the game economics, and they are putting serious capital at risk every year. They then turn around and sell those tickets to the public. If they’re good they make a lot of money. If not, they can lose their business over a single game.

Online tickets is big business and Ebay has done very well through its acquisition of Stubhub.

If Yoonew can gain traction this could turn out to be a success, the real question is whether there are enough people who want to trade tickets via a stock exchange format.

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THE FROSTFIRE BUZZ TEST

1. Is this a unique product? 7/10

2. Is this business/product difficult to replicate? 7/10

3. Is this something that can appeal to a large global audience? 6/10

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воскресенье, 6 января 2008 г.

Britney Spears Gets Released From Hospital Two Days Earlier Than Planned

UGH! I can’t even go to a kid’s birthday party without something going on with Britney Spears. WHY DID THEY RELEASE HER? WHAT BENEFIT DOES THIS HAVE FOR HER? I don’t understand why this girl can’t get help. SHE NEEDS HELP. I am SCREAMING!
Sources say the hospital released her without notifying any of the principles [...]

Ice.com raises $47 million

Ice.com has raised $47 million in outside venture capital the company will use to expand further into the affordable luxury goods market.

The money, which Ice.com secured from Boston investment banking firm Polaris Venture Partners, will enable Ice.com to consider acquisitions, build up its e-commerce infrastructure and target new niches in affordable luxury goods.

As part of the new funding arrangement, Polaris managing general partner and former Washington Post Co. president Alan Spoon will take a seat on the Ice.com board of directors.

Holiday season sales were up 60% and average order value up 25% on Ice.com and 21% on sister site Diamond.com, the company reports.

Ice.com, which grew its 2007 web sales by about 70% to $83.4 million, sees a growing market for online buyers of luxury goods that want to trade up for higher priced items as their purchasing habits change and their annual income grows.

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суббота, 5 января 2008 г.

Yahoo Picks heads for the deadpool

Launched in August 1995, Yahoo Picks highlighted the best of the web in a weekly, then later daily update service in an era prior to blogging. The site eventually evolved to a full blown blog in 2004.

Many new internet users in the mid 90s started on the web in roughly this order: Yahoo’s Front Page, Yahoo’s Directory , then for cool sites they’d head to Yahoo Picks.

Yahoo did not post the reasons for shutting the service, but in an age of mass produced and often automated link swapping and recommendations, the service is by comparison archaic, and probably not seeing an awful lot of traffic.

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Google may have worked out how to read text in images and video

A patent application lodged by Google in July 2007 but recently made public seeks to patent a method where by computers can read and understand text in images and video.

A full copy of the patent application “Recognizing Text In Images” can be viewed here.

Some choice lines from the patent:

“Digital images can include a wide variety of content…For example, digital images can illustrate landscapes, people, urban scenes, and other objects. Digital images often include text. Digital images can be captured, for example, using cameras or digital video recorders. Image text (i.e., text in an image) typically includes text of varying size, orientation, and typeface. Text in a digital image derived, for example, from an urban scene (e.g., a city street scene) often provides information about the displayed scene or location. A typical street scene includes, for example, text as part of street signs, building names, address numbers, and window signs.”

If Google has found a way to index text in static images and video this is a great leap forward in the progression of search technology.

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пятница, 4 января 2008 г.

5min has raised $5 million in Series A financing

5min has raised $5 million in a Series A financing round from Spark Capital. The how-to video site has been quietly growing in a sector we haven’t seen much activity in lately, outside of some niche developments particularly geared for educational purposes.

Aside from the funding, 5min will also be moving its offices to New York City some time this month, making the move from Tel-Aviv, Israel to become an U.S.-based company.

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HireAHelper.com gains traction and is one to watch for 2008

Hire A Helper is an Internet-based staffing service that connects day laborers with people who need to get work done. We reviewed HireAHelper.com last year and since then they have expanded rapidly and now have helpers in all 50 states.

With sections for Moving Help, Landscaping Help, Cleaning Help, and General Help / Day Labor HireAHelper.com should be able to help you.

HireAHelper's rapid growth is also due to the endorsement from Realtor.com and Moving.com, for whom they are the sole moving labor providor.

Here's how it works:

1. Search and select a helper in your area.
Search for local helpers and receive an instant quote on each helper you select. You can also learn more about each helper in their individual profile and read reviews of their past performance.

2. Helper contacts you.
The moving helpers you have requested will be in contact with you within 24 hours, if for some reason they cannot help you, you can choose another helper or choose to cancel the job. Once you offer a job to a helper and they accept, payment will be made with your credit card and you will receive a authorization code.

3. When the work is done hand them an authorization code.
After the worker has completed the work, simply hand them the authorization code you received during checkout and we will deposit the funds into their bank account.

Given HireAHelper's useful service and robust business model we expect to hear a lot more from this company as it becomes more widely used.

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четверг, 3 января 2008 г.

Google vs Yahoo

The screengrabs above show how the homepages of Yahoo and Google have changed over the last ten years.

While Yahoo has added more and more links, images and text to its frontpage, Google has opted to leave the page simple and free of everything except the Google search box and links to its services.

Given that the frontpage of any website commands the highest revenue, Google has resisted the temptation to clutter the page with advertsising and other distractions. A strategy that has seen Google grow to a $250 billion business.

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Interview with CEO of VibeAgent

The concept of building a TripAdvisor 2.0 is compelling and I met up with Adam Healey from VibeAgent to hear how he plans to build the next generation hotel website.

Where did your idea come from?

We wanted to create a one-stop shop to both research and book a hotel.

Because our recommendations come with profiles of their authors, and are personalized based on our social search algorithm (which weights reviews by your friends and colleagues more heavily than the average user) they are trustworthy.

And because we are a meta search site, we can show the user multiple prices for the same hotel room, so they can ensure they are getting the best available price.

What is your elevator pitch?

VibeAgent combines hotel reviews, meta-search, and social networking to help
people find the perfect hotel at the perfect price.

How is your proposition different from competitors?

Our major competitor is TripAdvisor. We believe we are TripAdvisor 2.0

1) We provide you with trustworthy reviews, because they come from familiar sources and are prioritized based on the likelihood you will share tastes and preferences with the user.

2) We help you drive directly to a purchase decision by ordering our hotel search results based on the likelihood they will appeal to you.

3) We provide you with the best available price, because we search the web for multiple prices for the same hotel room, from both other travel sites and the hotels directly.

Why will you succeed?

Because we provide the customer what they need: trustworthy, actionable advice, and then the best available prices.

What are your biggest successes so far?

We're getting great feedback from our users - we've signed partnerships with Priceline.com, InterContinental Hotel Group, Venere.com, and have several more exciting partnerships to be announced in the coming weeks and months.

How will/do you make money?

We get paid a commission for every hotel room that is booked using our site. We do not have any advertising at this time.

Have you received funding? If so, how much and from whom?

We've just closed a seed round, and appointed Trip Davis, CEO of TRX (NASD: TRXI) to our Board.

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среда, 2 января 2008 г.

Top 20 alternative BitTorrent sites

Sites like The Pirate Bay and Torrentz are very well known but there are some other toorrent sites that have some excellent, rare content.

Here are 20 of these less known torrent sites in no particular order:

1. torrentvalley.com

2. yotoshi.com

3. extratorrent.com

4. bitenova.nl

5. torrentscan.com

6. fenopy.com

7. smaragdtorrent.org

8. torrentat.org

9. fulldls.com

10. worldnova.org

11. spynova.org

12. nova9.org

13. 2torrents.com

14. scrapetorrent.com

15. litebay.org

16. monova.org

17. torrents.to

18. torrentradar.org

19. bitdig.com

20. bittorrentshare.com

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Today's most popular websites before they were famous

All websites start off small and unknown and some of today's big internet companies once had the most basic websites.

Google

Online since September 15, 1997, Google has become one of the most-visited websites in the world. Before Google became a household word, it began as simple way to conduct a better search. To see what Google looked like on November 11, 1998 - a little over a year after it began, click HERE.

To see what the search page looked like click HERE.

You Tube
It's hard for me to imagine a world without You Tube, but the world's biggest supplier of stupid home videos has only been around since February 15, 2005. A couple hundred million videos ago, You Tube looked like THIS. This snapshot of You Tube is from April 28, 2005 (about two months after You Tube came online).

eBay
Online since August 4, 1995, eBay is one of the most-visited sites on the planet. Click HERE to view a snapshot of eBay from June 14, 1997.

To view eBay's main page from that era click HERE.

AOL
Back in the day, AOL was king of the internet mountain. At its peak, with 30 million subscribers hearing "You've Got Mail", AOL seemed poised to take over the world. How times have changed. If you were one of the early subscribers, you would have been greeted with THIS PAGE from December 20, 1996.

Wikipedia
The ultimate encyclopedia to some. The ultimate source of errors to others. Wikipedia has grown exponentially since its online debut on January 13, 2001. Click HERE to see what Wikipedia looked like a few months after it started.