AllThingsD » Austin

Siri, Why Don't You Have A Texas Accent?

Arik Hesseldahl — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 19:57:02 +0000

I don’t know exactly why anyone is surprised that Samsung is making Apple’s A5 chip in Texas, but for some reason they are. Reuters reported today that the South Korean chip giant is building at a factory in Texas the wonderchip that powers both the iPhone 4S and the iPad. That’s the surprise. Rather than a factory somewhere in Asia, Samsung is cranking out the chips in the Lone Star State.

Given that Apple and Samsung have been working together for years — the first iPhone chips were Samsung made, after all — I’m not entirely sure why anyone is surprised that this Samsung fab was expanded to accommodate, among other customers, Apple.

Maybe the cybernetic voice of the iPhone’s marquee feature, the personal assistant Siri, should sport a Texan twang, rather than a non-specific accent. There’s a lot more inside the iPhone that comes from Texas than just the A5.

For one thing, the chip itself, or some significant portion of it, was probably designed in Texas to begin with. Remember Intrinsity? That’s the boutique chip design company that Apple acquired in 2010. Yes, that’s the one. Where was it based again? You guessed it: Austin, Texas.

There’s more. This is the very same factory that Samsung announced it was going to expand last year with a $3.6 billion investment. Indeed, yours truly even covered the announcement for Bloomberg News.

The previous fabs have been turning out Flash memory chips since the late 1990s. And since Samsung is the world’s largest supplier of Flash memory, and Apple is the world’s largest consumer of Flash memory, there’s a pretty good chance that the iPhone you’re carrying right now contains flash chips built in Texas. However, Apple buys flash memory from other companies too, including Toshiba and Hynix.

Then there are lots of other smaller components that come from Texas. Texas Instruments supplies the chip that drives the touch screen. As its name implies, TI is based in Dallas and has six fabs in Richardson, Texas (and many others around the world), one of which may turn out the touch screen controllers that iSuppli found in the iPhone. (TI wouldn’t confirm one way or the other if it’s made in Texas, but there’s a pretty good chance!)

And then there’s the audio codec chip from Cirrus Logic, found by market research firm iSuppli in its teardown analysis. It’s another company based in Texas, and so while the chip itself was probably manufactured in Asia, it was designed at Cirrus HQ in Austin.

And finally, don’t forget that Apple itself maintains a huge presence in Austin. The Austin American Statesman reported last year that the company was nearing a deal to lease 55,000 square feet of office space for the Intrinsity team, and is thought to employ about 2,500 people in and around Austin, most of them based at a 400,000 square foot campus.

So for all of Apple’s California good vibes, there’s a lot of Texas in every iPhone it makes.

Report: Apple's A5 Chip Made in Texas

Lauren Goode — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:48:16 +0000

Reuters reports that, according to sources, the A5 processor used in Apple’s iPhone 4S and iPad 2 is made in a sprawling 1.6 million-square-foot Samsung Electronics factory in Austin, Texas. The Korean electronics giant began supplying the A5 processors to Apple this year from the Austin plant, the story says. Both Apple and Samsung spokespersons declined to comment.

Here's Gowalla CEO's Non-Denial Denial Email to Investors About Facebook Acquisition

Kara Swisher — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 05:54:43 +0000

Update: Facebook has confirmed it is hiring Gowalla’s core team, while the Gowalla product will be shut down.

Even Gowalla CEO Josh Williams isn’t pretending a deal for Facebook to buy the location-sharing company isn’t happening, as you can read below in an email he sent to his investors.

Both companies declined to comment on a story on Friday and over the weekend. CNN had the scoop about the social networking giant acquiring Gowalla, which I have taken to calling Not-Foursquare.

That’s because — despite its often clever approach and innovation — it never caught up with the leading social location service.

Gowalla, which changed its approach several times, had been for sale for some time, said several sources.

The Austin-based start-up has raised just under $11 million from a range of investors, including Greylock Partners, Shasta Ventures, Alsop Louie Partners and the Founders Fund, along with a batch of well-known angel investors.

But let’s put this one to bed with the email that Williams sent out after the CNN story broke Friday, which was read to me tonight, so I might not have all of it perfectly and it is missing a sentence about I-will-smack-the-leaker):

Subject: Rumors and speculation

CNN just broke the news that Gowalla has been acquired by Facebook. This story was leaked from an unknown souurce.

The ink on the deal is not dry, so our holding pattern is that we do not comment on rumors and speculation. I have another email penned that was ready to send you today, assuming you would get this news before the story was officially released.

But now it is all over Twitter, so you have likely heard. A longer email will be sent soon. Until then, I am so very grateful for what you have done to make Gowalla a success.

The second confirmation email has apparently not yet been sent, but I will try to get it when it is, along with the price.

So, until the official official yes, here’s a video interview I did with Williams in April of 2010 about the location “wars”:

[ See post to watch video ]

Pre-$200 Million Valuation: Flipboard's Mike McCue at SXSW (The Full Onstage Video)

Kara Swisher — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 18:30:38 +0000

In March, BoomTown travelled hipster-Texas-style for the South by Southwest festival in Austin.

I was there to check out the geek-packed scene, but also to interview Flipboard’s Mike McCue in an onstage interview there.

The Silicon Valley start-up, which makes an innovative and highly designed social media reading app for the Apple iPad (iPhone and Google’s Android mobile operating system to come), recently raised $50 million in new funding, giving it a $200 million valuation.

This interview with McCue took place before that, but it’s still a wide-ranging map to where the much-touted Flipboard is headed.

Here’s the video:

[ See post to watch video ]

Exclusive: Flipboard Confirms $50 Million Funding at $200 Million Valuation

Kara Swisher — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 20:23:12 +0000

Late last month, BoomTown posted about a huge venture funding effort by the high-profile and even more highly designed social media reading app for the Apple iPad, Flipboard.

Today, its co-founder and CEO Mike McCue confirmed the $50 million round at an eye-popping $200 million valuation, in a wide-ranging interview at the start-up’s Palo Alto, Calif., HQ.

“We’re obviously thrilled, because we think it confirms our focus that people want a beautifully designed way to interact with content and to share it,” he said. “And there is a lot more to come–on a scale of one to 10, we’re just at a two or three.”

The bulk of the new second round of funding–Flipboard had previously raised $10.5 million–came from New York-based Insight Venture Partners.

Insight’s Jerry Murdock said in an interview that he was excited about the idea of “social endorsement” that Flipboard was pioneering.

“We back great entrepreneurs and Flipboard is that and also in an obviously unique position to solve a problem of media consumption in the digital age,” he said. “The sky is the limit. Or more precisely it is the best environment to consume curated real-time content for Twitter and Facebook, because of the user experience and social endorsement integration with the content.”

Insight is also an investor in Twitter.

Also stepping up in the new Flipboard round is Comcast’s venture arm, as well as previous investors, including Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures and a spate of well known angels, such as Twitter co-founder and product guru Jack Dorsey, Facebook co-founder and Asana dude Dustin Moskovitz, the ubiquitous Ron Conway, actor Ashton Kutcher and the investment company of former News Corp. exec Peter Chernin.

“From a Comcast perspective, we’re intrigued with Mike and what he’s doing with content aggregation,” said Amy Banse, Comcast Interactive Capital’s new head. “We think we can learn from him and he from us.”

Co-founded by longtime entrepreneur McCue (Netscape, Tellme) and former Apple iPhone engineer Evan Doll in January, Flipboard launched to much attention in July.

The elegant Flipboard–which McCue recently told me in an onstage interview at the South by Southwest conference in Austin had zero revenues thus far–has changed the game on the consumption of social media.

Its innovative social magazine concept is attempting to make the social networking universe more accessible, consumable and, perhaps most importantly, visually arresting via its rich app.

Essentially, Flipboard pulls information from media RSS feeds and sites such as Twitter and Facebook data streams and then reassembles it in an easy-to-navigate, personalized format in a mobile tablet touchscreen environment.

In its current offering, there are pull-quotes, photos, videos, status updates and even the first paragraphs of linked-out content. There is also the ability to comment and share, as if one were on a social networking or microblogging site.

McCue said the new giant pile of cash will be used to increase its 32-person staff to about 50, international expansion, small acquisitions and more product development on more platforms.

The next in the arena will be the iPhone version of Flipboard, said McCue, followed by one for the Google Android mobile operating system eventually.

Left unsaid, of course, was the need for funding to fight the likelihood of increased competition in the hot space for delivering both professional and social content to consumers on a wide range of devices.

Rivals are varied, such as Silicon Valley’s most adorable news reader start-up Pulse and also Zite, a news reader which was recently sued for copyright infringement by a group of major publishers.

There are bigger potential players, such as Google, which is trying to find various ways to move into the social space.

In fact, said several sources, Google and others have made acquisition approaches to Flipboard, which has instead opted for raising more funding and staying independent for now.

McCue declined to talk about that, but did note that he is not surprised by publisher interest, especially of the worried and wary kind, in the arena.

“Anyone not respectful of others’ content is going to get in that kind of trouble,” he said, noting Flipboard has struck deals with 17 big publishers so far, including this morning’s announcement about a partnership with Oprah Winfrey’s and Discovery’s OWN cable network. “There is not one half to this equation.”

Right now, the Flipboard app is free and the business plan is advertising and some possible subscription scenarios.

McCue said advertising will be the key to Flipboard’s business plan in the future, although it’s not clear if the company will ever sell advertising itself.

Rather, it will partner with publishers seeking better distribution in the explosive tablet and smartphone market, where Flipboard has been gaining traction quickly.

But until that is sorted out, there is now $50 million more in the Flipboard kitty to figure it all out.

“With this funding, we can grow at the right pace and have a lot of flexibility to get the product right,” said McCue. “And, that’s the most important thing.”

Pretty Flipboard Fundraising at an Even Prettier $200 Million Valuation

Kara Swisher — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 14:15:12 +0000

Flipboard, the high-profile and highly designed social media reading app for the Apple iPad, is out raising another round of funding at an eye-popping $200 million valuation, according to numerous sources close to the situation.

The Palo Alto, CA, company declined to comment on its new funding efforts, which sources said had recently accelerated.

While that valuation might change, several sources considering the investment said it is unlikely to go down in the current frothy financing market in Silicon Valley, especially given Flipboard’s splashy profile and top-drawer pedigree.

Co-founded by longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mike McCue and former Apple iPhone engineer Evan Doll in January, Flipboard launched to much attention in July.

That included $10.5 million in venture funding from Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures and a spate of well known angel investors, such as Twitter Co-founder Jack Dorsey, Facebook Co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, the ubiquitous Ron Conway, actor Ashton Kutcher and the investment company of former News Corp. exec Peter Chernin.

At the time, it was unclear what Flipboard’s valuation was. But now, said several sources, it’s clocking in at a hefty $200 million, which is perhaps no surprise at a time of increasingly lofty investments in tech start-ups.

Suddenly, Foursquare’s $95 million valuation seems like a bargain! (Sorry, Dennis Crowley, for comparing you to the Kool-Aid pitcher dude.)

In any case, the elegant Flipboard–which McCue recently told me in an onstage interview at the South by Southwest conference in Austin had zero revenues thus far–has changed the game on the consumption of social media.

Its innovative social magazine concept is attempting to make the social networking universe more accessible, consumable and, perhaps most importantly, visually arresting via its rich app.

Essentially, Flipboard pulls information from sites such as Twitter and Facebook data streams and then reassembles it in an easy-to-navigate, personalized format in a mobile tablet touchscreen environment.

In this offering, there are pull quotes, photos, videos, status updates and even the first paragraphs of linked-out content. There is also the ability to comment and share, as if one were on Twitter or Facebook.

Flipboard has since added a number of features and will be launching its new iPhone app later this year.

Right now, the Flipboard app is free and the business plan is advertising and some possible subscription scenarios.

It will be interesting to see who will jump into this leader in a nascent market, besides its current investors. Sources said one likely target group for Flipboard could be a large traditional media company.

Until the financial dust settles, here is the video of an onstage interview by the Digital Solution’s Katherine Boehret with McCue at the All Things Digital event, D: Dive Into Mobile, in December:

[ See post to watch video ]

(Full disclosure: ATD is part of Flipboard’s publisher beta program.)

Video: GroupMe Dudes Talk Group Messaging Phenom (and Drink Beer at the Same Time)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 22:01:45 +0000

If you had to pick the hotsy-totsy start-up to win the media darling of South by Southwest award for 2011–following in the precious footsteps of Foursquare and Twitter from years past–it would probably have to be GroupMe.

The group messaging/conference call/location/photo sharing service has, as these things tend to, garnered a lot of heat since its debut less than a year ago.

That has, of course, also meant the requisite big venture funding–$11.5 million in total–for the New York-based GroupMe, including from SV Angel, betaworks, First Round Capital, Lerer Ventures, General Catalyst Partners and Khosla Ventures.

And, no surprise, the dead-simple idea now has many start-up rivals, all vying to use combine mobile, texting, social, location, groups and smartphones into some unholy megatrend.

Still, GroupMe has built a slick little offering, which is likely to get scooped up by some bigger entity (or perhaps just copied, which is the sincerest form of flattery in tech).

Until then, its Co-founders Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci are enjoying their day in the sun–quite literally, at their free grilled-cheese-and-beer giveaway at SXSW this weekend in Austin, Texas.

Here is my video interview with their-future-is-so-bright-they-have-to-wear-shades pair:

[ See post to watch video ]

Video: BoomTown Versus Texas Hipsters and Cheddar Cheese Cats at SXSW

Kara Swisher — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 19:18:17 +0000

As it turned out, BoomTown did not succumb to hipster poisoning on my sojourn this past weekend to Austin, Texas and the famous South by Southwest festival.

The annual gathering, which has interactive, music and film elements, started last week and is still going strong–fueled, as far as I can tell, by beer, blogging, empanadas and excessive start-up hype.

Actually, it was a good time had by me, despite assertions from some longtime attendees that SXSW had somehow jumped the shark.

I personally saw no shark-jumping, but there certainly were a lot of free t-shirts and fake tattoos.

Here is a video of a variety of scenes from the weekend, from all over SXSW, from our very own All Things Digital party (I now can retire, since I had a drink named after me) to encountering a giant cheddar cheese sculpture of cats.

Yes, it was that kind of SXSW.

Enjoy:

[ See post to watch video ]

Pro Tip: How To Stop SXSW Twitter Overload In Its Tracks

Peter Kafka — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:32:16 +0000

There’s a lot of cool stuff happening in Austin at the South by Southwest conference this week, and All Things Digital will have three (3!) people on the ground to tell you about it. On the other hand, there’s going to be lots of stuff coming out there that isn’t so cool or interesting, and you may find breathless reports of such clogging your Twitter feed. One binary solution: TweetDeck’s filter function, which allows you to block any Tweet with “SXSW” (or any other term you want) from your feed. Not an endorsement! Just an option.

Viral Video: "Attack the Block" and BoomTown Debut at SXSW

Kara Swisher — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:15:42 +0000

Like many a geek–and after a decade away–I’m headed to South by Southwest later this week.

To get in the mood for the well-known multimedia festival in Austin, here’s one of the films making its debut this coming weekend.

It’s called “Attack the Block,” and is about a teen gang fighting an alien invasion. Plus, it has the best tag line ever: “Inner City Versus Outer Space.”

Which is just about how I am feeling about SXSW!

In any case, despite my lack of hipster cred, I will be there for a party hosted by WordPress with drinks by The Wall Street Journal Digital Network and All Things Digital on Friday, as well as to interview Flipboard Co-founder and CEO Mike McCue on Saturday in an afternoon session with the subtitle: “Game-Changer or Passing Fad?”

NetworkEffect’s Liz Gannes and The Digital Solution’s Katherine Boehret will also be at SXSW, so expect plenty of coverage from Texas.

Until then, enjoy this movie trailer, y’all:

The Next Web Frontier: Finding New Offline Friends

Liz Gannes — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:00:37 +0000

Can the Internet help us meet people offline? Not like a dating site that’s cordoned off from the rest of the Web, but in more of a good-conversation-at-a-dinner-party kind of way? That’s a premise that multiple start-ups are currently exploring.

One, called Yobongo, intended to launch tomorrow, offers a mobile app with proximity-based chat rooms (or, to use the hip start-up term of the moment, “group messaging”). Another, called Grubwithus, arranges family-style meals at restaurants.

Yobongo co-founders Caleb Elston and David Kasper, formerly of the Web video start-up Justin.tv, have built their iPhone app with serendipitous conversations in mind.

Only 12 or so people can join any one Yobongo room at the time; users are highly encouraged to share their real names; and there are no topics or room directory.

Each time users open the app, they are placed in a room containing people nearest to their physical location and, if possible, people they have talked to on Yobongo before.

The San Francisco-based company is hoping for quick growth at the geeky petri dish of SXSW. It does have one feature that seems perfectly tuned for the Austin party-hopping crowd–iPhone notifications for when a Yobongo conversation is heating up nearby.

Elston said he thinks the mobile, social, geo-located experience can give chat rooms a makeover the same way apps like Instagram are breathing new life into photo sharing.

“Often the best times are small, impromptu groups of people,” Elston said. “It’s the sitting-around-the-campfire type of experience.”

Meanwhile, Grubwithus is one of leading contenders from the latest Y Combinator start-up accelerator class, according to recommendations from its classmates. The company arranges family-style meals with restaurants and signs up participants to book and pay in advance, usually at a discounted price.

It’s kind of like an ad hoc Meetup with food. Or Groupon where a group of restaurant coupon buyers dines together.

As attendees commit to a certain dinner, their names and pictures show up on a dedicated Grubwithus meal page. Those who sign up early get a small discount for taking a bigger risk on who their dining companions will be.

Grubwithus co-founder Eddy Lu said that in San Francisco and Chicago, where the site is already operating, 75 percent of sign-ups come from individuals rather than couples or groups.

Some Grubwithus meals are posed around a topic or celebrity diner, while others are more random. Lu said like-minded people tend to flock to the same meals based on the price.

Grubwithus, obviously, takes a cut of each dinner fee, and also sees itself as a marketing channel for restaurants. It is testing a feature to help users set up their own dinner party invitations and menus, kind of like OpenTable for groups. Lu said the company intends to start fundraising later this month.

Five Questions for Spiceworks Co-Founder Jay Hallberg

Arik Hesseldahl — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 13:45:17 +0000

For all the attention that’s been paid in the last several days to the social enterprise, from the launch of Chatter.com to the investment by Salesforce.com in Seesmic, few companies can arguably make a defensible claim that they’ve already built a social network aimed squarely at businesses.

Spiceworks has. Over four years, the company has evolved from an an ad-supported network mapping tool to something of a Facebook for IT pros. The social networking part happened more or less by accident. Now Spiceworks, based in Austin, Texas, has a community 1.3 million strong, and adding more than 2,000 new members a day, all of them making technology spending decisions for their small to mid-sized companies. Tech advertisers and vendors are naturally lining up to get in.

And so have the venture capitalists. Last year, Spiceworks landed a $16 million C round led by Institutional Venture Partners, known for funding Twitter and Zynga and Netflix. Other investors include Austin Ventures and Shasta Ventures with total funding at $27 million.

Spiceworks co-founder Jay Hallberg was in New York stopped by our offices in New York and we talked about how Spiceworks got started, where it’s going, and why you may hear IT pros asking each other about their “pepper level.”

NewEnterprise: So Spiceworks has been described to me as a sort of Facebook for the IT professional. How did you get to that point?

Jay Hallberg: When we started we had no idea that was what it was going to become. When we launched in early 2006 the idea was to build an application that would let IT professionals manage their networks. In small and medium companies there’s usually one or two guys managing all the IT issues. It was a free download, ad-supported, and it could catalog everything on a local network, anything with an IP address, PCs printers, storage, servers. The idea was that it was going to be ad supported. It turned out to be a wild success. They started downloading it like mad, and they started telling each other about it. Then they started asking each other questions and comparing notes in the forum we had set up. That was really when the spark took off. It was a lot more than a network application, it was a social application. We’re now adding about 2,000 users a day and to put this in some perspective, there are about 5 million IT pros in the world taking care of the needs of some 200 million employees. We have about a quarter of them in Spiceworks, about 1.3 million. Vendors started approaching us so they could set up pages where they could engage these people where they work, and it was natural to take another step and start selling the product.

But it’s still very much a management tool too?

Yes. We tend to think of it as three things. There’s applications, and so we build out just like Facebook has messaging and photos we build things the IT manager needs to get their job done. A help desk, inventory, monitoring, network maps. Secondly we have the community functionality. And finally we have vendors selling products directly within Spiceworks. The easy example is with printers. The Spiceworks app shows you what printers you have and the status of their ink cartridges. If you know the printer ink status why wouldn’t you help them order the ink when it needs to be replaced? Then you can start crowdsourcing information to compare what you spend on ink versus other companies.

And so far you target mainly people in mid-sized and smaller companies. Why not the bigger ones?

It’s used in some enterprises. But our view is that there are about 15,000 companies with more than 1,000 employees. The people who work at those bigger companies get personal attention from the big IT vendors like CA Technologies, and BMC and IBM. But what about the millions of businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees that don’t get that kind of infrastructure and attention from the big vendors? So we started advertising to those people, and then the vendors came to us and said they wanted to build features into Spiceworks. EMC will build a storage advisor. Intel has paid to build a tool to manage their chips better. Because of the reach we have, now these companies want to take their relationship with us all the way through to purchasing. One thing we’re just rolling out is that we’ll take credit cards, but we’re also creating a request-for-quote feature. So when a user says he needs to buy a few servers he can send that to several vendors. And then he can talk it over with his friends in the community and see if he’s getting a good deal.

You’re growing awfully fast. How do expect to maintain that pace? You’re getting fairly close to penetrating about half of your addressable market.

One reason we’re excited as that we certainly see getting to that 50 percent market because we’re starting to see a tipping point where one IT pro goes to another job and when he starts he looks around says ‘You’re not on Spiceworks?’ and soon everyone at his new job has joined too. For them their pepper level starting to become part of their professional identity.

What’s a pepper level?

So when you join you’re a pinmento. And then you move up as your stature grows to habanero and jalapeno. The highest level is pure Capsaicin, which is the molecule itself. There’s about 25 ways to get points. It’s primarily about making the best contributions, the best answers, helping other people solve problems. It turns IT into a bit of a game.

Zynga Makes Another Acquisition–Dallas's Bonfire Studios

Kara Swisher — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 17:00:58 +0000

Zynga announced another small acquisition today, as it continues to vacuum up small independent online game developers across the U.S. and internationally.

This time it’s Dallas-based Bonfire Studios, which the San Francisco-based social gaming start-up said would now be called Zynga Dallas.

Bonfire makes titles for the PC and Xbox 360, such as “Age of Empires,” “Age of Mythology” and “Halo Wars.”

Zynga said Bonfire’s three founders–David Rippy, Bill Jackson and Scott Winsett, will become GM, creative director and senior art director, respectively, of Zynga Dallas.

Zynga’s other recent purchases include Challenge Games, which is based in Austin, as well as several others abroad.

Financial terms of the deal were not released by Zynga.

Zynga Makes Another Acquisition: Conduit Labs

Kara Swisher — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 16:45:40 +0000

It looks like the San Francisco-based gaming company is going to suck up social gaming start-ups, one city at a time.

Today, it announced the acquisition of Cambridge, Mass.-based Conduit Labs, which specializes in social music games. It will now become Zynga Boston.

In what feels like a modified roll-up strategy, Zynga has done this recently in Austin, Los Angeles and other cities, to expand its studio operations geographically.

Zynga did not disclose the price it paid for Conduit Labs, which raised $8.5 million in funding from Charles River Ventures and Prism VentureWorks.

Here is the official press release:

ZYNGA ACQUIRES CONDUIT LABS

SAN FRANCISCO–Aug. 17, 2010–Zynga today announced it has acquired Boston-based social games company Conduit Labs. Effective immediately, the Conduit Labs office will become Zynga Boston, a new game studio focused on new product development. Today’s announcement expands Zynga’s studio operations, adding to locations already in San Francisco, Austin, Baltimore, Bangalore, Beijing and Los Angeles. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Conduit Labs’ CEO, Nabeel Hyatt, will become head of the new Boston studio. The Conduit Labs team will be immediately integrated into Zynga’s workforce. Conduit Labs, founded in 2007 and funded by Charles River Ventures and Prism VentureWorks, has developed several free-to-play social games for the web.

“Boston is an epicenter for technology and has a strong talent market, making it an ideal location for us to expand operations,” said Mike Verdu, senior vice president of games at Zynga. “As one of the most prominent social game companies in Boston, the Conduit team shares a similar culture and drive with Zynga, and together we anticipate great successes from our new studio.”

Today’s acquisition, along with the recently announced joint venture with SoftBank for the launch of Zynga Japan, continues to extend the company’s footprint worldwide, creating more opportunities for Zynga to connect the world through games.

Clampett Alert! Zynga Launches First Original Online Game: FrontierVille.

Kara Swisher — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:00:37 +0000

The fast-growing social games start-up, Zynga–which recently penned distribution deals with Facebook and Yahoo (YHOO)–rolled out its first original online game today, called FrontierVille.

According to the San Francisco-based Zynga, most social games are iterations on other games already out there. Its flagship game, FarmVille, for example, wasn’t the first farm game.

The Wild West-themed FrontierVille is also the first game from well-known game designer Brian Reynolds, who has previously created Rise of Nations, Civilization II and others.

“FrontierVille is Oregon Trail meets Little House on the Prairie meets FarmVille,” said Reynolds in a statement about the game, where you start with a covered wagon and a plot of land.

There are also varmints to rassle with.

Someone go down to the cement pond to fetch Granny, Elly Mae and Jethro, stat!

Here is a video from Zynga about FrontierVille, as well as some screenshots:

ZYNGA GOES WEST WITH FRONTIERVILLE from Zynga on Vimeo.

And here is the official press release:

ZYNGA GOES WEST WITH FRONTIERVILLE LAUNCH

FrontierVille Invites Users to Tame the Wilderness, Grow a Family, and Build a Thriving Frontier Town

SAN FRANCISCO–June 9, 2010–Zynga today announced the launch of FrontierVille, a wild west-themed social game that allows users to tame the wilderness, grow a family, and build a thriving frontier town. The debut of FrontierVille comes on the heels of the recently launched Treasure Isle that quickly became the fastest growing Facebook application of all time and one of Zynga’s most popular games with 25 million daily active users. FrontierVille launches on Facebook today at http://apps.facebook.com/frontierville/.

FrontierVille introduces a new western theme to the Zynga family and leads a new generation of social games by introducing new features including multiple avatars on a single screen under one player’s control. For the first time, Zynga is introducing virtual families allowing players to customize a spouse and raise a virtual family. Additionally, FrontierVille, the first game from the Zynga East studios, is a “living world,” where players contend with wildlife encounters, varying weather, and vegetation growth.

“FrontierVille gives users creative new ways to connect with people around the world while bringing out the pioneering spirit in all of us,” said Brian Reynolds, Zynga’s chief game designer who led the development of FrontierVille. “FrontierVille is Oregon Trail meets Little House on the Prairie meets FarmVille.”

Beginning with a covered wagon and a plot of land, FrontierVille players are challenged to tame the wilderness, explore the wild West and establish a homestead with friends and family. FrontierVille game features include:

Family: Raise your own fantasy frontier family. Customize your make-believe spouse, and watch your little kiddies grow up. You can always change your own pioneer avatar, and you can move all the members of your family around for work and adventures.

Crops: After you’ve cleared enough land, it’s time to plant some crops and trees. Buy seeds and trees in the marketplace. Be careful to not let your crops wither as they become worthless, but don’t worry, your neighbors can always revive your crops if they wither. Harvested crops yield extra coin, food, and experience points.

Varmints: The wilderness is filled with dangerous vermin. Snakes, groundhogs, and bears lurk behind trees, rocks, and tall grass. You’ll have to attack or chase these varmints off your homestead.

Neighbors: Add friends as your neighbors to help you chop trees and build your log cabin. You can also hire your neighbors to get work done quickly.

Reputation: Being a good neighbor to your fellow pioneers earns you hearts. As you gain more hearts, or points, your reputation level increases. A good reputation makes you more useful to friends to hire you.

Today’s FrontierVille game launch along with Zynga’s recently announced partnerships with Facebook and Yahoo! continues to extend the company’s footprint worldwide, creating more opportunities for Zynga to connect the world through games. Recent acquisitions of XPD Media and Challenge Games established new Zynga game studios in Beijing and Austin.

Zynga Buys Austin-Based Challenge Games

Kara Swisher — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:26:14 +0000

Zynga, the online gaming powerhouse, has acquired Austin, Texas-based Challenge Games.

The social game start-up will be renamed Zynga Austin and be focused on product development.

Backed by Sequoia Capital and Globespan Capital Partners, Challenge focuses on virtual goods games, such as “Warstorm.”

Zynga did not reveal the terms of the deal.

The San Francisco-based Zynga has been on a bit of a deal tear of late, inking partnership agreements with both Yahoo (YHOO) and Facebook recently.

Here’s the official release:

ZYNGA ACQUIRES CHALLENGE GAMES

San Francisco–June 3, 2010–Zynga today announced the acquisition of Austin-based social game company Challenge Games. Effective immediately, the Challenge Games office will become Zynga Austin, a game studio focused on product development. Today’s announcement expands Zynga’s studio operations adding to locations already in San Francisco, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Bangalore, and Beijing.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

“Austin is an ideal location to extend our studio operations with its rich talent in the games business,” said Mike Verdu, senior vice president of Games at Zynga. “We look forward to building out our Zynga Austin studio with the best and brightest in the industry as we continue to bring social games to more users worldwide.”

Challenge Games’ Co-Founder CEO, Andrew Busey, will become Zynga’s general manager and vice president of the Austin studio. The Challenge Games team of 35 employees will be immediately integrated into Zynga’s workforce.

Challenge Games, backed by Sequoia Capital and Globespan Capital Partners, launched in 2007 to focus on immersive Web game development built on a virtual goods business model. Two of the company’s most popular games, Warstorm, a collectible card game set in a fantasy universe, and Ponzi, a tycoon game, will be further developed by the Zynga team.

Today’s acquisition along with Zynga’s recently announced partnerships with Facebook and Yahoo! continues to extend the company’s footprint worldwide, creating more opportunities for Zynga to connect the world through games. Recently, the company announced a promotion with 7-Eleven where stores across the United States and Canada are offering special promotional game gifts with Slurpees® and other items.

Gowalla's Josh Williams Talks About Phony Geolocation "Wars" and More!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 12:23:23 +0000

Last week, BoomTown had a very dulcet tea-fueled meeting with Josh Williams, the affable CEO and co-founder of Gowalla, one of the leading location-based mobile status-updating start-ups that seem to have sprouted up everywhere.

And while a lot of hyperactive blogging is being done in this still very nascent arena about how an all-out geolocation war is going on, it’s mostly just the smoke from overfunding going on in the hopes of finding the next Facebook-Twitter nexus.

Indeed, Austin, Texas-based Gowalla has raised over $10 million from such high-profile investors as Ron Conway, as well as from top-notch Silicon Valley venture firms, while its main rival, Foursquare, is now deciding which VC pocket it will pick at what insane valuation.

Both are attracting a lot of attention and consumers interested in the fad and eager to try out their innovative services.

Still, even if it all comes to naught financially, the combination of mobile, location, status and social networking is actually intriguing to both investors and, for now, consumers–even if Gowalla ends up getting bought by a larger fish such as Facebook someday soon.

As to business plans? Everything from loyalty plans to advertising to couponing is mentioned, but let’s be honest: None of these start-ups has any real idea of what will stick.

Until they figure it out, here’s a video interview I did with Williams, who talks about the competition, the differences among the various services, where it’s all headed (and how the Gowalla name was, yes, made up):

[ See post to watch video ]

Big at the SXSW Interactive Fest: Location, Location, Location

Jennifer Valentino-DeVries — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:00:11 +0000

The South by Southwest Interactive festival starts today in Austin, and it looks as though the buzz is all about location-based services.

Twitter, which got a lot of attention at SXSW three years ago, officially added an option to its site that allows users to share their location in their tweets. In a posting on its blog, the site said “a recent burst of interest in location sharing” prompted it to add the feature.

Users can opt in to enable the sharing service and can decide whether to attach their location on a tweet-by-tweet basis. They also can choose whether to provide exact coordinates or just a neighborhood or town name. It’s an ideal feature to add in time for SXSW, which is spread over venues throughout a large area of Austin and also includes important music and film portions.

But the real attention is focused on two services that have been in the location-sharing business longer than Twitter–Foursquare and Gowalla. These two applications let users share where they are and compete to earn virtual prizes based on how often and where they “check in” to the app.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Austin, Texas: Live Music And Now LiveOak

Russell Garland — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:36:55 +0000

Undeterred by the frosty fund-raising outlook, Austin Ventures General Partner Venu Shamapant and three others with ties to the Austin, Texas, venture firm have launched LiveOak Venture Partners.

The new firm, also based in Austin, will invest in technology start-ups, mainly in Texas, according to its Web site. It hopes to reinvigorate the state’s early-stage venture scene.

Although Austin Ventures continues to devote a substantial portion of its capital to early-stage venture capital, it has directed much of its firepower to later-stage and growth-equity deals such as vacation rental service HomeAway Inc. Texas has seen a decline in early-stage venture firms, but the start-up climate remains vibrant, said Shamapant.

Austin Ventures General Partner Chris Pacitti said his firm has found interesting opportunities to invest in early-stage and growth-equity deals and a combination of the two in software, Internet technology, information services and even financial services, but he said hardware has resisted the approach because it tends to be strictly early-stage venture. While Austin Ventures, through Venture Partner Clark Jernigan, will continue to work on that space, it isn’t prepared to focus as much attention as Shamapant wanted, Pacitti said.

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Dell Adds 905 Employees to North Carolina Labor Pool

John Paczkowski — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:15:17 +0000

So much for Dell’s personal computer manufacturing operations in the United States. On Wednesday, the PC maker said it would close its plant in Winston-Salem, N.C., as part of a long-term restructuring that will see it cut costs by $4 billion by the end of fiscal 2011. Over 900 employees will lose their jobs as a result.

“This was a difficult but necessary decision to improve the company’s competitive position,” Dell (DELL) spokesman David Frink said. “It is not a commentary on workers in North Carolina or workers in the United States.”

Of course not. As Dell CFO Brian Gladden said during the company’s last earnings call, “Our cost reduction programs have never been more crucial than during this weaker demand environment.”

Still, it’s unfortunate to see the company forced to shift work once done in the states to lower-cost contract manufacturers abroad. This is, after all, Dell’s third big closure in recent memory. The company stopped desktop manufacturing in Lebanon, Tenn., earlier this year, and in 2008, it shuttered a desktop plant in Austin, Texas.

A Software IPO! SolarWinds Prices At $12.50 a Share

Eric Savitz — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:40:22 +0000

Wow, an actual, honest-to-goodness, venture-backed software IPO.

We’re getting one today.

SolarWinds Inc. (SWI), an Austin-based provider of network management software, on Tuesday priced an IPO of 12,116,279 shares at $12.50 apiece. The company is selling 9 million shares in the offer, with selling holders–including various officers of the company and several venture investors–offering the rest. The selling holders will sell up to an additional 1,817,441 shares to cover over-allotments.

The banks on the deal include J.P. Morgan (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS), with Jefferies & Co. (JEF), Thomas Weisel (TWPG) and Ladenburg Thalmann as co-managers.

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It's Still the Economy, Silicon Valley

Kara Swisher — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:29:28 +0000

Last week, the economy took a much needed breather from its toilet-circling behavior of late, with the stock market showing gains for several days running.

Who knows what today will bring, given all the volatility. But most of the big consumer-focused digital companies–I am using Yahoo (YHOO), Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) as proxies for the sector–saw solid upticks over the last five days.

Yahoo shares rose close to four percent, Google was up just over five percent, Microsoft gained almost nine percent, while Amazon leaped 11.3 percent and Apple shot up 12.5 percent.

You could also feel the revelry from afar at the South by Southwest gathering that started this weekend in Austin, Texas, with lots of Web 2.0 partying and discussions of a Twitterific-Facebooktastic future.

Maybe happy days are here again, right?

Um, nope, just as when BoomTown wrote last September in a piece called: “Dear Web 2.0: It’s Still the Economy, Stupid!”

At the time, I wrote:

“Most companies in Web 2.0–despite their massive valuations over the last few years–-aren’t going to have the chance get frothy and light enough to become so poppable.

Instead, most will likely fizzle away quietly, with no exits in sight as the economy weakens and puts a vise grip on companies that cannot survive the very tough financial road ahead.”

Why? Well, because there still is no traction in sight for a true recovery and there will not be any for quite a while.

You need only to look at those big public companies and their stock market performance over the last six months, the true scoreboard, results that will iterate downward throughout the sector.

And, it has been exactly as the econalypse has advertised: Yahoo down 28.3 percent; Microsoft down almost 38 percent; Google dropping 25.2 percent; Amazon off 11.3 percent; and Apple dipping 31.6 percent.

And, of course, most expect that the next round of first-quarter earnings, coming around the end of April, to be weak overall for this group, given their reliance on consumer spending, advertising and general bonhomie that is surely lacking.

That, in turn, means few acquisitions and still no IPOs for Web 2.0 companies. Although only Facebook is likely to try for that gold ring, its prospects are still uneven at best, despite impressive audience growth at the social-networking site.

So, as I said before and will say again: It’s the economy, and Silicon Valley–as was true six months ago–is still not immune.

One bright light when it does manage to turn is that tech will likely see the first bounce, especially compared to pretty much all the other sectors of the economy.

Tech companies are relatively healthy with strong cash balance sheets and have shown a commitment to making cost cuts and layoffs that are long past due.

That’s all good. But, of course, the only thing that will send this all back into truly positive territory will be new products and innovations to introduce when the world is ready to spend again and grow.

As in: A lot more nose to the grindstone and a lot less party-hearty inanity.

What Does Facebook Connect on the iPhone Mean? A Big Web Brain Explains.

Peter Kafka — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 20:45:31 +0000

Maybe it’s because the Web 2.0 bubble has deflated. Or maybe it’s because the remaining Web 2.0 companies have figured out that it’s best not to make try to make noise at the same time everyone else does. But so far, South by Southwest has been blessedly light on rollouts/news/announcements, etc.

Which is probably why Facebook’s presentation on Saturday morning was completely full–there wasn’t much else going on. I didn’t get in myself, but I got the gist: Facebook is rolling out its Facebook Connect network/platform/connecty-thingy to Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone .

But I don’t quite get what that means. I suspect that’s because, as with most other technology rollouts/news/announcements, etc., trying to divine the impact 30 seconds after the fact is pretty pointless. You need to see how this stuff is actually used in real life. That can take days, weeks or months to figure out.

But Charlene Li, who gets paid to tell people what this stuff means, helped me out: It’s an incremental step toward social networks’ inevitable migration to mobile. That was easy!

Li, the former Forrester social network analyst who has hung out her own shingle at the Altimeter Group, didn’t make it into the Facebook event either. But after it was over, we walked into the room where the event had been held and talked about it. Meta!

We also got a brief cameo from an Austin Convention Center employee. If you want to skip that part, head straight to the 45-second mark in the following clip. But we got a giggle out of it, so in it stays.

[ See post to watch video ]

At South by Southwest, a Web 1.0 Blast From the Past

Peter Kafka — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:24:34 +0000

True story: The guy behind me in the cab line at the Austin airport offers to split a car. He seems nice enough, and once we’re in the cab we get to talking. I’m in from New York to check out South by Southwest interactive, the nerd spring break/convention. He’s from Wilmington, N.C. I tell him what I do. He tells me that he doesn’t have a job right now because his company got sold to Yahoo.

Wait a minute. Yahoo (YHOO) hasn’t bought anybody for quite some time. When did his company get acquired? 2002, he tells me. And the reason Richard Johnson hasn’t worked since then is because he didn’t have to. He was the founder of HotJobs, which Yahoo bought for $436 million in cash and stock.

Johnson, who’s a very pleasant fellow, says he hasn’t been in a coma since then. He’s invested in some companies, including stock photo agency Photoshelter. But he’s also spent a lot of time fly-fishing in Wyoming, and says he hasn’t felt compelled to start up something new because he hasn’t found anything that both excites him and that he understands. But he’s hoping that might happen in Austin this weekend.

So there you are: A walking, talking winner from the Web 1.0 era, here to poke around the deflating Web 2.0 bubble for opportunity. Johnson’s particularly interested in Present.ly, a Facebooky/Twittery tool for enterprise customers–he knows the company’s founder and has volunteered to work at the start-up’s booth so he can get a better handle on the business.

Drop by and say hello–and if you get a chance, ask him about his company’s then-famous ad that didn’t run in the 1999 Superbowl.

[Image credits: Bubble/Pink Sherbet Photography; Johnson/University of North Carolina Wilmington]

Applied Materials: Four-Week Austin Shutdown; Earnings Tuesday

Eric Savitz — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 17:35:10 +0000

Applied Materials (AMAT) has notified workers in in Austin, Texas, plant that it will shut down manufacturing operations for four weeks starting June 8, according to the Austin American-Statesman. The newspaper said it believes the company has about 1,750 workers in Austin.

Last week, the company pre-announced results for its fiscal first quarter ended Jan. 25, estimating revenue for the quarter of $1.33 billion, with a loss of 9-11 cents a share. At the time, the company also said that it planned to continue to cut costs, including shutdowns as appropriate.

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