AllThingsD » Revolution

Web's Openness Is Tested in Tunisia

Steve Stecklow — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 12:30:03 +0000

Slim Amamou’s struggle to end Internet censorship in Tunisia has come full circle.

In January, the 33-year-old online activist and software developer was jailed after the government accused him, among other things, of attacking President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s website. Mr. Ben Ali soon fell from power. Mr. Amamou was swept into the interim government, embodying how the youth who had run a revolution from the Internet had now gained a toehold in power.

Now he is back on the outside, worrying about what he sees as a new threat of Web censorship.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

You Say You Had a Revolution: What Does It Take to Build a Start-Up in Egypt?

Drake Martinet — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 22:06:20 +0000

What does it take to build disruptive businesses in the midst of a revolution? As it turns out, it requires a culturally uncommon aversion to risk.

Amr Ramadan, Ziad Aly and Haytham El-Fadeel all hail from Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt — places recently in the international spotlight for news of political disruption.

In that time, though, these three have built high-tech businesses bucking the Egyptian trope of an antiquity-based economy.

Ramadan started Vimov, which developed Weather HD, the top selling weather app for Apple’s iPad. Aly is CEO of ALZWAD, a mobile content platform for feature phones in the Middle East, and El-Fadeel has built Kngine, a Wolfram Alpha-like infosearch service.

The trio recently did a quick tech tour of the U.S. entrepreneurial hotspots — Manhattan and Silicon Valley — on a trip led by Ahmed El Alfi.

Alfi is CEO of Sawari Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm invested in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA is the shorthand for the area).

So, I sat down with the group during the Silicon Valley leg of their tour to pick their brains on the realities of building businesses amidst so much political disruption.

U.S. pundits have been banging away, asserting that the revolution was really fomented by an overabundance of young, educated and unemployed Egyptians.

I asked the trio if those same circumstances might make for a good start-up culture.

Aly agreed that there had been a change since the revolution and he now sees a necessary boldness among founders that wasn’t there before.

“I saw an idea last week that’s a platform around where people can go out — similar to Yelp. The founder came up with the idea and a prototype,” he said. “Before [the revolution] you would never have seen this.”

Even though conditions were right for digital disruption, Ramadan explained that cultural attitudes about risk of failure remain even after the government has turned over.

Because while a failed start-up or two in Silicon Valley can be a mark of experience for an entrepreneur, he observed that in Egypt prior failures just mean you have a history of failing.

But he did acknowledge that things are very much in flux.

“Before [the revolution], the way to get ahead was find a government job and stay off the radar; now that doesn’t seem to be as much the case,” he added. “I think more young people are willing to look at a start-up and say ‘Why not?’”

Alfi, the venture capitalist who arranged the trip and who is invested in companies in the MENA region, said that enough money isn’t really an issue — smart money is.

“It’s the Middle East, there’s plenty of money around,” he said. “What we lack are enough experienced people to help guide these companies.”

The lack of “smart” investment is complicated by what Ramadan described as Egypt’s cash economy. Because there isn’t a large community of investors taking risks on tech start-ups, Egyptian companies have to turn a profit from day one.

“The idea of losing money for a couple of years … is not something common in Egypt,” he said. “Even the concept of credit is not really there.”

In other words, profit from day one in Egypt is the only way to pay for day two.

“So, a country with a decent crop of engineers and a fresh start seemed to me like a reasonable place to develop a start-up community, especially one that could build products for the Middle East, based around cultural norms that foreign companies might have difficulty designing for,” he added.

Aly, whose mobile content delivery platform is targeted only at Middle Eastern users, believes that the combination of pervasive 3G and 4G phone service and an uptick in social media interest post revolution are good signs for companies entering his market.

“Mobile is the primary [and, often, only] Internet device, as opposed to more mature markets,” he said. “Even the iPhone, until recently, had to be connected to iTunes.”

All three men noted that Twitter and Facebook were the social media platforms of the masses in Egypt, but Aly added a footnote to the popular (and much debated) news narrative about the Egyptian revolution and social media.

Rather than heavy social media usage facilitating a revolution, the opposite seems to be happening.

During the revolution, Twitter was the only way to get reliable information even if not everyone was on it,” he said. “Since the revolution we are seeing much more interest than before.”

The group did acknowledge the difficulties they face building operations in such a politically and socially dynamic region.

But most of their worries echoed the kinds of refrains one might hear from Silicon Valley companies: Difficulties attracting developers, trouble finding good advice and learning the lessons of surviving rapid growth seem to be at the top of everyone’s list — regardless of geography.

But the combo of education, mobile device use and social media adoption in Egypt seems like fertile enough ground for start-ups, at least to Alfi, who will launch an incubator there this year.

He thinks what the region needs most are a few good home runs for investors.

Referencing one such exit, Leslie Jump, Alfi’s colleague at Sawari Ventures, added: “We need a success story. Like the ICQ deal was for Israel, a high-profile exit would bring interest in investing in Egypt.”

Egypt, Al Gore and the .XXX Domain–Bill Clinton Keynotes ICANN in San Francisco

Drake Martinet — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 08:34:29 +0000

Last night, Bill Clinton–arguably the first Internet President–got a little nostalgic.

“We are actually here today because the people sitting in your seats 20 years ago imagined a different world, though they didn’t know exactly how it would come out,” he said in a keynote speech for the 40th meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco. “They just knew that a networked world would probably work better than a bureaucratic one.”

Yes, indeed, the world has come a long way from when Clinton was in office.

In fact, Clinton noted that to the 800 attendees last night–correctly calling himself “the president at the dawn of the Internet age”–that there were only 50 Web sites in 1993 when he was inaugurated, and 36 million when his term was up in 2001.

Clinton’s speech, a paid appearance, touched on his history with ICANN, as well as the intersection of the Internet, geopolitics, poverty, the global distribution of wealth and infrastructure.

ICANN is the multinational, non-governmental organization that researches, debates and enforces decisions that affect how traffic gets sent around the pipes of the Internet.

It decides, for instance, that Libyan domain names end in .ly.

Clinton’s focus last night was urging the international crowd to try to use technology and their positions around it to build physical and financial infrastructure systems for poorer nations.

He called for a renewed focus on technology-sector job growth and touched the geopolitical implications of free access to the Internet.

Invoking the recent revolution in Egypt, he said that ICANN needed to ensure universal access to a free Internet and the continued vibrancy of the Web.

“That’s why it’s important that you want the Internet to stay forever young,” said Clinton. “One hundred years from now, you want somebody in some godforsaken place that’s been beat down to be able to do what the kids in Cairo did.”

At the conclusion of the address, Clinton sat on stage with ICANN President and CEO Rod Beckstorm and answered pre-selected questions.

The former President mostly stayed above the fray of the major debates surrounding this ICANN meeting, only peripherally mentioning the next day’s headline issue–the possible adoption of the .xxx top level domain.

That issue has seethed online for several years, and was supposed to come to a head Thursday. Several attendees related that a troupe of porn stars were expected at the following day’s meetings to protest the adoption of the .xxx domain for adult sites on the Web, as a modern day scarlet letter.

President Clinton’s most direct response was related to sales tax being levied on online purchases. It was his policy preference at the beginning of the e-commerce era to keep sales tax out of online transactions, so that those companies could have the chance to grow, he explained. He said that e-commerce didn’t seem to need the help anymore, and Amazon’s complaints about recent changes sounded like “a high class problem.”

ICANN 40 wraps up Friday, but won’t conclude before addressing other key topics, such as solving the global shortage of IP addresses–the unique numbers that identify every Internet-connected device–and aiding the proliferation of the next generation of online security protocols.

Adding more numbers to the list of IPs, or verifying a site’s identity, doesn’t sound complex. But, on the global scale, even simple changes require massive coordination.

Another issue: Lack of international enforcement could create a haven for online fraud in countries that can least afford it.

It was on this point that the former President’s speech and ICANN’s actual agenda converged.

“We need to ask ourselves if we are forming a more perfect union across the globe,” he said, urging those in the room not to get mired in small disagreements.

His advice: Focus on the larger mission of ensuring that the benefits of Internet access will be distributed equally, worldwide and beyond the foreseeable future.

“You have to be vigilant, because at some point all institutions are led by people more interested in maintaining the present than creating the future,” he said.

Word, Bill.

Exclusive: Former AOLers Steve Case and Ted Leonsis Raising $400 Million Growth Equity Fund

Kara Swisher — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 19:58:38 +0000

Steve Case and Ted Leonsis are bringing their old AOL band back together once again, this time by raising a $400 million growth equity fund.

The pair, the legendary top execs who rocketed AOL to the top of the Internet business in the 1990s, are now making the rounds in New York and elsewhere to pitch their new investment vehicle, sources said.

The money raised will be part of an entity called Revolution Growth, which already exists within Case’s larger Washington, D.C.-based company called Revolution.

While both Leonsis and Case have done a lot of investing in the Web 2.0 space both together (Revolution Money) and apart (the Groupon and LivingSocial social buying sites, respectively), this is the first time they are creating a more formal investment partnership.

Another former AOL exec, Donn Davis is the third partner in Revolution Growth.

Sources said its focus will be on companies just beyond the venture stage to bring them to scale.

Everyone, Please Tweet About New Book About the Egypt Revolution's Tweets

Kara Swisher — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 20:21:01 +0000

That was fast.

Which is probably apt, given the subject matter of a book coming out soon made up of real-time Twitter from Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

“Tweets from Tahrir,” which is being published by Or Books on April 21, says it is chronicling “an entirely new way of telling history.”

It will indeed be interesting to see all the myriad of tweets compiled in one place.

And the impact of social tools on the various protests in the Mideast will definitely be great fodder for some historian in the future.

That said, some think the focus on Silicon Valley social tools, such as Twitter and Facebook, rather than on the people’s will, is overhyped.

Still, social networking is simply a reflection of humanity, so examining its impact is well worth a read.

Plus, tweets are only 140 characters, so it is an easy one too.

Here is the press release on the book:

TWEETS FROM TAHRIR

Egypt’s Revolution as It Unfolded, in the Words of the People Who Made It

Edited by NADIA IDLE and ALEX NUNNS

With a foreword by AHDAF SOUEIF

Gsquare86M Gigi Ibrahim
Everyone in Cairo who wants Mubarak out and stands for justice come to Tahrir NOW!
Feb 2

“Without the new media the Egyptian Revolution could not have happened in the way that it did. The causes of the revolution were many; deep-rooted and long seated. The turning moment had come–but it was the instant and wide-spread nature of the new media that made it possible to recognise the moment and to push it into such an effective manifestation.”

–Ahdaf Soueif

The Twitter accounts of the activists who brought heady days of revolution to Egypt in January and February this year paint an exhilarating picture of an uprising in real-time. Thousands of young people documented on cell phones every stage of the action, as it happened. This book brings together a selection of key tweets in a compelling, fast-paced narrative, allowing the story of the uprising to be told directly by the people in Tahrir Square.

Some of the activists were ‘citizen journalists’, using Twitter to report on what was happening. Others used the social network to organize, communicating the next steps necessary for the revolution to move forward. Nearly everyone online gave instant reactions to the extraordinary events occurring before their eyes.

History has never before been recorded in this fashion. The tweet limit of 140 characters evidently concentrated the feelings of those using Twitter. Raw emotions burst from their messages, whether frantic alarm at attacks from pro-government thugs or delirious happiness at the fall of the dictator. To read these tweets is to embark a rollercoaster ride, from the surprise and excitement of the first demonstration, to the horror of the violence that claimed hundreds of lives, to the final ecstasy of victory.

Many of those tweeting also took photographs with their phones and these are used to illustrate the book, providing remarkable snapshots from the heart of the action.

Edited by young activists Alex Nunns and Nadia Idle, an Egyptian who was in Tahrir Square when Mubarak fell, Tweets from Tahrir is a highly original take on one of the most important and dramatic events in recent world politics. The result is as gripping as any thriller–but it’s all real.

Bill Gross's UberMedia Raises $17.5 Million From Accel, Index and Steve Case

Kara Swisher — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 17:04:37 +0000

UberMedia, which just bought TweetDeck for $30 million in equity last week, has raised $17.5 million, in a round led by Accel Partners.

The valuation for the Pasadena, Calif., start-up founded by well-known entrepreneur Bill Gross (pictured here)–which was actually struck some month ago–is $40 million.

Accel’s Jim Breyer will join the board of UberMedia, maker of social media reading and posting tools, which is currently largely aimed at the Twitter ecosystem.

“We are hoping to work very closely with Twitter, which is certainly our goal, as well as other social media platforms like Facebook,” said Breyer in an interview with BoomTown this morning, answering a question about previous tensions between Twitter and UberMedia. “There will be a lot of efforts to monetize Twitter and there is no silver bullet.”

Index Ventures and Steve Case’s Revolution Ventures also participated in the round.

The company did not reveal the amount raised, nor the valuation for UberMedia.

But many like him are trying to find a way to monetize the huge microblogging platform–including Twitter–and take advantage of its enormous scale.

Gross founded the start-up last spring.

Armed with $3.5 million in venture funding from a group of leading investors, including Index, Revolution, betaworks, First Round Capital and angel investors such as Mahalo’s Jason Calacanis and BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis.

Started in Gross’s Idealab start-up incubator and called TweetUp (and then PostUp), it was initially cast as a keyword-based bidding marketplace akin to Overture/Goto.com, the first paid search system he created a decade ago.

TweetUp also offered an organic search service to surface the best tweets. This put it at odds on several fronts with Twitter, which began to aggressively move to take over key parts of its business that had largely been left to third-party developers.

That still remains UberMedia’s essential goal, and Breyer hopes that the new investment will show Twitter that UberMedia hopes to work in harmony with it, as other developers have done successfully with Facebook. (Accel and Breyer himself are big investors in the social networking giant, so he should know.)

“Like Twitter, we want to drive the customer experience,” he said, pointing out successes such as the Zynga gaming service. “This is a lot like Facebook several years ago and cooperation worked out well for everyone.”

Here’s the official press release:

Accel Partners Leads Investment Round in UberMedia, Jim Breyer Joins Board of Directors

PASADENA, Calif.–February 14, 2011–UberMedia, the leading independent provider of applications for reading and posting to Twitter and other social media platforms, today announced that it completed a financing round led by Jim Breyer of Accel Ventures. Existing investors Steve Case of Revolution Ventures and Danny Rimer of Index Ventures also participated.

“At UberMedia, our goal is to enhance the Twitter experience with functionality in our clients and to be the best partner with Twitter in growing and enhancing their ecosystem,” said Bill Gross, Founder and CEO. “In particular, the addition of Jim Breyer to our board will really enable us to succeed at this mission. His experience on the boards of Wal-Mart, Facebook, Marvel Entertainment, Dell and so many other high-profile consumer brands will be particularly helpful.”

“We’ve been watching closely Bill’s efforts at UberMedia to build upon the ground-breaking communications platform created by Twitter,” said Jim Breyer of Accel Partners. “We see a tremendous business in the kinds of innovations in user experience being developed at UberMedia. The result of these efforts will be an expansion in the number and variety of people engaged with Twitter as well as a method for advertisers to reach consumers in highly targeted and relevant ways.”

And here are two video interview I did with Gross last April when the company was founded:

[ See post to watch video ]

Verizon Wireless Touts 4G Network, Shows Off Devices

Ina Fried — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 21:03:21 +0000

Well, we didn’t learn much new about Verizon Wireless’s new network or devices at the Ivan Seidenberg keynote on Thursday, but he did say that the company would have a preview of its LTE device lineup at this afternoon’s press conference.

Here’s hoping there are a few surprises here beyond the previously announced Motorola Atrix and Xoom.

The event is set to kick off shortly and Mobilized will have live coverage here.

1:05 pm: Well, despite timely warnings to get in our seats beginning at 12:45, it’s now five minutes after and the techno is still pumping.

1:11 pm: Okay. Getting started. Loud music gets louder. Cue video.

Tony Melone and Marni Walden take the stage and CEO Daniel Mead (at least I think it is Mead) is doing an intro.

1:15 pm: Another video now playing with partners. Since HTC CEO Peter Chou is in there, I think it is probably safe to say their oft-rumored LTE smartphone will make an appearance.

1:16 pm: Samsung and Ericsson execs also in the video.

1:17 pm: Verizon exec now touting the advantages of its 4G network including its spectrum, which it says will give it the best in-building coverage.

Also talking about how it is sharing its spectrum with rural service providers.

1:18 pm: Mead: “We’re very pleased to be part of bringing broadband to rural America.”

1:21 pm: Mead hands off to CTO Tony Melone to talk 4G and LTE.

Melone says that the company knows there is a lot of skepticism of the company’s move to go straight to LTE but that the bet is paying off with more networks and running faster than planned.

“The customer feedback we are getting is everything we had hoped for and then some,” Melone says.

Melone talks about 4G LTE plans.

Thirty-six months from now we will have the nation covered with LTE, Melone says. Two-thirds of the population will be covered in 2012. This year alone, he says, Verizon will add 140 new markets, including places like Little Rock, Detroit and Sioux Falls.

1:26 pm: On to devices.

Ten devices coming by mid-year being shown on stage: Four smartphones, two tablets, two notebooks and two mobile hotspots.

1:33 pm: LG CEO shows off the LG Revolution, what appears to be a slimmish smartphone.

Next up, Skype’s CEO talks about a new partnership that will allow for Skype to be always on and integrated into the address book of all of Verizon’s LTE smartphones,

1:34 pm: He’s followed by HTC CEO Peter Chou, who introduces the HTC Thunderbolt.

Chou says he’s been personally testing and using the Thunderbolt, which features the new Skype video chatting along with HTC’s Sense user interface.

“Let me tell you, it’s blazing fast,” Chou says.

Other features include a built-in 4G hotspot and a 4.3-inch Super LCD screen.

1:37 pm: He thanks Qualcomm and Google engineers that worked together to create the device, so guessing this one isn’t using Nvidia’s Tegra chip.

Next up is Electronic Arts VP Travis Boatman. EA’s mobile games lineup ranges from Monopoly and Tetris to Need for Speed and the FIFA 11 soccer game.

The new mobile version of Rock Band for Verizon’s LTE network lets people form a band and remotely jam over the network.

Samsung executive goes onstage to show off three devices for the LTE network, One is a mobile hotspot, one is a smartphone and the other is a 4G version of the Galaxy Tab.

Phone packs 4.3-inch Super Amoled Plus display, which is said to boost colors and offer improved display. It’s got an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with HD video and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video chat.

The tablet has a 1.2GHz processor developed by Samsung, while the hotspots provide connections to up to five users at a time.

Most impressive is the fact that the Samsung executive pulled all three devices out of various pockets.

Marni Walden shows off the remaining devices–a Novatel MiFi hotpot that works with both 3G and 4G networks.

There is also a Compaq Netbook, an HP notebook, as well as the previously announced Motorola Xoom and Motorola Droid Bionic.

1:47 pm: On to Q&A (hoping laptop No. 2 holds out through the end of question time.)

First question has to do with LTE speeds, which often exceed the 5- to 12-megabit speeds promised. Mead says that the company’s goal is to meet the promised speed range once the network is fully loaded, something that is not the case today.

Next question is on battery life. Melone says the company believes it will be able to meet customer expectations in that regard.

The company says it won’t announce pricing or rate plans for the 4G products, beyond noting its current prices for 4G laptop cards and service.

As for simultaneous voice and data, Walden says the company intends that at least some of its 4G launch devices will support talking and accessing data at the same time.

“It could be on some devices and not all,” Walden says.

Walden also confirms all the phones it showed Thursday are running Android.

1:55 pm: Asked about net neutrality, Mead says that what the industry needs is “unfettered development.”

“We think the free market system works very well, and we don’t need a lot of heavy intervention.”

Revolution CEO Steve Case at D8: The Full, Uncut Video

Kara Swisher — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 21:33:19 +0000

Today, please enjoy this interview I did with former AOL (AOL) kingpin Steve Case, who is still an active investor in the digital space, especially in the healthcare arena.

Of course, he is most famous for building the Internet’s first mega-company and for merging it with Time Warner (TWX), which became the worst corporate marriage in recent history.

Case did not shy away from talking about AOL–which had its 25th anniversary this year–and much more in this interview at D8.

Here’s the full video of the session:

[ See post to watch video ]

Want to see it bigger? Click here.

Revolution CEO Steve Case at D8: AOL Could Come Back–Look What Happened to Apple

Peter Kafka — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 20:56:16 +0000

Steve Case is most famous for building America Online, which became the Internet’s first mega-company, and for merging it with Time Warner (TWX), which became the worst corporate marriage in recent history.

But AOL (AOL) is 25 years old, and the AOL-Time Warner deal is a decade old. What has Steve Case been doing since then?

Investing, in a lot of different stuff. His Revolution holding company has stakes in everything from Revolution Health, a wellness/fitness/medical advice Web site, to Cacique, a Costa Rican resort, to Clearspring, a Web widget company. Late last year, Case sold Revolution Money to American Express (AXP) for $300 million. And Zipcar, another portfolio company, has just filed for a $75 million IPO.

Liveblog

“We meet again,” sighs Kara. “I just can’t quit you.” “We’re off to a good start,” says Steve.

1:58 pm: Kara–Let’s go back 25 years. Talk about the beginning of AOL.

1:59 pm: Case–Well, Zuckerberg was one year old.

I got into this when I was in college, reading Alvin Toffler’s “The Third Wave.” It was riveting.

We started in 1985, in partnership with Commodore. It was a total bet on community. We believed the killer app was community. Chat rooms, bulletin boards, etc.

On the road show, no one believed us. Which was fair, because we didn’t have many customers seven, eight years into it. Needed lots of technology to catch up a bit. And needed people to catch up, too.

2:01 pm: Kara–What put you over the top? All of those discs?

2:02 pm: Case–It wasn’t the discs. It was the content. By 1992, ’93, many more people had computers in their homes, connectivity was better. The Internet was evolving–it wasn’t legal for us to connect to the Internet until 1991.

It took a while before we were considered an Internet company. Even when we went public, we were an interactive company, or online services. Had to morph as market evolved.

2:04 pm: And at some point News Corp. (NWS) sued you?

2:04 pm: Yeah, in 1998. they were upset about an online game they thought we were excluding. There was a lot of antitrust chatter then. Those were the good old days.

Kara: Well, you proved them wrong, the idea that you were too powerful.

Case: “I’m not going to comment on that.”

2:05 pm: On the Time Warner deal: Made sense for us and our shareholders at the time. It made strategic sense. But as Thomas Edison said, vision without execution is hallucination.

I’m recalling, by the way, that one of our strategies was to buy Apple (AAPL), hire Steve Jobs and put him in charge. It was an idea that was floated.

Big point is that with the right leadership, which my group, including me, couldn’t provide, we were set up to succeed. Look at stuff like iTunes, YouTube, etc.–all of that could have come from that company.

2:07 pm: I stepped down after the merger. After a couple of years, I started making one-off investments. Then created Revolution as a holding company. Runs through portfolio, which you can see on his site.

2:09 pm: Kara–You were early on a lot of important trends. Oh, and tell me about your favorite device that isn’t the iPad (thanks, Kara!).

2:10 pm: I’m interested in the social media side, and there’s some stuff bubbling there that reminds me of the early days. Also, mobile and location-based stuff, really. But really, how the Internet can be a platform to change the world. Even companies like Zipcar and our resorts properties only work because of the Internet.

Kara: What’s the relevance of the Internet to a company that helps rich people travel?

Case: Booking tickets on the Web [hmm]. Health care is the one that can really benefit from the Web. Runs through Revolution Health portfolio.

2:13 pm: Case–Turns out I’m much more interested in businesses that touch consumers. Like Steve Jobs said, I like that better than enterprise.

And health care is really a wellness push. Because health care as we define it is really sick care.

2:14 pm: Kara–Talk about Twitter and Sarah Silverman.

Case starts to answer, but Kara interrupts and steers him somewhere else.

Case: I really didn’t want to do a blog in the last 10 years, because that seemed like work. But Twitter made sense. I signed up early, like three years ago, but like a lot of people, it didn’t make sense to me. About a year and a half ago it made sense. Less about what you’re doing than what you’re interested in.

2:15 pm: I’ve always liked that interaction part. I wish we’d thought of Twitter–we were headed in that direction with buddy lists, etc.

2:16 pm: Kara–Tease out the different big Web businesses: Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare.

Case: Facebook’s obviously a real company with real revenue. Twitter and Foursquare are much earlier, but they could be on the cusp of a real business with real revenue.

Kara: If you were a 19-year-old college student, what would you be looking at?

Case: I’m hoping that the Internet just becomes everyday life. You don’t call it email, it’s just mail. Etc.

2:18 pm: Big opportunity for Web integration in health: Wi-Fi pedometers, Internet-connected scales, etc. In most cases, remote diagnostics would be able to help you solve and correct problems.

And I think letting people know about healthier choices can solve a lot of problems, and the Web can help with that.

2:19 pm: Kara–Make some predictions. You’re a visionary!

On Yahoo (YHOO): Case pauses. “I don’t know.” This industry changes a lot. I don’t feel like I’m in a good place to make a judgment. Do remember that iconic brands, with large audiences: You should never give up for dead. Remember what happened to Apple.

On AOL: Obviously it’s not what it was 10 years ago, which is disappointing to see. But still a lot of revenue, cash flow, visitors. A lot of assets for somebody to take forward.

On Apple: Nobody would have imagined this 13 years ago, when Steve came back. Remember that it was worth $1 billion and left for dead. By the way, I’ve told Steve this–I’d love to see Apple focus on health care.

2:22 pm: On Facebook, social networking: Really big. Not going away. That kind of communicating is fundamental to human behavior.

On Hollywood: I do think it’s puzzling. We had a hard time getting VC money into the Internet, but Time Warner would spend $1 billion a year betting on movies. They were very comfortable with that, and so many fail.

2:24 pm: Kara–How do you want to be remembered?

Case: “That sounds kind of like a gravestone question.”

Kara: “Okay.”

Case: I want to be remembered, and my team to be remembered, as mostly a force for good, able to get tens of millions of people to take the Internet seriously and integrate it into their everyday lives. We helped get America online.

2:26 pm: A question from analyst Mary Meeker: Please remind us of the market value of AOL when you went public. And please talk about challenges you had when you were growing (“America offline,” etc.)

Case: We raised $10 million or $15 million, had about $30 million in revenue and were valued at $70 million.

As to the challenges–all of them were double-edged swords. For instance, regarding downtime, it took a better part of a decade to get people to take us seriously, and we let them down. Then again, the fact that people cared about our service problems made it clear that they took what we offered them seriously. It took us a year or so to work through that.

2:29 pm: We had a lot of ups and down. Mostly downs. It was a decade of building. One of my worries now, is that there are so many companies that are built to flip. I wish people took a longer view, and I wish VCs did as well.

2:30 pm: Case: I went to school in Hawaii with Obama.

Kara: How was he?

Case: I don’t know. I was a senior and he was a freshman.

A note about our coverage: This liveblog is not an official transcript of the conversation that occurred onstage. Rather, it is a compilation of quotes, paraphrased statements and ad-lib observations written and posted to the Web as quickly as possible. It is not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one.

Social E-Commerce Goes Into Overdrive: LivingSocial Raises Another $14 Million

Kara Swisher — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:30:29 +0000

Could the social group-buying space get any frothier?

Well, yes, it could.

After the recent $135 million funding of Groupon that valued the Chicago start-up at upwards of an eye-popping $1 billion, rival LivingSocial announced to today that it had raised a more modest $14 million in a Series C round.

The Washington, D.C. start-up had raised $25 million in a Series B venture financing only a month ago. And it raised $10 million on top of that since 2008.

Sources estimated the valuation for LivingSocial is several hundred million dollars now.

The newest round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners; Earlier investors U.S. Venture Partners, Grotech Ventures and Steve Case’s Revolution are also participating.

Ironically, Case’s former No. 2 at AOL (AOL), Ted Leonsis has been an early investor in Groupon.

LivingSocial said it will use the new pile of cash to expand to dozens of new markets, adding it was launching four new cities now: Portland, Orange County, Charlotte and Philadelphia.

It now operates in 18 cities across the country.

For those in Silicon Valley who do not consider these prices for all these social e-commerce sites high at all, BoomTown is here to tell you that in the real world the figure is not actually modest, except in comparison.

But LivingSocial will need every penny if it is to compete with Groupon and a growing spate of competitors in the local space, much as is also happening in the social status update arena.

The local outcome for most will inevitably be a sale to a big Internet company like Amazon (AMZN).

Or oblivion, especially since so many similar offerings makes the whole market confusing for both local businesses and customers

In general, most offer a daily deal with a huge discount on a wide range of products and services–from spas to skydiving–in dozens of U.S. cities, for large groups of potential buyers on the Web, through email or via social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Using social tools, the idea is use collective buying power to get low prices and push customers to local businesses.

If a deal reaches the number of buyers it needs, which can be in the thousands, these services sell vouchers to the consumers and collect a hefty fee for the sale from the businesses it sends customers to.

The plus for many small businesses is to get a crack at a lot of new consumers–think of it as social networking lead-generation.

This kind of thing has been tried before, of course, centering on consumers who group together to get discounts on items by purchasing in bulk.

In Web 1.0, there were many group-buying sites, most of which failed badly. One of the more high-profile ones, Mercata, received $90 million in funding from investors, including Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures.

No matter in 2010!

That’s due to the VC frenzy going on, spurred by winner-take-all theories–Groupon, for example, got most of its recent mountain of cash from champion Russian overspenders, Digital Sky Technologies.

However it turns out, here is LivingSocial’s official press release:

LivingSocial Raises $14 Million Series C Round Led by Lightspeed Venture Partners; Launches in Portland, Orange County, Charlotte and Philadelphia

Company Also Begins Offering Hyperlocal Deals in Seattle Area–Users Can Now Get Deals Even Closer to their Homes

$14 Million Round Comes on Heels of $25 Million Series B Announcement Last Month

Washington D.C., April 29, 2010–LivingSocial, the social commerce leader behind LivingSocial Deals and top Facebook applications Visual Bookshelf and Pick Your Five, today announced that it has completed a $14 million Series C round of venture funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with U.S. Venture Partners, Grotech Ventures and Steve Case’s Revolution, LLC participating. Because of the rapid growth, and high user demand, LivingSocial will use the capital infusion to expand into additional markets–bringing Deals to dozens more cities throughout the U.S. in 2010. This additional funding comes on the heels of the company’s recent $25 million Series B round announced last month.

“We’ve known and admired the LivingSocial team for a long time, and I have bought many of their terrific local offers. They’ve done an excellent job of growing their user base through smart media buying and excellent knowledge of social channels and virality,” said Jeremy Liew, managing director of Lightspeed Venture Partners. “With this financing round, LivingSocial is very well positioned to bring their great offers to even more people.”

LivingSocial is also launching its Deals program in four new markets: Portland, Orange County, Charlotte and Philadelphia. This brings LivingSocial live in 18 cities across the country with major plans to expand to dozens of markets throughout the year.

“We’re constantly receiving requests from our users to expand and launch in their markets, and this recent funding round will allow us to do just that,” said Tim O’Shaughnessy, CEO and co-founder of LivingSocial. “We’re really excited to introduce LivingSocial to Portland, Orange County, Charlotte and Philadelphia to continue generating huge savings for our users and even bigger returns for our merchants.”

LivingSocial users throughout the country saved an average of more than $32 each in March, and have saved tens of millions of dollars since the launch of Deals in 2009. By signing up for LivingSocial’s free daily online service, people are saving an average of 50-70% at their favorite places, such as the hottest local restaurants, spas, sporting events, hotels, and other local attractions.

Because LivingSocial wants to give consumers more availability to the program, the company is launching hyperlocal deals for the Seattle area. Now consumers in areas like Tacoma and Bellevue will start getting deals targeted to their location, in addition to Seattle proper. Hyperlocal deals not only help more consumers explore new things in their city, but these deals also provide merchants with a greater opportunity to reach local audiences on the LivingSocial Deals platform.

LivingSocial is now live in 18 markets including: Washington, D.C., New York City, Boston, Atlanta, Austin, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, the Twin Cities, Chicago, Raleigh Durham, Denver, San Diego, the San Fernando Valley, Portland, Orange County, Charlotte and Philadelphia. Dozens of additional cities are expected to roll out in the coming months. For more information or to sign up your city, go to http://livingsocial.com.

Fred Davis to Join CBS's Quincy Smith at New Silicon Valley Boutique Bank Venture

Kara Swisher — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 06:26:02 +0000

Fred Davis, the well-known entertainment lawyer, will join CBS Interactive head Quincy Smith at a new banking and advisory firm in Silicon Valley, according to several sources.

Davis (pictured here) is a senior partner at Davis, Shapiro, Lewit & Hayes. The entertainment law firm–which is based in both New York and Los Angeles–has an emphasis in music, digital rights, and branded entertainment, and works with a wide range of digital media companies, including YouTube.

After a BoomTown post in late October on Smith’s plans, CBS (CBS) confirmed the move, which will take place in January, noting that his new firm would remain an adviser to the media giant under a multiyear contract.

Davis is an interesting choice for the firm, which Smith hopes will emulate Hambrecht & Quist, one of the more influential among Silicon Valley investment banks during the first Web boom.

Along with Davis, Smith has been joined by CBS’s Mike Marquez.

Smit has also been collecting a high-profile group of advisers to the still-unnamed firm, including Danny Rimer of Index Ventures, former Netscape Communications CFO Peter Currie, and David Golden, EVP of former AOL CEO Steve Case’s Revolution LLC.

Revolution's Steve Case: The Entire D5 Interview With Kara Swisher

Kara Swisher — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 07:29:27 +0000

Well, we meet again, Steve Case and I!

You might think after two books about the rise (book one) and fall (book two) of AOL, the iconic company Case helmed, that we’d both be flat out sick of each other.

Actually, not so and, in fact, illness was a big topic for this discussion onstage–many of Case’s new ventures center around health.

By way of background, D: All Things Digital, the annual tech and media conference Walt Mossberg and I host, has been sold out with a long wait list every year we have put it on.

That has meant only a few hundred people can see the interviews and also demos we do live onstage with some of the tech and media industry’s most interesting and important players and products.

The lineups have included Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs, as well as Eric Schmidt of Google, IAC’s Barry Diller, Meg Whitman of eBay, Cisco’s John Chambers and many others.

And we’ve demoed stuff like the Treo when it first came out, as well as digital toilets, Wi-Fi phones and much more.

We usually post the photos and videos of the interviews and demos six or more months after they take place on a separate conference site. This year, our Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski liveblogged D5 and also posted video highlights from all of the sessions immediately on our newly launched site here.

Now, we are posting videos of every session of the 2007 conference here, in full, and we have made all our photo galleries, hosted by SmugMug and mostly shot by our fabulous Asa Mathat, public too. You can also access our videos via the site’s master player here.

Every day, I am going to highlight a different interview or demo from the conference.

Here is Case:

[ See post to watch video ]

Revolution Chairman and CEO Steve Case

John Paczkowski — Wed, 30 May 2007 22:36:15 +0000

It is the largest industry in the country, and almost everyone is unhappy with it.”

–Steve Case comments on the health-care industry in the Washington Post, April 5, 2005

Years after leading America Online into one of the most disastrous mergers of the century with Time Warner, AOL founder Steve Case has reinvented himself, launching Revolution, a new venture he hopes will shake up the health-care and wellness industry. The question is, will it shake things up in the way AOL shook up Time Warner? And what does health care have in common with the Internet, anyway?

[ See post to watch video ]

3:30 p.m. PDT: Kara’s first question: Where is Web 2.0 right now (and I use that term loosely, because I hate it)? Case says it’s great to see mainstream acceptance of these technologies. The question is how do you take these things to the next level and apply them to other industries, like health care.
On AOL: “I’m disappointed that 10 years ago we were in the catbird seat and now, for a variety of reasons, we’ve lost that.” What would he do with AOL today? Case says “to be honest, I don’t care that much. … I closed that chapter years ago.”
3:35 p.m.: Conversation moves to a discussion of Case’s new company, Revolution. Case says he wants to build companies that change the world, iconic companies. He’s not interested in building companies simply to flip them. He wants to build companies that improve industries that are ripe for disruption, what he calls philanthropic companies.
3:40 p.m. Why health care? Case says it’s a mix. “Personal experience and also the recognition that this is an industry that needs change. … People feel they are not in control of their health–they feel disenfranchised. … So we said let’s bring a fresh perspective to this and build companies that empower consumers to take charge of their health.” Case says health care needs to become more of a retail business. Revolution is apparently supporting what amounts to a collection of retail health clinics. In a nutshell, Case says basic health care should be as accessible as Starbucks.
3:45 p.m. Case says Revolution will offer packaged, relevant health-care information online. There’s also a community function, he notes, as well as a records-storage issue. People can store their medical records electronically at Revolution. Kara notes that the latter is an idea that seems rife with privacy implications: Will consumers actually trust Revolution with their medical records?
3:50 p.m. Kara wonders how the medical community feels about Revolution’s plans to allow people to rate doctors and other health-care providers. Case admits it’s a concern, but one that’s far outweighed by the consumer’s need for a personalized approach to medicine. Case envisions a future world in which we manage our health information like a stock portfolio.
3:55 p.m. In Revolution’s early days, Case says, the goal is to provide a brand of coverage that is characterized by fresh thinking and ideas.
4 p.m. Q&A:
What about Revolution developing a kind of “concierge” health service, with plans tailored to individuals? Case says that Revolution will help consumers with insurance companies, dealing with claims and so forth, while keeping mechanisms in place to protect privacy.
4:05 p.m.Revolution will also help people choose doctors, Case says, noting that the way most people pick doctors is completely haphazard. “We’re trying to figure out ways to move the system forward,” he says.
Case closes by coming back to a common theme: “You’ve got to have a more holistic way of considering health.”