AllThingsD » San Francisco

Gree's New San Francisco Office to Accommodate Hiring Spree

Tricia Duryee — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:36:28 +0000

Gree, the Tokyo-based company that bought OpenFeint for $100 million earlier this year and is trying to build a global mobile social network, has aggressive hiring plans in San Francisco. The company said it plans to move into a new 41,000-square-foot office this spring, which will enable it to double its headcount to about 300 employees. The game development studio will focus on developing free-to-play games aimed at the international market.

TasteMakerX Raises $1.8M for Mobile Social App Platform

Kara Swisher — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:00:32 +0000

TastemakerX, a San Francisco start-up that is developing a social mobile platform focused on “targeted taste graphs,” said it had raised $1.8 million in funding from a variety of venture firms, including Guggenheim Partners, Baseline Ventures, True Ventures and Tekton Ventures, as well as angel investors. The company said it will release its TastemakerX Music mobile app as a private beta in early March.

Klout Acquires Local App Blockboard

Liz Gannes — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:00:05 +0000

Social media influence scorer Klout has made its first acquisition: A local app maker called Blockboard.

The deal indicates new directions for Klout, which to date had not been particularly focused on mobile or local.

Blockboard made a neighborhood discussion board iPhone app that had only been available in its hometown of San Francisco. Its team of four had previously been at companies like Delicious and Craigslist. When I covered the company, I noted that it has more of a Twitter approach to a local social network, where competitor Nextdoor requires real identities, a la Facebook.

Klout said that Blockboard’s app would continue to be available, and that its team would work to improve Klout’s local and mobile efforts.

Klout received a rich valuation in its most recent funding round, which closed last November but was only announced in January. Blockboard, meanwhile, had raised $1 million in 2010 from Joshua Schachter, Mitch Kapor, Founder Collective and others.

The New York Times Bits Blog Gets a Billboard

Liz Gannes — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:03:44 +0000

Competition in the technoblogoverse just got a little fiercer! The New York Times Bits technology blog now has its very own billboard on Highway 101.

Specifically, the billboard is on 101 southbound in South San Francisco, just north of SFO. It heralds, “Bits: Everything you need to know on the business of technology.”

A spokeswoman for the Times said she didn’t know when the billboard went up, but said it was part of a broader promotion effort after the relaunch of Bits late last year.

Other Web companies who’ve recently bought billboards on Highway 101 in the San Francisco Bay Area include Zynga, Groupon, Box.net and even the young travel search site Hipmunk.

Campaigns on 101 (warning: Locals frown at people who call it “the 101”!) cost an average of $10,000 to $20,000 per month, with some prominent spots costing more than $30,000 per month, said John Laramie, CEO of ADstruc, a DSP for outdoor advertising.

It should be noted that AllThingsD competes with Bits, obvi.

Also, please excuse the cellphone photo through my dirty windshield; I drove to L.A. this weekend and should really take the car in for a wash.

Boss Talk: Zynga Chief Talks IPO, Lessons Learned

Shayndi Raice — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:02:00 +0000

Zynga Inc. Chief Executive Mark Pincus ended 2011 as the face of an overhyped Web initial public offering. Now he wants to show the hype was justified.

Early last year, his San Francisco company, which makes social games such as “FarmVille” that are played on Facebook, was on track for one of the hottest initial public offerings of 2011. But when Zynga finally went public last month, its stock price dropped 5% on the first day of trading and has since consistently traded below its $10 offering price.

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eBay Is the Most Recent Bay Area Transplant to Seek Access to Seattle's Talent Pool

Tricia Duryee — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:00:23 +0000

EBay has opened up an office in the suburbs of Seattle, where it has aggressive plans to double the number the employees it has there, to 150.

The e-commerce giant (a term typically reserved for Amazon in these woods) is one of the larger examples companies from the Bay Area that are setting up shop here and looking to soak up some of the Northwest’s rich engineering talent.

Other companies with satellite offices in the Seattle area include Google, Facebook, Zynga and Salesforce.

“I’m surprised I ended up at eBay, but the story is compelling,” said Ken Moss, who was hired in November to be eBay’s VP of managed marketplaces technology; Moss is GM of the Redmond office.

A long-time Microsoft employee whose claim to fame includes inventing the Pivot table in Excel, Moss more recently co-founded CrowdEye, a start-up focused on search technology and later on stock market prediction.

He said eBay’s dedication to the region is one of the biggest selling points for recruitment.

Most of the 75 employees that currently work there were hired over the past few months, and a small team has been here for seven years. Among the newbies I met were a number of Microsoft veterans who had been there for 12 to 15 years.

Moss says he will report directly to eBay’s CTO Mark Carges, which is “a signal to the whole company that diversified development is for real.”

“We are first-class citizens,” Moss said, referring to sometimes strained relationship between remote workers and a company’s headquarters.

Eric Brill, VP of eBay’s research labs, is also based in the Redmond office, and has been working part-time there since joining the company in 2009.

Moss said eBay will be looking to hire a range of technologists, from college graduates to senior leaders, including developers, testers, researchers, data miners and other positions.

While I was at the office on Tuesday, the mountains were peeking out from the clouds and were easy to spot from the floor-to-ceiling windows on the fourth floor. It was easy enough for everyone to have a window seat in the open-floor plan.

Although the employees just moved in on Monday, a sign outside the building already announced eBay’s presence. Inside, workers were busy putting the final touches on the space to make it feel like eBay. Primary colors of red, blue, yellow and green highlighted the office walls; with a bit of Seattle flair, conference rooms were named after Northwest tribes such as Puyallup and Quinault (and other names that might be difficult for San Jose-based employees to pronounce).

But missing were some of the perks that some recruits expect these day — no shuttles to and from work or fancy cafeterias, for instance.

In fact, eBay has a long way to go to compare with what Google has done here. Since entering the market seven years ago, Google has hired more than 900 employees, spread across two locations, a spokesperson confirmed.

One office is in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood; the other is on the Eastside.

The two offices are geographically divided by Lake Washington, which can be crossed by one of two floating bridges — or by boat, if you are crafty enough. The traffic bottlenecks make for a horrendously notorious commute, so having two locations that straddle both sides is a huge perk — like having offices in both San Francisco and San Jose.

Because of Google’s size here, many of its perks are similar to its Mountain View headquarters, including free meals prepared by chefs, frozen-yogurt bars and other, mostly food-based, luxuries.

In eBay’s case, the new digs are located deep on the Eastside, a couple of miles past Microsoft in Redmond, and roughly 15 miles from Jeff Bezos’s empire in downtown Seattle. Recently, Amazon relocated its headquarters to a brand-new campus in South Lake Union, a neighborhood being revitalized by former Microsoft executive Paul Allen.

Other outside companies that have also established sizable tech centers here include Facebook and Zynga. A couple others have gained offices through acquisitions. Electronic Arts, for instance, now has a large office here, after acquiring PopCap; EMC now has big expansion plans here, after purchasing Isilon.

And Geekwire, a Seattle-based technology blog, is good at keeping an ongoing tally, including recent moves into the area by Jawbone and SweetLabs, a San Diego-based start-up, based by Intel Capital and Google Ventures.

Two years ago, Facebook opened an office in the heart of downtown Seattle. It plans to move soon to a 27,000-square-foot space that will have room for about 135 employees. The 70 or so engineers in the office today have worked on projects such as video calling, the Facebook iPad app and other big issues, such as security.

Last April, social game maker Zynga opened an office in Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square neighborhood, hoping to absorb some of the game talent here, spawned from Xbox and Nintendo, and cloud-computing knowledge from Amazon. It has 50 employees today, but declined to say how many it planned to hire in the near future.

As with most of these companies, eBay believes it can find a diversity of talent here that can’t always be easy to hire in the Bay Area.

As a Seattle native, and having covered tech here for the past 12 years, including an eight-year stint at the Seattle Times, I might not be the most unbiased on the subject. But I’ve seen first-hand the breadth of talent here, from Microsoft, Amazon, Expedia, T-Mobile and many others, including a strong start-up pool.

Despite that, the local tech community often suffers from an inferiority complex when it compares itself with the Bay Area, which is much larger. Still, it seems that Silicon Valley companies are finding a number of excuses to travel north to drink from the area’s plentiful tech waters.

Uber CEO Responds to New Year’s Eve Complaints, Plans More Surge Pricing

Lauren Goode — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 04:31:56 +0000

Uber, the San Francisco-based start-up behind a smartphone app that allows users to request car service, had some users uber-angry today over the fares they paid for rides on New Year’s Eve.

Complaints arose on Twitter about the high price of Uber car rides due to so-called surge prices that were put into effect across multiple cities. One user, a San Francisco-based entrepreneur named Brendan Mulligan, described in a blog post how a two-minute, half-mile Uber ride cost him $75. He also offered some tips for improving the app.

Here’s a sampling of complaints from irate Uber customers on Twitter:

Got charged $150 for 2.4 mile ride from @Uber last night.

January 1, 2012 5:08 pm via webReply RetweetFavorite

@peternudo

Peter Nudo

While I’m glad I’m home safely, the $107 charge for my @Uber to drive 1.5 miles last night seems insanely excessive. :(

January 1, 2012 9:46 am via Tweetbot for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@Aubs

Aubrey Sabala

A total of 97 complaints have been logged since Saturday night about surge pricing, Uber says. That does not include the 15 users the company believes may not have gotten the surge-pricing notifications through their apps when requesting cars. The company declined to say exactly how many customers requested cars via Uber on Saturday night, but founder and CEO Travis Kalanick says the total number of rides was in the five figures. Overall, he says, the evening was a success despite the complaints.

The company is reversing charges for some unhappy customers on a “case by case basis,” Kalanick says.

Uber, which launched in 2010, currently dispatches car services in seven cities, including San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C. and Paris.

Uber doesn’t dispatch its own cars, but acts as a marketplace through which users can connect with drivers. Kalanick says the surge pricing is to ensure there are drivers available for Uber customers, since those drivers could theoretically make money elsewhere during holidays and other high-demand days.

Since Uber doesn’t dispatch taxi cabs, rates are generally higher than regular cab rides to begin with. Users get a direct-dial option for calling the driver as he or she approaches them, and the cars that arrive are usually high-end town cars. Uber rides also include a base fare of between $7 and $8 depending on the city, and the tip is automatically factored into the final price per ride.

The company has been known to put surge pricing into effect on nights when it anticipates demand to outpace the supply of car services available. The company did this on New Year’s Eve last year, and also on Halloween. When prices are about to surge, Uber sends a mass email out to its users, puts up a blog post detailing the pricing changes, and, barring technical issues, users should also get notifications through the app during times that surge pricing is in effect.

Dynamic pricing — especially when it comes to the travel industry — is not a new concept. Kalanick says Uber faces a unique challenge when it comes to changing expectations that come with decades of fixed pricing in car transportation.

“If you look at a club that charges a $20 cover on a normal night and then charges $100 on New Year’s Eve — that’s just what happens,” he told me. “But with Uber, we understand there are some people who feel the pain of that transition and we take some responsibility for making it as smooth a transition as possible.”

He said the company will still put variable pricing into effect during holidays in the future, and is currently considering whether to do the same during weekend nights.

Viral Audio: A Look Back at Tech in 2011, and Forward to 2012

Kara Swisher — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:06:46 +0000

I was on San Francisco’s public radio station today, talking about this past year in tech with “Forum” host Michael Krasny and fellow panelists, former TechCrunch writer Sarah Lacy and CNET’s Molly Wood.

2011 was a big year, as it turned out, with good and bad news for companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Netflix and others.

We also looked forward to 2012, which will include new online TV efforts and, of course, the much-anticipated Facebook IPO.

Here’s the chat:

Airbnb Hires Former Yahoo Legal Eagle Belinda Johnson as General Counsel

Kara Swisher — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:44:49 +0000

Airbnb, the San Francisco online vacation rentals start-up, said it has hired a key former Yahoo lawyer, Belinda Johnson, as its new general counsel.

The legal issues at Airbnb are both interesting and challenging, all around the new arena of global sharing or, as the company calls it, “collaborative consumption.”

Johnson is one of several recent major hires by Airbnb, which has been adding more seasoned execs to its team of late. Other recent key Airbnb hires include Monroe Labouisse as head of trust and safety and customer service, and Vivek Wagle as head of content.

Johnson left Yahoo several months ago as its deputy general counsel, after a long tenure there working on a wide variety of issues.

Among other things, she oversaw legal strategy for Yahoo’s global products, and worked on deals like its search and advertising alliance with Microsoft. Johnson came to Yahoo from its Web 1.0 acquisition of Broadcast.com, where she had served as general counsel.

She attended both college and law school at the University of Texas.

Coming Soon: Twitter to Show Off What It's Building, in Its New Building

Liz Gannes — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 09:00:58 +0000

Twitter invited press, including AllThingsD, to come to an event this morning in San Francisco in order “to come see what we’re building.”

Does that mean new products? Probably — but with this company, you never know.

Let’s face it, Twitter has what’s probably an unprecedented world-changing to product-innovating ratio. It’s still a small set of simple tools to send short messages out to a network.

But hey, there’s a reason people joke about the perils of reinventing the wheel.

In fact, at least part of seeing what Twitter is building is likely to be a tour of ongoing renovation of an actual physical building, not a revamped site or app or relevancy filtering features. The event is being held at Twitter’s planned new headquarters at San Francisco’s historic Market Square building. This is the one in the middle of the rundown neighborhood that Twitter is being given tax benefits to help revitalize.

The new office isn’t set to house Twitter’s staff until mid-2012. Renovations started a few months ago. (Maybe we’ll get to wear hard hats!)

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and Executive Chairman Jack Dorsey are both scheduled to speak. We’ll update you when we know more.

Roadshow: CEO Pincus Not Selling Shares in Upcoming Zynga IPO

Kara Swisher — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 06:01:45 +0000

According to sources close to the situation, neither CEO Mark Pincus nor one of its principal venture shareholders, Kleiner Perkins, will be selling any shares in its upcoming initial public offering.

While big investors often divest stock in IPOs, not all do. It is a carefully watched number by investors, who are always wary of insiders who unload a lot of shares in an offering.

But such activity by the fast-growing San Francisco online gaming company will be watched carefully since Pincus has recently been painted in a number of press reports as the greedy Mr. Potter of Silicon Valley.

Among the allegations is that he runs a poisonously tough culture that tracks its employees’ output and performance via elaborate data models that require extraordinary amounts of work, along with nefarious list-making of who’s naughty and who’s not.

That big-brother behavior has reportedly included taking away high-ranking jobs and the sweet stock options that go along with them from those execs found wanting.

While there is no doubt Pincus is a hard-charging personality, his defenders note that it’s due to a belief that life at Zynga is a meritocracy and that his practices are not any more heavy-handed than those at other firms.

Indeed, Pincus has a lot of competition in the tough-guy tech CEO category from longtime legends such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates, who set the gold standard for mean, as well as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and now Google CEO Larry Page.

Pincus does not even rate in this pantheon, which is more typical of tech companies than anyone would care to admit or, to be fair, care to care about. With big benefits, vast wealth and much latitude, many in tech don’t mind the grueling work schedules.

After all, it’s not exactly ditch-digging, now is it?

In any case, sources said the coverage has hit Zynga staff hard, as well as Pincus, who has not responded due to the IPO’s quiet period. That’s in contrast to Groupon, the daily-deals site whose own rough process was rife with highly negative stories about the company’s prospects.

While those media accounts were more aimed at the business itself and less personal, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason vociferously defended the company in a controversial letter that was then leaked and published (to me and by me!).

Pincus will doubtlessly have a lot to say to investors who ask about the company’s culture and its possible negative impact on attrition, as some stories have charged.

His decision not to sell, sources said, was inspired by Zynga investor and close friend Reid Hoffman, who has sold very little of the stock of LinkedIn, where he serves as chairman.

The action all begins next week, according to multiple reports, when Zynga takes its show on the road in preparation for an IPO that is expected to value the company at $15 to $20 billion and will take place before the new year.

It will debut under the ZNGA ticker on the Nasdaq market.

While some have been worried about Zynga’s future growth, its past performance has been a lot stronger than other Internet offerings. In the first nine months of the year, the company posted $828.9 million in revenue, double the amount from a year ago, with net income of $30.7 million.

Pincus’s holding onto shares will be seen as a plus, of course, although he has sold a large amount of stock in Zynga’s history.

According to its S-1 filing:

“From our inception in October 2007 to date, Mr. Pincus, our Chief Executive Officer, Chief Product Officer and the Chairman of our Board of Directors, has purchased an aggregate of 149,197,328 shares of our common stock. To date, Mr. Pincus has sold an aggregate of 43,629,310 shares of our common stock at prices ranging from $0.42 to $13.96.”

Pincus now holds 91.4 million of Class B shares, 16 percent of the total, as well as 20.5 million of Class C shares, 38 percent of that group. Kleiner holds 65.2 million shares, or 11.2 percent, of Class B shares.

Other big Zynga owners, who might or might not sell at the IPO, include Institutional Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures, Foundry Venture Capital and Avalon Ventures.

Exclusive: Zynga's Van Natta Moves to Strategic Adviser; Feld Off Board, Paul In

Kara Swisher — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:30:08 +0000

In a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission concerning its upcoming IPO, Zynga is expected to unveil two key management and board changes at the online gaming phenom:

Chief Business Officer Owen Van Natta — who came to the San Francisco-based start-up several years ago to help CEO Mark Pincus grow it and develop it — will step down from his job and become a strategic adviser focusing on major partnerships. He’ll still remain board member at Zynga, but will give up millions of pre-IPO shares by moving out of his operational role.

And director and venture investor Brad Feld will leave the the board, which VCs sometime do as companies move to a public offering and add members with more specific business experience.

In his place, longtime entrepreneur and investor Sunil Paul, who founded a company called FreeLoader with Pincus many moons ago, will join the board.

Zynga confirmed the changes to me in a statement by Pincus:

“Owen is a valuable business partner. He’s made great contributions to Zynga and continues to be an important part of our team.”

Sources said the changes related to Van Natta around are not part of a recent controversy around a Wall Street Journal story about clawing back of some share options grants of early Zynga employees who had become less involved in the company. While the company cannot actually take back already vested shares owned by those staffers, the article has put a lot of scrutiny on Zynga and raised questions about how to cope with the kind of hyper-growth some Internet firms experience.

That’s certainly been the kind of rocket ride Zynga has been on, as it has grown from a small social gaming company on Facebook to a high-profile public company.

Zynga is in the final stages of its IPO process, answering questions from the SEC that are typical. If all goes well, Zynga execs are expected to go on a road show after the Thanksgiving and go public by the end of the year at a market valuation of close to $20 billion.

That was different from when Van Natta officially got to Zynga in the spring of last year — after a rocky experience running the doomed Myspace. At the time, he told me at the time that planned to be focused on scaling the business and did not consider himself a long-term operating executive.

Since then, he has helped Pincus hire a series of experienced gaming execs, including a chief operating officer, a chief marketing officer and others.

Zynga was Van Natta’s third high-profile Web company in recent years. He was a top early exec for Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook until early 2008, and in 2009 he took over News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace, a job that lasted less than a year.

Early in his career, Van Natta was also was a top strategy, marketing and deal exec for Amazon, which bought an early social networking start-up called PlanetAll that he worked at.

It will now be interesting to see what Van Natta does next, but it is unlikely he will take a permanent position. He is a longtime angel investor in Silicon Valley, including in hot start-ups such as Asana and still holds a significant stake in Facebook.

But, in moving out of his job at Zynga, he will be giving up many millions of shares of a rich trove he was given when he arrived at the company. That said, Van Natta already owns millions of accelerated vested shares and will get another large grant as a board member.

Translation: Don’t cry for Mr. Van Natta, Silicon Valley — he made $42 million last year from Zynga shares alone.

Digital Marketing Start-Up Thismoment Raises $7.3 Million From Sierra Ventures

Kara Swisher — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:30:58 +0000

Thismoment, the San Francisco-based digital marketing platform provider, said it has raised $7.3 million in its first institutional venture round from Sierra Ventures.

Before this funding, the company raised $4.25 million since 2008, when it was founded as a content-sharing Web site.

The company, which serves brands and agencies with its Distributed Engagement Channel platform, said it is aimed at “managing content, conversation and creative assets across earned, owned and paid media channels.” That means marketing “initiatives across Facebook, YouTube, brand sites, rich media ad units, mobile devices, tablets and digital outdoor placements,” as well as a platform to manage these social marketing campaigns.

Sierra’s Mark Fernandes will join the board. Other investors include private equity firm Fenway Partners, as well as well-known digital execs Shelby Bonnie, Jason Hirschhorn and Mika Salmi.

Thismoment said it will use the new funds to expand operations in the U.S. and also add them internationally.

Tech Firms Log On to San Francisco's Mayoral Race

Vauhini Vara — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 10:00:49 +0000

In Tuesday’s mayoral election here, 16 candidates will battle in one of the most competitive contests in years. And to influence the race’s outcome, Silicon Valley technology players are getting involved in the election to an unprecedented degree.

In the past several weeks, founders of San Francisco-based Salesforce.com Inc., Twitter Inc., Zynga Inc. and Yelp Inc., along with several investors in those companies, have contributed thousands of dollars to try to keep interim mayor Ed Lee in office. They support Mr. Lee’s policies that have shaved millions of dollars from some Web companies’ tax liabilities in an effort to ensure they remain based in the city.

One high-profile result of their effort is an online video that appeared last month and that has since gone viral. It features San Francisco Giants pitcher Brian Wilson and musician and Bay Area native MC Hammer singing to the latter’s 1990s hit “2 Legit 2 Quit,” with new lyrics that endorse Mr. Lee.

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Viral Video: An Interview With Andreessen Horowitz's Jeff Jordan

Kara Swisher — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 12:35:30 +0000

Last weekend, I interviewed former OpenTable and eBay exec Jeff Jordan — who is now a newly minted VC with Andreessen Horowitz — at the student-run Play digital media conference at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.

It turned out to be a lively session with the sassy Jordan, who talked about a wide range of topics, from entrepreneurship to running a scaled org to his first venture investments, such as Pinterest.

Luckily, I get to interview Jordan again tomorrow, at Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco, along with eBay’s CEO John Donahoe. The topic will be mobile commerce.

Here’s the video of the event, with thanks to ReelSurfer for the embed:

Jawbone Debuts UP, Which Tracks, Well, You (Video)

Kara Swisher — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 04:01:08 +0000

Jawbone, the San Francisco mobile products company famous for its Jawbone mobile headsets and Jambox wireless speakers, today introduced its latest offering, called UP.

The company had previously shown off the small $99 wristband and its accompanying Apple iPhone application, which track a user’s daily activity, sleep patterns and eating habits. Incorporating motion sensors and social elements, UP will be available to consumers on Nov. 6.

Jawbone said it is making the move into the sector because “global health is on a disturbing and rapid decline.” Hence, UP, which is aimed at making people aware of how they move through the world (or not).

The consumer electronics company had raised another $70 million in funding earlier this year.

The wristband was designed, as usual for Jawbone, by Yves Behar, and comes in three sizes and numerous colors.

Here is a video about UP that I did last week at Jawbone offices with founder and CEO Hosain Rahman and the company’s software head, Jeremiah Robison:

[ See post to watch video ]

Cellphone Etiquette on the Subways of Seoul and Taipei

Ina Fried — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 11:30:34 +0000

Smartphones are a common sight on subways all around the world.

Even in places where cell signals are scant or nonexistent, the versatile devices are being used for playing games, listening to music and watching videos.

However, where there is a signal, cellphones are often a lightning rod for controversy: There’s an ongoing debate over how to handle something that can be very useful — and also very irritating to those nearby.

In Taipei, signs and recorded messages encourage commuters to think twice before annoying fellow passengers with loud conversations. A sign depicting a talking cellphone suggests that phone users consider sending a text message rather than talking and, if they must converse, urges them to keep things brief and and use a quiet tone.

On the subways of Seoul, where wireless coverage is strong and ubiquitous, there is plenty of opportunity to talk on cellphones. On the Web site for the Seoul subway system, transit authorities list tips on how to be a polite passenger, starting with using a soft voice and setting cellphone ringers on vibrate.

Instead of talking, many transit passengers opt to use their phones as on-the-go TVs, utilizing Korea’s unique mobile video service, known as Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB).

In both Taipei and Seoul, it was fairly uncommon to hear someone yakking away on their phone — something I hear all the time on the buses and streetcars of San Francisco, even if service here is a whole lot spottier.

Calling PETA Stat -- Stop the Twitter Bird Magazine Cover Abuse!

Kara Swisher — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 16:59:29 +0000

That poor little bird.

The famous Twitter bird, I mean, which is getting yet another drubbing on another magazine cover.

When last we checked in with the tweetie icon, he (his name is, apparently, Larry) was on a crutch and all bandaged up on the front of Fortune under the inevitable title: “Trouble@Twitter.”

Inside, there was also an illustration of the bird with a rocket strapped to his back going the wrong way.

Is this bird Wile E. Coyote or what?

Now, New York magazine has the bird as an obese beached whale with the cover line: “twitter #toobigtosucceed?”

I wonder when, if and when the start-up starts to score big results, there will be a Twitter bird with really big muscles.

Or more likely, because Larry is getting unfairly abused, if all does not go well for the San Francisco company, a Twitter bird with X’s for eyes.

I am calling fowl.

Federated Media Buys Lijit Networks

Kara Swisher — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:00:16 +0000

San Francisco-based Federated Media Publishing said it has bought Lijit Networks, a smaller online advertising analytics and tools firm.

The price for the Boulder, Colo., start-up — which was founded in 2006 — was undisclosed, but it has received just under $29 million in venture funding from firms such as Foundry Group. Federated said Lijit would continue to operate independently, “but in conjunction.”

In an interview yesterday, Federated CEO Deanna Brown said the buy was to round out offerings for its clients and to better compete in a world where most of the online ads go to the top five players.

“I am excited we can give both publishers and advertisers more tools for engagement and monetization,” she said.

Federated, which lost big social-media news site Mashable earlier this year, also benefits from increased scale and inventory of sites.

Lijit CEO Todd Vernon, who will become EVP of technology at Federated, said that it was ever more important for ad-focused firms on the Web to “deliver the entire stack.”

“Lijit has a core competency in the media business, and combined with FM’s best-in-class sales force, we can offer everything needed to do effective online campaigns,” he said.

Here’s the official press release:

Federated Media Publishing To Acquire Lijit Networks

Combined Entity Will Power More than 77,000 Independent Publishers Across the Web Via Comprehensive Advertising, Analytics and Reader Engagement Tools

SAN FRANCISCO, October 4, 2011 – Federated Media Publishing, which powers the best of the Independent Web, today announced the acquisition of Lijit Networks, Inc. Lijit is a leading provider of advertising services, audience analytics and reader engagement tools for online publishers of all sizes. The combined entity will reach nearly 300 million global unique visitors according to Quantcast.

Lijit, headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, will continue to operate independently but in conjunction with the rest of Federated Media Publishing. Lijit CEO Todd Vernon and COO Walter Knapp will take on corresponding EVP of Technology and SVP of Platform Revenue responsibilities at Federated Media Publishing and will report directly to Federated Media Publishing’s CEO, Deanna Brown. Additionally, Lijit board member Seth Levine from Foundry Group will join the Federated Media Publishing board of directors, effective immediately.

With the addition of Lijit Networks’ existing publisher relationships, Federated Media Publishing will now reach more than 77,000 online publishers and nearly 15,000 expert communities, making it one of the largest companies to power publishing on the Independent Web. The acquisition vastly expands the combined company’s inventory of sites, offering premium advertisers improved scale and reach.

Publishers Will Profit and Flourish

Lijit helps publishers more thoughtfully interact with and better understand their audience by providing analytics and engagement tools that build deeper relationships, lengthen time on site and increase page views. These robust and actionable audience analytics and reader engagement tools leverage intent, behavior and demographics to help publishers of all sizes increase revenue and better engage their readers.

Additionally, the combined advertising services provided by FM and Lijit will give publishers of all sizes a revenue stream that complements existing sales efforts and helps grow and monetize their website businesses, no matter what the size.

Advertisers Can More Easily Analyze and Engage

The combination of Federated Media Publishing’s premium online advertising and conversational marketing programs and Lijit’s proprietary data collection tools will empower advertisers to better understand user intent, contextual relevance and demographic information. And by leveraging the combined entity’s extensive publisher relationships, advertisers will have unprecedented scale on the Independent Web.

Introducing Programmatic Buying to the Independent Web

Programmatic buying is one of the fastest growing trends in digital media and the introduction of Lijit’s robust RTB exchange will equip media buyers with one of the largest platforms available. Over the next few months, Federated Media Publishing and Lijit will develop a series of private exchanges that will highlight leading independent publishers. These exchanges will allow brands to engage active, passionate consumers found in highly conversational online communities and publications, while delivering premium CPM rates via FM’s conversational marketing programs.

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“The Lijit Networks team is just as passionate and committed to powering publishers as we are at Federated Media Publishing and that was a crucial element to this decision,” said Deanna Brown, chief executive officer, Federated Media Publishing. “Our combined relationships, proprietary tools and conversational marketing services will be invaluable to publishers and advertisers alike.”

“Federated Media invented how to leverage authentic voices and engaged conversations that exist in the Independent Web,” said Todd Vernon, founder and CEO of Lijit Networks. “The combination of the two companies is a game changer in the industry that unlocks new opportunities for both companies and our combined publisher network.”

UrbanSitter Puts Finding a Babysitter Into Social Context

Liz Gannes — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:30:00 +0000

A new site called UrbanSitter promises to match parents and babysitters using friends and affiliations in common.

UrbanSitter helps parents filter potential sitters based on their availability and their experience working for Facebook friends and friends of friends; it also filters for people whose children attend their kids’ schools and do the same activities. Soon the service will enable payments and mobile booking.

UrbanSitter has been live in testing in San Francisco for the last five weeks, handling about 300 babysitting bookings so far.

Co-founder Lynn Perkins, who compared what she’s trying to do with Uber and Airbnb, said this social approach will make finding a sitter more efficient without sacrificing trust. She argued that existing babysitter-booking sites like Care.com and Sittercity take a more “Web 1.0″ approach that isn’t social or real-time.

Plus, as UrbanSitter gets a higher density of users, it could open up opportunities for the holy grail of babysitting: Last-minute bookings.

The four-person UrbanSitter team — who are, of course, all parents, and come from companies like TripIt and Goodby, Silverstein — is currently raising $1 million in funding.

Chegg Buys Zinch in Another Move Toward a "Social Education Platform"

Kara Swisher — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:00:03 +0000

Chegg — best known for online rentals of textbooks to college students — said it has just bought Zinch, a start-up that links high school students and college recruiters.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The purchase of the San Francisco-based Zinch, said CEO Dan Rosensweig in an interview earlier this week, is part of a larger plan involving a series of acquisitions aimed at “how we move from two-day relevance to relevance all year around for students.”

By that, he meant the short time period when students either buy or rent their textbooks for the semester.

That’s certainly been a good business for Chegg, which is the leader in the online textbook-rental arena, including digital distribution.

But to further solidify its relationship with students and expand its market base to include high schoolers along with college consumers, Chegg has picked up a number of start-ups like Zinch, using its stock and also the whopping $220 million in funding from a number of venture firms, including Kleiner Perkins.

In late September, for example, the company bought CourseRank, which helps students share course schedules, take classes with friends, and read and write reviews on classes and professors, as well as find out how they grade.

Also scooped up by Chegg: Notehall, which is a student-to-student note-taking trading market; Cramster, a social homework helper; and Student of Fortune, a homework-answers site for student questions (which a recent filing by Chegg noted was bought for $5.9 million in stock).

Also being tested are such offerings as deals for students and other ways to leverage the original textbook relationship.

“This is the beginning of a connected student network that we hope to build into a giant platform,” said Rosensweig. “We want to have a student using us all the way through for a 10-year span, from high school on.”

In related news, Chegg said it has hired former Palm CFO Andrew Brown as its new CFO. Prior to Palm, he served as the CFO of Pillar Data Systems Inc., a storage start-up funded by Oracle’s Larry Ellison.

While a CFO hiring often indicates a soon-to-happen IPO, Rosensweig said that Chegg has more than enough capital, needs to focus on building up its offerings and is in no rush to go public.

We’ll see, but here’s the official press release from Chegg about Zinch:

Chegg Plans to Expand into $7 Billion College Recruiting Market and Increase Student Base By Over 3.5 Million

Chegg enters into a definitive agreement to acquire Zinch, the leading digital network that helps high school students research, connect with and pay for college

SANTA CLARA, Calif., September 15, 2011 – Chegg today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Zinch. The acquisition is subject to standard closing conditions and is expected to be completed by the end of this month. The acquisition will expand Chegg’s social education platform into high schools. Zinch, founded in 2007, connects prospective college and graduate students to scholarships, admissions officers and other students who have been through the same process.

The acquisition of Zinch, with over 3.5 million members, $1.9 billion in scholarships and over 5,000 school profiles, will significantly expand Chegg’s customer base and its social education platform. Colleges and students will be able to connect more effectively for less through Chegg, helping to streamline the college recruiting process globally. In addition, unlike any other company in the education space, Chegg will provide resources to students at every major milestone before, during and after their college career — including bridging the gap from high school to college.

“Our mission has always been to save students time, money and help them get smarter,” said Dan Rosensweig, president and CEO of Chegg. “With our acquisition of Zinch, we’re extending our mission to high school students through the $7 billion college recruiting market, while continuing to break down the barriers of a college education, from the high cost of tuition and textbooks to helping students make money, pick their courses and get the academic help they need.”

At Zinch, over 3.5 million students have built online profiles to showcase themselves as “more than test scores” to shine in the admissions process, and to be matched with schools and scholarships that might be a good fit. Colleges and universities worldwide, including more than half of the US News top ranked national universities, use Zinch for cost-effective student recruiting and outreach.

“Getting in and paying for school is daunting. Together, Chegg and Zinch can not only make higher education more affordable and accessible, it gives students an edge in finding the right school, getting admitted and reducing the cost. Students can put their best foot forward, be recognized for their achievements and be discovered by programs that fit their interests,” said Anne Dwane, CEO of Zinch.

The acquisition is subject to standard closing conditions and is expected to be completed by the end of this month.
To learn more about Chegg’s social education platform and its network of services, go to www.chegg.com.

It's Official: Arrington Out at AOL; Schonfeld New TechCrunch Editor (Plus Armstrong Internal Memo Too!)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 16:03:27 +0000

AOL and TechCrunch founder and editor Michael Arrington have officially parted ways, almost exactly one year from the New York Internet portal’s acquisition of the popular tech news site.

He was replaced by longtime TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld.

The company’s statement said that the high-profile blogger had “decided” to move on, which was a decided understatement, given that the negotiations between the pair sometimes approximated a cage match.

The noisy media fight centered on a new $20 million venture fund that Arrington is now running, called CrunchFund, and his editorial status at TechCrunch with the new role.

Many, including myself, had raised questions about the conflicts of interest inherent in the situation, if Arrington had remained influential at TechCrunch. Arrington had argued that transparency took care of that.

The name of the fund, which is close to the name of TechCrunch, will remain, said Arrington onstage this morning at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco.

“This is my baby and I built this,” he said, in an understated appearance. “So, it’s a sad day.”

Before beginning an opening interview with well-known Silicon Valley investor and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman at the conference, Arrington got off a good joke — one of many to come, apparently (uh-oh!) — by wearing a t-shirt with the label: Unpaid Blogger.

It was a humorous poke at AOL content czar and former Arrington boss, Arianna Huffington, who had called him that in one of the many rounds of fighting of late.

It was all in good fun, finally, after not so much fun.

Along with a media firestorm, the fracas included Arrington posting an angry blog on TechCrunch itself demanding that AOL give him editorial independence or sell him back TechCrunch.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and Huffington were inclined to do neither and, thus, Arrington had to go.

Here’s a statement that was just put out by AOL:

“The TechCrunch acquisition has been a success for AOL and for our shareholders, and we are very excited about its future. Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch has decided to move on from TechCrunch and AOL to his newly formed venture fund. Michael is a world-class entrepreneur and we look forward to supporting his new endeavor through our investment in his venture fund. Erick Schonfeld has been named the editor of TechCrunch. TechCrunch will be expanding its editorial leadership in the coming months.”

Oddly, Armstrong put the news of the change at the end of his weekly internal memo to staff, in which he noted that the company would continue as an investor in Arrington’s CrunchFund — a $10 million investment — which had started this whole controversy.

Tim, in old-timey journalism that’s called burying the lede, but here it is:

AOLers –

We’re right in the middle of the most important season of our year and we have some critical work to get done. I wanted to share the highlights of what we are expecting to have happen in the next 12 weeks. As I mentioned last week, we have prioritized our focus areas in a concise document.

The main items are below and there will be a steady set of reviews against these and related items at the weekly product reviews and monthly business reviews:

1. Traffic Growth: Full execution of the Bridge and Tunnel Project

2. Display Ads Growth: Premium formats and video growth/improvement in the quote to collect process for customers and sales

3. Video Platform: Launch of new video platform

4. Patch Monetization: Sales allocations/partnerships

5. Expansion of Content Verticals/Platform: Genre verticals in HuffPost/video expansion

6. Mobile: Content & ads priority match/move mobile engineering up the brand food chain

7. Expansion of Devil Network: Increase partners and scale production

8. Paid Services: Increase commerce partnerships

As we have discussed, the fall of ’11 will be about driving organic product improvement and reducing our focus to the high leverage opportunities. Every new opportunity at the company will be compared to our succinct plan. If we are going to add a new idea, an existing idea needs to be removed. There is room for execution and for improvement — everything else needs to be put on the back burner.

Finally, I’d like to announce that Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch, has decided to move on from TechCrunch and AOL to his newly formed venture fund. TechCrunch continues to be a part of the AOL Huffington Post Media Group. AOL will maintain its initial investment in Michael Arrington’s fund and AOL Ventures will oversee our investment in the fund.

Have a great week everyone — stay focused and keep up the strong momentum –TA

Indeed, now that the disruption is over, it is long past time to focus on the entrepreneurs and start-ups that TechCrunch is built on. Here is the link to watch the live stream of TechCrunch Disrupt.

UPDATE: It’s not over until it is over, apparently. In a blog post of her own, Huffington took aim at The Wall Street Journal over its coverage of the internal battle at AOL.

Calling out a Journal story from over this past weekend as “shoddy,” she took issue with its characterization of AOL as having a “culture of clashing fiefs and personalities,” with a focus on fighting between her and Arrington.

The issue at hand wasn’t about personalities. It was about principle; a very simple fundamental principle about conflicts of interest that every journalistic enterprise adheres to — including the Wall Street Journal, as its former publisher L. Gordon Crovitz points out today. But you wouldn’t know that from the breathless opening grafs of the exceptionally misinformed, substance-lite, and anonymous-quote-riddled piece.

Indeed, it takes a full eight paragraphs before the Journal’s reporters Jessica Vascellaro and Emily Steel move away from their gossip girl caricature “clash of personalities” narrative and get to — or at least near — the heart of the matter: Can someone running a venture fund edit a site covering the tech startup scene? This has nothing to do with personalities, either Mike Arrington’s or mine.

If only we could only find a way to also include the doofus-is-not-disparaging fired Yahoo CEO, Carol Bartz, this giant rumble would certainly be complete.

SECOND UPDATE: But, wait, what tweet through yonder smartphone breaks?

It is the Arrington, now seemingly taking a shot at Huffington about their clash of personalities.

Wrote Arrington on Twitter just now: “ok @ariannahuff. Let’s go ahead and talk about how this really played out.”

Oh, let’s — although part of me (and I know this might seem ironic) wants to make it stop.

Police Search for Missing Apple Prototype

Ian Sherr — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 15:01:42 +0000

Police officers and Apple Inc. employees recently visited a San Francisco residence in a search for a prototype of one of the tech giant’s devices that had been traced to a local home, but left empty handed.

Four city police officers accompanied two Apple employees to the home in south central San Francisco, the city’s police department said in a statement on Friday.

The police statement didn’t say when the search took place or name the device that went missing. However, the department’s press release was sent in a document titled “iphone5.doc.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Move Over, Craigslist: Airbnb Launches Sublets for Longer-Term Rentals

Kara Swisher — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 07:00:06 +0000

Airbnb, the fast-growing online accommodations service, is expanding an offering to allow users to more easily book longer rentals of a month or more.

The San Francisco-based company said in a press release that it had seen a “marked increase in users seeking and booking long-term stays.” So now, after already booking 3,000 monthly rentals, Airbnb said it is improving the functionality and expanding the long-term market on the site.

“Searches for reservations of a month or longer will now display the total monthly price directly in search results,” said Airbnb.

The move will add more competitors to Airbnb, including huge sites such as Craigslist, which specialize in longer-term rentals. Until now, the well-funded site — which has just recovered from a recent controversy over a booking gone bad — has focused on shorter, hotel-like offerings, but at people’s homes.

Take the Money and Run? Twitter Shareholders Now Mulling Cash-Out Offer From DST.

Kara Swisher — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 17:13:08 +0000

Whether or not to sell any of their shares in Twitter is the big decision facing stakeholders of the microblogging service right now, as the second $400 million part of the company’s recent funding by Russia’s DST Global is completed in the next several weeks.

That includes everyone from early angel investors to those who bought it on the secondary markets to Twitter’s 600 employees, all of whom can sell a portion — up to 20 percent, sources said — of their holdings.

It’s all part of a recent $800 million mega-funding by Twitter, valuing the San Francisco company at $8.4 billion.

While $400 million went to Twitter, the second tranche of $400 million of the total was targeted to cash out current investors and also employees of the company.

Current investors include Benchmark Capital, Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital and several other venture firms, as well as a spate of prominent angel investors, such as Ron Conway.

Whether DST — as well as other smaller buyers, including early Twitter investor Chris Sacca and T. Rowe Price, according to the tender offer — gets them and others to sell enough shares is the big question, especially since few want to get caught in what one shareholder called the “Facebook idiot box.”

That would be referring to those who sold their investments in Facebook two years ago, when the social networking giant allowed its employees to sell 20 percent of their stakes to DST.

The financing was part of a $100 million add-on to a $200 million investment in the social networking company by the aggressive Russian investor.

At the time, the tender offer valued Facebook at $6.5 billion for the common stock, or $14.77 a share.

Of course, Facebook is worth upward of more than 10 times that now. Oops!

That’s why high-profile Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, for example, is not selling out any of the shares it bought earlier this year in an $80 million transaction in private secondary markets.

Reasons to sell, of course, are also compelling.

Some investors might want to lock in upside, especially if they think the latest valuation is too high.

For venture capitalists in the company, some might want to return a win to their limited partners, while Twitter employees might want to put a down payment on a house after years of toiling in the start-up.

Others might also be worried about Twitter’s prospects going forward and might determine that the recent round was the high point of its market value. Twitter has indeed struggled to find a sustainable and lucrative business model, focused on advertising.

In addition, although it has recently stabilized, others might worry about Twitter’s management changes over the last year, as co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams have departed. Twitter creator and other co-founder Jack Dorsey is now running the company’s product efforts, with CEO Dick Costolo (who looks a lot like that Woody Allen shot above from the classic movie, “Take the Money and Run”).

Then again, that was exactly the take on Facebook several years ago, so it is now a case on all sides of seller beware.

Twitter declined to comment and I have not heard back yet from DST about the status of the transaction.