After a massive breach of its computer systems yesterday, LivingSocial has sent out emails to all of the 50 million customers impacted, a company spokesman said, and is now working with law enforcement in an investigation to help find the perpetrators.

The company declined to give more information about how the hackers might have entered the Washington, D.C., daily deals company’s system to get access to names, emails, birthdates and encrypted passwords. But it did note that it was taking extra measures to restrict access to all of its systems and consumer data and has been doing heavy monitoring of consumer accounts.

LivingSocial also underscored that credit card information of its users has not been hacked. “We store credit card data through a financial processing network, so the full number literally does not exist anywhere in our system,” the spokesman said.

Still, the hack is a huge blow for LivingSocial, which is owned in part by Amazon, impacting 50 million customers, who will now be required to reset their passwords. All of LivingSocial’s countries across the world appear to have been affected, except in Thailand, Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines, as LivingSocial units Ticketmonster and Ensogo there were on separate systems.

This is the latest big data breach in the consumer Internet space, which has seen troublesome incursions into some high-profile companies recently, including Zappos, LinkedIn and Evernote.

The attack comes at a tough time for the company, since it has been trying to turn itself around after a downturn across the daily deals landspace. LivingSocial got a large cash infusion recently from investors to help stanch its losses. Amazon owns 29 percent of the company.

LivingSocial, the daily deals site owned in part by Amazon, has suffered a massive cyber attack on its computer systems, which an email from CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy — just sent to employees and obtained by AllThingsD.com — said resulted in “unauthorized access to some customer data from our servers.”

The hack includes customer names, emails, birthdates and encrypted passwords.

The breach has impacted 50 million customers of the Washington, D.C.-based company, who will now be required to reset their passwords. All of LivingSocial’s countries across the world appear to have been affected, except in Thailand, Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines, as LivingSocial units Ticketmonster and Ensogo there were on separate systems.

One positive note in a not-so-positive situation: The email sent to employees and customers noted that neither customer credit card nor merchant financial information was accessed in the cyber attack.

This is the latest big data breach in the consumer Internet space, which has seen troublesome incursions into some high-profile companies recently, including Zappos, LinkedIn and Evernote.

When asked for comment on the email, a LivingSocial PR spokesman confirmed the attack and that 50 million customers were impacted.

The attack comes at a tough time for the company, since it has been trying to turn itself around after a downturn across the daily deals landspace. LivingSocial got a large cash infusion recently from investors to help staunch its losses. Amazon owns 29 percent of the company.

More to come, but here’s the email sent to employees, including one that will be sent to customers soon:

Re: Security Incident

LivingSocialites –

This e-mail is important, so please read it to the end.

We recently experienced a cyber-attack on our computer systems that resulted in unauthorized access to some customer data from our servers. We are actively working with law enforcement to investigate this issue.

The information accessed includes names, email addresses, date of birth for some users, and encrypted passwords — technically ‘hashed’ and ‘salted’ passwords. We never store passwords in plain text.

Two things you should know:

1. * The database that stores customer credit card information was not affected or accessed.

2. * The database that stores merchants’ financial and banking information was not affected or accessed.

The security of our customer and merchant information is our priority. We always strive to ensure the security of our customer information, and we are redoubling efforts to prevent any issues in the future.

To ensure our customers and merchants are fully informed and protected, we are notifying those who may have been impacted via email explaining what happened, expiring their passwords, and requesting that they create new passwords. A copy of the note is included below this email.

If you have any questions or concerns, please visit Pulse –https://pulse.livingsocial.com/intranet/Home/more_updates.html — for a list of frequently asked questions. If you have additional questions that aren’t answered in the FAQs, please submit them via email to XXX@livingsocial.com.

Because we anticipate a high call volume and may not be able to answer or return all calls in a responsible fashion, we are likely to temporarily suspend consumer phone-based servicing. We will be devoting all available resources to our web-based servicing.

I apologize for the formality of this note, which the circumstances demand. We need to do the right thing for our customers who place their trust in us, and that is why we’re taking the steps described and going above and beyond what’s required. We’ll all need to work incredibly hard over the coming days and weeks to validate that faith and trust.

– Tim

Subject: An important update on your LivingSocial.com account

LivingSocial recently experienced a cyber-attack on our computer systems that resulted in unauthorized access to some customer data from our servers. We are actively working with law enforcement to investigate this issue.

The information accessed includes names, email addresses, date of birth for some users, and encrypted passwords — technically ‘hashed’ and ‘salted’ passwords. We never store passwords in plain text.

The database that stores customer credit card information was not affected or accessed.

Although your LivingSocial password would be difficult to decode, we want to take every precaution to ensure that your account is secure, so we are expiring your old password and requesting that you create a new one.

For your security, please create a new password for your *email_address* account by following the instructions below.

1. Visit LivingSocial.com

2. Click on the “Create a New Password” button (top right corner of the homepage)

3. Follow the steps to finish

We also encourage you, for your own personal data security, to consider changing password(s) on any other sites on which you use the same or similar password(s).

The security of your information is our priority. We always strive to ensure the security of our customer information, and we are redoubling efforts to prevent any issues in the future.

Please note that LivingSocial will never ask you directly for personal or account information in an email. We will always direct you to the LivingSocial website — and require you to login — before making any changes to your account. Please disregard any emails claiming to be from LivingSocial that request such information or direct you to a different website that asks for such information.

If you have additional questions about this process, the “Create a New Password” button on LivingSocial.com will direct you to a page that has instructions on creating a new password and answers to frequently asked questions.

We are sorry this incident occurred, and we look forward to continuing to introduce you to new and exciting things to do in your community.

Tim O’Shaughnessy

CEO, LivingSocial

Image copyright Greg Epperson

While many of today’s successful tech companies have been able to cross this chasm and achieve mainstream adoption and massive scale, many more have gotten stuck in the chasm, unable to evolve their offerings to cater to and engage the mainstream. In the past five years, it has become increasingly difficult for tech CEOs, VCs and entrepreneurs to assess where they are in this S curve and cross the chasm effectively. The main reason is that the profile of the early adopter has changed. As services like Facebook and Twitter have made consumer tech part of pop culture, more mainstream consumers are adopting technologies earlier than ever as a way to be “in the know” of pop culture. However, these new mainstream consumers are not true early adopters; they are just “mainstream tinkerers.” They have an entirely different set of demands and behaviors than their early-adopter predecessors. As a result, they have less patience and churn easily. Essentially, the pace at which mainstream consumers encounter technology has accelerated, and companies must be ready to address their demands.

So how can today’s companies effectively navigate the new chasm?

First, companies need to understand the nature of early consumption by getting to know their customers. It is easy for companies to confuse these “tinkerers” for early adopters. The problem here is that the tinkerer community lacks the essential ingredients of the traditional early-adopter community that allow a company to use its feedback and engagement to “cross the chasm.” The net result is that investors and companies confuse early adoption and tinkerer adoption as a sign that the company has broken into the mainstream. The result is a massive growth ramp in adoption, followed by a rapid downdraft in churn — and eventual failure.

This confusion has happened time and time again to popular companies like Socialcam, Viddy, Formspring and Chatroulette. Through the power of social media, these sites drew incredible numbers of tinkerers and early adopters all at once. They created a lot of buzz, but failed to delight and engage to retain the interest of tinkerers. So, what is the antidote to this?

Focus on Addiction, Not Just Adoption

I recently heard a legendary venture investor say that it is easier than ever to start a company, but harder than ever to make it durable.

To build companies that last, entrepreneurs must deliver a product in a way that translates into “addictive” retention. Early adoption is not enough. Any successful product needs habit-forming attributes that compel customers to return hourly, daily, weekly or monthly.

Think about what you do every day. Do you stop by a coffee shop en route to work, stand in line, order a latte and check your Facebook account? Routines are hard to break, so I’d argue that Starbucks is one of the most addictive services in the world … add caffeine to the mix, and you have super addiction. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter draw habitual users in this way, and the engagement is both immediate and long-lasting because it is ingrained as part of your daily routine.

Building Blocks for Engagement

So how can companies build products like this? Over and over, I see four elements within successful companies that engage consumers:

• A founder who is obsessed with customer experience
  A successful startup needs a founder who wants to over-deliver on UX, no matter what. It needs a founder who is focused on consumer delight and product quality, and also cares about the details. Founders that fit this mold include Apple’s Steve Jobs, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey.
• A product that is highly habit-forming
  Companies that build products that are engaging from the start and draw repeat visitors help to create a consumer mind-set that leads to habitual use. Making a business engaging means drawing users in. Tap into consumer desires and celebrate the aspirational aspect of a site. Online jewelry design site Gemvara allows consumers to design and create their own rings or necklaces using a template that generates a picture-perfect rendering; these activities fill in the habit-forming engagement in-between purchases. If the consumer isn’t ready to buy immediately, the item can be shared or added to a wish list.
• A focus on network effects or brands
  Businesses that build a brand that stands for something specific or that have network effects tend to become much more durable. Skype, Lending Club and Airbnb are great examples of network-effect businesses; more demand brings supply, and more supply brings demand. Similarly, building a great brand will happen naturally if you build a great service or product that has a clear message and mission. Companies like Amazon and Zappos didn’t have a network effect, but they did something else — they delivered a great service, and they did it so well that they became reliable brands consumers could count on.
• Gamification and engagement mechanics
  Ensuring traction for your site means getting consumers addicted in such a way that they return again and again. Real estate might not be an obvious habit-forming category, given that the purchase is by definition sporadic, but sites like Trulia and Zillow have transformed what might seem a staid industry into something dynamic and engaging. While most people may move very infrequently, and might not seek out a site as often with homes to rent or buy, these sites added a gamification effect so that it’s easy to track the potential value of a property and compare it to other properties. The data available and algorithms used draw people to these sites again and again out of consumers’ pure curiosity. This helps create engagement and reduce customer-acquisition costs.

Sustaining a business once it is built requires dynamic leadership, ensuring a product is addictive and engaging. Introducing new initiatives and keeping the product engaging means every employee must care about even the smallest details.

More than 20 years later, Moore’s “chasm” notion still holds: Companies must move from the early adopters to the masses to be successful. The new wrinkle is that the popularity of the consumer Web has dramatically accelerated the pace at which the mainstream first engages, so companies — from day one — need to build products that don’t just drive adoption, but spark addiction.

Sergio Monsalve @vcserge is a partner with Norwest Venture Partners.

Image copyright Adisa

Today’s consumers have a world’s worth of information at their fingertips, anytime, anywhere. As of February 2012, half of mobile phone users have smartphones, and they’re accustomed to answering any question they have with a quick Google search or a barcode scan.

The information age has created some new challenges for retailers. To begin with, it’s now incredibly simple for a customer with a mobile phone to walk into an electronics store and scan the TV or camera she’s thinking about purchasing to do an instant price comparison against other brick-and-mortar or online retailers. This kind of behavior change is disruptive to retailers, and is forcing them to rethink their policies and business practices.

Millennial shoppers used to information on demand, and more globally aware than their parents and grandparents, expect greater variety and better quality, and they care about where their goods came from and how they affect the world. They want to know — or at least feel entitled to know — who stitched together their sneakers, whether the farmer who grew their coffee was fairly paid and the size of their potato chips’ carbon footprint.

For retailers in the grocery sector, demands for transparency are triggering bigger conversations. Take Proposition 37 in California — a bill that would have forced food suppliers to label genetically modified foods. Food suppliers stood on both sides of the issue. Agricultural powerhouse Monsanto was one of the largest funders against it, arguing that the bill would force unnecessary labeling of perfectly safe, common foods — a kind of Scarlet Letter. Meanwhile, yogurt manufacturer Stonyfield Organic donated in support of the bill, calling for transparency and less ambiguity in labeling. The bill was ultimately defeated by a fairly small margin (53.1 to 46.9 percent), and the issue has not been put to bed. The trend (or perhaps it’s a pendulum swing?) toward transparency is inexorable.

Another challenge posed by today’s torrent of information is the increase in “noise” compared to the “signal.” Facts that are easy to digest and easy to find don’t always tell the whole story. “Food miles” are a vexing example. When thinking about the carbon footprint of food, our natural instinct is to assume that the fewer miles the food travels, the better. Sometimes this is true — but when you’re comparing, say, tomatoes grown in Mexico to tomatoes grown in a greenhouse in New Jersey, food miles alone don’t tell the whole story. The reality is the energy spent heating a greenhouse may outweigh the fuel spent transporting the field-grown tomatoes from Mexico. In fact, transportation typically makes up less than 15 percent of the carbon footprint of produce.

For all the challenges retailers face as they adjust to the new reality of a digital age, there are also some enormous opportunities for those willing to adapt. Today’s consumers may be more skeptical, but they’re also accessible in new ways and are looking for personalization. Retailers now have the opportunity to move beyond mailing weekly circulars full of coupons — they can share local, real-time promotions on Facebook. A grocery store that’s just received a shipment of unusually sweet, juicy pineapple now has the means to tell that store’s shoppers about it instantly. Feedback is “ripe” to be transformed too. Who today would bother walking back to a store with a tasteless watermelon or soggy bag of salad to complain? But scan it with a mobile phone to give feedback to the store and grower (and get an instant coupon) — that is not only simpler, but actually generates more useful information for the store and supplier.

Some retailers in the grocery industry are already moving in this direction. The Kroger family of stores, which includes Kroger, Fred Meyer and Ralphs, has taken a progressive approach to consumer engagement and transparency. It was the first retailer to let shoppers trace produce back to the farm via the Internet and mobile apps — telling shoppers where their fruits and vegetables came from. In addition to building customer loyalty, this increased connectivity allows Kroger, in the rare event of a food recall in a category, to let shoppers know more precisely which products were affected. Retailers are also experimenting with scanning tunnels that can read more complex barcodes — including capturing information about freshness of perishable items.

As we move forward, retailers will figure out how to embrace consumer engagement. Instead of maintaining one corporate social media page, we can expect to see a much more nuanced approach, with local stores creating individual profiles where they can interact with local shoppers (they just have to figure out how to staff them). Instead of running a print ad for strawberries a few weeks in advance of Valentine’s Day, they’ll be able to push a timely nudge to their shoppers when the berries are abundant and at peak sweetness. The knowledgeable and friendly family greengrocer of the 1950s will be re-imagined with a smart algorithm that can make sensible recommendations based on what’s good today — and what the shopper’s personal dietary preferences are. It’s a more responsive approach, and could profoundly change the supply and demand dynamics in place today that favor availability above all.

Longer term, over the next decade or so, stores that sell faster-moving goods will face the same turning point that electronics, book and clothing sellers reached in the last decade — with fast, richly personalized online shopping now available, what’s the role of a physical store? Could the experience be replicated or improved online? I remember when the idea of shoe shopping online sounded like the opening line of a joke, but Zappos changed all that with brilliant logistics and piercing consumer insight. The same can and will happen for the grocery sector. In 10 years, I think we can expect to see grocery stores that focus less on staples like cereal and paper towels, and more on seasonal, sensory, impulse purchases. Today, produce makes up about nine percent of retail grocery purchases and shelf space. In the future, as more people turn to the Internet for the bulk of their groceries, produce could make up more like a third.

Whatever the next decades bring, it’s not much of a prediction to say that technology will reshape retail. Stores that can experiment with transparency, increase personalization, eliminate waste and build trust will win the hearts and shopping baskets of the millennial generation.

Elliott Grant is the founder and Chief Technology Officer 
for YottaMark. He founded YottaMark with the vision that giving products a unique identity is the foundation for real-time supply chain insights and recall management, as well as a powerful platform for brand owners to create new consumer connections. Previously, Elliott was VP of Operations for a $250M food-packaging manufacturer and was an engagement manager at McKinsey & Company. He holds a PhD in Engineering from Cambridge University.

Well-known Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur Shervin Pishevar of Menlo Ventures and Goldman Sachs tech banker Scott Stanford are starting a new company that will focus on formulating a new model of how startups are created.

Pishevar confirmed his move, but Stanford did not respond to a query about the new effort.

That said, sources said he is poised to leave the investment bank and partner with Pishevar in a new venture called Sherpa, which has two parts.

One is called The Foundry, which is being funded by a number of major strategic corporations, who are presumably looking to gain a digital edge. It will also include well-known entrepreneur partners, but no investors or venture capital firms.

There will also be a fund related to invest in the new companies created, which will also include assets added in from the larger companies.

It’s not exactly an incubator or accelerator, said Pishevar in an interview, given the mixed record of those efforts to create startups. He would not give any more details as yet.

Pishevar will remain as a venture advisor to Menlo, as part of the change, and has also been named a strategic advisor to Uber, the fast-growing car service.

Said Pishevar: “I’m incredibly excited to announce my new endeavor, Sherpa and The Foundry. This is the biggest idea I’ve ever pursued. I’m also so excited about my new role as strategic advisor to Uber and very honored to stay as a venture advisor at Menlo to continue the epic work we have done together.”

The parting with Menlo appears to be amicable. “Menlo is excited to see Shervin’s new model come to fruition while continuing to work together in his role as a venture advisor,” said Menlo’s Shawn Carolan. “As anyone who knows him can attest, his talents in spotting great ideas, connecting and evangelizing are exceptional and his venture advisor role allows us to continue to collaborate on finding and creating value together.”

Indeed more than many in the tech scene, the incessantly networking Pishevar is perhaps well suited to such an ambitious effort like Sherpa. He’s has worked closely with a lot of Web 2.0′s hottest startups, such as Uber, Fab and Warby Parker, while also leading Menlo’s investment in Tumblr.

An active angel investor, he has also started a number of companies, such as the Social Gaming Network, which was merged with Mindjolt.

And Stanford is equally well known in Silicon Valley, having shepherded a wide variety of high-profile deals for the banking giant, while heading its global Internet investment banking business from San Francisco as a managing director.

He’s been at Goldman for a dozen years and has been involved in investments in Facebook, Zappos and LinkedIn. Before banking, he worked at pioneering search company, LookSmart.

But Mine, a new start-up focused on exactly this sort of thing, operates on a different premise: Embarrassing or no, we are what we buy.

In other words, it’s another stab at mapping our online identities. But instead of relying on our ever-expanding web of social connections — such as Facebook — or the myriad topics of interest that catch our fancies on a moment-by-moment basis — like Twitter — Mine goes after our e-paper trail, piecing together a picture of a user from a history of their e-commerce activities.

“Over the next few years, purchase history is going to become perhaps the biggest component of your online identity,” co-founder Pierre Legrain said in an interview. “Right now, it’s spread out all over the place. Mine should be the repository that you control — it’s the master copy of your purchases.”

The idea is fairly simple. Log into Mine with Twitter or Facebook and grant the app access to your Gmail or Yahoo email account. From there, Mine combs through your purchase history of receipts from Amazon, Etsy, iTunes and Zappos, retrieving a master list of your purchases. After that, you’re able to choose which purchases you want showing up in your Mine identity (thank god), and publish them to your account.

From here, it’s much like other social platforms — you’re headed into the stream. Based on a follow/follower model like Twitter (a company Legrain once worked for), you’re able to scroll through the stream to see your friends’ recent purchases, complete with annotated comments sections and the ability to “heart” things. There are links tacked on to each purchase entry, so if you like something one of your friends bought, you can click through and get one yourself.

So, a question: Is this little more than a collection of items you’d otherwise be “liking” on your Facebook page? Or, say, a Pinterest board of items you own or want to own? It seems like the territory is already rife with potential competition.

Legrain refutes this (obviously). He believes the verbs themselves — “like” for Facebook, “pin” or want for Pinterest, and “own” for Mine — are on separate trajectories. “Liking and wanting things creates tons of volume, but in terms of ownership, it is a completely different bucket in people’s minds,” Legrain said.

In other words, there’s room for his start-up not to get big-footed upon by a giant competitor (hopefully).

That may be true, but the more difficult part is making room for another social networking app in consumers’ minds. Keeping people engaged and in the feed is an uphill battle. And with existing competition from players like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter (to say little of Path and Pinterest), Mine has its work cut out for it, no matter how active our spending habits.

Mine is available in the App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch, as well as on the Web.

Good taste not included.

But there are signs that the freeze between the two companies is starting to thaw. Over the past couple of weeks, Amazon’s Kindle devices have started appearing in search results on Google Shopping. While that may not sound very significant, it means that Amazon realized it could no longer afford to ignore the search engine — even if it means it has to pay.

An Amazon spokesman declined to comment on the Kindle’s sudden appearance in Google Shopping, and a Google spokesperson also had nothing to say.

When Google first announced it was rolling out Google Shopping earlier this year, it promised a better shopping experience on Google. While the program has been fairly under the radar, it represents a huge shift for the search engine, which used to accept product feeds for free. For the most part, the change has gone smoothly, with many retailers reporting positive results and few complaints by consumers (the one exception is Microsoft’s Bing, which has plenty to say).

However, early on, Google came under fire for not delivering the best experience, as promised. Most notably, since Amazon was refusing to participate, it eliminated many products from results, including the Kindle. For example, SearchEngineLand reported in early November that Google’s results were less than stellar when searching for the Kindle Fire. While several online merchants and brick-and-mortar stores showed up as selling the device, shoppers could not see Amazon as an option. It would be like buying an iPad from another retailer without first checking prices on Apple.com.

But starting sometime a couple of weeks ago, that was no longer the case. Today, Amazon is showing up in the results for the Kindle on Google Shopping. Sources say that Amazon is paying to participate, rather than this being a move by Google to include the Kindle for the sake of having more complete listings. Amazon is not otherwise participating on Google Shopping, although some of its subsidiaries are, such as Zappos and Diapers.com.

For most shoppers, the Google-Amazon rivalry is easy to miss — one company is a search engine and the other is an e-commerce site. But this holiday season, it’s in full swing, with most consumers starting their online shopping experience at one of the two sites. According to Forrester, 30 percent of online shoppers went directly to Amazon, compared with 13 percent of shoppers who went to Google first. This year, Google is seeing a huge lift after revamping its shopping experience. In addition to starting to charge retailers for inclusion, it created a more visual experience, including product images. It also allows consumers to easily conduct price comparisons across numerous sites.

Google’s efforts are already paying off, according to Eric Best, the CEO of Mercent, which provides retailers with tools to help them compete on Amazon and Google. He said across Mercent’s customer base, which includes 1-800-Flowers, REI and Office Depot, transactions this holiday season are up 60 percent year over year on Google and 37 percent on Amazon.

“Google is growing so much faster in its conversion to paid than we were expecting or we would have hoped,” he said. “I think Google is working hard to recover some ground against Amazon with these moves. After all, how defensible is search if you don’t own commerce?”

And it isn’t for lack of trying. Since Facebook snapped up photo-sharing application Instagram for $750 million earlier this year, the next logical step was to move to video. Now there’s no dearth of apps that serve up user-generated videos captured through the smartphone.

Add Threadlife, the latest from Zappos founder Nick Swinmurn, to that pile. His app’s premise is much like a few others: Where video is concerned, shorter is better.

Threadlife’s stock in trade is the three-second video clip — dubbed a “stitch” in the whole sewing theme — a play on the idea that, as with photos, we’re apt to consume things quickly when they’re easy to view fast. That’s much along the lines of Viddy, a competing app that has been around for much longer, which holds 15-second time constraints on each clip.

Threadlife’s value proposition, however, is a bit different. Users can compile their short video “stitches” into themed “threads.” It’s a simple way to explicate a process — like restoring a project car you have in the garage, from rust bucket to street-ready — over a period of time, each clip adding another segment on top of the last. Or, for the sappy parent crowd, a way to curate the first days, weeks and months of a new addition to the family.

The company is keeping both the social and anti-social demographics in mind. Threads can be private or public, and all content within the app is shareable out to Facebook and Twitter. Smart, in that the app can keep private moments cordoned off, yet still capable of attaining user growth via social channels.

And yet the challenges are considerable. The social video app market is completely flooded. Acquisition exits may not be as easy to come by, as some apps have already been snapped up by giants like Twitter and Autodesk.

Facebook, too, doesn’t seem to be taking a side in the war among these types of start-ups, instead inviting all developers to integrate their social video apps into the Open Graph platform.

And despite never launching, social video application Vine subscribed to the short-form thesis; the app recorded in quick increments, only taking in video when you hold your finger down on the “record” button, and stitched those together afterward. Moreover, Twitter acquired Vine prelaunch, so Threadlife may have to compete with an app backed by one of the most popular short-form communication services in the world today.

Will Threadlife crack the social video app dilemma? I don’t know. But at the very least, it will make for a good story.

The site, which sells high-end clothing, shoes, handbags, jewelry and watches, will become a part of Amazon.com/Fashion, according to a statement that appeared on the front page of the site.

Reuters, which first reported the news, said Amazon launched Endless.com in 2007, and that the closure is part of a big push by Amazon to expand further into fashion and apparel this year.

In an recent interview with AllThingsD, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos said he is spending a lot of time thinking about the apparel, and that its clothing business was getting “very exciting.”

“I think there’s a tremendous amount of invention going on there, especially in the Web presentation of apparel,” he said.

A spokesperson confirmed that the transition was taking place and said that other non-Amazon branded fashion properties, such as Zappos or Shopbop, would not be affected.

“Between Amazon, Shopbop and Zappos, our customers have easy access to an assortment of quality brands and a variety of shopping experiences for any fashion need, so we are shifting our Endless business to Amazon in order to focus on the Amazon Fashion experience,” the spokesperson said.

Amazon also operates MyHabit.com, a fashion site that sells items at a discount.

Apparel is one of the fastest growing categories online, according to eMarketer, which is predicting that the category will grow by 20 percent to $40.9 billion this year, up from $34.2 billion in 2011.

On the Web site, Amazon billed the changes as “exciting news.”

Earlier this week, I slogged through the rain in a very dorkish GroupMe plastic poncho at SXSW in Austin to attend what I thought was one of the more interesting sessions, titled “Why Cleanweb Will Beat Cleantech.”

Perhaps because it was not yet another creepy location app (memo to Banjo and Highlight users, please stop attempting to get me to allow you to stalk me, cuz I ain’t!), it was more sparsely attended.

But the presentation by longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sunil Paul was a good one, given his premise that current information technology tools were at the heart of creating solutions around energy conservation.

The founder of Brightmail — and also the first start-up partner of Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus at a Washington, D.C., company called Freeloader (where I first met the pair) — thinks that clean technologies like solar can be better leveraged with Cleanweb, which he defined as the “application of information technology to resource constraints.”

In other words, more Airbnb (fewer hotel rooms mean less carbon emissions), more Zappos (fewer stores, less driving to stores, etc.) and more teleconferencing (that’s easy to grok) is evidence that the Cleanweb could be an important contributor to saving the planet.

Quoting a recent tweet he saw, Paul noted that a smartphone today has as much computing power as the computers that put a man on the moon, but all we do with them is launch birds into pigs.

“I am saying we can do something better with the aggressive application of software technology,” he said.

Actually, those Angry Birds are now in space, too.

In any case, here’s Paul’s interesting deck from the talk:

cleanweb_presentation-Sunil-2012-mar-10

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That’s Target’s motto this holiday season, as it promises on-time Christmas deliveries for online orders placed by Tuesday.

But some retailers are being a little more jolly.

In today’s fast-paced digital world, procrastinators are being rewarded, and will be able to shop online as late as Thursday and still get presents safely underneath the tree in time for Christmas.

For example, Wal-Mart will rush packages to your door for orders placed as late as Wednesday; Amazon is offering regular free two-day shipping as late as Wednesday; Zappos is offering free shipping for orders made by 1 pm PT on Thursday; and Toys “R” Us will go as late as noon on Thursday for express shipping.

There are exceptions, of course, and Amazon is a big one.

For orders placed on Thursday, one-day shipping will cost shoppers $3.99 an item; for items ordered on Friday, only Amazon Prime members will be able to pay $9.99 an item for on-time delivery; those in 11 U.S. cities can wait until Saturday, at which point it will cost $3.99 per item to ship by local express.

Amazon Prime is the e-commerce company’s membership service; it charges $79 a year for free two-day shipping and other perks, like free streaming videos.

One of the biggest limitations for the holiday is the logistics of getting a package from a distribution center to someone’s home. For example, FedEx won’t be running on Christmas, but will be running partial operations on Christmas Eve, a Saturday.

At this late point in the year, physical retailers shine.

For example, Apple’s shipping cutoff date is on Wednesday, but it will allow customers to order online and pick up in the store until 11 pm on Friday. On Christmas Eve, many of its stores will be open until 6 pm. Toys “R” Us and Best Buy are also offering free in-store pickup, adding late hours to accommodate the busiest of people. Best Buy will be open until 3 pm local time on Dec. 24, and Toys “R” Us will will stay open for 112 hours straight, starting at 6 am Tuesday, Dec. 20 and closing at 10 pm on Saturday night.

Online retailers can’t compete with store hours but, conversely, stores have had a hard time competing with the deals online, especially earlier in the season.

This holiday period, Amazon prompted consumers to consider the moral dilemma of shopping in stores versus online, when it kicked off a Dec. 10 promotion that offered $5 off to consumers as an inducement to walk out of stores empty-handed. EBay fired back with its own promotion, which gave online shoppers a $10 coupon to return to stores.

To be sure, online retailers will have something to celebrate on Sunday.

ComScore, which is tracking online spending habits this holiday season, said $30.9 billion had been spent online during a 46-day shopping window that ended Dec. 16, marking a 15 percent increase over last year.

Spending last Friday — dubbed Free Shipping Friday — hit $1.07 billion; it was the fourth day to surpass the billion-dollar mark this year. Still, Cyber Monday — the Monday following Thanksgiving — appears to rank as the heaviest online spending day of the year for the second consecutive season.

With only 13 days until Christmas, today has historically ranked as one of the heaviest online shopping days of the year, thereby earning the nickname “Green Monday.”

This year it’s almost a guarantee that history will repeat itself.

Already, six individual days have surpassed the billion-dollar threshold this holiday season, according to comScore. That’s up from last year, when only one day eclipsed $1 billion in spending.

The term Green Monday was coined by eBay in 2007 to describe the second Monday of December because it tended to attract shoppers who wanted to make sure their presents would arrive in time. And, well, because the color of money is green.

This year, a number of online retailers are banking on it by offering a number of holiday specials.

But one of the biggest benefactors of all is FedEx, which must ship all the orders.

The commercial postal service is predicting that today will be the busiest day in its nearly 40-year history. The company is forecasting that it will ship more than 17 million orders today, double its daily average volume, and will exceed last year’s busiest day of 15.6 million shipments.

FedEx might be one of the first indicators to reveal how well the online shopping is fairing.

It says the increase is largely driven by residential shipments sent from online and catalog retailers. ComScore’s data would agree with that hypothesis. Already, the research firm says that online shopping is up roughly 15 percent from Nov. 1 to Dec. 9, compared to the same period in 2010.

ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said, “We know that Green Monday will rank among the top online spending days of the season.”

But he added that it will likely not be the last hurrah of the year.

Other important days to come include the promotional day coined “Free Shipping Day,” which occurs on Dec. 16, and other days this week as we near the end of the year.

One retailer, however, was not in the holiday spirit.

Amazon-owned Zappos put out a press release today calling itself the Anti-Green Monday. It said shoppers don’t have to get caught up in the hype because it is guaranteeing that all orders made on Dec. 22 will receive next-day delivery for Dec. 23.

Now that’s the true definition of a procrastinator.

Here is comScore’s list of the 10 biggest shopping days of 2011:

“I have about 50 pairs of Nikes in my closet, and it seemed to me like I should be treated differently by Nike than a customer who has zero pairs,” he said.

The thought inspired Swinmurn to start RNKD, which is launching in beta today. Customers can create profiles and upload pictures of items of clothing they already own by snapping a picture and designating brands and where they bought each piece.

“The idea was to bridge the gap between consumers and brands by using what people already have in their closets,” Swinmurn said.

Users will be rewarded with badges and points for uploading photos, and will have the opportunity to win gift cards based on their participation. Swinmurn believes brands could use RNKD as a way to offer clothing at a discount to their most dedicated fans.

The emphasis is on the brand, rather than the store at which the apparel was purchased, which is how many other loyalty programs are designed.

Swinmurn, who left Zappos before it was sold to Amazon, also gained inspiration for RNKD after starting a small clothing line called Dethrone, which creates gear and clothing for practitioners of mixed martial arts. He said he sells 99 percent of the apparel to small shops. “We have no idea who walks into the shops and buys the product,” he said.

Swinmurn is hoping to tip the market on its head. Brands are already giving discounts on clothing at stores like Ross and T.J. Maxx, and on online flash sales sites like Gilt Groupe, ideeli and Rue La La. But those discounts aren’t being given to the biggest fans of the brands.

Instead, Swinmurn argues, discounts should go to consumers who deserve them.

RNKD is based in San Francisco, and is self-funded by Swinmurn, who has an engineering team of one.

Zappos expects to launch its first attempt at recreating the catalog experience on the iPad in early December, just in time for the holidays.

The app was developed by the Zappos office located in San Francisco, where a dozen or so employees are working on building new shopping experiences.

Zappos, which is owned by Amazon.com, is headquartered in Las Vegas.

The new app joins the regular Zappos iPad app, which features most, if not all, of the products found on the company’s Web site.

Instead of being generally available in iTunes, the Zappos app will be found on Apple’s Newsstand, which organizes magazine and newspaper subscriptions for those who use iOS 5. It will be free; a new edition will appear monthly.

Articles will highlight things like fun and funky boots for winter or trends in color. All of the items will be for sale, making it more catalog than magazine.

Will Young, a director in Zappos’ San Francisco office, said the catalog will highlight about 100 items a month, featuring shoes, clothes and handbags. “Most people still think of Zappos as shoes,” Young said. “The main goal isn’t sales. It’s about educating.”

The app was unveiled to all Zappos employees at an all-hands meeting yesterday.

It launched its first AmazonLocal site in June, and has been able to expand quickly through its investment in LivingSocial, which sells many of the deals to spas, restaurants and other services in those cities on behalf of Amazon.

Today, Amazon announced that in addition to local deals, it will also be sweetening the pot by offering special discounts from Amazon-affiliated sites, including Amazon.com; MyHabit.com, which offers flash sales on apparel and home decor; endless.com, a designer apparel site; and 6pm.com, a discounted apparel site operated by Amazon-owned Zappos.

AmazonLocal said over the next few months, offers will include $25 for $50 to spend on jewelry and watches at Amazon.com, $40 for $80 to spend at MyHabit.com and $25 for $50 to spend at 6pm.com.

The offers will drive traffic to its lesser-known brands, which at times have had difficulty gaining traction, and also provide some incentive for people overwhelmed by offers from a dozen Groupon wannabees to subscribe to yet another daily deals site.

While it may appear the daily deals business is a small side project for the large e-commerce provider, if done well it may become exceedingly important as it uses ads and offers to discount the price of hardware.

Amazon has cut the price of its 3G Kindle to $164 and the Wi-Fi version to $114 thanks to the introduction of advertising on the platform.

As evidenced by the extreme interest in the discontinued HP TouchPad tablets that were being sold off in a fire sale at $99 apiece, you can see how important it is to drive the price of similar hardware below $100. Amazon plans to release a tablet computer by October, people familiar with the matter said, intensifying its rivalry with Apple’s iPad.

For other daily deal providers in the space, ranging from Groupon to Google, the entrance of Amazon may be intimidating. Despite announcing the launch in New York City only today, it has already sold 80 vouchers for food and drinks in downtown New York; 121 vouchers to hot yoga in the Upper West Side; 581 tickets to Cirque du Soleil’s “Zarkana” performance; and 259 vouchers to a restaurant in Brooklyn.

A sad little period was put on the even more pathetic story of Myspace yesterday by its former owner, News Corp., which said it had lost $254 million. The media giant announced the writedown during its quarterly earnings call.

The down-the-drain social networking site generated $230 million in operating losses over the last year.

The most recent quarter was an “improvement” on previous losses — but what a way to go.

After its once stratospheric valuation heights, Myspace was sold for just $35 million to a company that included singer/actor Justin Timberlake as an investor, which just adds that last little bit of cringe to the sorry situation.

Many had long predicted Myspace’s demise — the bloom was off the rose very soon after it was the most hyped company in Web 2.0 history. But it’s still a good question to ask: Is this a case that other hotsy-totsy start-ups need to look to as a cautionary tale? Or was it simply a digital belly flop?

Well, it’s both, of course. So here are the five key things the current crop of pretty start-ups might want to take away from the Myspace debacle:

1. Stay current: One of the big problems of Myspace, as has been much observed, was its inability to keep innovating its technology and improving its offerings. While this seems simple in retrospect, consistently trading up the experience and deliverables to users is something that many companies quickly lose sight of. But in a fast-changing digital world, it is very easy to get behind very quickly.

2. Stay focused: You certainly can go in a lot of directions in life and in your business, but most companies that succeed — Apple, Amazon, Facebook — tend to stick rather closely to their knitting and do not veer off into too many orthogonal directions. Myspace, riding on huge waves of attention and hype, seemed to have a new plan and scheme every five minutes. When it comes down to it, most companies are lucky to get one amazing and significant business.

3. Stay humble: Speaking of waves of attention and hype — they’ll sink any company fast if it spends too much time swimming in their deceptively lovely waters. As anyone at the top of a curve knows, the riptide downside will come soon enough (see: Airbnb). Thus it’s important to have the right amount of attention. While it goes against a lot of marketing strategies, underplaying can often be more powerful.

4. Stay customer-focused: Another obvious rule that Myspace repeatedly broke, with its rush to add all kinds of traffic-inducing elements to the site, rather than build it for quality and layer them in later. While people joked about the circus act that Myspace’s interface became, it actually was not very funny for those using it.

5. Stay independent: One wonders what might have happened if Myspace had not taken the money and run. While the pile of money from News Corp. was perhaps irresistible, it’s hard to find to anyone on any side of this deal who did not bemoan the pressures of being inside a big company, and its negative impact on Myspace.

Facebook — which CEO Mark Zuckerberg was allowed to carefully nurture before imposing a definite business plan — is often pointed to as proof of the importance of allowing delicate start-ups the space to thrive. But there are also instances of hot entrepreneurs doing fine within a larger entity — YouTube at Google, or Zappos at Amazon, leap quickly to mind.

In the end, of course, none of this might have helped Myspace, which may have simply been one of the Web’s shooting stars. That is to say, remarkable to watch — but, in the end, also a lot more common than you might think.

The bus, which was used to promote his book “Delivering Happiness,” has nine bunk beds, pomegranate seeds in the fridge and the obligatory groupies hanging out in it.

From the lounge in the back of the bus, Hsieh talks about what it was like to sell his company to Amazon in a deal worth $1.2 billion, how he’s determined to stay independent and the correlation between being happy and running a successful business.

Now, the bus continues on as a symbol for the company’s culture, which encourages a blurring of the lines between life and work.

Here’s the video, including the ending where we attempt a MTV-esque goodbye, where Hsieh kicks me off the bus, although I screw it up by failing to leave.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110602/all-aboard-zappos-happiness-bus/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110329/how-about-dontvoteforme-so-boomtown-gets-the-no-140-spot-in-times-tweet-off/ http://allthingsd.com/20110329/how-about-dontvoteforme-so-boomtown-gets-the-no-140-spot-in-times-tweet-off/#comments Tue, 29 Mar 2011 15:35:45 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=42086

Yes, it is perverse, but I really want to come in dead last in Time magazine’s “140 Best Twitter Feeds.”

Why? Well, there’s no way I am getting near the top with the likes of Sarah Palin and Lady Gaga in the same list, so I felt the 140th–get it?–slot on a Twitter poll is the next best thing to aim for.

Here’s the deal, according to the magazine’s Web site:

“TIME picks the 140 Twitter feeds that are shaping the conversation. Take a look and vote on whether you think these top tweeters should be on our list.”

The list is split up into categories, such as authors (Neil Gaiman, who is #1, and Margaret Atwood), celebrities (Gaga and the inevitable Justin Bieber) and companies (Zappos and Whole Foods).

There is also a technology group, with luminaries such as New York VC Fred Wilson, man-about-Web Kevin Rose and, of course, the King of Tweets Robert Scoble.

I am in that group too, with the description: “When this woman reports a rumor, you can pretty much count on it to be true.”

Thanks…I think–although I prefer to call it reporting a fact.

In any case, early on, I was doing badly in the voting–as I had hoped and is entirely correct considering I am unknown to anyone but certain geeks–and was right near the bottom with some suspect deal sites.

But by last night, GigaOm’s Om Malik had dropped below me, along with Wilson. I was at the unacceptable 131 spot.

This will not stand! Thus, so I can shoot the moon, I urge everyone to vote for:

132 Mike Allen
133 Om Malik
134 Amazon Deals
135 Fred Wilson
136 DealDivine
137 Nieman Lab
138 Best Buy Deals
139 Coupons.com
140 Steven Johnson

A well-known writer and entrepreneur, Johnson has 1.4 million followers on Twitter and does not deserve this ignominious loss as much as me.

Tweet that.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110329/how-about-dontvoteforme-so-boomtown-gets-the-no-140-spot-in-times-tweet-off/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110211/one-kings-lane-raises-23-million-from-kleiner-perkins-greylock-others/ http://allthingsd.com/20110211/one-kings-lane-raises-23-million-from-kleiner-perkins-greylock-others/#comments Fri, 11 Feb 2011 11:00:52 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=2697 One Kings Lane, which is competing in the trendy flash sales market, selling home décor, furnishings and accessories, has raised $23 million in a second round of funding.

The round was co-led by existing investor Kleiner Perkins and new investor Greylock Partners. Also participating is First Round Capital and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, as well as new investors TriplePoint Capital and Marissa Mayer.

If you haven’t heard of it, San Francisco-based One Kings Lane is an online retailer that sells designer home items, ranging from large oriental rugs to sophisticated and modern side tables, at deep discounts. The offer, which is sent to your inbox on a daily basis, is limited and can sell out in five minutes or five hours.

Typically, the merchandise comes from unsold inventory at luxury or high-end interior designers, which is why it can be sold for so much lower than retail.

The concept is part of a burgeoning new industry that is being called “private sales” or “flash sales.” Companies in the space include Gilt Groupe and Rue La La, which are mainly focused on fashion and clothing.

One Kings Lane has another differentiator: It is not building big warehouses to store all the items it wants to sell, nor is it committing to purchasing any of the inventory in advance. Therefore, the costs are lower because One Kings Lane doesn’t get stuck with any excess inventory.

On the other hand, it doesn’t have complete control over the shipping process, meaning shipments can sometimes take one to two weeks to reach customers.

CEO Doug Mack said he doesn’t expect the model to change with this funding.

The site was founded in late 2008 by Susan Feldman and Alison Pincus (who is married to Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga, the social games company that has also raised funding from Kleiner Perkins–albeit on a much larger scale). One Kings Lane launched in the spring of 2009.

Last year was a pivotal time for the company.

Mack, who was hired in June, quickly ramped up the management team, hiring other executives from Hotwire, eBay, Walmart.com and Zappos.

It grew revenues five times over 2009 and boosted its membership base to around one million. It launched an iPhone app in November that generated two to three percent of its sales on the first day. Since then, the app has sustained those revenue levels.

Mack says the home furnishings are top of the line, and are compelling because they’re nothing you’d ever see at Ikea, or even in a department store like Macy’s.

While quality is hard to convey over the Web, he says the company has slowly gained customers’ trust over time. Often, customers will start by purchasing something small, like a candle. From there they might work their way up to a cashmere blanket, and eventually take the plunge into something as large as an armchair or area rug.

One of the more telling statistics that supports this is that 70 to 80 percent of sales are from repeat buyers.

This round of funding follows its Series A, which it raised back in December 2009. That was led by Kleiner Perkins, with Hoffman also participating. Hoffman introduced One Kings Lane to Greylock, where he is also a partner.

Mack says the capital will be used for three things: Accelerating the growth of its membership base, expanding the catalog of merchandise and scaling customer service as its membership grows.

To attract more members beyond the viral growth the company has already experienced, Mack says it will begin its first meaningful Web campaign, addressing its target of middle- to upper-class women, ages 35 to 55, in metro areas.

“In the grand scheme of things, we are only scraping the surface. Anyone with a home or apartment could use one of the things we sell,” Mack said.

In relation to the funding, James Slavet of Greylock will be a board observer, joining Aileen Lee of Kleiner Perkins, who has a board seat,  and Bing Gordon of Kleiner Perkins, who is also an observer.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110211/one-kings-lane-raises-23-million-from-kleiner-perkins-greylock-others/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110128/zappos-meddles-in-mobile-as-opportunities-increase-for-apps/ http://allthingsd.com/20110128/zappos-meddles-in-mobile-as-opportunities-increase-for-apps/#comments Fri, 28 Jan 2011 14:00:41 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=2097 As we’ve written before, 2011 is the year that mobile begins to become a big opportunity in e-commerce.

To be sure, a lot of brands are getting on the bandwagon. Big retailers represented on the iPad with applications include eBay, Target, JCPenny, Gilt Groupe and Pottery Barn Kids. Some are even experiencing good results.

EBay has been one of the more aggressive in revealing how its mobile business is faring.

The auctions and e-commerce company said last year that mobile sales more than tripled in 2010, generating nearly $2 billion in gross merchandise volume. (That’s the value of all stuff sold on eBay, regardless of whether the buyer and seller finalized the deal.)

While that’s a big number, it represents only 3.7 percent of overall earnings.

But that could change quickly.

From what we are hearing, various retailers are expecting mobile revenues to hit about 10 percent of overall sales by the end of this quarter, and that later this year, it could inch even higher as more tablets and smartphones get into the hands of consumers.

To get a taste for how shoppers interact with applications on tablets and mobile phones, we caught up with the folks at Amazon-owned Zappos.

Zappos, which was founded in 1999 as a shoe seller and has since branched out to more categories, is a relative newbie to mobile. It started developing apps only six months ago, and launched an iPad app in October followed by an iPhone app in December.

Now it’s on a roll and expects to launch an Android version in early March, with a mobile Web site remodel also in the works. Jaimee Newberry, a product manager on the Zappos Mobile team, said, “We are pleasantly surprised. We think they seem to be doing well, although it’s really early.”

Zappos declined to share specific revenue or download figures, but so far the Zappos Mobile iPad and iPhone apps are  No. 5 and No. 32, respectively, in the Lifestyle category. Overall, Zappos ranks 80th for iPad downloads and has received four stars in a five-star rating system.

Zappos Program Manager Ian Klassen said what’s interesting is how behavior differs between mobile devices and the PC. ”The results we are getting back on the iPad show that people absolutely love to browse,” he said.

In addition, he said that the iPad provides a big sales lift on Sunday evenings between 6 and 9 pm PT, whereas the PC version is stronger on weekdays– in particular on Mondays and Tuesdays. Behavior on the iPhone differs, too. ”We say the iPhone is for shopping on your lunch break, whereas the iPad is where you do shopping on the weekend, like going out to have coffee and enjoying the experience,” Klassen said.

The mobile devices are also selling more apparel than the regular site, although shoes  remain dominant on both.

Sure enough, the iPad can offer a much more luxurious experience than the smaller screen on the iPhone, and can do a fairly good job of replicating a window-shopping experience.

Stealing a play from the iPad’s photo app,  Newberry said consumers can use the same pinch-burst technique to dive into a whole category, such as women’s shoes. Instead of having to click to enter the category, a number of photos displaying sandals and sneakers will pop up. While the feature may not be practical for finding the exact pair of shoes you want, it’s a whimsical way to be entertained while browsing.

Zappos plans a number of updates for the applications soon, including more filters to help with browsing and free shipping for everyone. On the regular PC site, users have to sign in to VIP accounts in order to be guaranteed free shipping, but on the mobile devices the differentiation wasn’t possible before. Soon, if you buy on a mobile device, you will automatically be upgraded.

An aspect of the app experience that is completely arbitrary is the products that are featured–in nearly full size–on the homepage. “We feature what looks nice and what is the most colorful,” Newberry said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110128/zappos-meddles-in-mobile-as-opportunities-increase-for-apps/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110124/zendesk-growing-like-mad-adds-a-coo/ http://allthingsd.com/20110124/zendesk-growing-like-mad-adds-a-coo/#comments Tue, 25 Jan 2011 05:00:33 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=2225 Zendesk, the Web-based help desk outfit, says its revenue has grown 300 percent in the last year (though it didn’t disclose an amount). It has also tripled its number of business customers, who use it to keep track of help desk calls, to 5,000. Add in iPhone, Android and BlackBerry apps, as well as integration with Salesforce.com and Twitter, and Zendesk has touched some 22 million end users, the company says.

No surprise then that it’s beefing up its executive team. Zendesk named Zack Urlocker chief operating officer. Urlocker is currently a former executive in residence at Scale Venture Partners. Before that he was an executive vice president at MySQL, and helped boost its sales to $100 million before it was acquired by Sun Microsystems.

Among the new Zendesk customers are Groupon, OpenTable and Zappos Insights, as well as established brands like Adobe and Sony Music. This news comes on the heels of its $19 million round of funding led by Matrix Partners late last year, along with Charles River Ventures and Benchmark Capital.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110124/zendesk-growing-like-mad-adds-a-coo/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110111/salescrunch-raises-1-4-million-for-a-social-network-for-salesmen/ http://allthingsd.com/20110111/salescrunch-raises-1-4-million-for-a-social-network-for-salesmen/#comments Tue, 11 Jan 2011 10:59:18 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=27924 A reminder that you don’t have to be a pre-revenue app-maker to grab investor funding these days: Here’s SalesCrunch, a 9-month-old a “social network and sales training platform.” The New York-based company has only a few hundred users, none of whom pay, but it has still gathered $1.4 million in a round led by First Round Capital. Other investors include Accel Partners and Alfred Lin, former COO and CFO at Zappos. SalesCrunch founder Sean Black used to head sales at Trulia.com.

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