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True Or False? Automatic Fact-Checking Coming To The Web – Complications Follow

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

TechCrunch - By Devin Coldewey - Nov. 29 (Opinion) - The social layer has settled on the web like a dusting of multicolored snowflakes, gracing every story with a little menagerie of sharing counts and buttons. Once basic standards of content publishing were established, basic standards of sharing had to be as well, the internet being as it is a medium of information transmission. First you get the content, then you move it around. We’re still working on the moving around part.

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WooThemes Launches WooCommerce To Turn WordPress Sites Into Online Shops

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Sarah Perez - Sep. 27 (Opinion) - WordPress theme provider WooThemes is launching a new service today called WooCommerce, which lets users install a plugin on their WordPress site in order to turn that site into a professional e-commerce storefront. The system includes a plugin and the company's theme library, while also offering multiple payment gateway options, settings for configuring shipping rates, coupon support, email templates, a reports panel to track sales and performance and more.

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Home Decor Flash Sales Site HomeSav.com Raises $1.2 Million

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Robin Wauters - Sep. 27 (Opinion) - Luxury home decor flash sale site HomeSav.com this morning announced that it has raised $1.2 million in seed financing from multiple retail angel investors and entrepreneurs including the Koffler family and the Metrick family (founders and owners of Canada's largest high-end home furniture retailer). In addition, HomeSav.com says it has grown its membership by over 1,400 percent in the first year to over 100,000 registered users in the United States and Canada. Its members are said to place over 100 orders per day.

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With iTunes In The Cloud, Apple Under-Promises And Over-Delivers

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By MG Siegler - Aug. 30 (Opinion) - With iTunes In The Cloud, Apple Under-Promises And Over-Delivers

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Google’s +1 Button Gets Its Treat: Now Lets You Share To Google+ Circles

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Jason Kincaid - Aug. 24 (Opinion) - Over the last several months you’ve probably come across Google’s +1 quite a few times. You may have even clicked it, only to wonder what exactly you’d just accomplished. Because, at least from the user’s perspective, there hasn’t been any reward from clicking on it. You’d push the button for the treat, only to leave empty-handed. That hasn’t stopped the +1 button from getting huge distribution — it’s now on 1 million sites and appears in 4 billion impressions every day, but that growth has had more to do with the fact that it’s Google than it does with the button being useful. The +1 button has always had a subtle purpose, of course: Google says that it impacts search results, so pages you +1 may show up in your friends’ queries more prominently than they would otherwise. But who knows how often that happens. And while these +1 clicks also get saved in your Google+ profile, they’re not anywhere your friends are going to see them.

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Facebook Wants Your Unborn Child

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Alexia Tsotsis - Aug. 03 (Opinion) - Sometime in the past week, Facebook flipped the switch on allowing you to add your unborn baby to your list of family members via the “Expected: Child” option on Facebook profiles. Apparently too many parents were creating "illegal" fake profiles for their yet unhatched offspring -- setting their fake babies' ages to 13 instead of negative whatever, the minimum Facebook allows. Also, you can't ask for a better customer acquisition strategy than getting them hooked while they're still in the womb!

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Amazon’s Market Cap Passes $100 Billion

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Leena Rao - Jul. 27 (News) - After reporting stronger than expected second quarter earnings yesterday, Amazon has passed $100 billion in market cap this morning. The company's shares are currently trading at around $225 per share, giving the e-commerce giant a $101.81 billion market cap.

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Google Tried To Buy Color For $200 Million. Color Said No.

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Michael Arrington - Jul. 22 (Opinion) - If that headline looks familiar to you, you're probably remembering our story about Google offering to buy Path for $100+ million from earlier this year. Path turned that deal down. About the same time, multiple sources have confirmed, Google was also making a run for Color, the mobile social network founded by Bill Nguyen. This was well before Color launched, and Google was looking at the company's potential as well as the team. Google offered $200 million for the company, according to our sources.

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I’m Quitting Email

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By MG Siegler - Jul. 07 (Opinion) - I’m Quitting Email

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The Power Of Pull

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Alex Rampell - Jul. 03 (Opinion) - What makes email, Facebook, and Google so valuable? Answer: Visiting them is largely unprompted, notwithstanding the synapses that fire in your brain that make you check your email, your Facebook feed, or decide to research something on Google. In other words, people pull content themselves, rather than having that content be pushed — or foisted — upon them. The best way of looking at consumer web applications is as a complex stack of “pulls” and “pushes.” Lest these terms be confused with an earlier generation of push: a “pull” is an unsolicited action by a consumer, whereas a “push” is a solicitation by a seller/producer. The consumer ultimately “pulls” from a mobile phone or computer. Everything else is “pushed” to the consumer, through ads, e-mails or other marketing efforts from companies eager to get business and traffic.

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The Declaration of Insurance Independence

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Dave Chase - Jul. 03 (Opinion) - Healthcare’s perverse incentives and an accompanying stifling bureaucracy driven by encumbering day-to-day healthcare with insurance has caused hyperinflation that is crushing family, employer and government budgets and holding back job growth. This must be stopped. Citizens and healthcare providers are doing exactly that, however counter-productive insurance regulations are impairing the ability to expand upon health plans shown to reduce costs by 40% or more. We, therefore, declare that: the United States are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent of insurance and self-sufficient in accessing day-to-day healthcare; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to insurance bureaucracy; and that all insurance connections involving the purchase of day-to-day healthcare, are and ought to be totally dissolved; as Free and Independent States they have full Power to explore the range of more effective ways of accessing day-to-day healthcare, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.

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Why Is Zynga Rushing Towards Its IPO?

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Erick Schonfeld - Jul. 02 (Opinion) - The IPO window is now wide open, with everyone from Zynga to Groupon rushing towards it. Nobody knows how long that window will stay open (rule of thumb is 18 months), so better go public while you can. But today’s IPO filing from Zynga came particularly fast. According to one source, the actual writing of the 150+ page S-1 document was one of the fastest documentation processes for an IPO of this size, only taking two to three weeks.

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Khosla Ventures Is Raising, Like, A Billion Dollars

Thu, 19 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Robin Wauters - May. 19 (Opinion) - Venture capital firm Khosla Ventures is raising $1 billion for its new fund, Khosla Ventures IV, an SEC filing reveals. From the looks of it, the new fund will be roughly the same size as the previous one (raised in September 2009).

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The Illusion Of Social Networks

Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Semil Shah - May. 15 (Opinion) - The world is full of illusions. Magicians use a cascade of mirrors, smoke, and misdirection to trick their audiences into believing the unbelievable. In the process, they mystify them, capturing their attention. Whether it’s David Copperfield cutting his lovely assistants in half with a saw, or David Blaine wowing street audiences by levitating himself, these types of artists rely on illusions to thrill, captivate, and influence in their followers. None of these magicians, however, hold a candle to the illusions provided by the characters who dance on television channels. For decades, the masses have been planted in front of the tube, waiting for packaged content to tickle their eyeballs and smooth the edges of modern life. Whether it’s the stars of a soap opera, anchors on political news networks, or preachers channeling the wishes of higher powers, TV provides the possibility of distribution according to audience segments in return for huge sums of advertising revenues.

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Sleazy PR Firm Throws Scummy Facebook Under The Sordid Bus

Thu, 12 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By MG Siegler - May. 12 (Opinion) - Sleazy PR Firm Throws Scummy Facebook Under The Sordid Bus

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Yahoo Sells Delicious To YouTube Founders

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Michael Arrington - Apr. 27 (News) - Yahoo has finally found a buyer for long suffering Delicious.

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Page Sharing Service Bo.lt Lets You Copy, Edit And Share Almost Any Webpage

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Alexia Tsotsis - Apr. 21 (Review) - With $5 million in funding from Benchmark Capital, webpage sharing service Bo.lt launches today after about a year in private beta. Like a “Bit.ly on steroids,” the service lets you paste any URL into its copy engine or bookmarklet, creating a duplicate of the page on its servers. Once copied, Bo.lt lets you quickly edit the page itself. You can change the text, edit and delete images and text and change links — either through the Bo.lt visual editor or its HTML editor.Page Sharing Service Bo.lt Lets You Copy, Edit And Share Almost Any Webpage

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iPhone 4 About To Be Flickr’s Top Camera. Point & Shoots? Pretty Much The Opposite.

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By MG Siegler - Apr. 17 (News Report) - What’s the most popular camera used in terms of pictures taken that are uploaded to Flickr? Right now, it’s the Nikon D90. But in about a month or so, it will be Apple’s iPhone 4. What’s amazing is that D90 is nearly three years old. The iPhone 4 is not

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NSFW: Colo(u)r Me Done – I’m Going To Vegas, For Starters

Sun, 27 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Paul Carr - Mar. 27 (Opinion) - For the past few days, my fellow tech writers have been working themselves into a bubbling froth about the Valley’s latest app du jour: Color. Some have been shocked — shocked! – at the level of investment that Bill Nguyen’s team has received for – what? a social-mobile-photo-sharing trifle – $41m!; Others have rushed to the company’s defense, accusing critics of playa hating and other such ungentlemanly conduct. So on which side do my sympathies lie?

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Google Doing Some Profile Unification Leading Up To… Well, Something.

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By MG Siegler - Mar. 26 (Opinion) - Google is still hard at work on their social strategy. You know it, I know it, we all know it. What it will actually be, remains to be seen. But there are clues related to it that have started to appear.

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Digital Textbook Startup Inkling Nabs ‘Multi-Million Dollar’ Investment From McGraw-Hill And Pearson

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Leena Rao - Mar. 22 (Opinion) - Inkling, a startup that develops an innovative digital textbook platform, has scored a ‘multi-million dollar investment from educational content giants McGraw-Hill and Pearson. Inkling’s technology delivers interactive textbooks that include the ability to collaborate, add multimedia and communicate within content. The startup adds another layer to online textbooks by adding 3-D objects, video, quizzes, and even social interaction within the content.

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Why Women Rule The Internet

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - Mar. 20 (Opinion) - Female users are the unsung heroines behind the most engaging, fastest growing, and most valuable consumer internet and e-commerce companies. Especially when it comes to social and shopping, women rule the Internet. Consider some more data. Comscore, Nielsen, MediaMetrix and Quantcast studies all show women are the driving force of the most important net trend of the decade, the social web. Comscore says women are the majority of users of social networking sites and spend 30% more time on these sites than men; mobile social network usage is 55% female according to Nielsen. In e-commerce, female purchasing power is also pretty clear. Sites like Zappos (>$1 billion in revenue last year), Groupon ($760m last year), Gilt Groupe ($500m projected revenue this year), Etsy (over $300m in GMV last year), and Diapers ($300m estimated revenue last year) are all driven by a majority of female customers. According to Gilt Groupe, women are 70% of the customer base and they drive 74% of revenue. And 77% of Groupon’s customers are female according to their site.

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Green Buildings Software Startup, Retroficiency, Closes $800,000 Seed Financing

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

TechCrunch - By Lora Kolodny - Mar. 09 (News) - A Boston startup that makes energy auditing software for the commercial buildings industry, Retroficiency, raised $800,000 in a seed round led by energy management services firm World Energy Solutions (NASDAQ: XWES), and joined by a number of angel investors including Jean Hammond and Jill Preotle (both early investors in ZipCar) the companies announced today. Facility managers, auditors or engineers who need to improve the energy efficiency of an aging building input whatever basic information they know about that building into Retroficiency's system. The software uses the available details, and a comprehensive set of data about tens of thousands of other buildings with similar traits, then uses predictive analytics to generate an energy model for that building...

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The End Of History

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

TechCrunch - By Jon Evans - Feb. 13 (Opinion) - The world is quaking. Egypt and Tunisia are overthrown; Algeria, Gabon, Jordan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen are rocking. Some say this is thanks to Twitter and Facebook. Others, notably Malcolm Gladwell and Evgeny Morozov, say that social media are politically irrelevant and/or dangerous. China has censored “Egypt”, Syria has legalized Facebook, and the president of Sudan has declared he will use social media to crush his enemies. You couldn’t make this stuff up. What’s going on? Who to believe? Fear not. I can explain. Everyone is right, and what’s going on is nothing more than the end of international politics and history as we know them. Welcome to our brave new world, and about time, too. The old one sure was miserable while it lasted.

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UberMedia, Indeed. Bill Gross’ Twitter Ecosystem Empire Just Acquired TweetDeck

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

TechCrunch - Feb. 11 (News Report) - The number of companies in the Twitter ecosystem keeps contracting. But not for a necessarily bad reason, but because they keep getting purchased. And what's crazy is that it's largely one person who has been buying them up: Bill Gross. We've just learned this his company, now called UberMedia, has just acquired TweetDeck. We're hearing that the deal, which happened recently, was in the $25 - $30 million range. And this is clearly the largest deal they've done yet as TweetDeck is the largest Twitter client outside of Twitter's own properties.

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