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TechCrunch
TechCrunch is a group-edited blog that profiles the companies, products and events defining and transforming the new web.

TechCrunch
  • FanIQ Keeps Fans In The Game, Membership Jumps 2000% This Year
    FanIQ, a sports site that focuses more on entertaining its users than bogging them down with the stats and opinion pieces found on the likes of ESPN, has had a landmark year. The site launched in 2006, but hasn't really hit its stride until now: since January, the site has grown by over 2000%, recently hitting as many as 2.4 million unique users and 1.5 million registered members. These figures pale in comparison to the larger sports sites and popular fantasy leagues, but the rate of growth is very impressive nonetheless. FanIQ differentiates itself from other sports sites by offering a set of casual games and community features alongside more traditional sports headlines. To encourage participation, the site has a points system that rewards users who write blog posts and play the site's integrated trivia game. These points are just for show (though CEO Ty Shay says that many users are still intensely competitive about them), but in the future the site will offer virtual goods and other rewards in exchange for points.

  • Real Girls Media Picks Up Strategic Funding From Meredith
    Real Girls Media, a San Francisco-based online publishing company specializes in?you guessed it?social communities for women, has raised an undisclosed amount in funding led by Meredith Corporation, which took a minority stake in the company. RGM, which was founded in 2006, had previously raised $6 million in Series A funding from 3i and WaldenVC. The agreement adds Real Girls Media Network's traffic (which comes primarily from flagship community site DivineCaroline) to Meredith?s network, which the company claims increases Meredith?s unique visitors to an admirable 15 million uniques each month.

  • IAB Reports U.S. Online Advertising Almost $5.9 Billion In The Third Quarter
    The Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers just released their quarterly report on U.S. online advertising revenues. For the quarter, they estimate online advertising revenues were almost $5.9 billion ($5.865 billion, to be exact), which is an 11 percent increase from the same quarter a year ago and a 2 percent increase from the second quarter of 2008. If you look at the (awfully blurry) graph above, you can see that online advertising revenues have been pretty much flat all year long.

  • Mufin Opens Automated Music Recommendation Engine To The Public
    Mufin, a powerful music recommendation engine that actually works, has launched to the public. We last covered the site in early October, when it opened in a restricted private beta. The site, which was created by the same organization that created the now-ubiquitous MP3 file format, uses an advanced algorithm to 'listen to' songs and identify similar sounding tracks based on over 40 characteristics. Such automated systems are very hard to pull off (which is why Pandora, another music recommendation engine, uses human experts), but in my testing Mufin had fared surprisingly well.

  • eMusic: 250 Million Songs Downloaded. iTunes: 5 Billion+
    Will the music subscription business ever grow beyond its current niche? It looks increasingly doubtful. Today, eMusic announced that since it launched its current music subscription service in 2003, customers have downloaded 250 million songs. Apple's iTunes, by comparison, has sold more than 5 billion songs since it opened the iTunes Store in April, 2003. That makes eMusic one twentieth the size of iTunes. The way eMusic works is you pay a subscription of between $12 and $20 a month and then you can download 30 to 75 songs a month and keep them. You can also purchase songs above those limits, starting at $0.25 a track. eMusic has a catalog of 4.5 million songs, and is particularly strong in independent music. It currently has 400,000 subscribers, and the company expects to make $70 million in revenues this year.

  • It?s Time For The Crunchies!
    It's hard to believe that nearly a year has gone by since we gave out those crazy gorilla awards to the best startup and product successes in Silicon Valley and around the world. Some of the photos from last year are here. The Crunchies are back. We are once again partnering with some of our favorite blogs - thank you to co-hosts GigaOm, Silicon Alley Insider and VentureBeat (click the links for their announcements). Thanks as well to 1938 Media, our video production partner (see their first video below in the comments).

  • Lonely Wrestlers Create Their Own Social Network
    It's not easy being a wrestler. Inside the ring your pounding an opponent's head against the corner post, but outside the ring it's hard to meet people. Nobody really wants to be your friend. Not even on MySpace. They say their your friends, but they are not really your friends. Wrestlers aren't stupid. They know everybody thinks they are just a bunch of clowns. That's why the company that employs all the wrestlers you see on TV, World Wrestling Entertainment, created WWE Universe, a social network just for them and their fans. Okay, it's not really a social network. It's just a craptastic promotional vehicle. And some of those wrestlers aren't so bright. But they are lonely.

  • Google Kills Lively
    Even Google is getting into the downsizing spirit. It just announced that it is killing Lively, its browser-baseed virtual worlds that could be embedded into other Websites. Lively launched just last July. The death notice on the site says it will shut down on December 31, so we are adding Lively to the deadpool. Lively just never took off, and was extremely far afield for Google. We should have known something was up when we noticed that it didn't work with Google's own browser, Chrome. What else is being cut at Google?

  • Yahoo Brings Glue To U.S.: A Plethora of Aggregated Topical Third Party Content
    Yahoo Glue, a new search results page design that the company has been testing in India, is rolling out to the US market this evening. You can view it at glue.yahoo.com, although Yahoo says it is rolling out in stages, so sit tight if you don't see it. It's also a little different than the Indian version, and includes a number of resources beyond simple search results. On a typical query, content from Wikipedia, Yahoo Shopping, Yahoo Answers, blog search results (from Google) and YouTube videos are shown. For the US, Yahoo is starting with a limited set of topics and using a two column instead of a three column design. They've also left out the search results altogether. In this example for Barack Obama, prominent links to Memorandum (a political blog aggregator) are also shown.

  • Qik And Strands Each Trim 10 Percent Of Staff
    The cutbacks continue, even at seemingly healthy startups. Social recommendation engine Strands let exactly 10 percent, or 14 people go (7 in the U.S. and 7 in Spain), the company confirms. Strands has raised a total of $55 million, still employs 125 people, and is hiring for other positions. It also just announced a mobile version for Nokia S60 phones. Qik, which lets you stream live video from your cell phone, also laid off about 10 percent of its employees, which in its case amounted to five people. We got a tip that the reason for the layoffs is because the startup could not raise a $10 to $15 million round, but a spokesperson says that is not true and that we should stay tuned. We hope its not true because we love Qik. The company so far has raised only $4 million, but its investors include Marc Benioff and Marc Andreessen.

  • CrunchGear Review: BlackBerry Storm for Verizon Wireless
    The ?iPhone killer? label (which I hate using ? BTW) as been thrown around since the first touch-screen device hit the market after the original iPhone was launched last year and, unfortunately, nothing has been able to live up to the hype. Both consumers (you) and techies (us) have been eagerly awaiting the launch of the Storm in the hopes that it would knock down the iPhone a peg or level the playing field. I don?t want to dash your dreams, but the Storm is not on par with the iPhone. It is, however, the closest device available on the market today to compete with the iPhone, but that?s not saying much. Imagine the iPhone being on top of a mountain with the rest of the touch-screen devices at base camp. The Storm sits atop all the rest, but it?s still at base camp. Video after the jump.

  • Mozilla Add-Ons Hit One Billion Downloads
    In other Mozilla news, Firefox hit a major milestone today with the one billionth download of add-on software for the browser. That feat took three and half years. Many of those downloads are never used more than once or twice, of course. But there is no doubt about it that Firefox is major software platform. Just look at StumbleUpon, it was built on top of Firefox.

  • This Week on the Crunch Board
    Make sure to look at the latest job listing on CrunchBoard. While doing that take a look at our new Crunchboard Service and Sales Directories. They are a great way to connect with the start-up community. Click through for some of jobs posted in the past week.

  • Google Makes Up 88 Percent Of Mozilla?s Revenues, Threatens Its Non-Profit Status
    Today, the (for-now) non-profit Mozilla Foundation released its financial statements for 2007 (embedded below). Revenues for the organization behind the open-source Firefox browser were up 12 percent to $75 million, with search-related royalties from Google accounting for 88 percent of the total, or $66 million. (Another $2 million or so came from other search engines). Those revenues come from Mozilla's portion of the search advertising revenues generated by the default Google search box in the Firefox browser. Google's overall percentage of Mozilla's revenues is even bigger than it was in 2006, when it accounted for 85 percent. And that proportion may continue to grow over the next three years, as Google just extended its contract with Mozilla. But buried in the financial statements is the fact that the Mozilla Foundation is being audited by the IRS and its non-profit status is in question:

  • First Guns N? Roses Album In 17 Years Debuts Tonight On MySpace Music
    Chinese Democracy, the first new Guns N' Roses album since 1991, debuts tonight at 9 PM PST exclusively on MySpace Music, where fans can listen to it for free. Well, actually it debuted on BitTorrent a while ago, but we're not talking about that. Also, the band has previously released two songs, Chinese Democracy and Better, to radio stations and music sites in the past couple of weeks. But tonight is the big debut, and for most people it will be the first time they hear the music. It will be available in 25 countries: US, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Russia, Turkey, Poland, India, Australia, New Zealand, Korea and Japan.

  • How Can The Music Industry Be In Trouble With All This Free Promotion.
    2007 person-to-person music downloads were worth a staggering $69 billion, and movie/television piracy continues to grow, says a new study. And all that free promotion didn't cost them a penny. At least, that's how Techdirt sees it. And I agree. Instead of embracing what might be the largest free marketing giveaway in the history of the world, the music labels instead sue their customers. And ask the social networks for handouts. Somebody over there needs to put their thinking cap on, quit screwing around and just give the damn music away for free with no lawsuit strings attached. Then use 360 contracts to find a way to survive on other revenue stream. Or even thrive. Less suing. More singing.

  • SnapTell: Instant Product Lookup From The iPhone. You Want This.
    If you have an iPhone, you'll probably want to check out SnapTell Explorer, a free application now available on the App Store. The premise is simple: take a photo of the cover of any CD, DVD, book, or video game, and the application will automatically identify the product and find ratings and pricing information online. I was skeptical when I first saw the app - the iPhone has had difficulty with image processing for barcodes, and most image recognitions systems I've tried on other platforms have been iffy at best. But SnapTell just works. Every time. The app correctly identified just about everything I threw at it: Xbox games, Pocketbook O'Reilly manuals, The Dalai Lama's Little Book of Wisdom, Kurt Vonegut novels, and a number of more obscure books (yes, it worked on The Twinkies Cookbook). It even managed to ID a copy of Civilization 4, despite the fact that it was covered in obnoxious price tags and stickers. I actually tried to mess it up by taking photos in poor lighting and odd angles, but the app still stayed nearly flawless. No, it doesn't have everything - I managed to stump it on a book about Danish Grammar - but it will do just fine for any trip to a retail store.

  • Gmail Themes. That?s Totally Ninja.
    Apparently a lucky few Gmail users had a "Themes" tab pop up under settings. No longer do you have to suffer through the boring-if-functional standard Gmail interface for the 16 hours a day that you keep the page loaded. Try "Ninja" instead.

  • Tweetag: Tag-Based Search For Twitter
    Tweetag is a brand new way to search Twitter, or 'browse the Twittosphere' as they put it. The app, like most Twitter-related applications, is fairly simple: you enter a tag, and Tweetag will show any public Twitter messages that contain that particular keyword, but more interestingly also a list of other tags that are related to it. This allows you to filter down Twitter's constant stream of 140-or-less-character messages intuitively. Take for instance a query for 'obama': you'll see all tweets contain the President-elect's first name, and you can simply filter it down by adding other keywords to the URL or clicking an associated tag, e.g. 'obama/youtube'.

  • GazProm Media Completes $15 Million Acquisition RuTube, The YouTube Of Russia
    Russia's media conglomerate, Gazprom Media, is now the proud owner of video-sharing site RuTube. This deal has been in the works since at least June, 2007 and is believed to be in the $15 million range. RuTube is the YouTube of Russia. Or, rather, it wants to be. According to comScore, YouTube is actually the YouTube of Russia. In September, RuTube attracted 2 million unique visitors in Russia, versus 2.9 million Russian uniques for YouTube. RuTibe is seeing some nice growth, though. It has doubled its audience since June. (All caveats about comScore estimates apply here. Their numbers for Russia should be looked at as indicative of the trend rather than as absolutes). TechCrunch reader Andrei Taraschuk, the founder of UMapper, translated the following Russian press story about the deal into English for us:

  • Insidious New SEO Ad Product Will Be Hard For Google To Detect (Updated With Google Response)
    New York-based advertising firm MediaWhiz, never one to worry about gray areas when it comes to advertising, has launched a new product today called InLinks. It's fairly straightforward - advertisers who want their sites associated with specific keywords simply buy ads. Links to those sites are then added to publishers sites whenever those words pop up in content. These aren't ghost links like Kontera and others include in content - they're full blown links without any notation (like a nofollow) that they are advertisements meant primarily for SEO juice. Content sites are paid a flat rate per month per ad sold. I'm trying to get more details now from the company, but there is more on this here and here.

  • Ian Rogers On The Death Of The Music CD Business: ?I Don?t Care.?
    We've written a lot about the death of the recorded music business, but in a keynote address to a music industry conference a couple weeks ago Topspin CEO Ian Rogers sketches out a different future. Rogers, the former head of Yahoo Music, correctly points out, as others have before him, that it is not the music industry that is dying. It is the CD business. And as far as the CD business going the way of the dodo, with sales of physical CDs declining and the growth of digital sales not making up the difference, his response is:
    I don?t care.


  • TeachStreet Expands To San Francisco: Find That Perfect Cooking Class. Or Whatever.
    TeachStreet, a Yelp-like service for real world classes (cooking, dog obedience, music lessons, ballroom dance, foreign language, golf, yoga, etc.), just opened its doors in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. The site first launched in Seattle, where the company is headquartered, and then expanded to Portland. Their Bay Area expansion adds 65,000 local classes, teachers and schools, and more than doubles their existing 50,000 resources in Seattle and Portland combined. There are, for example, 442 painting classes, 625 Yoga classes and 567 piano classes in the area. More importantly, TeachStreet tells me there are twelve dog training classes near my home in Atherton. The company raised $2.25 million in a 2007 financing.

  • YouTube, TroopTube Go To War
    Video infrastructure site Delve Networks launched TroopTube in partnership with the Department of Defense a few days ago as a more secure alternative to YouTube, which the DoD banned in 2007. TroopTube is basically Youtube, but without the embedding feature, and the DoD has moderation and censorship controls. Now Delve Networks CEO says Google is up to no good, trying to convince the DoD that TroopTube won't scale, and that YouTube's exclusive arrangement with Barack Obama means the troops won't be able to watch the president's weekly talks. "Google is trying to attack TroopTube," he says. The email is below, and we're following up with Google for a comment.

  • Parlor Game: Pick Yahoo?s Next CEO
    With Yahoo now looking for a new leader, Silicon Valley's favorite parlor game is picking a new CEO for the embattled company. Plenty of names are being bandied about, from former AOL CEO Jonathan Miller (whose non-compete with Time Warner expires next March) to OpenTable CEO and former eBay superstar exec Jeff Jordan. Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is also being thrown out as a possibility, but she is not interested. Other strong candidates include Google senior VP Tim Armstrong (who heads up North American ad sales), former Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig (as we've noted before), and Marc Andreessen. Mark Cuban would have been interesting too, but he has other things to worry about right now. Vote below for who you think is the best candidate, or nominate your own in comments with your reasons why he or she should be considered.