by TechCrunch Europe on December 1, 2009

[Sweeden] Oskar Stål has joined Spotify as its new CTO after the departure of the original CTO Andreas Ehn, who left to pursue his own startup. I guess people slightly forget that next year Spotify is actually going to be 4 years old, even though it only launched publicly at the end of last year. (Long time in private beta).

Stål comes from the mobile transaction company mBlox, where he’s been for the last eight years, growing from a five-person start-up into a global business.

By hiring a CTO with deep mobile experience it’s clear Spotify sees the mobile as the key supporting plank in its structure. Last night I spoke to a Spotify contact who told me that since they launched the Symbian version of Spotify, the service has “gone crazy.” Make of that what you will. Symbian, as a platform used by Nokia’s non-smartphones, is of course a great deal more mainstream, especially in Europe, than the iPhone or Android.

Advertisement
by Michael Arrington on December 1, 2009

Taiwan-headquartered Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, will launch up to 10,000 consumer electronics retail stores in China, says China Daily. Until now they have not had a significant retail brand or presence.

What will they sell? Probably some of the many products that they build for well known brands, including the iPhone, iPod, iMac, Sony Playstation, Sony Vaio notebooks, Amazon Kindle, Nokia phones and Nintendo Wii.

But part of the plan, we’ve heard from an independent source, will be to use the retail presence in China to win manufacturing business as well. HP, Dell and others can move more of their business to Foxconn, along with a promise to get retail presence for their electronics in the Foxconn stores in China.

Foxconn exports $55.6 billion of electronics from their factories in China, says the article, or about 3.9% of China’s total exports. And that number may be lowballed. Our sources say no one outside of Foxconn even knows the real size of their exports, and that $100 billion/year or more is the street rumor in Asia.

by Jason Kincaid on November 30, 2009

BillShrink, the startup that looks to help users save money across verticals including cell phones, credit cards, and savings accounts, has just announced that it has grown to 1 million members since its launch in April 2008. Alongside the milestone, the site is also announcing that it has found “$1 billion in savings on everyday bills”.

That second statistic is a little confusing. BillShrink basically means that if its users had signed up for the top matches generated by its cost cutting tools, they would have saved a total of $1 billion. Of course, not everyone who uses the service decides to change their cell phone carrier or credit card, so the total amount of money saved isn’t that high. That said, this is the first time BillShrink has disclosed the size of its userbase, and it’s clear that the site is getting some solid traction.

by Sarah Lacy on November 30, 2009

Of the hundreds of companies I meet in any given country, I only write about a handful. Sometimes it’s the ones that seem to be copying a US idea, but in reality are building their company in a completely unique—and frequently more profitable—way. Other times, I’m captivated by an idea that’s perfect for an emerging market, but probably wouldn’t work in the US.

But every once in a while I find a company that hits the trifecta: It’s addressing a big problem locally, it’s something I don’t think is offered in the US, and…. I want it. And when a product in undeveloped, chaotic, messy India can make someone in Silicon Valley feel jealous, you know that entrepreneur has come up with something good.

by MG Siegler on November 30, 2009

If you’re going to leave your job at TechCrunch, you better have a good reason. I think Mark Hendrickson actually may have had one.

Hendrickson left TechCrunch in March. After about two years of writing and doing development for TC, he got the startup itch. He formed a company, Worldly Developments, and along with co-founder Jay Marcyes is now ready to unveil their project: Plancast.

As you can derive from the name, Plancast is a way to easily broadcast your plans to your online social circle. But a better way to think about it may be as a “Foursquare for the future,” which is how Hendrickson often describes it. The main idea is that while many people use Foursquare and similar location-based services like Gowalla and Loopt to share where they are, Plancast is about sharing where they will be.

by Jason Kincaid on November 30, 2009

Google has just annouced the winners of its second Android Developer Challenge, a competition that looks to spur development on the Android platform by offering large cash grants to the winners. Thirty prizes were given out in total, with the top 3 winners from each of ten categories taking home $100,000, $50,000, or $25,000 respectively, with 3 overall winners walking away an additional $150,000, $50,000, or $25,000.

The top winner overall was SweetDreams, an app that helps you send late night calls straight to voicemail and automatically conserves battery power by turning off features like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi at night. Second overall was What the Doodle!?, an app that’s like an online multiplayer version of Pictionary. And third prize overall went to WaveSecure, a security/backup app that lets you track your phone’s current location, lock it down or remote wipe your phone, and backup/restore data.

by John Biggs on November 30, 2009

There’s already been quite a bit of ink spilled over the demise of the CrunchPad but I thought I’d add a few drops. My opinion is this: the CrunchPad was a testament to the power of online media and a fascinating study in the ability of new media to enact real changes on the real world. While the product faltered, it’s fascinating that the project went as far as it did given the forces arrayed against it.

Think about what happened: if we reduce this to its component parts you have some dudes in California who talked to some dudes in Singapore and who agreed to work together on a piece of hardware. I’ve seen the prototypes and the thing worked and worked well. Most hardware manufacturers can barely take each others meetings let alone coordinate a massive project while separated by a culture and an ocean.

by Jason Kincaid on November 30, 2009

For the last six months, you may have noticed that some of your favorite apps on Facebook Platform carried a special badge deeming them to be “Facebook Verified”. These apps “passed Facebook’s review for trustworthy user experiences”, and were given both greater exposure in the App Directory and less restrictive limits on the number of messages they could send to users. And tomorrow, just over six months after the program launched, Facebook is killing off Verified Apps for good.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise: Facebook announced plans to end the program in late October, and has been Emailing developers about it for weeks. But now that Verified Apps are going away, it’s a good time to look back at the long, convoluted road Facebook took to a program that was ultimately very shortlived.

by Erick Schonfeld on November 30, 2009

With the rise of Twitter, we’ve also seen the rise of link shorteners (standard URLS take up too many characters). The king of the link shorteners right now is bit.ly, which is the default shortener on Twitter and accounts for more than 75 percent of all short URLs on the service. Every month, bit.ly shortens about 1 billion links. For spammers, that’s one huge honey jar.

The flip side of a short link like this one—http://bit.ly/6PwhcP—is that you can’t tell by looking at it what website it redirects to. It could be a TechCrunch post, or it could be a spam site. There’s no way to tell the difference when you see the link in a Tweet. (Don’t worry, it’s a TechCrunch post).

The spam problem is getting worse, which is why bit.ly is taking more serious measures to sniff out spam behind its short links. Today it announced it is working with three new services to fight spam and malware: VeriSign’s iDefense, Websense Threatseeker Cloud, and Sophos.

by MG Siegler on November 30, 2009

So this is funny. Yes, Twitter is having downtime issues right now. Yes, again. But that’s nothing new, obviously. What is new is that Twitter being down has also apparently borked the site many people use to check if Twitter is down, downforeveryoneorjustme.

While the site, made by Ryan King, is working for every other site on the web, the image below shows what is returned when you put in twitter.com now. Did I mention King is now a Twitter employee? Beyond meta.

by MG Siegler on November 30, 2009

Apparently, like everyone else, the Seattle Times is very interested in trying to figure out what to actually use Google Wave for. But while most are trying to use it for either fun, realtime chats, movie reenactments, or inner-business workings, the Seattle Times have tasked Wave with a larger goal: Catching a killer.

This public Google Wave has been set up to involve the community by offering realtime information that anyone may know about the location of a man suspected of killing four Seattle police officers. A search of a Seattle-area home this morning turned up nothing, but various reports of sightings are coming in, and the Times is opening a Wave to help with the flow of information.

by Michael Arrington on November 30, 2009

San Francisco based Eventbrite went prime time earlier this month when they raised $6.5 million from Sequoia Capital, and added partner Roelof Botha to their board of directors. We had a chance to sit down with Botha as well as founders Kevin Hartz and Julia Hartz and talk to them about their business and the fundraising.

We were supposed to talk for just ten minutes, but the interview went on for a solid 25 minutes before we were done. Julia and Kevin talked about Eventbrite’s growth to ten million registered users based only on word of mouth advertising. The company lets people sell (or give away) tickets to events – something only the big venues could do previously through companies like TicketMaster.

The service is free for people who give away tickets, and they charge a small percentage on non-free sales. The free tickets spread the word to new users, who often come back to sell tickets to their own events. This year, Eventbrite will rack up $100 million in gross ticket sales, says the company. The average ticket price, not factoring in the free tickets, is $60.

by Leena Rao on November 30, 2009

As online retailers are witnessed strong Black Friday results, Google is reporting that there was a surge in online shopping searches with “Black Friday” on Thanksgiving day and the Friday after the holiday. Searches with the term “Black Friday” were up by more than 20%, year over year, according to Google. Searches for “black friday sales” and “black friday ads” were both up by more than 50%, year over year.

This data indicates that consumers match deals around this time of the year with Black Friday and that these deals are increasingly displayed online versus on TV or in newspapers. The most fast growing store-specific search terms were “Walmart Black Friday”, “Kohls Black Friday Ad”, “Sears Black Friday Sales” and “Target Black Friday Deals Online.”

by Erick Schonfeld on November 30, 2009

What is it with architects that they feel the need to glom onto the latest buzzwords to justify their projects? A group from M.I.T.’s Senseable City Lab is looking for funding for an ambitious observation deck designed for the 2012 London Olympics. They are calling it the Cloud. It is a “lightweight transparent tower, composed of a ‘cloud’ of inflatable, light-emitting spheres . . . fed by real time information from all over the world.”

The structure is an architectural interpretation of the realtime cloud. Videos of the Olympic events, Twitter and Facebook streams, and other realtime data such as energy usage, Internet traffic, and mobile phone activity will be projected onto LED displays in the Cloud so that people in the Cloud can observe the events from high above London.

by Leena Rao on November 30, 2009


Rumors were swirling that IBM would be acquiring database security company Guardium after the Israeli financial newspaper, TheMarker, reported the acquisition yesterday (translated version here). Big Blue has officially confirmed to TechCrunch that it has acquired Guardium but did not disclose financial terms. TheMarker reported that IBM is shelling out $225 million for Massachusetts-based Guardium.

A subsidiary of Log-On Software, Guardium provides technologies that ensure security of enterprise databases. The startup protects databases for Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Sun Microsystems and other companies. The company’s technology is installed in more than 450 data centers worldwide. IBM says it will integrate Guardium within IBM’s Information Management Software portfolio. Guardium, which was founded in 2002, has raised a total of $21 million in funding from Cisco, Cedar Fund, Ascent Venture Partners, Stage One Ventures, Veritas Venture Partners and others.

by Michael Arrington on November 30, 2009

Digg has poached Keval Desai away from Google as their new Vice President of Product, we’ve confirmed from the company. Desai’s last day at Google is today.

Desai is a long time Google employee, first joining the company in 2003. He’s currently their Director of Product Management and has led development of product/businesses in Google’s advertising business (including AdWords, Syndication & TV Ads).

He’ll be Digg’s first head of product, a responsibility that has been shared at various times by founder Kevin Rose, CEO Jay Adelson and Chief Strategy Officer Mike Maser. And he’s got a big job ahead of him: Digg is hard at work on releasing an entirely new version of the site.

by MG Siegler on November 30, 2009

There is a lot of buzz around SimpleGeo right now. The service, which participated in our RealTime CrunchUp earlier this month, also took home two prizes at the Under The Radar conference just prior to that. And that was a big deal for the company considering it won the audience award even though it’s not exactly the most consumer-oriented project. But people seem to understand that the location space is getting really hot right now, and SimpleGeo, which provides its geolocation infrastructure to other companies, offers one of the best models to capitalize on that. So it should be no surprise that they’ve attracted some big time investors.

SimpleGeo has just closed a $1.5 million seed round of funding, we’ve confirmed. This round, led by First Round Capital, also includes from Redpoint Ventures, Ron Conway, Kevin Rose, Chris Sacca, Joshua Schachter, David Cohen, Debbie Landa, Tim Ferriss, Shawn Fanning, Gary Vaynerchuk, David Lee, and Freestyle Capital. Yes, it’s basically a who’s who in angel investing that is on board now with SimpleGeo.

by Gagan Biyani on November 30, 2009

You might find this suprising, but the top social gaming companies on the iPhone are not the same ones you know of from Facebook and MySpace. Zynga, despite $54.2M in funding, has hardly made a dent on the iPhone. Neither has Playfish, which was recently bought for $300M. Playdom hasn’t done squat, either. Although “the big three” of social gaming are great at online games, they aren’t doing too well on the iPhone. For example, Zynga’s Mafia Wars game hardly hit the top 25 throughout its time on the App Store.

by TechCrunch Europe on November 30, 2009

A round-up from Shakil Khan, effectively Spotify’s consigliari today in London opened the kimono a little on where it’s at.

Speaking at the new NOAH Conference in London, the headline points from his talk were that we can, as we expected, see a U.S. launch in Q1 2010 as well as a launch in Germany and China in Q1/2 (so no pressure then). Spotify will also extend from its existing handset deals into premium services on other platforms in 2010. They are talking to TV manufacturers about embedding Spotify into internet-enabled TV sets and Khan said they now get “a call a week” from games console makers which want to add Spotify to their service.

He also went through a round-up of its stats and model to date.

by TechCrunch Europe on November 30, 2009

There were some interesting panel discussion today at the NOAH conference – a new event in London aimed at presented tech companies to the private equity and banking sector – but the plethora of suited and booted attendees were shocked out of their chairs a little when Klaus Hommels, (one of the first angel investors in Skype, QXL and XING and recently a venture partner with Balderton (formerly Benchmark Capital Europe) spoke his mind.

The panel he was on had been beating about the bush on investing in tech startups, until he broke into the discussion to make some salient points:

“Structurally we fucked it up. European tech companies would normally have been picked up by media companies in Europe but they are in such a bad state this is not possible. So before anyone puts money into new companies, we need to ask: who is going to by all the shit in our existing portfolios?!” (I think he might have meant to say ’stuff’, however…)

bugbugbugbug
Techcrunch on Facebook