The Filter Reboots As Recommendation Engine For Hire, Ex-Googler Doug Merrill Joins Board
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

Almost two years ago The Filter, a startup backed by Peter Gabriel, launched to bring better music and movie recommendations to consumers. The site got lost in the abundance of more popular music and movie sites out there, so about a year ago CEO David Maher Roberts decided to shift gears and start licensing his recommendation engine to other businesses.

It was the right move. Today, the Filter powers recommendations for sites and devices with a combined reach of about 20 million people, with two more large media deals in the final stages of converting from a trail to a full license which will bring its total reach up to 85 million. The startup’s revenues went from $150,000 in 2008 to about $1 million in 2009. “All that money came from licensing,” says Roberts. “I think we get $2,000 from Google for advertising.” Since November, the company has been “borderline breakeven.” And it just added to its board of directors former Google engineering VP Doug Merrill, who left Google to briefly serve as president of EMI for a year.

“Recommendations—from friends, from newspapers, from colleagues—are the most common way to find new content,” says Merrill. “However, there is more information available than there are people to recommend. The Filter analyzes data to provide measurably better, more relevant recommendations, automatically.” The Filter creates personalized music and movie feeds based on user’s activities (rating. listening, saving, sharing) as well as their preferences in other accounts such as iTunes and Last.fm. Roberts claims that in trials, customers have seen a 20 to 40 percent lift in media consumption (video views, dwell time) than using their own recommendation algorithms. Not counting those two big media deals in the wings, the Filter’s recommendation technology is currently being used by Nokia Music, Sony’s MyPlay, DVDPost (a European Netflix), ThePlatform, and We7 (another music site also backed by Gabriel).

The Filter’s own site is still growing steadily, if slowly, with about 800,000 unique visitors per month. “It was a much slower process than we had wished,” says Maher. People liked the technology, he says, but they wanted it on sites where they already consume content. The Filter’s experience shows how tough it is to build a standalone music or movie property. But if its recommendation algorithms really do provide the kind of improvements Roberts claims, more sites will adopt it. You can try out its relevance engine for yourself on The Filter website.

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Monday Morning Marketing Quarterback: Which Superbowl Ads Scored On The Web?
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

With the Super Bowl yesterday came the time-honored Super Bowl commercials, each costing $2.5 million for a 30-second spot.  Even Google got in on the game with its first ever spot receiving rave reviews (although the commercial wasn’t new). But which commercials went beyond TV to score on the Web?  Reprise Media released a report that ranks Super Bowl advertisers based on the level of integration between their television commercials and presence on the web in terms of search and social media. According to Reprise’s scorecard, Boost Mobile, HomeAway, E*Trade and Google were the marketing standouts out of last night’s commercials.

Reprise decreed that Boost Mobile and HomeAway, which were both first-time Super Bowl advertisers, had the best cross-channel promotion from the tube to the web. E*Trade and Google followed with compelling ad spots that encouraged users to look to the web for more information. Who fumbled?  The Pop Secret/Emerald Nuts, Prudential, Dodge Charger and all movie commercials had the least amount of cross-channel integration.

Interestingly, Turbo Tax, Mazda and Pepsi didn’t have ads in the Super Bowl but they attracted traffic online by running paid search ads on keywords related to other Super Bowl advertisers. Unsurprisingly, millions of consumers turned to social networks including Twitter to discuss their favorite ads. According to social media monitoring service Trendrr, the four top gaining Super Bowl ad brands on Twitter within the last 24 hours were Dockers (+307%), Boost Mobile (+161%), Emerald Nuts (+150) and Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (+120%). Out of all of the car commercials, Audi’s A3 Green Police advertisement received the most buzz on Trendrr.  But was that because it was humorous (showing people getting arrested for using foam cups and incandescent bulbs) or too smug?

Social media measurement company Radian 6 and ad agency Mullen have released stats on which brand was most effective according to sentiment and volume of Tweets on Twitter. The report says that Doritos was the most effective brand to advertise on the Super Bowl telecast on CBS this year. Budweiser Select55 was the least effective brand. And Google and Focus on the Family followed Doritos is becoming the most discussed commercials on Twitter. Of course, it should be noted that Doritos had several commercials in the Super Bowl, which could have contributed to the volume of tweets. On the other hand, Google had a higher percentage of positive tweets.

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Social Music Player TuneWiki Raises Funding From Motorola Ventures, Others
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

Social music player TuneWiki has raised an undisclosed amount of additional funding in a Series B round led by Motorola Ventures and joined by Intellect Capital Ventures, HillsVen Capital, Novel TMT and prior investor Benchmark Israel.

Update: The Marker (in Hebrew) says the investment totals $7 million.

TuneWiki says it will use the investment to expand its product offerings for mobile platforms and the Web.

The company will continue to focus on the use of song lyrics in new ways that connect music fans with new products, including an upcoming mobile game.

TuneWiki boasts apps for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Nokia handsets.

This is the second funding announcement for Motorola’s venture arm in a week – on Feb 2 the investor announced that it had injected extra capital into mobile barcode company Scanbuy.

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Your Comments Are Safe With Us
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

About half an hour ago, a post that was published on the Digital Inspiration blog hit Techmeme. The title of that post left little to the imagination: it read “TechCrunch Removes Reader Comments From All Older Blog Posts”.

That allegation in itself is inaccurate, as is most of the rest of the article, so I felt compelled to respond quickly and offer our side of the story. Which, on a sidenote, we weren’t asked for by the person or people behind the blog (at least not to my knowledge).

I’ll start with the part that checks out: yes, comments on older blog posts are not being displayed at the moment, although they are still stored in the database on our side. But no, we did not remove them because we were looking to decrease our page load time – although we’re constantly looking for ways to do so – and there’s no big search engine optimization conspiracy behind it either.

This also has nothing to do with the fact that we actively moderate comments on posts around here – we’ve always welcomed civil discussion and that hasn’t changed. Criticism and disagreement is fine, but we want to keep the comment section a nice place to come for everyone, and those who keep that from happening – spammers, anonymous trolls directing personal attacks, etc. – will see their comments occasionally get moderated out of sight (read: deleted).

So why are comments on older blog posts not being displayed?

The simple truth is that this is a direct consequence of the widely reported incident that occurred in late January, when we were maliciously hacked.

Since then, our technical staff has been hard at work not only plugging the hole but also making sure there are no other security issues that can be exploited, as well as taking the necessary precautions for such an event not to occur again.

Truth be told, I have no in depth knowledge of what happened precisely when we were hacked, nor do I have any detailed information about what measures we are taking as a result of the security breach. We’ve always been very transparent about the way things are run here at TechCrunch, so I expect that when and if our technical staff feel it is safe to share that information, we will all learn more about it.

Here’s what I do know, though: no comments that were previously on older posts have been voluntarily deleted by anyone here at TechCrunch, and all that were published in the past will be reinstated soon. This is a technical issue.

Your comments are truly valuable to us, they are safely stored, and they will be restored in the near future.

Any questions or comments?

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Does Monster’s Acquisition Of Yahoo! HotJobs Matter If The Internet Is The Job Board?
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

(Editor’s note: Centralized Web job boards are in decline. Dan Finnigan, CEO of Jobvite, explains why in this guest post. Previously, he was Senior VP at Yahoo and GM of HotJobs, and before that a Director on CareerBuilder’s Board as CEO of Knight Ridder Digital.

Monster’s acquisition of Yahoo HotJobs signals a significant landscape change for a job board industry facing significant economic pressure and I believe the deal also marks a “new normal” in how companies are hiring talent. Online recruiting is transitioning away from “the Big Three” job boards. The Internet is becoming the job board.

Of course, unloading and closing properties that are not part of Yahoo’s strategy going forward is smart. (Though selling a job advertising board smack in the middle of this downturn and extreme unemployment must have been as hard as selling an empty, foreclosed home in Las Vegas right now.)

But more importantly, this acquisition is an indicator of a rapid evolution as more hiring takes place online. Venture-backed startups are transforming this industry as new technologies begin to change how companies find and attract talent.  The elephant in the room is that the economic jolt of September 2008 has permanently altered the job market and dramatically accelerated labor trends underway for many years, such as the growth in job turnover throughout a person’s career.

Increases in unemployment, under-employment and turnover are boosting traffic to nearly all job boards and job search engines – and the number of online applications to resource-depleted recruiting departments. Companies are spending more money sifting through unqualified applications, so they are naturally spending less on job boards and taking advantage of free sites, like Indeed, to post and distribute their jobs.

To combat the influx of poor-fit applications, companies are turning to new technologies and online services to target talent and search across the open Web for people who may not be actively searching for a job on a board. This is possible because 42% of working adults in the US now maintain a profile somewhere online—most notably on LinkedIn and Facebook, but also on Twitter and services like Jigsaw, an SF-based, user-generated database of professionals. And the downturn is growing this number.

The more innovative recruiters at growing companies like Zappos and Dell are now are using social media to engage prospective candidates in a genuine and inexpensive way: building candidate communities in their career site and blogs, search engine optimizing job listings, distributing jobs through social networks to dramatically drive referrals, and tracking web analytics by job to determine their best sources of talent.

To me, the more interesting acquisition was Monster’s purchase 18 months ago of Trovix, a Bay Area startup that built a behavioral algorithm for matching jobs and resumes to help recruiters sift through applicants and jobseekers through jobs. But, the irony is that they will be “unveiling” this new technology, dubbed 6Sense, on this weekend’s (expensive) Super Bowl, the annual marketing battleground of the big, horizontal job boards.

As funny as those ads can be, they are not likely to solve the job boards’ bigger marketing challenge: how to convince companies to spend more money “posting and praying” that the best person applies for their job when the broader, open Internet is fast becoming the new, cost-effective “job board” of talent.  This week’s combination of Monster and Hotjobs isn’t going to solve that problem either.

Image via Flickr/Frank Gruber.

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Kazaa Takes A Swing At Symantec After Adware Accusations
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

The history of P2P file sharing service Kazaa (which actually started life as “KaZaA”) is known to most of us born in the eighties or before, and consists mainly of copyright related lawsuits and adware-ridden software.

The gist of the story can be found on its Wikipedia profile, but what many seem to forget in present times is that the service is still around, serving users an unlimited amount of (licensed) songs for a $20 monthly subscription fee.

Recently, a Symantec security program apparently identified the Kazaa desktop client as high-risk, flagging the software as adware. This prompted Brilliant Digital Entertainment, the company that operates Kazaa, to issue a special notice / consumer alert to its customers.

And it isn’t pulling any punches.

While boasting about the fact that Kazaa is now a legitimate business offering over one million fully licensed tracks to its customers, Kazaa claims Symantec for the second time in recent weeks incorrectly identified it as being high risk. As a result, the company says, a subset of users were unable to use Kazaa because Symantec’s security software flagged it as adware. Some of its users were apparently “sufficiently spooked by Symantec’s unilateral action” after those warnings that they followed its advice to remove Kazaa.

In an angered statement, the company adds:

Symantec had justified turning off the music for some of Kazaa customers by flagging files in the Kazaa music plug-in application as high risk due to the files being used for serving advertisements. As a result Kazaa customers or subscribers running Norton AV are having these files stripped from the application which prevents them from using the service.

It continues:

Symantec’s error, hot on the heels of a similar mistake against Spotify, highlights the potential for anti-virus companies to do more harm than good in the effort to displace pirate operations from the on-line marketplace.

After the Spotify incident (Symantec classified the music streaming service as a Trojan about a week ago), the security software company apologized on Twitter. It’ll be interesting to see how they handle this notice from Kazaa.

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AppFund Launches To Seed iPad Apps
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

On the heels of the launch of the much-hyped iPad, investors and developers alike are beginning to cater to the iPad ecosystem. CNET and E! Online co-founder Kevin Wendle has teamed with MusicNation co-founder Daniel Klaus to form AppFund, a company designed to help entrepreneurs create and launch iPad and other Tablet based applications.

Similar to startup incubators like Y Combinator, AppFund will provide funding and expert mentoring to help developers build the very applications that will support the long-term success of the iPad. Based in New York City, AppFund will invest anywhere from $5000 to $500,000 in startups developing applications for the iPad or other tablet devices. The amount funded will depend on the complexity of each App.

The firm is encouraging developers to submit proposals immediately to be part of the launch of the first iPad applications by summer 2010. According to the fun’s site, AppFund has allocated several million dollars and may increase the size of the fund with additional capital or partners at a later time as needed.

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The Gesture Cube May Not Be Real But It Should Be
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

IDENT’s GestIC technology is a gesture-based interface system and they’re showing off by describing a cube of some sort that allows you to turn, twist, and pinch your data in 3D. Each side will have different functions and you can access messages and the web just by slipping and sliding on the surface.

This is obviously as real right now as the Yeti but you could imaging something like the iPad in 3D with touchscreens on each surface. It also looks quite striking and the interface is great if you’re into high-tech Minority Report stuff. Why you’d want this instead of something that fits in your pocket is beyond me, but there’s no accounting for taste.

GestIC is described as a new HCI method and has already shown up in some devices. You can read more about the cube here.

Click through for videos.

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FriendFeed Clone Cliqset Launches Social Memory Integration Courtesy Of Evernote
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

Evernote, the popular site, iPhone (and now Android) app which lets you record your memories by snapping geo-tagged photos, making voice notes, or just text notes and making it easy to search through them, is gaining serious traction on the web. In December, Evernote just reached 2 million unique users, only 7 months after reaching its first million. Of course, it makes sense that users would want to use Evernote to record social interactions. Today, Cliqset, a FriendFeed-like realtime online identity platform that lets users merge and share a vast variety of social information, is integrating with Evernote to allows users to archive social content.

With this integration, users of both Cliqset and Evernote can store photos, status updates, reviews, blog posts, videos, music, documents and anything they want to remember or save, to their Evernote account. Cliqset, which offers both a web-based and desktop app, aims to be a one-stop-shop for social communications, pulling in content from close to 70 social networks and services, including MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed and more. Users can also update their status, and share photos, bookmarks, reviews on Cliqset and push them out to wherever they choose.

Once you activate the Evernote integration and account information, you can share any content on Cliqset via the click of the Evernote icon on the app. You can create folders for Evernote content, and then search for the content within Evernote. The integration has been synced across web-based app, Cliqset’s desktop app, Firefox extension and bookmarklet.

While the real-time social media stream is fast becoming a crowded space with Threadsy, Streamy and others offering compelling platforms, Cliqset is continuing to innovate its platform to allow for ultimate syndication. Of course, Seesmic is entering the fray with the acquisition of Ping.fm. Darren Bounds, president of Cliqset, has told us that the platform aims to be a less clunky version of FriendFeed, with a target audience of users who aren’t as technologically savvy. Cliqset will be launching an iPhone app in the near future and is currently developing a browser extension for Chrome.

Cliqset + Evernote from cliqset on Vimeo.

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Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch Defends Flash, Warns That HTML5 Will Throw The Web “Back To The Dark Ages Of Video”
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

Adobe’s Flash technology has been taking a beating lately. Apple still won’t support it on its upcoming iPad or its iPhone. Steve Jobs calls it buggy and crash-prone and dismisses Adobe as being lazy. Adobe is trying to fight the negative vibes emanating from Cupertino and elsewhere. It has already pointed out that it will be easy to convert Flash apps into iPad apps, and now CTO Kevin Lynch is weighing in to defend Flash.

In a blog post today, Lynch addresses the two major threats to Flash: Apple’s refusal to support it on mobile touchscreen devices and the rise of HTML5 as a new, open standard which may one day replace Flash. On Apple, Lynch says Adobe is ready and able to put Flash on the iPhone, the iPad or anything else Apple can throw its way. But, as has been the case for more than a year, the ball is in Apple’s court:

We are ready to enable Flash in the browser on these devices if and when Apple chooses to allow that for its users, but to date we have not had the required cooperation from Apple to make this happen.

Lynch points out that the next version of Flash for smartphones, 10.1, is about to become available and that practically all other smartphones will support it, including Android, Blackberry, Nokia, and Palm Pre. If they can handle it, why can’t an iPhone?

But the bigger long-term threat to Flash is HTML5, especially for rendering video. Lynch says that 75 percent of video on the Web currently is shown in a Flash player. That number could decline if HTML5 video starts to take off. Google (via YouTube, Chrome, and other products) and others are pushing HTML5 hard. Lynch tries to pretend that HTML5 is not a threat, saying in the same breadth that Adobe supports HTML5, but its incompatibilities across browsers spells doom for the Web. He writes:

Adobe supports HTML and its evolution and we look forward to adding more capabilities to our software around HTML as it evolves. If HTML could reliably do everything Flash does that would certainly save us a lot of effort, but that does not appear to be coming to pass. Even in the case of video, where Flash is enabling over 75% of video on the Web today, the coming HTML video implementations cannot agree on a common format across browsers, so users and content creators would be thrown back to the dark ages of video on the Web with incompatibility issues.

HTML5 is still a young technology, and those incompatibility issues can be solved over time. Flash is still a more capable technology when it comes to rendering video, but HTML5 is advancing faster and as a native Web standard it has many other advantages which may help it win over time.

Adobe is in a battle for developers, who buy its Creative Suite software to make Flash apps. As long as Flash is the de facto standard for video and animation on the Web, those sales will not be threatened. But if Flash developers migrate to other technologies to build better apps for the Web and mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad, Adobe’s competitive position will be weakened. It will defend Flash to the death.

Photo credit: Flickr/Bill Tyne.

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TheFunded Ranks The Most Loved VCs Of 2009
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

Some VCs are getting an early Valentine’s Day gift fromTheFunded, the site where CEOs rate venture capitalists and their firms. Below you will find the top-ranked individual VCs, as determined by their ratings in 2009. What makes this ranking particularly useful to entrepreneurs is that it is ratings by other CEOs, often CEOs who have had direct dealings with the VCs they are rating.

While this is still a popularity contest of sorts (for instance, the rankings are not based on individual investment returns), presumably CEOs are smart enough to take investment performance into account. But they also take into account their own personal experiences with the individual VCs.  These are the VCs who CEOs love the most, and not just because they are nice but because they help CEOs do their jobs, which is to build great businesses.  Topping the list is Terry McGuire, co-Founder of Polaris Ventures and a big life sciences investor. Mark Suster of GRP Partners is No. 2.  David Sze of Greylock comes in at No. 7.  Brook H. Byers of  Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers is No. 10.  Kleiner’s star investor John Doerr is No.11  Michael Moritz from Sequoia is No. 32..

Anyone who is on this list is well-liked and respected by CEOs.   A total of 84 individual VCs (and some angel investors) made the cut out of 17,834 investment pros listed in TheFunded’s directory. To get on the list, each VC had to have at least an average rating of 4 out of 5 and have at least five separate reviews from CEO members of the Funded. (There are 13,480 CEO members). No more than one of the five ratings can be negative (a score of 3 or less).  Other VC that made the list include Howard Morgan (No. 28) and Josh Kopelman (No. 39) of First Round Capital, Bill Tai (No. 29) and George Zachary (no. 64) of Charles River Ventures, Roelof Botha of Sequoia (No. 50), Fred Wilson (No. 60) of Union Square Ventures, and angels Mike Maples, Jr. (No. 43)  and Ron Conway (No. 61).

You can compare this list to the most active VC firms of 2009 to get a sense of the overlap between these rankings and which firms are doing the most deals.  Some other insights that TheFunded shared with us: there was a lot of turnover in VC firms in 2009.  When TheFunded sent emails to all the investment pros in its directory, 38 percent either bounced back or replied with an automated message saying they’ve left their firms.  None of those people are on this list.  And about one or two firms a week became inactive, or 9 percent of the 4,005 firms listed in its directory.

TheFunded.com is offering 2 free tickets to the Future of Funding () event on February 18th in San Mateo, where many of the award winning venture capitalists will be attending an awards ceremony, for the best comments about the state of venture capital on TechCrunch (as determined by either the author or TheFunded, TBD TC).

Top-Ranked VCs by TheFunded

1. Terrance G. McGuire, Managing General Partner at Polaris Venture Partners, rated 5 by 5 CEOs
2. Mark Suster, Partner at GRP Partners, rated 4.8571 by 7 CEOs
3. Andy Fillat, Managing Member at Leapfrog Ventures, rated 4.8333 by 6 CEOs
4. Dan Rua, Managing Partner at Inflexion Partners, rated 4.8 by 5 CEOs
5. Paul H. Klingenstein, Managing Partner at Aberdare Ventures, rated 4.6667 by 9 CEOs
6. Stuart Ellman, Managing Partner at RRE Ventures, rated 4.6667 by 6 CEOs
7. David Sze, Partner at Greylock Partners, rated 4.6429 by 14 CEOs
8. Ross A. Jaffe, Managing Director at Versant Ventures, rated 4.6364 by 11 CEOs
9. Steven D. Arnold, Managing General Partner at Polaris Venture Partners, rated 4.625 by 8 CEOs
10. Brook H. Byers, Partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, rated 4.6 by 10 CEOs
11. John Doerr, Partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, rated 4.5714 by 14 CEOs
12. Philip Gianos, General Partner at InterWest Partners, rated 4.5714 by 7 CEOs
13. James D. Robinson III, General Partner at RRE Ventures, rated 4.5556 by 9 CEOs
14. Richard W. Levandov, General Partner at Masthead Venture Partners, rated 4.5455 by 11 CEOs
15. Phil Black, General Partner at True Ventures, rated 4.5 by 12 CEOs
16. Andreas Stavropoulos, Managing Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, rated 4.5 by 6 CEOs
17. Jed Katz, Managing Director at Javelin Venture Partners, rated 4.4737 by 19 CEOs
18. William J. Link, Managing Director at Versant Ventures, rated 4.4444 by 9 CEOs
19. Jon Callaghan, General Partner at True Ventures, rated 4.4167 by 12 CEOs
20. Joerg Ueberla, General Partner at Wellington Partners, rated 4.4 by 5 CEOs
21. Tom Bogan, Partner at Greylock Partners, rated 4.4 by 5 CEOs
22. Maria Cirino, Managing Director at 406 Ventures, rated 4.4 by 5 CEOs
23. Mark S. Menell, Partner at Rustic Canyon Ventures, rated 4.3333 by 12 CEOs
24. Doug Pepper, General Partner at InterWest Partners, rated 4.3333 by 9 CEOs
25. Michael T. Fitzgerald, General Partner at Commonwealth Capital Ventures, rated 4.3333 by 9 CEOs
26. Bijan Salehizadeh, M.D., General Partner at Highland Capital Partners, rated 4.3333 by 9 CEOs
27. Nicolas El Baze, Partner at Partech International, rated 4.3333 by 6 CEOs
28. Howard Morgan, Partner at First Round Capital, rated 4.3077 by 13 CEOs
29. Bill Tai, Partner at Charles River Ventures, rated 4.2857 by 14 CEOs
30. David Ladd, Managing Director at Mayfield Fund, rated 4.2857 by 7 CEOs
31. Frank Boehnke, General Partner at Wellington Partners, rated 4.2857 by 7 CEOs
32. Michael Moritz, Partner at Sequoia Capital, rated 4.2778 by 18 CEOs
33. Peter Sinclair, Managing Member at Leapfrog Ventures, rated 4.2727 by 11 CEOs
34. Donald B. Milder, Managing Director at Versant Ventures, rated 4.25 by 8 CEOs
35. John Burke, General Partner at True Ventures, rated 4.25 by 8 CEOs
36. Bill Kaiser, Partner at Greylock Partners, rated 4.25 by 8 CEOs
37. Bill Elmore, General Partner at Foundation Capital, rated 4.25 by 8 CEOs
38. Mark Hatfield, Partner at Fairhaven Capital, rated 4.2222 by 9 CEOs
39. Joshua Kopelman, Managing Partner at First Round Capital, rated 4.2 by 30 CEOs
40. Lon H.H. Chow, General Partner at Apex Venture Partners, rated 4.2 by 5 CEOs
41. Dave Fachetti, Managing Director at Globespan Capital Partners, rated 4.2 by 5 CEOs
42. Edward L. Cahill, Partner at HLM Venture Partners, rated 4.2 by 5 CEOs
43. Mike Maples Jr., General Partner at Maples Investments, rated 4.1818 by 22 CEOs
44. David Stern, Venture Partner at Clearstone Venture Partners, rated 4.1818 by 11 CEOs
45. Curtis Feeny, Managing Director at Voyager Capital, rated 4.1667 by 12 CEOs
46. John W. Jarve, Managing Director at Menlo Ventures, rated 4.1667 by 6 CEOs
47. Shawn T. Carolan, Managing Director at Menlo Ventures, rated 4.1667 by 6 CEOs
48. Bob Spinner, Managing Director at Sigma Partners, rated 4.1667 by 6 CEOs
49. Stuart MacFarlane, Managing Director at Momentum Venture Management, rated 4.1667 by 6 CEOs
50. Roelof Botha, Partner at Sequoia Capital, rated 4.1538 by 26 CEOs
51. Anthony P. Lee, General Partner at Altos Ventures, rated 4.1538 by 13 CEOs
52. William D. Porteous, General Partner at RRE Ventures, rated 4.1538 by 13 CEOs
53. Michael Kim, Partner at Rustic Canyon Ventures, rated 4.1538 by 13 CEOs
54. Brent Ahrens, General Partner at Canaan Partners, rated 4.1429 by 7 CEOs
55. Eric Wiesen, Principal at RRE Ventures, rated 4.1429 by 7 CEOs
56. Alex Mendez, General Partner at Storm Ventures, Inc., rated 4.125 by 8 CEOs
57. Richard A. D’Amore, General Partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, rated 4.125 by 8 CEOs
58. Jonathan Ebinger, Partner at BlueRun Ventures, rated 4.1111 by 9 CEOs
59. Gus Tai, General Partner at Trinity Ventures, rated 4.1 by 10 CEOs
60. Fred Wilson, Partner at Union Square Ventures, rated 4.0952 by 21 CEOs
61. Ron Conway, General Partner at SV Angel, rated 4.0909 by 11 CEOs
62. Hodong Nam, General Partner at Altos Ventures, rated 4.0833 by 12 CEOs
63. Gilman Louie, Partner at Alsop Louie Partners, rated 4.0769 by 13 CEOs
64. George Zachary, Partner at Charles River Ventures, rated 4 by 16 CEOs
65. Paul Maeder, General Partner at Highland Capital Partners, rated 4 by 9 CEOs
66. Warren J. Packard, Managing Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, rated 4 by 9 CEOs
67. Bryan Schreier, Partner at Sequoia Capital, rated 4 by 9 CEOs
68. Brian Pokomy, Associate at SV Angel, rated 4 by 8 CEOs
69. Byron Deeter, Venture Principal at Bessemer Venture Partners, rated 4 by 8 CEOs
70. Kevin Spain, Principal at Emergence Capital Partners, rated 4 by 7 CEOs
71. Thatcher Bell, Principle at Draper Fisher Jurvetson Gotham Ventures, rated 4 by 7 CEOs
72. Kirk Holland, General Partner at Vista Ventures, rated 4 by 7 CEOs
73. Jonathan Seelig, Managing Director at Globespan Capital Partners, rated 4 by 7 CEOs
74. Andrew L. Zalasin, General Partner/CFO at RRE Ventures, rated 4 by 7 CEOs
75. Bruce K. Taragin, Partner at Blumberg Capital, rated 4 by 7 CEOs
76. Frederick J. Dotzler, Managing Director at De Novo Ventures, rated 4 by 6 CEOs
77. Max Niederhofer, Associate at Atlas Venture, rated 4 by 6 CEOs
78. Gil Dibner, Principal at Genesis Partners, rated 4 by 6 CEOs
79. Ryan Ziegler, Investment Manager at Edison Venture Fund, rated 4 by 6 CEOs
80. Bob Pavey, General Partner at Morgenthaler Ventures, rated 4 by 6 CEOs
81. Philippe Herbert, Partner at Banexi Ventures Partners, rated 4 by 5 CEOs
82. Eric Hjerpe, Partner at Atlas Venture, rated 4 by 5 CEOs
83. Angelo J. Santinelli, General Partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, rated 4 by 5 CEOs
84. David Min, Principal at Steamboat Ventures, rated 4 by 5 CEOs

Photo credit: Flickr/le vent le cri

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Mobile Barcode Company Scanbuy Raises Funding From Motorola Ventures, Others
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

Scanbuy, a New York-based provider of mobile barcode solutions, has received a capital injection in a round led by Motorola Ventures, Masthead Venture Partners, Hudson Ventures and private investors. Financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.

Scanbuy’s ScanLife platform provides a way for advertisers to provide digital information to consumers through the use of 2D barcodes and camera phones. That way, advertisers are able to provide consumers with access to information like product reviews, price comparisons and coupon offers simply by having them scan two-dimensional codes placed on product packaging, a magazine ad or other media. Scanlife can scan traditional UPC barcodes as well as popular 2D barcode formats like Datamatrix and QR Codes.

According to a statement released by lead investor Motorola Ventures, ‘millions’ of people have used ScanLife on a range of mobile devices running Android, BlackBerry OS, iPhone OS, Java and Symbian to date. Scanbuy also claims to have the largest and oldest patent portfolio of any company in the industry, with over 30 patents granted covering the solution.

Noteworthy: Scanbuy’s chief executive is Jonathan Bulkeley, previously CEO of barnesandnoble.com and prior Managing Director of AOL’s joint venture with Bertelsmann Online in the U.K., and AOL’s Vice President of Business Development in the United States.

This investment follows Motorola Ventures’ backing of Zephyr Technology Corporation, which dates back to June 2009.

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On eBay, Twitter Followers Are Worth Less Than A Penny Each
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

It used to be that Twitter followers were worth something, or at least people thought they were worth something, which is the same thing. It was only about a year ago when Jason Calacanis was offering $250,000 to buy a spot on Twitter’s Suggested User List, which would have guaranteed him perhaps a million followers before Twitter ended up revamping the SUL to be less monolithic. He never got on the list, but if his offer would have come to roughly $0.25 per follower.

Today, you can “buy” followers on eBay for less than a penny each. Some of the Buy-It-Now listings include 5,000 followers for $20 (which comes to 0.4 penny/follower), $5,500 for $40 (0.7 penny/follower), $1,100 for $10 (0.9 penny/follower). You are not actually buying followers outright (Twitter doesn’t allow people to transfer their followers), but rather services which “guarantee” getting your account up to the promised number of followers through “proven and safe methods.” Some even only count reciprocal followers (followers who follow back).

How do they do this? Well, there are automated bots, of course. But another method we’ve heard about anecdotally uses cheap labor in China to create Twitter Follower farms (similar to the gold farms that grew around online games like World of Warcraft). Online laborers in China essentially create thousands of Twitter accounts which can then follow other accounts. Yes, people are actually paying for this worthless service. The sellers on eBay may very well use different methods. But the fact that these types of followers are worthless shows in the plummeting rate for Twitter followers from a quarter each a year ago to less than a penny now.

So are Twitter followers simply worthless as many people have suspected all along? I think you have to distinguish between real followers and fake followers (maybe Twitter could start a Verified Follower service), and how engaged those followers are. Do they retweet a lot and engage in conversation, or never tune in at all? Follower counts don’t tell you that. Just as all Website visitors are not worth the same, neither are all Twitter followers. But you can’t buy real followers. They come to you.

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NSFW: Guest Post! Five reasons the iPad will blah blah blah Kindle
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

Columnist’s Note: In a little under 24 hours, I have to submit the final manuscript of my next book. My original deadline – January 1st – sailed passed weeks ago, as did the one-week extension I awarded myself on the basis that no-one does any work in the first week of the year. This last deadline, though, is immovable: lawyers and editors and typesetters and proof-readers are standing by; the thing has to be printed at some point. I haven’t slept for days, my blood is an 80:20 Caffeine:Provigil blend and I can’t feel my fingers. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t have time to write this week’s column.

And yet, I still have a contract with TechCrunch – one that’s no less binding or legally enforceable than the one I have with my publisher. By hook or by crook, 1000 words have to appear in this space. I briefly considered outsourcing this week’s column to India – or maybe employing some Indians on H1Bs here; I gather that’s the future. But then I remembered that employing people costs money. Next I considered asking one of my journalist friends to take over for the week; but there’s always the danger that they’ll be better at the job than I am and I’ll find myself unemployed. Again. I needed a solution which a) fills space, b) is free and c) is unlikely to put me out of a job.

And that’s when it hit me – I should commission a Guest Post.

But I’m not going to give away my space on TechCrunch to just anyone: I need to make sure that they conform to the high standards demanded of a typical tech blog guest author. To that end, I’ve put together this useful list of hints for writing the perfect Guest Post…

• Tip One: Choose a topical issue
  This is vital. Without a topical issue to hang from, all Guest Posts would to forced to use honest titles like “My marketing director told me to write this because it’s the only way our bullshit product will get on TechCrunch” or “I only wrote this to warrant an entry on CrunchBase”. The obvious topical issue this week is the launch of the iPad. Like new spin-offs of CSI, the world will never tire of new opinions on the iPad, even if yours brings absolutely nothing fresh or new to the genre. If you’re feeling bold though, why not try to link your customised iPhone cover startup to the recent death of JD Salinger? (hint: bunchofphoneys.com is still available)

• Tip Two: Ask yourself “do I actually know anything about this subject?”
  If yes, go back to the drawing board. It is critical that you choose a subject that has absolutely no relation to your areas of expertise. For example: I am a former book publisher who now splits his time between writing books and blogging about technology. I also read maybe 75-100 books a year. Therefore, if I were to write a Guest Post comparing – say – the iPhone and the Kindle – readers would assume that I was allowing my prior knowledge to cloud my judgment on which device is better for enjoying books. They would smell bias. Much better that I opine on, say, the pet food industry or why Belgians make terrible lovers. I mean, they do, right? My wife/mother/kids told me.

• Tip Three: Work your issue into a snappy title
  Let’s say you’ve decided to write about the iPad – because, let’s face it, you have. Next comes the important task of picking a title. Remember, a good title serves two important functions: 1) to attract comment trolls, and 2) to amuse Gabe Rivera from Techmeme. One tried and tested format is the “Why X will be the Y killer” construction, or the even more popular “Five tips for…” meme. The latter is especially recommended for authors who are working against a tight deadline: readers will tolerate any shit as long as it’s in a numbered list (the so-called ‘Mashable Rule’). Note: there is no need for the title to actually relate to the body of your Guest Post: the two are quite separate entities.

• Tip Four: Write any old crap
  The trick here is to avoid looking or sounding like a real writer or a journalist. If your prose is too polished or your argument too well thought out, readers will assume you’re one of TC’s paid writers and will ignore your carefully written promotional bio. The trick is to make readers get one paragraph in and think “who the fuck is this idiot?” and then scroll down to find out. How can you telegraph your amateur status? I, personally, myself believe that the use of tautology is a good way to go. As is unnecessary repetition. Another approach is to completely ignore the most obvious flaw in your argument. For example, if you’re comparing the iPad unfavourably to the Kindle, it’s important to appear oblivious to the existence of e-ink. Instead point to the iPad’s superior video-handling abilities, or the fact that its name has a more balanced vowel-to-consonant ratio than the Kindle.

• Tip Five: End on a high-five, with a blatantly self-promotional bio
  After all, you didn’t spend hours waiting for your PR company to finish ghost-writing your Guest Post, only to throw away your big chance to stroke your ego and make a few dollars at the end. Am I right?

Ok, then get to it!

If you think you’re up to the challenge of writing a guest post, please summarise your pitch on the inside cover of a copy of Paul Carr’s multi-Steve-wynning book – Bringing Nothing To The Party: True Confessions of a New Media Whore – and send to him via TechCrunch where, until this post goes live, he writes a weekly column.

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Why My Mom’s Next Computer Is Going To Be An iPad
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

Editor’s note: This is a guest post penned by Ethan Nicholas, developer of the million-dollar iPhone game iShoot and the newly released Kim Rhode’s Outdoor Shooting. Before the iPad was even announced, Nicholas was already conceiving his next game with the tablet device in mind.

The Internet is a funny place. After Apple announced its new iPad, I cringed at the hate being directed its way on sites such as Slashdot and Digg. Even the guys at Penny Arcade, whom I normally agree with, said “that iPad presentation had to be the worst thing I’ve even seen on on the Apple stage” and that Apple had failed to make a case for the device.

If you believe them, the iPad is going to be a massive flop.

Well, the unwashed masses on the Internet also predicted that the iPod would be a failure. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now.

The iPad is a computer for people who don’t like computers. People who don’t like the idea of upgrading their 3D drivers, or adjusting their screen resolution, or installing new memory. Who don’t understand why their computer gets slower and slower the longer they own it, who have 25 icons in their system tray and have to wait ten minutes for their system to boot up every day.

For what most of these people need a computer for, the iPad is perfect. It doesn’t do as many things as a “real” computer does, but the things it does do it does in a way even non-tech-savvy people can figure out, and there are far fewer ways to screw it up. So if you have managed to convince yourself that the iPad is a useless, locked-up DRM-laden failure of a ‘computer’ before even touching one, I have two words for you:

My mom.

My mother is a lovely lady in her sixties who is… well, “not computer savvy” is probably a good way to put it. I regularly have to figure out why her computer is running incredibly slowly, or why it won’t print, or any of the million other random things that happen when people who don’t live and breathe computers sit down at one daily.

The iPad is perfect for her. It does exactly what she needs. It will let her watch movies and listen to music and read books on long flights. It will make using a computer fun instead of an annoying chore.

But it also won’t allow her to install umpteen news and weather gadgets that start up on boot and slow her computer to a crawl. It won’t suddenly forget how to talk to a network, or get so confused by all of the software installs and uninstalls that you finally have to break down and reinstall the system from scratch. In other words, my mother’s next computer is going to be an iPad, and I dream of the day when I can finally throw off the oppressive chains of being the one guy in the family who knows how to actually keep a computer working.

And you know what? There are millions upon millions of people just like her out there. They outnumber us. And they finally have a chance to become productive, self-sufficient computer users instead of constantly asking family members to fix their computers or, even worse, keeping the Geek Squad in business.

No, the iPad isn’t for everyone. But I’m going to go on record as saying that, for non-computer-geeks everywhere, the iPad is going to redefine computing.

(Image courtesy of Flickr/Scott Chang)

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