ReadWriteWeb

A New Backchannel For Live Events: The Brightkite Wall

Sarah Perez — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 06:38:47 -0800

Whenever there is a conference or event, there's a secondary bit of action taking place behind the scenes: the backchannel. Here, the attendees are live blogging, twittering, posting photos, and streaming live video about what they're seeing on stage or in and around the venue. Twitter has always been the microblogging platform of choice in this scenario, but starting today, they just might have new competition from Brightkite, the mobile social networking service that's making a name for itself among the early adopters.

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Last night, Brightkite released a new feature for their mobile social networking platform called the "Brightkite Wall." This wall displays the live stream of notes, photos, and checkins at any one place. When launched full screen, the Brightkite Wall's placestream can be shown on any monitor, projector, or TV, which obviously makes it perfect for conferences and events.

Using the Wall

To get started, simply browse to the desired place and click the new Wall tab. Then click on the embedded Brightkite Wall to go full screen. Organizers can even customize the Wall beforehand, if desired. The message and location name can be modified, the shortcode can be selected for use within the U.S. or outside the U.S., and checkins can be turned on or off.

Of course, Brightkite has a much smaller user base than Twitter, which could have made this new feature a non-starter. However, Brightkite has that problem covered. With the Brightkite Wall, anyone can participate by texting a pre-defined shortcode provided for you by the service.

Better Than Live Blogging?

Brightkite's Wall may soon beat Twitter to become the microblogging platform of choice for live events because it offers a much richer stream of information. Instead of just displaying 140-character notes, Brightkite's Wall also displays photos. Combined with notes and checkins, this makes the Wall a much more engaging experience.

For those virtually attending the event, watching the Brightkite Wall could end up being even better than refreshing a blogger's post featuring their "live" coverage of the event. A live blog only gives you one point of view and set of images. Even if it's a group effort, it's not the same as being immediately tapped into the thoughts and reactions of all the event's attendees as you are with Brightkite.

Potential Problems

Our only concern for this new feature is that it doesn't appear to be any sort of administrative control over who can configure what. If some rogue conference attendee wanted to, he or she could highjack the Wall by customizing their own personalized greeting for all to see. That could lead to problems, especially if the message was profane or offensive.

Another concern is that there doesn't seem to be any sort of archiving system in place, so while the Wall may be a great real-time view into the thoughts and activities that are taking place at a particular point in time, going back to view older images and notes could be a challenge if the same locale (address) is used over and over again for subsequent events.

The Wall feature is still in beta, though, so as people begin to use it and submit feedback, it may be updated to even better reflect people's needs than it does now.

Discuss

10 Things to Know About Salesforce.com

Bernard Lunn — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 06:00:00 -0800

These are reflections from having spent a few days at the annual Salesforce.com event, Dreamforce. We hope they are valuable to people who need an executive summary-level understanding of the company and its position in the cloud and SaaS marketplace. Full disclosure, the company paid for my flight and hotel to attend Dreamforce.

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1. They Are Ambitious

Salesforce wants to be the dominant cloud platform for business. Their view is that computing has seen two waves: the first was the mainframe, and then the PC client server, and now the third is cloud computing. They have been consistent about this since their inception in March 1999, so this is no recent bandwagon hopping.

2. They Have a Good Shot at Meeting This Ambition

They have a powerful mix of capability and relentless focus. They have the resources -- cash, cash flow, clients, track record, management team, and so on -- needed to execute on this vision. Their competitors are bigger, but Salesforce has the advantage of focus. They are pure play, and they have no legacy to protect.

3. They Are a Marketing Machine with Flair

Having attended a few big rah-rah events, such as Java One, I see that Dreamforce compares well on scale, details, and flair. Its messaging and visuals were consistent and powerful, and everything just worked well. This all costs a lot of money (which relates to the next point), but that money has to be well spent, and they seem to be doing that. The presentations had real flair and humor. Benioff knows how to be controversial to get press. They are a billion-dollar business that still acts like a start-up. Even the music was good.

4. Their Biggest Issue Is Maybe Price

There are many lower-cost competitors to their base CRM application. Now that SaaS is increasingly accepted, due in part to Salesforce's evangelical marketing, smaller competitors spending a tiny fraction of what they spend on marketing can undercut them. Their most visible competitor is Zoho, and it does not look like Zoho is going to shy away from this battle, and they have staying power. So Salesforce is fighting on two fronts. On the one hand they are competing with Oracle and SAP for big enterprise accounts. On the other hand they are fighting low-cost competitors, such as Zoho. This will require all their marketing and management skills.

5. They See Today's Troubled Economy as Their Moment to Win Big

They got their early big traction in the last downturn around 2001 and 2002 and have never looked back. They are greedy while others are fearful. They spend more, grow, and hire, while other firms lay off people. The basic economic advantages of cloud computing, such as lower capital expenditures and a faster time to market, resonate in a downturn to the point that they overcome the resistance of conservative buyers to cloud computing.

6. Their Vendor Eco-System Is Making Money and Acting Bullish

Salesforce knows that this matters. This is the lesson they learned from Microsoft. Will they move into the spaces currently occupied by vendors? Of course they will. Vendors will have to be agile; that is just how the game works. But today, in these tough markets, we see vendors that are profitable, growing, hiring, and raising money. The winners in many segments are being defined now. It is a great time to be an entrepreneur in this space. Salesforce knows how to leverage all its capability to make a few winners do very well and then promote that success big time, thus inspiring others to come on board.

7. They Believe That Good Software Design Matters to the Core Economics of Cloud Computing

They refer constantly to their "multi-tenant kernel," which sounds very techie for a such a marketing-driven company. It does appear that they are not suffering from the scaling and reliability problems that we have seen affecting consumer Web 2.0 ventures such as Twitter and Facebook.

8. They Also Know How to Partner with Big Companies to Make Themselves Look Bigger

They wheeled out large companies, such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon, as partners. The message was, "We are at the center of an eco-system with big partners." This makes large conservative enterprise buyers feel comfortable.

9. Focused Research and Development

They have a predictable and focused R&D plan, with a major theme each year. This again makes large conservative buyers feel comfortable: they know what to expect.

10. They Will Need to be Careful About Usability Issues

They are adding so much functionality and so many partners that they face the danger of users getting confused and going to simpler point solutions. That "hairball-of-complexity" problem bedeviled Microsoft as it grew fast, but Microsoft enjoyed a lock-in that Salesforce cannot count on. The SaaS world is naturally lock-in resistant, with low switching costs. There is no sign of this being an immediate problem for the company, but it is something they will have to look out for.

See also our most recent story about Salesforce: Salesforce.com Says Hello World.

Discuss

IT Must Learn to Bend or Business Will Break

Jason Rothbart — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:00:00 -0800

The current economic climate is having a devastating effect on almost every business around. In order to adapt to changing conditions and opportunities, businesses will need to use flexible, adaptable systems to survive. The days of expensive year-long implementations of behind-the-firewall software look to be behind us.

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I recently attended a Forrester Briefing and listened to comments by analyst Peter Burris, a very smart guy. The company has done a host of studies showing that technology will be a growing part of how businesses compete and differentiate themselves in the future.

While systems and software used to be very "behind the scenes" and often transaction-based, that is the case no longer. Consumers and businesses alike buy differently, consume differently, and recommend differently. Trends such as social networking, video on demand, and e-commerce will continue to force businesses to adapt to keep up with their customers. They cannot rely on systems that take years to implement, and most don't have the budgets to make large investments, at least they won't for the next couple of years.

The growing focus on SaaS, cloud computing, application platforms, etc. are all responses to this growing trend in the market. There will be other solutions in the future for mobile, etc. that we haven't even imagined. They all drive businesses to use systems that they can deploy, change, and retire quickly. In my main job, I remember meeting a venture capitalist who talked about how his firm looks for opportunities in which it sees lots of "wiggling." He couldn't describe what that really meant, or how one gets paid for wiggling. I thought he was a lunatic.

In retrospect, he does make a good point. Things happen quickly on the Internet and in this changing global economy. When a business sees wiggling (or opportunities), either positive or negative, they need agile systems to respond. One-size-fits-all software and packaging are going the way of the VCR. I think this will continue to grow in importance and focus as enterprises evaluate new systems and invest in new technology. What do you think?

Discuss

Google Lively Is Dead-ly

Rick Turoczy — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:58:01 -0800

In an economic environment where a number of companies are stumbling, it's important to remember that sometimes even Google makes bad decisions. Such would be the case with Lively, a browser-based virtual world environment - and purported Second Life killer - that Google launched this summer to great fanfare.

Now, a little over four months after Lively's launch, Google has decided to turn the lights out on the alternate reality, announcing that they are discontinuing Lively at the end of this year.

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Google tried to be polite about pulling the plug:

"Since Lively's launch, we have been delighted to see the creative ways you've used the product. We enjoyed hanging out in Jen's coffee house, and checking out the Brasil Party room. We got a kick out of the YouTube videos in a variety of languages telling stories about your avatars. And we've been awed by the elaborate rooms that you've constructed, using mosaic tiles and photo gadgets in novel ways."

But ultimately, it decided to shut the whole thing down. Why?

There will be all varieties of speculation as to why Lively failed to remain a viable application for Google. Perhaps the traffic Google expected never materialized? Maybe it was going to be too distracting to take on a well-entrenched Linden Labs and its faithful user base? Was the "Windows only" format a problem? Could it be that, in today's economic conditions, Google simply couldn't afford to fund it?

I think we can take Ockham's Razor to this one. Because I think the answer is quite simple: It seemed like a good idea at the time. But, in actuality, Lively didn't offer Google any relevant data. And that, ultimately, is what killed Lively.

The world of Google - everything on which Google focuses its time and effort - is built on relevant data. A portion of that world involves making that data searchable. But the far more lucrative portion of that world involves analyzing how users are accessing that data and finding ways to monetize those behaviors.

Example? Think of the silliest Google app that you can. I'll pick Google Mail Goggles, a Gmail Labs feature that makes you answer math questions before you're allowed to send an email to prevent you from drunk-emailing your friends. But you could take Gmail emoticons, because - honestly - that's pretty silly too. Even those seemingly ridiculous apps provide thousands of data points through their use: Which users deem themselves "at risk" for sending unwarranted emails? How good are inebriated people at math? What's the trend of sad emoticons now that the economy has turned? How many people opt for traditional emoticons versus graphic ones? You could go on and on with the potential data points.

But those examples only make sense because of one thing: users. It's much more difficult to make that leap with Lively - which didn't boast anywhere near the traffic of Gmail - and as such, it just simply didn't fit in to Google's larger plan. And when traffic started to tank, it wasn't worth additional investment, because Google likely wasn't seeing any relevant application for the data as part of its core structure.

Yes, I'm sure other factors came into play, and I'm sure it wasn't easy to pull the plug on a splashy product that launched mere months earlier. But it's an important reminder that Google has a larger goal in mind and you're a big part of it. If you're not playing, nobody's paying.

Discuss

Wild Apricot: "Economic Scars"

RWW Sponsor — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:30:00 -0800

Editor's note: we're currently running a series of 'Sponsor Posts', focused on use cases and business stories. These posts are clearly marked as written by sponsors, but we also want them to be useful and interesting to our readers. We hope you like the posts and we encourage you to support our sponsors by trying out their products.

Wild Apricot is a young technology company out of Toronto, Canada. We provide Software-as-as-Service for associations, clubs, and non-profit organizations. This is our story of an investment round that fell through due to economic conditions.

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Our clients are primarily based in US and Canada, as well as other English-speaking countries around the world: UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, etc. (software is currently only offered in English). As of now (November 2008) we already have over 12,000 organizations signed up for our membership website software, which we think is not bad for a barely 2-year-old startup.

Originally financed by our founders, the company wanted to grow faster and in December 2007 decided to seek additional financing from outside investors. Things progressed quickly, and by February 2008 we shook hands on a deal with a new investor: a very entrepreneurial investment company out of UK. Closing was planned for April 2008.

Of course, things never go as planned (and this is one of the lessons many startups learn the painful way). First, due diligence protracted much longer than expected. This was partially due to the fact that our Canadian-based company has a subsidiary office in Moscow, Russia, where the bulk of software development work takes place. The investor was keen to ensure that the intellectual property was properly protected, and it required changes to the legal setup of the Russian subsidiary, new employment contracts for all employees, and a bunch of other changes.

Then the MBAs and lawyers got their hands on the deal, and it quickly deteriorated from a relatively simple original term sheet to a thick stack of very complicated contracts.

This was to be the first Canadian deal for the investment company, and the deal stalled for a while as the investor's lawyers struggled to reconcile the terms sheet with their standard templates and the wording of UK contractual law with the Canadian legal system and its way of doing things. (That's another lesson for start-ups: making a deal outside of your home base frequently takes much more time and energy.)

The shareholder agreement, articles of association, board by-laws, and all the other fun documents multiplied in versions like rabbits.

Everybody got exhausted, and the deal almost derailed a few times and was only saved thanks to the open dialog between our company and the majority shareholder of the investment company.

Dmitry Buterin, the Chief Apricot (aka President of Wild Apricot), got the final documents on the morning of October 9th, 2008. He was visiting the Moscow office at the time and went to work having the documents signed and faxed between Moscow and Toronto.

Alas, it was not to be. At 4:00 pm, he got a call from the investor. "We are not going to close the deal after all. Our shareholders are panicking and withdrawing their money. We cannot do any new deals now." The financial crisis finally hit home.

After seven months of due diligence, many thousands of dollars spent on accountants and lawyers, and countless hours invested by the management team, Wild Apricot had to write it all off.

It was even more disappointing because our company was delivering on its promises. Back in January 2008, we provided a detailed financial projection, and at the last check-in with the investor team we were proud to show the September and year-to-date numbers were right on the projections.

As the saying goes, in every crisis there is opportunity. So, the Wild Apricot team went searching hard for those opportunities.

The story is still being written because the crisis is still unfolding, but here is what we have achieved so far:

We asked nicely, and the investor agreed to reimburse part of Wild Apricot's legal expenses, even though there was no legal obligation on the investor's part.
We contacted local media right away to capitalize on all of the hoopla about the crisis and ended up on Canada's CBC television.
The founders put together another round of their own money, and while they had to scale back some growth ambitions, we feel comfortable about riding out the current storm and bridging this and the next investment round. (we knew that any deal had a risk of falling through, so we had backup financing arranged in advance, and it came in very handy.)

Wal-Mart has been reporting record growth as of late and McDonalds is stealing market share from Starbucks. So we think Wild Apricot might do even better in these tough times. Non-profits are hurting and have to trim their budgets (just search Google News).

To tell you more about our software: the basic premise is that for a simple, flat monthly fee of $25 to $200, Wild Apricot replaces up to seven separate pieces of software: the content management system for your website, a members database, a secure private website for members and the board, an event registration system, online payments processing, software to send bulk emails and newsletters, and online community facilities, such as blogs and discussion forums. Technical support and updates are free.

For a small association or club, this set-up saves thousands of dollars in software, countless hours of volunteer time usually wasted on copying and pasting and reconciling the data between a dozen Excel files, and paying through the nose for IT services.

Wild Apricot delivers a custom-built website project that would cost the equivalent of $20,000 or more (not to mention hefty ongoing maintenance and support fees).

October 2008 has been our best month in terms of absolute financial growth (meaning our monthly revenue has increased by the biggest amount ever). Percentage-wise, our revenue grew by 11.3% in a single month! And November so far is shaping up to be an even better month for us.

We we are very confident in our ability to keep growing by staying agile on our feet!

And here is the silver lining:

The US dollar is shooting up against most other currencies. Wild Apricot software is priced in US dollars, while its expenditures are largely in Canadian dollars and Russian rubles. This adds a healthy boost to its bottom line.

What are your war stories? How are you navigating these waters, and what new opportunities are opening up for other technology startups?

If you're curious to know more about this 'gritty startup', please click through to Wild Apricot's website and support a RWW sponsor!

Discuss

Yahoo! Glue Finally Comes to the US and It's Awesome

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:31:02 -0800

This May Yahoo! started testing an "all in one" search product called Yahoo Glue in India. It's a really cool service that tonight becomes available to US users of Yahoo.

Yahoo! Glue search results include web search, images, news, blog search, Wikipedia and YouTube videos. That's right - in the India version at least Yahoo! displayed search results from both Google's YouTube and Google Blogsearch. The end result - all these links on one page - is pretty awesome.

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The Indian version prioritized pages relevant to India, which is interesting, but a little unhelpful to those outside of India. Tonight's roll out will include a version that prioritizes US relevance and uses an algorithm to determine which media type is most relevant to a particular search. That type's widget will appear highest on the page. Starting at 6:30 PM PST tonight you should be able to give it a spin and let us know what you think at Glue.Yahoo.com.

Discuss

Mozilla: One Billion Addons Served - Here Are Some of Our Favorites

Frederic Lardinois — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:36:57 -0800

Mozilla today announced that it has served its 1 billionth addon download since they started keeping track of these downloads in 2005. Currently, Mozilla's users are downloading close to 1.5 million addons every day.

Mozilla has cultivated one of the most active and interesting developer communities around its products and seeing numbers like these will surely give a lot of other developers an incentive to try their hands at developing new plugins for Firefox as well.

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Mozila also just released a new interface to showcase some of the top Firefox addons, which will surely bring a lot of new users to those plugins featured there.

Your Favorites

We asked our readers and Twitter followers about their favorite apps and, as expected, received a wide variety of answers. For web developers, Firebug was clearly a winner, though a lot of you also mentioned Greasemonkey, the bookmarking plugin de.licio.us, and DownloadHelper. Other favorites included Ubiquity, and FoxMarks, AdBlock Plus (though we hope you disable it on RWW and your other favorite websites), and Tab Mix Plus.

Our Favorites

Among the RWW staff, Sarah Perez listed the magazine-style RSS reader Feedly and the FFHolic Toolbar for FriendFeed users as some of her favorites.

Rick Turoczy is a big fan of the CoolIris plugin that allows you to browse pictures and videos in a very pretty 3D environment, though he also likes Iterasi, which allows you to take live snapshots of any web page. (Disclosure: Iterasi is one of Rick's consulting clients, but he assures as that he likes it so much that would use it anyway)

Richard MacManus likes StumbleUpon and the Google Toolbar.

Other favorites among the rest of the staff here included ColorfulTabs, Evernote's Web Clipper, and the Google Notebook plugin.

Also, all of us at RWW try to use our sponsors' products, so we are currently checking out AdaptiveBlue's Glue as well.

Did We Miss Something?

These are just some of the plugins we and our readers are using (and we surely missed quite a few). Did we miss your favorite? Feel free to let us know in the comments.

Discuss

Gmail Gets Themes

Frederic Lardinois — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:21:23 -0800

Gmail's interface was revolutionary when it was first released, but the design was a bit too plain for a lot of users. After a short while, users started to develop Greasemonkey scripts and Firefox plugins that could bring some more excitement to the standard Gmail theme. Today, however, Google itself announced that will be rolling out over 30 different themes for Gmail in the next couple of days.

A few lucky Gmail users are already seeing a 'Themes' tab appear in their settings menu, though as is typical for Google, it might take a day or two before this new feature has been rolled out to all users.

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Looking at the array of themes, some are clearly more playful than others (think ASCII logos and ninjas), though all of them keep the standard Gmail interface. Interestingly, most of these themes also feature modified Gmail logos, similar to the modified Google logos that often appear on the Google homepage on holidays.

Google also announced a 'minor facelift' for the default Gmail interface to make it look 'crisper and cleaner.'

Dynamic Themes

Similar to the themes for iGoogle, some of these new themes also change according to the local weather and time of day, which is a neat effect, though obviously not very useful.

Overall, this is not a dramatic update to Gmail, but a lot of users have been waiting for this feature, and judging from the early reactions to the announcement we have seen so far, these new themes are going to be a quite popular.

Discuss

Creative Commons Scores One of Its Biggest Wins Ever: Democracy Now!

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:16:44 -0800

The Creative Commons Foundation announced today that award winning TV and radio news show Democracy Now! will now be distributed under a CC license. Democracy Now! is broadcast daily on more than 700 television and radio stations around the US and as a podcast online.

Whether you agree with the show's political perspective or not, Democracy Now! is undeniably one of the best produced and distributed independent media projects in the world right now. If there are more high profile collections of media distributed under the innovative Creative Commons License, we don't know what they are. Creative Commons is a variation on traditional copyright that switches permission to republish content to opt-out with publisher applied conditions.

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How CC Works

Traditional copyright, as currently defined in the United States and increasingly around the world, requires by default explicit permission before any reuse of content is legally allowed. There are a variety of variations of Creative Commons, but Democracy Now for example is being distributed under a license that allows any reuse without further permission as long as that reuse includes attribution of credit to the original source, the reuse is in a noncommercial context and the original content is used in whole with no derivative works are made. It's one of the most conservative variations there is - but it's still Creative Commons.

About Democracy Now!

Founded in 1996, Democracy Now! is a daily morning news show that brings together a skilled investigative staff and some of the most high-profile guests in the world. Its editorial perspective is clearly leftist as are its roster of guests. It's already proven itself skeptical of the Obama administration, though.

The show and its primary host Amy Goodman regularly win press awards for their investigative journalism around the world. Sympathetic viewers will find the show's content deeply informative, inspiring and emotionally moving. This author hasn't discussed the show with unsympathetic viewers before but would welcome their thoughts as well.

This is a very big win for this new copyright paradigm and we hope to see a good write up of Democracy Now's experience soon in the Creative Commons Case Studies Collection.

Discuss

The Slow Death of Print: RIP PC Magazine

Frederic Lardinois — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:14:02 -0800

PC Magazine, Ziff Davis' flagship print publication, has announced that it will go 100% digital. The January 2008 issue will mark the end of PC Magazine's print edition after 27 years of continuous publication. Instead of the print version, PC Magazine will start publishing a digital version of the magazine, 'PC Magazine Digital Edition.' Current and new subscribers should see this digital edition appear in their inboxes by February 2009.

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100% Digital

PC Magazine has been publishing a digital edition since 2002, but at least in its current version, this digital edition only imitates the print version in its layout, which is definitely not the easiest and most convenient way to read text. Also, the problem for print magazines is not the fact that they are physical objects, but simply the fact that a publication which only appears once a month will always lag behind its online competition, especially in a fast moving business like technology news.

A number of publishers have been experimenting with digital editions similar to PC Magazine's. The New York Times, for example, has its Times Reader application, which allows offline access to the paper. However, in a world where online access is becoming ubiquitous, these products are at best bridges to a pure online experience.

PC Magazine, of course, already has a strong online presence and a number of very interesting blogs and online video shows. The value of PC Magazine often wasn't in its news content anyway, but in its reviews - all of which are available online, without the need to subscribe to a digital edition of the magazine.

Would You Subscribe to a Digital Edition?

While we are glad to see that a quality publication like PC Magazine is taking steps to secure its future, it is not clear to us why PC Magazine would put time and effort into producing a digital edition of its magazine instead of just focusing on the online experience.

Discuss

The A-Team

Bernard Lunn — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:15:40 -0800

We like to report good news, not just because it makes us all feel good, but because when a company is doing something positive during a downturn, it indicates something pretty interesting about that company. That is why Jobwire reports on new hires when all the other news is about layoffs. In that same spirit, The A-Team will be a monthly wrap-up of all the Series A VC financing rounds in web technology. To close a Series A VC round these days, you have to be pretty special.

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The Qualifying Rules

A minimum of $1 million. We don't want $50,000 financing being called Series A. Sorry, no grade inflation here.
Lead Institutional VC. There are plenty of other very good types of financing. We celebrate bootstrappers in our Gritty Entrepreneurs series. Angels are wonderful, and we all love friends and family. But this series is about the classic VC fund, the core of the start-up financing world. We only report the lead VC because that is what matters: with a good lead there is never a shortage of followers.
Reported data. We need to see the dollar amount and the lead VC publicly reported. No "unreported sum" or "undisclosed investors." If you want to be stealthy, you don't need any visibility, which is fine.
Web technology only. We are seeing a lot in alternative energy, biotech, and other sectors, which is all very interesting, but not what we do at ReadWriteWeb.
Series A only. We recognize that getting Series B or C financing is important as well, but it is hard to see from public data whether these are really positive events or not. During a downturn, many of them, sadly, will be down rounds that protect VC capital but, because of onerous preference terms, often leave the entrepreneurs with very little. We don't want to celebrate something only to find it is viewed as negative by the participants. But everybody can celebrate a Series A: it speaks of optimism, new trends, and a go-for-it spirit.

The Heroes And their Partners

We believe that entrepreneurs are the heroes, but we also really want to celebrate their partners, the VC guys who have the guts to go against the trend and back them during tough times. All VCs talk the talk, which is that this is a great time for investing. We want to report on the ones who actually walk the walk as well. There is only one way to get into this list: close a Series A round and wire the money.

We want to use this to learn about changes in the VC business and so that entrepreneurs can see who is actually doing deals today.

Our A-Team Series Starts in October

October 2008 was a unique month for anybody in the business world. The word that kept dropping from the lips of even the most experienced been-there, done-that kind of person was "unprecedented." These are not normal times. And October was certainly not a normal month.

So, the October list was pretty short. We have heard plenty of stories from entrepreneurs about deals that were agreed on and in the final legal phase but that got pulled in September and October. We did not track September because the worst and final phase of the crash kicked in mid-September, and deals were still being done in the early days of September. So, October was the first full month of the new reality.

We count from the date when the deal was announced. But we recognize that the contract may have been signed some weeks before then.

Enough Preamble. What Deals Were Done?

Oops! Using our strict criteria, only one deal was done in October. We saw some that came close. We saw a seed round of $225,000 for a game company called Kirkland North from a venture fund called Harrison Meta Capital. We saw a Series B for $4.5 million coming from RRE Ventures to our good friends at Adaptive Blue. We saw an Israeli company called CogniSafe getting an undisclosed seed round from 21 VCs.

The one deal that squeaked into October was Zimbio with a $6.8 million Series A from DFJ and Menlo Ventures. The deal was announced on September 30th. So it is entirely possible (indeed probable) that this contract was signed before our official Meltdown Day. But the deal got done, and that is what matters.

Zimbio has very few facts on its "About Us" page. TradeVibes at least has a CEO listed; so we tracked down Anthony Mamone, and the data was sparse, not even a LinkedIn profile. All we found was a sketchy profile on Link Silicon Valley.

A Special Cheer for Syncplicity and True Ventures

The deal that kicked off the A-Team series and gave us the idea for it was the one with Syncplicity with its $2.35 million Series A funding from True Ventures. So we went to meet Leonard Chung, CEO, at True Venture's offices in San Francisco. True Venture's open-plan offices on Pier 38 do not look like classic VC, and that is probably the point. Phil Black of True Ventures made the point that ever-increasing fund sizes were taking VC away from its entrepreneurial start-up roots.

Then we noticed that our friends at GigaOm have their offices right next door. No coincidence as it happens, True Ventures was the lead investor in their Series A funding. So, True Ventures is a founding member of our A-Team. Take your best venture to them!

We have not had time to fully review Syncplicity yet. We promise to do so soon. So, in the meantime, we will fall back on the journalistic standby, quoting from its site:

"Everyday sync, backup, and sharing as simple as can be. The only all-in-one service that makes sure your files are everywhere you need them."

That is a crowded space. But so was search when Google entered the market. Getting an A round done in today's market makes one think they must have done something right, so we will check them out and urge you to do the same.

Good News from a November Sneak Peek

Here is the good news. Taking a sneak peek at November, around the middle of the month, we already see quite a few Series A deals that meet all of our criteria. We will tell all in our A-Team report in early December.

Who did we miss in October? (No spam please; look at the qualifying rules above.)

Discuss

How Much Traffic Can a Link on Google.com Drive? The Case of the G1

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:59:14 -0800

Can you imagine getting a link to your website highlighted just below the search box on Google.com? How much traffic do you think that would drive? According to one estimate published today by traffic analysts Compete.com, the link on Google for the G1 Android phone by T-Mobile delivered an estimated 800,000 unique visitors who clicked that link in the 7 days it was on the site.

Compete estimates that there were about 99 million people who visited Google.com during that period, so that's a little less than 1% click through. To be honest, we're a little surprised the number isn't higher than that. That's just the beginning of the surprises, though.

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In fact, according to Compete, that Google.com link only delivered 40% of the traffic that the G1 landing page saw during that period. We've asked Compete what other sources were big but again, we're pretty surprised by these numbers.

We're a little surprised that less than 1% of visitors were curious enough to click on the first new link on Google.com in a long time and we're quite surprised that other parts of the marketing campaign were able to deliver even more traffic!

How did all this traffic convert into sales? Some people have said that there's an estimated 1.5 million G1 phones in circulation, but others, like Information Week, say those numbers aren't believable.

Compete's traffic numbers are probably a little soft as well, but they sure are fun to think about. For the full write up, see the Compete blog.

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EtherPad: Dead Simple Real Time Collaboration

Frederic Lardinois — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:16:35 -0800

EtherPad is not likely to win a price for its user interface design, but it might just be one of the most useful web apps we have seen in quite a while. EtherPad allows you to instantly create a workspace for text documents that you can then share with your colleagues, clients, or friends. Every edit to the document will immediately appear on your co-workers' screens in real-time.

EtherPad acknowledges that Google Docs already allows for a similar kind of collaboration, but compared to EtherPad, Google Docs is clunky and slow when you just want to collaborate on a simple text document.

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EtherPad would be a great tool if you want to keep collaborative notes during a conference call or meeting, but you could also use it to draft or edit text for a press release or email collaboratively.

No-Sign Up

EtherPad, for example, doesn't require you to sign-up before you can start working on your document. You can also just share your workspace's URL with your co-workers and they, too, don't have to sign up. Indeed, you can't even sign up for the service, which may become a bit of a problem if you want to go back to a document you worked on earlier, but don't remember the randomly assigned URL.

Google Docs requires you to send email invitation to all your collaborators and updates to documents don't appear in real-time.

Features

EtherPad also has a versioning system that allows you, or anybody else with access to your workspace, to save the document at any time.

Developers who want to share code might also find this a useful tool, as it can highlight JavaScript syntax. Looking at EtherPad's heritage, it becomes clear why the developers added this feature. The service was developed by AppJet, an online web programming platform, and is basically a showcase for the next version of AppJet's tools, but was mainly created because the developers at AppJet were looking for a tool that had EtherPad's functionality but weren't able to find one.

Verdict

As is often the case, the most useful tools are those that have a relatively restricted feature set, but allow users the freedom to use them as they see fit. EtherPad is one of these services and it will probably become a standard tools for us very soon.

You can find a screencast of the product here, but given that you don't have to sign up for it, you could just as well try it out for yourself (or join this workspace we already created).

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National Geographic Society To Do Video Games

Sarah Perez — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:57:39 -0800

The successful science and educational organization The National Geographic Society, best known for their long-running magazine, has just made an interesting announcement. Their next venture in their for-profit operations is video games. This month, National Geographic Games, a newly formed division within the company, will launch three gaming products to be soon followed by another in December and three (so far) are planned for next year. The games will be developed for major gaming consoles, handhelds, and mobile platforms, including, yes, the iPhone.

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There are few people out there who don't have fond memories of flipping through the pages of a National Geographic magazine, admiring the award-winning photography that graced its pages as our eyes widened to the wonders of the world around us. Since its launch in the "ancient" times of 1888, the world has gotten a lot smaller, figuratively speaking. Television, air travel, and, of course, the internet, have allowed us to explore much more of the world than ever before. To some extent, the information age has impacted, if not the magazine's sales themselves, the sense of wonder that was once to be had when perusing the magazine's articles and images.

To keep up with the changing times, the new National Geographic Games division (NGG), will attempt to connect with people once again on the platforms of our modern age, including the Wii, Playstation 3, Nintendo DS, PC and Mac, the PS3 Network, and the iPhone. There will also be free Flash games online at nationalgeographic.com/channel. As always, the company's goal is to encourage people to explore their world, this time though, it's through play.

Lest you think these games will be wimpy attempts at educational experiences, it's worth nothing that Chris Mate, a former executive at Take2 Interactive, the company behind "Grand Theft Auto," will serve as VP and GM of the games venture. Hopefully, his history, which also includes Bethesda Softworks, will bring some spunk to the usually dry "learning is fun!" gaming experience.

The first game to launch will be "Herod's Lost Tomb," an online game which blends in content from both the December 2008 issue of National Geographic magazine as well as the National Geographic Channel feature broadcast on the biblical figure King Herod, architect of the ancient world.

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Six Apart Gives Journalists Free Blogs

Sarah Perez — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:54:44 -0800

San Francisco-based blogging startup Six Apart has announced they will be giving away free accounts on their TypePad blogging system for professional bloggers and journalists who recently lost their jobs as well as those who fear the axe is coming. Cleverly dubbed the "Journalist Bailout Program," the service includes one free blog, a place in the Six Apart Media advertising program, promotion on Blogs.com, a as well as other tools and advice on driving traffic to your site, all courtesy of Six Apart.

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The TypePad Journalist Bailout Program

The program launched over the weekend through via this lighthearted post over on TypePad.com which reminds you that "Tumblr...will not pay your bills." According to the company, they've already seen hundreds of journalists signing up to participate.

As detailed in the TypePad blog post, the bailout program includes the following, a dollar value of at least $150 per year (the price of the TypePad service alone), if not more :

A free TypePad Pro blog account, the same service that powers many big-name media blogs. It includes professional support so Six Apart will answer any questions you have.

The blog is enrolled in the Six Apart Media advertising program. These are display ads that pay a more than Google text ads, and bloggers get to keep the revenue.

Six Apart will promote the new site on Blogs.com, a directory of the best in blogs. Blogs.com will be a way for all of the bloggers peers in the Journalist Bailout Program to cross-promote and share traffic for their independent sites.

Lots more. Six Apart can also introduce you to their VIP program to help drive traffic to the site, help connect blogs to LinkedIn profiles, make it easy to manage your comments from an iPhone, and even show you how to automatically promote posts to your Facebook friends

There are no rules on how the blog must be used. Journalists can use the blog showcase their best work, launch something new, or hang onto the site, you know, "just in case."

The Times, They Are A-Changin'

We're in the midst of a great upheaval. The internet is impacting the business models of so many established ventures. Newspapers and magazines aren't the only industries affected by any means. The internet has left nothing untouched, whether music, video, news, sports, communication, marketing, advertsing and more, those wishing to stave off its force of change are simply trying to outswim a tidal wave.

What's better for those being impacted is to be prepared and thinking ahead for the future - what is Plan B? As we mentioned earlier this week, not everyone sees the death of the journalism ahead - media mogul Rupert Murdoch, for example, sees opportunity.

And if you think successful journalism can only come on the platform of old media, you're wrong. Look around. So many journalists are now getting into blogging, but one of our newest favs that proves the potential success of the model is TechFlash, home to John Cook and Todd Bishop, both of whom left their respected papers and struck out on their own to deliver quality tech news in readable format without all the bias, backstabbing, and petty quarrels the tech "blogosphere" seems to get itself involved in from time to time.

Journalists may also want to keep in mind Arianna Huffington's recent, but vague, promise to begin funding investigative journalism through her incredibly successful The Huffington Post site, one of the most recognizable and read blogs out there.

So journalists, get your platforms ready...there's no better time than now and no better price than free.

Note: Six Apart's Movable Type weblogging platform is what powers our blog here at ReadWriteWeb.

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