Ajax Girl

AOL quietly canceled the Life Sciences blogs of Weblogs Inc last week, bringing the total number of blogs canceled to 60% higher than the number of blogs still operating.

Blogs canceled included the Weblogs Inc titles The Cancer Blog, The Diabetes Blog and The Cardio Blog.

No official statement was made by AOL/ Weblogs Inc regarding the decision, and unlike previous cancellations the blogs have not be added to the Retired Blogs list.

The total number of retired blogs at Weblogs Inc now totals 55 (including the 3 not on the official list) with 33 blogs still remaining, although 7 in the 33 are translated versions of Engadget and Autoblog. The count does not include the Blogging Stocks sites that operate under the AOL banner but use the created-for-Weblogs Inc CMS Blogsmith.

(thanks to Hsien for the tip)

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/160437794/

Online storage startup Mozy, headquartered in Utah, has been acquired by EMC Corporation, a public storage company with a nearly $40 billion market cap. EMC paid $76 million for the company, according to two sources close to the deal.

We first covered Mozy in January 2006 as part of an overview of the current generation of online storage solutions. The company has a dead simple way for users to back up their computer hard drives online. Download their software (Mozy supports both Windows and Mac machines) and the backups occur slowly over time. If there is ever a problem, you can restore your hard drive from Mozy’s servers.

Mozy’s chief competitor is Carbonite, another company we’ve tracked over the last couple of years. Carbonite has raised $21 million in venture financing.

Mozy, by contrast, raised just $1.9 million in capital. The round, closed in May 2005, was led by Wasatch Ventures, with participation from Tim Draper and Novell co-founder Drew Major.

That’s quite an exit for Mozy - $76 million on just $1.9 million raised. It’s almost identical to StumbleUpon, which was acquired by eBay earlier this year for $75 million after raising just $1.5 million in venture capital.

Rumors circulated a year ago that Mozy was close to being acquired by Google for significantly less than this. The company eventually passed on the deal, which must have been a tough call. They clearly made the right choice in waiting.

Look for an official announcement of the Mozy acquisition in the next few weeks. Congratulations to Josh Coates, Mozy’s CEO (who refuses to comment on the deal), and the rest of the Mozy team.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/160345209/

Acebucks, the maker of a virtual currency for Facebook has raised a $1.5 million round of investment. AceBucks was originally purchased by Michael Lazerow to form Buddy Media, whose investors include Howard Lindzon, Peter Thiel, Mark Pincus and James Altucher.

Acebucks is a virtual economy that pays users Acebucks for installing applications and referring their friends (kind of like a virtual pyramid scheme). Users can then spend the currency on either virtual goods in the Acebucks mall or put them toward real items like an iPod Nano.

Acebucks is using the financing to grow the company. They want to become the de-facto virtual currency of Facebook, and will soon launch an API that lets users integrate Acebucks into their own applications. They are also expected to announce a business partnership in the coming days.

I found installing the application to be rather spammy. It refused to let me through the sign-up process unless I sent notifications to my friends, automatically checking five of them. You can uncheck the friends and press the submit button, but they don’t make this obvious.

While virtual currencies haven’t had much luck on the web at large, Facebook may provide the right environment to ensure the security of their money supply and merchandise that precursors lacked.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/160421906/

“Social Media”, the name given to all the thoughts and media the public exchanges online, has boomed over the past couple of years, largely unbeknownst to corporations these conversations sometimes concern. Case in point was media pundit and blogger Jeff Jarvis’ lengthy ordeal with Dell’s customer service, to the detriment of Dell’s reputation. Many more lesser known, yet influential, conversations about consumer experiences take place on the web every day. I’ve even had some of my own.

Visible Technologies is a company that helps corporations manage their online reputations by becoming more aware of and responsive to these conversations. Visible Technologies was started in 2003 and took a Series A investment of undisclosed size from U.K.-based advertising giant WPP in July 2006. WPP announced it acquired 25% of the issued share capital of Visible Technologies LLC for $3.5 million with the option to buy 26% in August of that year. Today they’re announcing a $12 million series B led by Ignition Partners with WPP also participating.

Visible Technologies makes two systems for tracking conversation on the web, TruCast and TruView. TruView tracks your corporate reputation by looking at search engine results related to your company and analyzing whether the references are positive or negative.

Their TruCast system is targeted at helping companies “track, analyze and participate” in the conversations taking place across the web. The TruCast system crawls the web for conversations on blogs and forums related to a company. The system then analyzes each topic by subject and sentiment, and allows users to track this information over time using dynamic charts and statistical reports to identify influencers, hot spots, and trends. Conversations found by the system can also be passed on to a PR representative for a response, which hopefully won’t turn into PR trolling.

BuzzLogic is another company helping corporations manage online reputations, but focuses on finding the top influencers around a topic, not every conversation about your company.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/160414349/

Ning will cross a sizeable milestone this weekend: 100,000 user created social networks on the platform (including this one). That’s up from just 30,000 in February when they launched a new version of the service. THe company is also saying that page views have been growing 40% month over month over the summer.

Ning recently raised a $44 million round of financing after two undisclosed rounds directly from co-founder Marc Andreessen. The company certainly finds itself in the right place at the right time. Everyone wants a social network of their own, and Ning is here to give them one.

The company sure has come a long way since I pronounced them dead in early 2006. Sometimes I like it when I’m wrong.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/160151960/

Controversial startup PayPerPost makes another misstep this weekend - they became verbally abusive with an employee candidate who turned them down.

A couple of weeks ago we wrote about how CEO Ted Murphy took all employees on an all-expenses-paid offside to Club Med, where they got drunk, inexplicably dressed up as Native Americans (complete with red face paint) and then posted video of the whole racially offensive episode on the web.

Now this: Today we were sent an ongoing email string between PayPerPost and an engineer, Lawrence Salberg, who was steered towards the company by a headhunter. After an underwhelming interview the candidate did some research and wrote back to the headhunter that he was not interested in the job, and in fact that he was so upset that he wasted his time that he didn’t want to hear about any of the headhunter’s other opportunities, either. “Remove me from your candidacy system immediately,” Salberg said in a long email outlining the reasons he would not work at the company.

That should have been the end of it. But the headhunter forwarded Salberg’s email to PayPerPost VP Software Development Peter Wright, who went on the attack. “I’m shocked at some of the statements in your email to Lori” Wright said in an unsolicited email to Salberg. Other gems aimed at the job candidate:

• As for this company having no future, have you done ANY research at all?
• First you say that the only people that would work at such a company are those with no brains, no self confidence, etc etc. I take offense at that.
• The thing that amuses me most about your post though is how easily you are swayed by loud noises.
• I wish you the very best of luck in your search for a “career.”
• I know there are lots of safe little environments out there with well structured corporate ladders that you can happily spend your days climbing and climbing until eventually you retire.

Wright also spends time boasting about his own accomplishments, saying:

I’m a best selling author. I wrote the world’s best selling VIsual Basic book (and 13 others) and had a very happy career as a consultant specializing in Microsoft technologies that took me all over the world.

And so on (the entire string is embedded below, which includes a number of attacks on TechCrunch as well). Wright defends the abilities of his team and technical management, which have previously been criticized as lax and unprofessional.

It’s never professional to go on the attack when someone declines your job offer. With a company as controversial as PayPerPost, there’s also a good chance the embarrassment will be forwarded to the press. The lesson here - be very careful before you take a job at this company, and if you decline, don’t even think about giving your honest opinion. And if you’re a startup looking for a smart engineer, Lawrence Salberg is still on the market.

A Final Word About PayPerPost

The company complains that we write about them only because it drives controversy and traffic. That is, of course, absolutely correct. I freely admit it. PayPerPost is a lightning rod for blogging ethics discussions and continues to be a company that many are watching and hoping will fail. But I have no personal vendetta against them as individuals. CEO Ted Murphy is a very nice guy in person and I still have hope that the company will simply change their business model over time, as others have done, to something less despicable.

Recently, though, the friendly back and forth between us and PayPerPost has taken a nasty turn. One of their VCs, Josh Stein at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, has been pitching bloggers to write a post saying I’ve gone too far with my criticisms., and that I only point out their failings because PayPerPost is (as Wright says in his email) “very real threat” to TechCrunch. I don’t believe that’s the case (I don’t even get how they are a threat to us), but I’m happy to debate the point with them. We can reconvene for another TalkCrunch podcast at any time. Or simply have a private phone conversation. Let me know.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/160102902/