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LA based white label social networking networking startup Pringo has announced the launch of a new social networking site that is focused on saving the planet and tires.

The site, “Eco Treadsetters” comes from the Yokahama Tire Corporation and is focused on reinforcing Yokohama’s online branding, increasing its user base and enhancing the company’s position as “a socially-aware tire manufacturer that is focused on protecting the Earth.”

Users can create profiles, communicate with each other, form sub-communities, have a profile page etc…the pretty much standard social network feature set. Users are also able to “submit their environmental projects, created to help preserve their respective communities, to potentially win prizes, including an eco-trip to Costa Rica and gift certificates from Patagonia and iTunes.”

Pringo has been off our radar for a while as more well known white label services such as Ning get most of the attention. The company has built up a respectable corporate business providing social networking solutions to sites such as 11on11.com, CBS Radio and ePharma.

It’s no slight to Pringo when I say that I just don’t see the appeal of a social network from a tire manufacturer; after all there is nothing wrong with how the site functions and no doubt they were paid well to host it. The long tail may be long, but I think in this case Yokahama wont gain decent road traction.

See our chart of white label social networking providers here.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/178053905/

Google is taking a multi-pronged approach when it comes to winning over the hearts and minds of Facebook developers. We already know that it will attempt a direct appeal to get developers to come over to Google’s side and create social applications via its OpenSocial APIs. But Google is also trying to convince Facebook developers to use Google’s new pay-per-action ads (still in beta) to get more people to install their apps on Facebook. Google’s AdSense team is specifically targeting Facebook developers with an invitation to its pay-per-action beta program (reprinted beow).

A pay-per-action (PPA) ad only costs the advertiser something if a specific action is taken by a consumer—in this case, installing a Facebook app or going to a developer’s application page on Facebook, where the developer can make money showing his or her own ads. For the most part, it seems these PPA ads will appear on Google itself or on sites elsewhere on the Web that are part of the AdSense network. Thus they will (ironically) drive more traffic to Facebook.

But there’s another, albeit speculative, scenario. According to VentureBeat, Google may try to sneak AdSense ads into Facebook itself. This is a stretch, but bear with us. Google would have to do so through a back door, by appealing to developers themselves, who control the ads on their own pages within Facebook. If Google can show generic AdSense ads on Facebook, it could show these PPA ads as well. In the letter to Facebook developers, Google curiosly says the PPA ads will appear on “individual publishers in the Google content network, including other Facebook applications.” It seems that Facebook would crack down on any such sneak attack, given its ad partnership with Microsoft. But it would be interesting to see which ads do better on Facebook: Google’s PPA ads or Facebook’s upcoming SocialAds. Let the most relevant ads win.

Here is the full text of the letter from Google to Facebook developers:

Dear Facebook Application Developer,

Would you like to drive more users to your app? We’ve expanded our pay-per-action (PPA) beta test and would like to invite you to participate by creating ads for your Facebook application.

To start setting up your first pay-per-action campaign, click on the link within the pay-per-action alert in your AdWords account and follow the simple steps at http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=68150 to get your PPA ads up & running across the Google content network and on other Facebook applications.

Key Benefits of PPA

* Save money by paying only for actions that you define, such as users adding your app. Rather than paying for clicks or impressions, you only pay when a visitor performs a specified action, such as installing your Facebook application or visiting your main application page.
* Save time by setting up AdWords conversion tracking: you can set your desired cost per action and pay for completed actions to hit your cost-per-action targets.
* Increase conversion rates by using publishers’ knowledge about visitors to their websites to your advantage. Individual publishers in the Google content network, including other Facebook applications, choose to display PPA ads that they feel will appeal to their visitors. This works to your advantage, as publishers are motivated to choose ads they believe will have a high conversion rate.

With PPA, you decide how much you want to pay for each type of action, whether it’s $1 for a user installing your application or $.15 for visiting your application page. You can also control your spending by setting a daily budget. In addition, you can view clicks, impressions, conversion rate, cost per conversion, total conversions, and total cost for each pay-per-action campaign by running a Placement Performance Report or a pay-per-action report in the Report Center of your AdWords account.

For more information about pay-per-action ads and a list of our most frequently asked questions, please visit the pay-per-action section in the Google AdWords help center: http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=11635

We are excited to offer you a new way to attract new users to your Facebook application and meet your advertising goals.a If you have any questions, please email adsense-developer-research@google.com.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/178013189/

Last night we outlined the details emerging about Google’s social networking initiative, OpenSocial. Below are some screenshots of OpenSocial in action that we didn’t have time to include in that post.

Most of these shots show the integration of iLike and Flixster applications with social networks on Ning. A few show the integration of applications with orkut and hi5. We’ve also included an overview document below.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/177966896/

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/177976474/

Google broke through $700 a share in trading today, closing at a record high of $707, just over 3 weeks since breaking through the $600 mark.

Google did have the benefit of a surging NASDAQ; the exchange favored by tech stocks closing up 42.41 pts or 1.51% after the Fed cut US interest rates by 25 basis points to 4.5%. A range of analysts including Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and others have raised their target price for GOOG stock to $800 and above.

It’s not all plain sailing ahead for Google. The US Federal Reserve wouldn’t be cutting interest rates if it thought the US economy was healthy and the Federal Open Market Committee said that although financial market turmoil linked to a US housing downturn had eased in part, “the pace of economic expansion will likely slow in the near term, partly reflecting the intensification of the housing correction,” which if applied to Google would see its revenue growth slow.

International markets also present a problem for Google, with a decline that wasn’t widely reported when Google announced its 3rd Quarter earnings result October 18. According to Google’s statement, if it hadn’t been for currency movements international revenue would have dropped $121 million in the 3rd quarter (presuming that USD has remained at the same level). It might have been a blip but it’s certainly something to watch given most of Google’s growth opportunities should be coming from outside its home country, given the relative maturity of the US internet market.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/177972452/

WooMe - a website for “speed introductions” that presented at TechCrunch40 but is still in private beta - is giving out one thousand invitations to our readers (redeem yours here).

You would be excused for mistaking WooMe for a speed dating website like SpeedDate.com (covered here). WooMe users are put into one minute-long webcam sessions with one another to decide quickly whether or not they are compatible. After five subsequent sessions, you indicate which of the people “woo’d” you or not. If they were woo’d by you too, then you can choose to contact them for $1. This obviously lends itself to speed dating, and indeed 75% of the 30,000 total sessions conducted in private beta have been for dating purposes.

However, the company is insisting that the service has many non-romantic uses. You can leverage WooMe to find a travel partner or someone to babysit your kids (hopefully you’ll make that decision after more than a 1-minute long face-to-face). You can also just use it to find people with similar interests to you. Last night, WooMe hosted an event for UC Berkeley that got students together to meet over topics such as “I still love Cal football”.

CEO Stephen Stokols says that almost 7,500 people have mutually woo’d each other on the service so far. On Friday, WooMe will add the ability to tag the people you meet over webcam. These tags will stay in people’s profiles so new introductions come loaded with some basic information about a person.

WooMe

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SpeedDate

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/177948011/

As far as I know, YouTube never changed their logos for holidays like famously Google does. But today they did, quietly adding a pumpkin to the logo in lieu of the television screen we normally see. Too bad it wasn’t something a little scarier. An evil looking clown, for example, would have been perfect.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/177931382/

Advertising has gotten a lot more complicated since the early days of the internet. There are hundreds of ad networks out there. With targeting being the name of the game, efficiently allocating your ad space to visitors is nearly impossible. In response, automated ad optimization engines have started up to help manage these advertising complexities. Using one seems like a no-brainer for publishers concerned about making the most of their advertising. Advertising rates change too quickly over time and the complexity of serving the right ads to your different demographics is simply too hard to handle by hand, particularly on websites with large footprints.

There are several engines out there already, including YieldBuild and The Rubicon Project. Now TechCrunch 40 finalist Pubmatic is hosting a contest to draw more publishers to their platform. Every month, the two publishers who see the greatest gains using Pubmatic will receive thousands in free advertising on top “web 2.0 web sites” (i.e. blogs). The amount is still unknown because they are still finalizing the sites they are advertising on. You can sign up for the program here.

PubMatic’s ad optimization engine is similar to YieldBuild and the Rubicon project. Unlike these earlier two, Pubmatic is actually live with 1,300 sites and open to anyone else. The engine serves as a meta ad server that serves the highest revenue ad network for each visitor given the time, geographic, demographic, and layout aspects of your site. It currently supports ad networks like Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network and Value Click. They also provide them with a central dashboard to track all their ad networks and ad configurations. Below you’ll find more information from their TechCrunch 40 video.

Pubmatic has already picked the November winners WinCustomize and BikerOrNot, which they claim have seen over 100% increases in their ad revenue since using PubMatic. YeildBuild and The Rubicon Project have boasted similar increases for their publishers. To a degree, it all just depends on how poorly monetized your site was to start. However, Pubmatic is looking for sensible successes from fairly well trafficked sites and will double check your previous monetization metrics to ensure the increase in revenue is real.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/177931384/

If you’re like Marie Eve Bergeron-Tourangeau from Canada, you’ve decided to become a Facebook profile page for Halloween. Which is better, I guess, than trying to dress up like a Google OpenSocial, since the only image really associated with that so far is this horny elmer’s glue thing.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/177875700/

One of the most disruptive startups in the financial industry is Prosper, a peer-to-peer lending marketplace. Since its launch in February, 2006, Prosper has attracted more than 450,000 members who have loaned $96.4 million to each other. There is so much liquidity on Prosper now that the startup wants to create a secondary market for loans on the site.

Right now, if you loan money to someone on Prosper, you have to wait for the term of the loan to expire to get all of your money and interest back (unless the debt is paid back early). A secondary market would allow individual lenders on Prosper to sell loans to each other right away, and perhaps even package them together. Such a secondary market could make Prosper a more appealing place for larger financial institutions to invest in.

Hints of what Prosper is up to can be found in an S-1 registration the company filed yesterday with the SEC (see press release). The part of the S-1 (which is not yet effective) that caught my eye was this:

The Lender Participant Rights are associated with the $500,000,000 in aggregate principal amount of Notes to which this prospectus relates. This amount represents the aggregate principal amount of Notes that Prosper expects will be originated on the Platform during the one-year period beginning on the date of this prospectus together with the principal amount of Notes that have been originated on the Platform prior to the date of this prospectus.

In plain English, that means that Prosper expects that the cumulative amount of loans on the site a year from now will be worth up to $500 million. That would still be peanuts for most banks, but would represent a fivefold increase from the amount of loans originated on the site so far.

Prosper has raised $40 million from Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, the Omidyar Network, and Fidelity Ventures.

Prosper

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Zopa

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/177858942/