Ajax Girl

MySpace is gearing up to launch MySpace Platform, according to a number of third party developers who’ve been contacted for input on the product. While this has been rumored since June, this is the first indication that the service is preparing to actually launch. And we also have information that suggests that it will be announced next week at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.

The new developer platform, like Facebook Platform which was announced in May, will essentially be a set of APIs and a new markup language that will allow third party developers to create applications that run within MySpace. Developers will be able to include Flash applets, iFrame elements and Javascript snippets in their applications, and access most of the core MySpace resources (profile information, friend list, activity history, etc.). Applications will need to be hosted on MySpace servers.

And in a big change in strategy for MySpace, developers will be able to serve their own advertising within their applications, and keep 100% of the revenue (Facebook also allows this).

Suddenly Facebook, with nearly 5,500 third party applications, has significant competition around their platform - Within a month both MySpace and Google (see our post here) will probably have launched their own services. Platform competition is great for developers, but it also means they need to create and maintain separate code for each platform they choose to play on. Someone is hopefully working on a startup that will streamline that process for people. Whoever does it first, and best, can have a winner on their hands.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/167762260/

eBay just launched more than 600 micro-social networks on its site called eBay Neighborhoods. Each one is organized around a different product, like coffee, iPhones, Eames furniture, Seinfeld memorabilia, or Ford Mustangs. Content from across eBay—including eBay blogs, guides, reviews, and product search—is pulled into each eBay neighborhood and packaged into widget-like modules. Members can join whatever neighborhoods they like, and add to discussion boards there, post photos, invite friends, and meet other people who share the same consumer obsessions.

Visually, the neighborhood pages are an improvement from the bare-bones utility I normally associate with eBay. The product search, for instance, is a rectangular grid of thumbnail images that enlarge when scrolled over, and reveal product and price information without requiring a click-through to another page.

Each neighborhood acts as a socially-mediated shopping guide that drills down into a very specific product category. eBay members can join as many neighborhoods as they like or even suggest new ones. It’s a smart way to surface content created by eBay shoppers (because I’m not sure how many people are reading those eBay blogs).

After its recent Skype blowup, it’s good to see eBay focusing on what it knows best: shopping.

Still, what these neighborhoods are lacking is access to the outside world. What would really be smart would be if eBay allowed anyone to easily take any module on a neighborhood page—the reviews, the visual product search, the discussions, or the eBay blog posts—and embed them on other Web pages like Facebook, MySpace, or their blogs. People who are really into modern furniture might put that particular product-search module on their blog, for instance, just because it surfaces cool-looking Eames chairs and retro clocks available on eBay Making such widgets available would help draw more traffic into these shopping neighborhoods. And if eBay tied them into its affiliate-fee program that pays for each referral that results in a sale, you’d have these widgets all over the place.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/167713507/

There’s a lot of talk about remunerating video creators these days. Revver’s been doing it a while along with Metacafe too. But Blinkx is now monetizing video for publishers too, but unlike YouTube’s recent offering, ,revenue is only split between Blinkx and the publishers.

They’re launching an ad network that lets publishers serve contextual ads on top of the videos they embed on their sites. All a publisher needs to do is sign up and wrap their video’s player in Blinkx’ ad code (there’s a full explanation in a video I embedded below). Publishers are paid half of any ad revenue generated from ads served on their site via PayPal. I have a feeling that this product will be popular amongst video submitters for sites like Digg.

Behind the scenes, the technology matching ads to the videos comes from Blinkx existing “AdHoc” ad server, which powers the contextual ads served on their own and partner sites (Ask, Real, Lycos, Infospace, Looksmart). AdHoc looks at meta data and parses any speech in the video to match the clip with an appropriate ad. Suranga Chandratillake, co-founder and CTO of Blinkx, says their network has improved ad yields anywhere from 10-150% depending on the content of the video. Short entertainment clips don’t tend to see as much improvement, but longer informational clips see higher gains by picking out advertisements related to the concepts being discussed.

Blinkx has done their best to not obstruct the operation and ads of the original player. Ads show up as drop down text links at the top of video or as a static box displayed above the player. It’s very similar to AdBrite’s BritePic product.

Before there are screams of indignation over putting ads on someone else’s videos, this doesn’t seem all to different to how video publishers currently make money. They place Google Adsense alongside embeded videos. Other startups have gotten in trouble by materially altering the function of a site’s video player (i.e. Searchles pulling videos out of Grouper’s player). Blinkx doesn’t alter the underlying player, but layers on top of it. Yet it seems a curious reality that in online video, apart from all other media, it has become perfectly acceptable to embed and monetize someone else’s content. On the other hand, creators can choose to not allow embeds of their videos.

The bigger problem is whether Blinkx’ network can compete against YouTube’s pre-bundled advertising. While Blinkx offers the ability to serve advertising over many of the social video sites, YouTube still dominates the content in that arena. It won’t be long before their video AdSense expands beyond a select few opt-in clients. Blinkx is going to have to offer publishers a bigger payoff without angering social video sites in order to survive.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/167807632/

IBM and Linden Lab (the company behind Second Life) will announce a new partnership at the Virtual Worlds Conference in San Jose today that will focus on virtual world interoperability.

The initial focus of the joint effort will be the ability to allow users to use a single virtual persona (or Avatar) across multiple virtual platforms, with seamless interworld transactions to be considered later.

Discussions and efforts surrounding standards and interoperability are in vogue this year, as the marketplace for virtual worlds has matured. Chinese Second Life clone HiPiHi announced its intention to lead a push towards standards based virtual worlds in August, and TechCrunch 40 presenting company Metaplace offers interoperability between user generated worlds on its DIY virtual world platform.

IBM has been highly active in the virtual worlds space, both as a user of platforms such as Second Life as a conference and business communications tool, and as a creator with its Active Worlds chat platform. IBM’s Italian employee’s went on strike within Second Life in late September.

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/~3/167819270/

AdBidCentral has today launched its futures marketplace for “premium guaranteed display advertising” after a private beta test which commenced earlier this year.

AdBidCentral powers sales of futures-oriented premium display advertising on top comScore-rated publisher sites with a patent-pending futures marketplace platform that aims to make forecast buying and selling of premium display digital media “easy, efficient and intuitive.”

AdBidCentral’s marketplace offers a transparent futures marketplace where everything from booking, transacting, publication and reporting takes place from the one central location.

The service can be used as a complement to enterprise direct sales whilst providing the ability to pre-buy future campaign inventory based on placement and guaranteed impressions.

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/~3/167630132/

I’ve personally lamented the end of Business 2.0, a magazine I faithfully subscribed to until the very end. But today they spammed their user base with an offer to subscribe to other magazines. With all due respect to my co-editor Erick Schonfeld who just left that publication, this was a pathetic end to an otherwise glorious publication. At least, I hope it’s the end, and that they don’t spam us again.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/167607548/

One of the knocks against Facebook is that it is a somewhat closed, proprietary platform. Here’s how the argument goes: The ultimate technology platform, in contrast, is the Web itself. It is open and ultimately will triumph over all other platforms, including Facebook. Any innovations that take hold in closed environments are quickly replicated on the open Web. At some point network effects take over, and the utility of those innovations on the Web supercede those on the original platform.

Anil Dash furthers this argument in a post today:

Think of the web, of the Internet itself, as water. Proprietary platforms based on the web are ice cubes. They can, for a time, suspend themselves above the web at large. But over time, they only ever melt into the water. And maybe they make it better when they do.

So how long does Facebook have before it melts into the Web?

A: That won’t start to happen until you can take your friends (i.e., your social graph) with you.

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/~3/167587967/

One great way to use Highrise: Track all those little customer service interactions you have with different companies.

For example, Ryan’s been dealing with a broken camera case and is keeping track of the problem as a case in Highrise…

Click for full-size version.

Here’s another example, this time using Highrise to keep track of the convoluted process of obtaining a refund from an airline…

Click for full-size version.

Instead of a bunch of post-it notes and scattered emails, Highrise gives you a paper trail you can come back to whenever you need it. And tasks help you keep track of dates that might otherwise be forgotten (e.g. “Was I supposed to receive that rebate within 4 weeks or 4 months?”).

Whether it’s a business or personal affair, Highrise makes it easy to keep track of whom you’ve talked to, what you talked about, and what you need to do next.

Related:
Why Highrise? [HighriseHQ.com]
Highrise has your back in customer service interactions [Product Blog]

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/641-using-highrise-to-conquer-customer-service-problems

BREAKING NEWS: Jaiku, the Twitter (and Pownce)-like service from Finland, has been bought by Google.

Jaiku Founders Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen today posted this on their homepage:

“While it’s too soon to comment on specific plans, we look forward to working with our new friends at Google over the coming months to expand in ways we hope you’ll find interesting and useful. Our engineers are excited to be working together and enthusiastic developers lead to great innovation. We look forward to accomplishing great things together. In order to focus on innovation instead of scaling, we have decided to close new user sign-ups for now. But fear not, all our Jaiku services will stay running the way you are used to and you will be able to invite your friends to Jaiku.”

The terms of the acquisition have not been released.

This is a fascinating move by Google which would have looked at Twitter prior to this acquisition, and Twitter’s recent $5 million series A funding last July.

There will be inevitable comparison’s with Google’s acquisition of Dodgeball, which largely came to nothing, but it would appear that the time for social networking and blogging via mobile has come. Google’s ability to add scale and marketing muscle to Jaiku should be putting Twitter on the back-foot right now.

More coverage on TechCrunch UK.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/167510195/

Goofy names, retread startup ideas, inexperienced entrepreneurs, free food—the WSJ does a nice job this morning laying out the gestalt evidence that we are in the midst of a second Silicon Valley bubble. Capping off the list of exhibits is none other than last month’s TechCrunch40 conference, which drew about 1,000 people (not counting the random booth babes).

There is no question that we are seeing a lot of froth out there, which Mike’s been warning about for quite some time. You should see some of the unsolicited Website launches that get submitted to us every day here. Yesterday alone we received 17 submissions, including one for Hide Pink Shirt Guy. I’m not even sure what that is, but it is not a business.

But are we seeing a financial bubble here,or is there something else going on? There is certainly not as much money being thrown around (yet) as the last time around. While talk of a $10 billion or $15 billion valuation for Facebook feeds into the bubble theory, Facebook seems more like a lone exception. There are convincing arguments that it truly does represent a major new platform and thus deserves a platform-like valuation (there are also convincing arguments against that theory). Nevertheless, the clearest sign of a financial bubble in Silicon Valley would be if valuations across the board began to become divorced from reality. While valuations are certainly up, they are not yet in wacko territory.

Maybe Paul Graham has it right. It’s so cheap to create Web startups these days that we are going to be seeing a whole lot more of them. Many will be inane, redundant, or half-baked. But a few will rise up from the froth and create something lasting. Bubble or not, it’s worth keeping an eye out for those game-changers. We just might have to wade through a lot of junk to find them.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/167484899/