Ajax Girl

I first met Yedda founders Avichay Nissenbaum and Yaniv Golan during a trip to Israel in February 2006. The company, which hosts a question and answer service that is similar in some ways to Yahoo Answers, launched later that year.

Tonight they’re announcing their acquisition by AOL. Terms are not being disclosed.

Yedda has evolved significantly since last year. They still compete directly with Yahoo and others, but they also partner with others to power independent Q&A services as well. There are more than fifty of partners working with Yedda now - example partners are ePals and TheJobNetwork. Yedda says those partners now drive 90% of their total traffic.

The company, which has raised $2.5 million in venture capital, is still small but growing rapidly. Comscore shows a big jump in usage since the summer, from 215,000 unique users in June to nearly 800,000 last month (see above, this does not count partner traffic).

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/183394256/

Andrew Hyde’s Startup Weekend, born out of the TechStarts event this last summer, has been busy. The company goes from city to city, organizes developers to spend a long weekend deciding on a new business idea and then building it. Everyone who shows up is a founder, and everyone has equal equity in the new thing, whatever it ends up being.

More than a few dustups have occurred in the handful of cities that have now had a Startup Weekend event. That’s something you’d expect when you throw a hundred or more people together for an intense working session, and money (in the form of stock) is potentially involved. See a TechCrunch UK article from last month with a detailed history of the events to date.

Putting the controversy aside, however, these events are clearly wonderful for creating community. Note that I am not saying “for creating useful startups” - it’s highly unlikely any of these will get funded, let alone reach a liquidity event. But participants are clearly charged up after the sessions, and the overall feedback is positive.

The Atlanta event just ended. The new startup, called Skribit, is preparing for a beta launch. What is it? I really have no idea. It’s described as “a social software widget that allows bloggers to take suggestions directly from their readers. Widgets are shareable web applications that anyone can easily grab and post into the blog of their choice.” Sounds like a commenting system to me.

The organizers say you’ll be able to sign up on the home page soon to register for the beta. Yes, they’ve pre-announced that soon they’ll have a web form up on the site to collect emails. Like I said, I don’t expect much from Skribit and the other Startup Weekend startups, but the events have real value nonetheless.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/183343030/

Rich Tehrani over at TMCNet is reporting that Google may be looking at buying mobile phone network operator Sprint.

Although it would be easy to scoff at the rumor (and it’s still very much in the unlikely bracket) as we know Google’s ambitions have no bounds. America’s 5th largest company is already trying to buy mobile spectrum in the United States, and is considering a similar move in the United Kingdom. Google also has its own mobile phone operating system on the way. The acquisition of Sprint may be unlikely, but so would the three moves listed here have been to anyone talking about Google 12 months ago.

I do like Matthew Ingram’s argument though relating to the constant Google takeover rumors:

it’s because Google has effectively become the saviour of everything. What was once a tiny company with a simple service that everyone used and/or liked has become a globe-spanning colossus with a market value bigger than the gross domestic product of a medium-sized country — and so the implication is that Google can do anything.

There’s a whole lot of old-world businesses with declining market caps that could become Google targets, particularly as Google starts to hit growth barriers across its core business lines. Car manufacturers are cheap at the moment (you can run Google ads on a screen in the car) and the Airlines are in a spot of bother as well. OK, maybe too far fetched…at least for another 12 months anyway

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/183323333/

GoodBarry GoodBusiness aims to make “ecommerce easier for small business owners” with a package that includes website creation, lead management, email marketing, online shopping, blogging, and business analytics in the one system.

See our review of GoodBarry GoodBusiness here.

We’ve got free GoodBusiness invites for TechCrunch readers. The first 500 readers get 3 months free usage of GoodBusiness on the Mini-Barry plan, which is usually $39/ month. There are no limitations during the three month period - you can use your own URL, set up payment gateways and so forth, just as for the paid plans.

Sign up here and enter code GBIZTC.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/183440723/

We’ve praised new hosted forum startup Tangler on a number of occasions - most recently calling it the bleeding edge in new discussion board/forum startups.

Apparently someone else likes it too. Someone in Turkey is willing to pay up to $1,500 to anyone who can “clone Tangler.” But don’t go too far - the listing also states “do not steal tangler.com images and do not violate copyrights. The clone should have the same functions, but the design should look different.”

Two bids have been placed already, one for just $1,000. Of course, building a scalable forum platform that allows syncronous and asyncronous messaging via a javascript interface may require more of an investment than $1,000 or so. But hey, why not try.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen something like this. Someone tried to buy a Techmeme clone for just $500 in 2006, and a fresher listing shows a $300 request for the same thing.

To whoever wins the business - my recommendation is to ask for the money up front, because it’s very unlikely you’re going to have a happy customer when you hand over a week or two of work on your Tangler or TechMeme clone.

Tangler

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