Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: TechCrunch (Page 1 of 3)

Minnesota’s W3i Lights Up the ‘Net with Its Latest App News

June 29, 2010 / / 0 Comments

(This post first appeared on Minnov8.com, a site about web & Internet innovation in MInnesota.)

Okay, so there’s this company named Apple that I hear makes phones. And people tell me there’s been, uh, a bit of news lately about some new phone of theirs? 
IPhone4-FrontBackSide Well, that media firestorm didn’t stop Minnesota’s W3i from deciding to jump in with some news of its own, which is actually related to the exploding ecosystem around Apple mobile devices.  That would be apps.

St. Cloud, MN-based W3i is in the app distribution business — in a big, profitable way (33 successive quarters thereof).  But till now that business has been all about desktop apps, and Windows only. Well, mark down yesterday as the day they entered the world of mobile, with this bombshell: W3i Launches New Incented Mobile App Distribution Service for iOS App Developers.  A separate version of the release, for consumers, gets more to the benefit: Consumers Can Now Earn Rewards for Installing Apps.  Those rewards, my friends, would be cash — for consumers who register at a W3i site called Apperang.com. 

Naturally, app fanboys and girls everywhere loved the news — after reading about it on some of the sites they frequent the most.  TechCrunch (MobileCrunch) ran this story: Apperang Pays You Cash to Download iPhone Apps… Ka-Ching!  And VentureBeat (MobileBeat) ran concurrently — amazing how that happens — with their take: Get paid to install apps with W3i Mobile Solutions and Apperang. 
W3i-logo+tag Numerous other sites and blogs picked up on it immediately, and Twitter was going crazy on it (just search on hashtags #apperang and #w3i).  [Oh, sure, there was a story in the Mpls StarTrib last week, too, but that didn't light up much of anything… <rimshot>]

Apperang-screenclip I asked the CEO of a local app development company for his reaction to this W3i news, from a business perspective:  ”The model and integration W3i has developed for desktop distribution has been a huge success in the past, so I wouldn’t bet against them on making their mobile version a success,” said Wade Beavers, CEO of DoApp Inc. “For developers wanting to get a core base of users fast, it makes sense to use this service. The key will be how long those users keep your app, because that’s where the return on investment is.”

I also asked one of Minnesota’s most experienced iPhone app developers for his reaction: “Will app publishers readily jump to use this type of service? Small developers, maybe,” said Bill Heyman of CodeMorphic. “But small developers may not have budget to support this type of promotion… Will it be enough to hit the tipping point for more organic sales because of a higher App Store ranking? Well, ultimately, it would depend on how much a company wants to spend to buy a ranking.”

But, actually, W3i signed on some pretty successful big developers for its private beta before the announcement yesterday (the service is now in public beta).  That list of launch advertisers — just those that let W3i use their names for PR purposes — includes these firms, with the name of their app in parentheses: Big Stack Studios (Sigma), Inert Soap (FingerZilla), Booyah (MyTown), Gist (Gist), Thinking Ape (Kingdoms at War), Flixster (Movies), Slacker Inc (Slacker Radio), xCube Labs (My Health Records – Health n Family), and infinidycorp (Zombies vs. Aliens).

I’m sure we’ll be hearing about a lot more, as W3i tells me they are crazy-busy now following up with other app companies who are inquiring.

(Disclosure: the author has had a consulting relationship with W3i for providing PR services.)

TechCrunch50 vs. DEMO – My Take

September 7, 2008 / / 0 Comments

You may have been seeing some of the talk online about TechCrunch50 taking potshots at DEMO as its organizers try to get publicity for their new event, which they purposely scheduled during the same timeframe as the venerable, long-standing event. Tc50logo
Can you say "in your face"? DEMO is now going into its 19th year and has become widely regarded over that time as the place for promising new startups to launch. The TC50 organizers are trying to claim that they somehow are more pure because they do not charge a fee to the startups they accept to present, while DEMO long has done so — widely seen as the price for the process DEMO puts a presenting company through to benefit from its first-class brand of company launch experience, which includes all the positive things that go along with that in the way of publicity and investor exposure.

Demofall08

I'm about to leave for San Diego to attend DEMOfall 08, which will be about my seventh time covering their events as a press registrant. They are very, very well run events. I also have a press pass to TechCrunch50, although, since the dates of the two conferences directly overlap, I will only be able to attend that last day of TC50 (in San Francisco), on Wednesday. I'd like to take in all of both events, but I can't; no one can, except from a distance or online.

TC50, despite its name, is actually debuting 52 companies. DEMO will have 72 presenters. Another difference between the events is that DEMO always releases its list of presenters the Friday before the event, which typically starts with a Sunday evening reception. TC50 has chosen to be, uh, different, saying it will only release names of its companies at 6:30 am Pacific on Monday, and that's only for companies who will pitch that day. It won't release the names of those presenting on Tuesday and Wednesday until 6:30 am on each of those days. Do some people know already who's presenting?  Sure, I suspect word leaks out a lot from the companies themselves, although both shows prohibit news being formally released before their "embargoes" lift on Monday. (Note that press attendees' inboxes begin filling up days before both events, but they of course expect us to honor the embargoes, and I do.)

So, what do I think about all the hype going back an forth (most from the TC50 side) about this competition for Startup Launch King-of-the-Hill Event?  A lot of distraction, really — which even TC now admits.  This is supposed to be about the startups. I wholeheartedly agree. It seems there are plenty of them out there, so what's the problem with two events like this?  Why does one have to be in the other's face?  (It would just make a lot more sense if the events were scheduled separately.)  I have a take on how they're different in other ways, too. DEMO, over the years, has increasingly tended to attract more established startups — which, of course, have no problem paying their fee. Many have raised Series A and B rounds by the time they get there, and I've seen many beyond that stage. Thus, the fee is a pittance for them, especially for the benefits they gain. (And it costs them more than that to have good PR support for the event.)  DEMO has even taken to having 4 or 5 large firms introduce new products or services at each of their events. My hometown boys from Best Buy being a prime example at the year's DEMOfall… TC50, on the other hand, seems to be seeking raw startups for its event, those that have raised little or no money. Thus, not having to pay a fee is a good thing for them. More power to 'em! But it will be a different type of event than DEMO for that reason: earlier stage startups than most (not all) of DEMO's presenters.

Another way I'm thinking TC50 will likely be different:  I suspect many more of their presenters will be Bay Area based.  DEMO has long prided itself in its companies being from all over the U.S., and increasingly the world. (See my last post for the number of countries this year's DEMOfall class will be from.)  We'll see how TC50's companies stack up in this regard next week

I did not attend TC's first attempt at a conference last year (called TC40), but I heard from a very experienced tech PR person at DEMOfall last year, who had come directly from it to DEMO, that it was "pretty horrible."  I'm hoping for their sake, and for all the hype and expectations they have created, that they do better this year. And, most of all, for the sake of the startups — who may have not invested a fee into the TC50 event, but have surely invested many, many hours of preparation.  And that's money, too.

ReadWriteWeb Gets Into Startup Database Game

July 9, 2008 / / 3 Comments

It’s about time somebody else started doing this — providing a way for tech startups to get themselves listed on a database. RWW just launched ReadWriteWeb Companies (tricky name), and did it the smart way: by using a platform already available (TradeVibes), instead of trying to code their own.

Rwwcompanies

TechCrunch has really been alone at the top as the only decent resource designed for this purpose, with its CrunchBase service — which now lists some 6500 startups, 13,000 people, and more than 2700 funding rounds. It was only logical they would start such a database, seems like at least two years ago now, with their close ties to the VC and startup communities in the Valley. They do a decent job, as I can attest, having listed a startup there a few months ago. They provide very good, responsive service. (Note that it’s not an automated, unattended service — a real human monitors and approves what you try to list there.) One drawback? You’ll get sales calls like mad once your listing goes live, from outfits such as outsourcing companies in India, etc.

Another service, KillerStartups, which of course does not have nearly the reach and buzz of TechCrunch, offers both a free and a paid service ($50, as I recall). Having learned the CrunchBase lesson, we were more than happy to pay their fee, which means you won’t get hammered with offers from service providers who have so many things to try to sell to startups, it boggles the mind! If you’re too strapped to pay the $50, get ready for the barrage.

Another service launched last year is StartupSearch, a sideline project of Niall Kennedy, whom I can attest is one smart, plugged-in dude. He runs the Widget Summit conference, which I blogged extensively about last fall, and the service appears to be an offshoot of that endeavor — which required an extensive database all by itself. The site says it tracks "facts and figures" about Web 2.0 startups, including traffic to their sites (though it doesn’t say how it does that). However, StartupSearch only lists 81 companies to date. That may now grow with the attention it’s getting on ReadWriteWeb’s post today, which links to it. But it seems Niall, who’s a busy guy, may not be devoting much attention to the site anymore — yikes, his last "Weekly Web Wrap up" was September 10, 2007! (Just before things got really busy for him with the Widget Summit.) But, after all, it is a dot-org.

ReadWriteWeb did a smart thing to launch its service — there is definitely room for another decent offering in this space, and I wish Richard luck. He took his time and did it right. And, now, whenever you read a RWW post about a given company, if there’s a database entry for it on RWW Companies, you’ll see a little widget you can click on to take you to their listing. Cool — I’m gonna test it out.

P.S. Oh, the startup I’m talking about above?  You’ll know more on July 11.

UPDATE 7/30/08:  The startup is DoApp Inc., at www.doapps.com.  Or check us out at the iTunes App Store.

 

W

Don’t Believe Everything You Read on TechCrunch

February 19, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Especially the comments. Though donning your skeptic’s hat ain’t a bad idea when reading the posts, either. For example, is a startup written about on TechCrunch any better, or worthy of your time, than one that isn’t? Scoldingdontbelieve
They all start from ground zero; some just have money and influence, or a friend on the staff. I found it interesting when a key TechCrunch writer recently quit, saying he didn’t think he could write about "one more f**king startup." Thank you, because I don’t know how many more I can read about, either. (And the quantity is even worse on Mashable.) But I digress…

This post was mainly inspired by the drivel that runs through a lot of the comments. It’s reader beware, folks, as many of you know. What really irks me are negative comments from people who make up an identity to anonymously take a shot a one of their competitors. There must be a way for a site with open comments to make people verify who they really are (and out them, if necessary), or to at least police such comments better. Sometimes, readers do — but it’s not their job, now is it?

I saw such a comment on this recent TechCrunch post: Amazon Web Services Goes Down, Takes Many Startup Sites With It — #8, to be specific (which I won’t give more play by repeating here). First of all, the post itself was overly dramatic to begin with, leading many to comment (most of them constructively) that this really wasn’t as big a deal as the writer was making it out to be. And more than one implied "you get what you pay for."  In other words, this occurrence is one reason why bootstrapping a startup may not always the best when you’re a web company — meaning, risking your customers’ experience with only a "three nines" service. But the cheap shot #8 guy takes, out of the blue, is a direct attack on an alternative to Amazon’s service, which is a much more robust offering. The comment offered nothing to the discussion — just a cheap shot. In fact, when at least one other commenter asked later for more information from the guy, he was nowhere to be found.

Now, maybe I wouldn’t take such issue to this if the competitor he was talking about wasn’t one that I know — Nirvanix, which just so happened to be one of my top picks of the presenting companies at the recent DEMO ’08 conference. But I decided to ask Nirvanix’ CEO, Patrick Harr, whom I had met at DEMO, what this guy was talking about. Here’s what he said, in his very responsive email back to me:

"There is no customer registrant under that name, nor beta customer with that name that has ever tested our SDN service. In fact, [the situation is] quite
the opposite. Our service is very stable. We consistently maintain 100%
uptime at 2.5 to 3X greater performance than Amazon. Just as important,
our architecture of distributed geo nodes with 99.999% data availability would
not have allowed this type of outage.
Net, net — the comment must have been from a competitor."

Or a disgruntled somebody-or-other. Harr also told me that DEMO went very well for Nirvanix, and that the firm "just won a big Fortune 10 company, and another Fortune 100 is almost signed." In fairness, the firm seems to be targeting large enterprises much more than it is startups — so one would expect its uptime would have to be better than Amazon’s.

[Too bad Harr couldn’t have been as responsive as he was to me in commenting directly on TechCrunch. That is, responding quickly to comment #8 in particular. The lesson for companies, especially if you’re a startup seeking to make inroads against big-name competition, is simple and clear: you’d better have somebody monitoring key blogs on a daily, ongoing basis!]

If you’d like a second take on Amazon Web Services’ downtime problems, here’s an article from the AP via Business Week: Amazon’s Cloud Storage Hiccups.

Another interesting thing about TechCrunch commenters is how often they go after the writers themselves — accusing them of a certain stupidlty limited view of the world. These writers get accused regularly of all sorts of improprieties, as they sit and type away there from their cloistered little Silicon Valley digs. Case in point: commenter #14 here. "Bad journalism," the man says. Does what they do even fit into the category of journalism?  Well, there are those who would argue that one pretty hard. Yet, alas, that’s a topic for another post…  But the fact remains: be skeptical when reading traditional media, and even moreso with blogs — and especially with open comments on either.

Wow, It’s Wiki-Wiki Week!

March 15, 2007 / / 6 Comments

First, I hear that MindTouch, which was presenting at the Community 2.0 conference this week in Vegas (which I’m bummed I couldn’t attend), announced the re-launch of its free.pngki site under the new name (and actual Internet domain) “Wik.is”. You can read the press release here. Wikishomepagewmhtalogo The company’s wiki-hosting site was previously located at Wiki.com, but, due to a licensing issue with the domain name operator, MindTouch had to scramble to get its customers’ wikis migrated rather quickly over to a new domain. [More on that later.] I had the opportunity to catch up with Aaron Fulkerson, VP of Product at San Diego-based MindTouch, to do this brief Q&A:

Tech~Surf~Blog: What’s the new site for? And who is it for?

Fulkerson: MindTouch Wik.is gives an organization or individual the ability to integrate a fun and easy-to-use community tool into their existing web site. We offer a free, ad-driven version but, for only $60 a year, users can have an ad-free community wiki that has a consistent look, feel, and navigation with their existing online properties. It’s been my experience that, by giving users a consistent look-and-feel, they’re more inclined to use the technology and participate in the community. The benefits to users of Wik.is include additional and fresh content, community growth, and much more. Wikistypes

Tech~Surf~Blog: Why does MindTouch sponsor this site? What’s in it for you?

Fulkerson: Well, for starters, $60 a year for every organization that upgrades to the Pro version! Seriously, though, we priced the Pro version in order to make the most basic functionality accessible to any organization. We believe that every web site should have a community wiki embedded into it. Wikis are such a powerful and easy-to-use tool that every organization’s web site should have one. At only $60 a year, that’s now a reality.

And, if a user opts for just the free version, we’re still building awareness about MindTouch and our other products. Whether you’re a non-profit or an individual interested in a simple and fun community site, a small business or a large enterprise looking for a community-driven Intranet, or a major media or publishing company seeking a user-generated content strategy, MindTouch has a product that will provide proven benefits. MindTouch is the most comprehensive vendor of wikis, and we’re proving it again.

Tech~Surf~Blog: Explain the “re” launch of this site — what was it before? What will it have from the original site? How is it similar or different?

Fulkerson: Wiki.com was a site that previously licensed our software. MindTouch severed relations with the operator of this site in early November 2006, but, in order to not hurt the end-users of Wiki.com, we allowed Wiki.com to continue to use our software for communities that were already created. Later, in January of this year, when a community member of Wiki.com informed us the operator planned to pull the plug on Wiki.com in 72 hours, we offered to migrate all the content to our servers. We were very concerned that people were about to lose their community and content. It turns out the operator of the site, too, was clearly concerned about this and approved the migration. We worked very hard, almost around the clock, over 48 hours to migrate the sites.

Tech~Surf~Blog: Who is now running Wiki.com (which just also relaunched), and does MindTouch have anything to with it anymore?

Fulkerson: I don’t know the details. We have no involvement with this.

Tech~Surf~Blog: On a side note, how are you and the others who relocated from St. Paul to your San Diego office enjoying your new home?

Fulkerson: I can’t speak for everyone, but my wife and 14-month-old daughter really like Little Italy, as do I — that’s the district where we reside in downtown San Diego. In fact, I love it! It’s a three-block walk to the new office, and I can walk the whole way with a wi-fi connection! There’s a real sense of belonging in the community.

Tech~Surf~Blog: Will you be visiting the Twin Cities again soon?

Fulkerson: I’m really excited to be presenting on a panel at the upcoming Minnesota High Tech Association Spring Conference, on Tuesday, April 10, 2007. I’m looking forward to being back in Minnesota and connecting with friends. [Note: Yours truly is moderating the panel.]

Tech~Surf~Blog: What’s the reaction been to your new Wik.is site so far?

Fulkerson: Traffic has been stellar. [The chart here I grabbed from Aaron’s Flickr page.] We had almost 400 sites register just on March 13! I was suprised. Wikistraffic031306 I really believe the Pro version is exactly what every organization and web site needs in features, and because you can give it a consistent look, feel, and nav. I think about all the organizations I’ve been involved with in the past and know this would be a big help.
[End of Q&A.]

Anyway, back to “Wiki Week.” On the same day as MindTouch makes its announcement, TechCrunch comes forth with a story about another fairly significant development in the wonderful world of wikis: WikiSeek Launches Community Edited Search Engine. WikiSeek is no upstart — it’s two years old and funded to the tune of $5 million by Sequoia Capital.

Just a few days prior, as if to pre-empt the above, the much-hyped new venture of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales planted another media story: Wikia plans editable Web search engine.

Then, as if this wasn’t enough to make this week extremely wiki-ish, Business Week up and publishes a CEO Guide to Wikis, with several feature articles on the topic — more than you thought you ever wanted to know about wikis. It’s as if someone declared this National Wiki Week!

Meantime, just today, Jimmy Wales’ new Wikia.com venture took a pretty good bashing from one commenter. Search Insider’s Gord Hotchkiss didn’t hold back on his skeptical view of the whole thing in this Mediapost piece: Jimbo Wales And People-Powered Search: A Long Shot.

We all know the human being can only scale so far, but how far can a collective of them scale? I guess that’s the question when it comes to wiki-based search. Can people really ever be expected to do as well or better for search as algorithms can, at least with any speed? And can they be free of politics, as algorithms surely would expect to remain? 🙂 What do you think, is this Jimbo guy smoking something exotic with that “other peoples’ money” he scored for this new deal?

« Older posts

© 2024 Graeme Thickins on Tech

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑