Planetaki Planet Bernie's world

SPONSOR MESSAGE: Are You Serving the Same Web Content to Everyone? Using Segmentation to Retain and Attract Different Audiences

2010-03-12T05:11:14+00:00

This webinar and guide covers: A formula for Web site conversion The four main psychographics to use to begin segmentation How Digg appeals differently to segments to keep visitors coming back to their site Download Now

*** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above or, in Facebook, by clicking on the "View Original Post" link below. ***

Google Rumoured to be Hiring Online Real Estate Sales People

2010-03-12T04:14:41+00:00

Rumours emanating out of Sydney today indicate that Google is aggressively looking to hire a field sales team to target the Sydney real estate market. Sources said that Google had approached a number of sales people from domain.com.au in an effort to hire them as field sales people for the Google real estate initiative. Sources also believed that Google may be initially targeting the Inner West region of Sydney.

Surprisingly, there were no rumoured approaches to sales people from the market leader, realestate.com.au.

If these rumours do pan out to be true, it would be a major increase in Google’s efforts to compete with the incumbent market leaders realestate.com.au and domain.com.au. It is also probably a recognition that the approach of targeting sales at the franchise group level only is not working so well and a realisation that agents don’t self service.

Earlier this month, Google announced a marketing partnership with LJ Hooker. Industry insiders believe that this deal is worth between $300k and $500k and will promote LJ Hooker across Google Maps. It is also believed that no other franchise group has yet entered any formal marketing partnership with Google and franchise groups such as Ray White and Century 21 are only uploading their listings to Google Maps.

The hiring of a field sales force probably means that Google will, over time, aggressively offer its services to real estate offices through Australia. The question is what will that offer be and what is the likely take up by real estate agents. It also raises some longer term questions about relationship between Google and the two market leaders (realestate.com.au and domain.com.au), both large PPC spenders on Google.

Hot Potato Tosses A New Site, API, And iPhone App With Foursquare Integration At You

2010-03-12T05:01:40+00:00

Back in November of last year, the location-based social event service Hot Potato launched at our Realtime CrunchUp. Today, they’ve taken what was a solid service, and made it a lot better with a number of upgrades.

First and foremost, there is a new iPhone application that just went live in the App Store. With a completely revamped user interface, the app makes it easier than ever to find and participate in events. Perhaps more importantly, it makes it really easy to create new events — and notably, the service has the nicest third-party Foursquare integration I’ve ever seen. When you click on the button to create an event, you can still manually enter a location, but if you happen to be around the venue, you can simply pick it from Foursquare’s list of venues with the click of a button. This drastically simplifies the event creation process since the venue metadata is already there.

This new app will be crucial for the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, which starts tomorrow. If you’ve been reading TechCrunch over the past week, you’ve undoubtedly seen that just about every location-based service has an app they’re unveiling. And another service based around planning events, Plancast, just launched their app this evening. But Hot Potato offers the best of both worlds as it allows you to both plan future events, and interact with ones currently taking place. The new app makes it very easy to chat about the event, and upload photos and videos.

And they’ve cleaned up the stream of information around these events. There is now a filter to show everyone commenting, or just your friends. There are also now number indicators to show unread items. And the check-in process has been simplified thanks to big green buttons that make it obvious.

Also new for SXSW is Twitter integration. On a case-by-case basis, Hot Potato will be pulling in tweets about certain events at SXSW, using a filter to make sure only relevant ones show up. You’ll be able to do things such as filter those tweets to show only those by people you actually follow, which will make them potentially much more meaningful to you. You can also reply to tweets thanks to integration of Twitter’s API. And you can share tweets from within the app that will show up as retweets on Twitter.

Another new features is Calendars — something which each Hot Potato user now has. Obviously, you can add the events you wish to be a part of to your calendar, but people you are friends with on the service can also add you to other events as well. The app also now features Push Notifications now (on top of revamped email notifications).

On top of the new app, Hot Potato has rolled out a completely revamped website with just about all of the same functionality of the new app (as well as the new look and feel). And at the highest level, Hot Potato finally has its own social graph, which can pull in friends from the usual suspects: Facebook, Twitter, your address book, etc.

And here’s something that should really help Hot Potato this week: each time someone checks-in to a SXSW event with Foursquare, that service will recommend they also join the event on Hot Potato. Clicking on the accompanying link provided in the Foursquare app with open the Hot Potato app and let them join the event with a click (if they have an account). As you might expect, you can also check-in to a venue on Foursquare within Hot Potato. With Foursquare likely to be one of the key apps used by conference goers, this cross promotion is simply huge.

On top of all of this, the service now has its own full API, so others can use and interact with their data.

Simply put, all these updates are full of win, and make a good app even better. And remarkably, they’ve managed to cram in all these new features while at the same time simplifying the overall experience.

Fine the new iPhone app here in the App Store. It’s a free download.

CrunchBase Information

Hot Potato

iPhone

Foursquare

Information provided by CrunchBase

On The Eve Of SXSW’s Location War, Plancast Gets An iPhone App

2010-03-12T00:37:13+00:00

It’s getting tough to keep up with all of the location-related developments leading up to this year’s SXSW, and they just keep coming. Tonight, on the eve of the event, Plancast has just had its iPhone application approved. The service, which we’ve previously described as a ‘Foursquare for the future’, allows you to tell your friends where you’re planning to be as opposed to where you currently are (in other words, it lets you and your friends plan ahead). You can grab the new iPhone app here.

The application itself looks solid, and includes the core functionality you’ll find on the Plancast website. The main view allows you to scroll through a list of your friends’ upcoming events, and tapping on an event will show you where it is on a map and who else is going. At SXSW, where there are always many panels and parties going on, this can come in handy — sometimes it’s more practical to plan ahead than it is to walk across town when you notice a few of your friends are checking in somewhere. One feature I’d like to see is a way to get push notifications when a bunch of friends are planning to attend the same event (e.g. “Hey, your friends are all going to Salt Lick in a few hours!”); hopefully we’ll get something like that in the next release. There’s also a mobile version of the site available for users on other mobile platforms.

Plancast was founded by TC alum Mark Hendrickson, and recently closed an $800,000 seed funding round that included a bevy of well known angels like SoftTech VC, Dave McClure, and Joshua Schachter.

For other SXSW-related location news, see Loopt’s new iPhone app, Gowalla’s new app, and Vicarious.ly, a new app from SimpleGeo that brings all of this location data together.

CrunchBase Information

Plancast

Information provided by CrunchBase

How to Choose the Right Apple iPad for You

2010-03-12T04:13:12+00:00

A step-by-step guide to making a smart choice between the Wi-Fi-only and 3G versions of the tablet from Apple.

South by Southwest: A Virtual Playground in Austin

2010-03-12T04:13:12+00:00

Start-up hopefuls and creative entrepreneurs are heading to the South by Southwest technology conference.

What We're Reading: A Nobel Peace Prize for Us All?

2010-03-11T23:43:37+00:00

Our daily roundup of Internet gems looks at a campaign to award the Nobel Peace Prize to the Internet, quantum computing, and one airline's crackdown on video chatting in the air.

Milo’s Response To Google’s Blue Dot Specials: A Picture

2010-03-12T00:37:13+00:00

This morning Google announced a new Blue Dot feature on the mobile version of Google Product Search that shows whether a product is in-stock at nearby stores. This seems to pose a threat to startup Milo, which highlights local inventory in product search results both on the web and mobile devices. Milo’s co-founder Ted Dziuba subsequently responded to our post with a Tweet that read “Google Product Search has availability for 5 retailers vs. Milo’s 49. Super cool web service, bro.” At launch Google only has partnerships with Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm. Milo’s list of merchants includes a range of retailers, from BestBuy and Nordstrom to Midwestern regional department store Blain’s Farm and Fleet.

When we asked for an additional response, Milo sent us this amazing set of pictures below. Milo’s Palo Alto office’s are located at 165 University Avenue, in the same space as Google’s first office back in 1999. Look closely at the picture and you may even see a few of the famous faces from Google’s original team. The building itself is legendary in Silicon Valley and has also housed PayPal. Here’s a 2007 New York Times article detailing the building’s history and apparent lucky karma. The picture of the Google employees was given to Milo by one of its investors.

Milo CEO and co-founder Jack Abraham was quick to respond that they are not implying that Milo is the next Google, but just meant to inject some light-hearted humor into the situation. In all seriousness, Abraham said that Milo has a tremendous amount of respect for Google and its Product Search but aren’t scared of the search giant entering the market and actually welcomes the competition. Abraham and his team have been working for the past two years to scale their product and feel that their offering is more comprehensive than Google’s Blue Dot specials. While Milo is steadily expanding its merchants both regionally and nationally, the startup is also looking to partner with mom and pop shops in cities. Currently, Milo indexes 2 million products.

And Forrester reports that the “online research, offline buying” consumer market represents $917 billion in consumer spending, which is 30 percent of all U.S. retail sales. Online, e-commerce spending accounts for less than 5 percent of U.S. sales. With those numbers, it comes of no surprise that Google wants a piece of the pie. But perhaps there’s enough room for a number of players to monetize from this space.

CrunchBase Information

Google

Milo

Information provided by CrunchBase

HP Begins Rebranding Campaign With “Let’s Do Amazing” Ads

2010-03-12T00:37:13+00:00

Most people in the world hear Hewlett-Packard and think “printers.” And who can blame them? Since the relatively recent emphasis on the “HP” instead of “Hewlett-Packard,” and the general consumer move away from printers, HP hasn’t really done anything noteworthy — well, other than thrive despite the decline of the business in which they made their fortune. It’s like the old joke about the bricklayer and the sheep — but instead of drowning their sorrows in gin, HP is drowning them in money in an effort to rebrand the company. To that end, they’ve created a series of ads with the questionable tagline “Let’s Do Amazing.”

It’s not much of a time investment: a few 30-second spots with Flight of the Conchords‘ Rhys Darby bumbling around some professionals who appreciate what HP does. Won’t you join me for a look?

Read the rest of this story at CrunchGear…

New Partnerships for Nestoria

2010-03-11T23:45:10+00:00

Property search engine Nestoria has recently entered into three white-label partnerships in Spain, Germany, and the UK.

In Spain, nestoria.es has teamed up with El Correo Gallego, a regional media group based in Galicia, to provide their property search. nestoria.es explains that this is its first property search partnership.

In Germany, nestoria.de has linked with gutefrage.net, a new social network focused on asking and answering questions. Nestoria says gutefrage.net is one of the top 20 German language websites in terms of users.

In the UK, nestoria.co.uk has integrated with Buyers Edge, a service that helps match prospective buyers with qualified buying agents. Buyers Edge users can now search the nestoria.co.uk database in a co-branded environment.

These new partnerships mirror similar deals with The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and Channel 4 in the UK, and with Financial Times Deutschland, Capital magazine and Wetter in Germany, amongst others.

New Look at immobilienscout24.de

2010-03-11T23:45:10+00:00

Leading German property portal immobilienscout24.de has just launched a new design for its commercial real estate section.

According to a statement from the portal, the redesign offers improved navigation, and the areas for property seekers and advertisers have been more clearly separated.

Along with property listings, immobilienscout24.de’s commercial section offers a range of other information, from tips on business creation to a section for those running catering services.

The past 12 months have seen immobilienscout24.de make a concerted effort to consolidate its place at the top of the German market. Most recently, the portal launched a wide-ranging ad campaign that saw its unique user number soar to a record 4.6 million in January.

The portal’s iPhone app is also proving extremely popular, with 140,000 downloads registered in the six weeks since its release.

Nokia Is Coming to America - Still

2010-03-11T23:43:36+00:00

Backed by flashy new phones and fresh software, Nokia is ready to woo American smartphone buyers all over again on price.

iPhone OS 4.0 Looms, But When Will We See It?

2010-03-12T00:37:13+00:00

Apple has set the standard that once every year they will release a new version of the iPhone. It stands to reason that this year will be no different, with a new model likely coming sometime this summer. But arguably just as important as Apple’s hardware refresh is the accompanying software refresh that comes with it as well. And that’s why it shouldn’t be surprising at all that whispers of iPhone OS 4.0 are starting to grow. But this year, the timeline appears a bit off.

As AppleInsider reported today, iPhone OS 4.0 is likely to deliver multitasking support. If true, that will make it perhaps the most important OS upgrade for the platform yet. However, in reporting the news, AppleInsider also notes that the software, “remains under development and reportedly has a quite ‘way to go’ before it’s ready for prime time.” Looking back at the iPhone OS SDK history you’ll notice a constant: Apple has released the beta builds in March the past two years. We’re already well into March this year, and so far, no word about Apple being close to doing the same.

In fact, last year, Apple held its iPhone OS 3.0 preview event (where it first made a beta available) on March 17. I remember this well because I was unable to attend as I was at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. I also remember when Apple sent out the invites to that event, March 12, because I wrote up the report about it on my way to the airport to leave for Austin. But the difference last year is that there were whispers leading up to that announcement that there would be some kind of event in March for the iPhone OS. This year, so far, nothing.

Now, it’s possible that some of the speculation about the new iPhone OS release has been muted because of the recent iPad unveiling, and it’s upcoming launch on April 3. But that very launch also adds fuel to the fire that we won’t be seeing an iPhone 4.0 OS anytime soon. After all, Apple is currently in the process of rolling out the beta builds of iPhone OS 3.2 (currently on beta 4), which is the OS the iPad will apparently ship with.

The launch of the SDK is important because it gives developers time to get their apps ready for any big changes coming. And multitasking seems like it would be a pretty huge change, though it’s not entirely clear if most of the work would be done through the OS itself to optimize how app resources are managed, rather than apps having to do that themselves to be deemed “multitasking ready.” Hell, it’s not even clear if any iPhone beyond the inevitable new one will be allowed to let third-party apps run at the same time as the new hardware will undoubtedly have a faster processor (possibly the A4 found in the iPad), more RAM, and maybe even a better battery — all of which will be crucial to multitasking.

I’ve spoken with a few developers and none have yet seen any part of the iPhone 4.0 OS. A few have gotten word from the company that it is indeed coming, and that big changes are in store (which had led me to speculate about background running in the past) but have no idea when that will be. Apple, meanwhile, has been thinking about how best to let third-party applications run in the background on the iPhone for about a year now.

It seems unlikely that Apple would launch a new iPhone OS without giving developers plenty of time to play around with it. And since there is no word about the 4.0 SDK coming anytime soon, that could well mean a push from the usual June/July timeframe for a new (final build) iPhone OS launch. Might we see new iPhone hardware that launches with OS 3.2? And then iPhone OS 4.0 would be released as a free upgrade closer to the Fall timeframe? It certainly seems possible.

CrunchBase Information

iPhone

Information provided by CrunchBase

Vicarious.ly: SimpleGeo’s One Location-Based Stream To Visualize Them All

2010-03-12T00:37:13+00:00

As I’ve made abundantly clear over the past several days, just about every service that has anything to do with location is launching something at the SXSW festival which starts tomorrow in Austin, Texas. Don’t believe me, here’s a small sampling (Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Whrrl, Plancast, Brizzly, Twitter). So, how are you going to wrap your head around all this location data? SimpleGeo has an awesome way.

Vicarious.ly is a real-time location-based stream of information presented in a nice visual way. While the plan is to eventually launch one for many different cities around the U.S. and eventually the world, the first one is based around Austin, for SXSW. To make it, SimpleGeo partnered with BlockChalk, Brightkite, Bump Technologies, Flickr, Fwix, Foursquare, Gowalla, and Twitter to pull all of their location data and place it both in a constantly-updating stream, and put data points on a Google Map at the top of the page. These data points are represented by the logos of the various companies, so it’s easy to follow visually.

Those concerned about the privacy implications of this need not worry, Vicarious.ly doesn’t pull actual user names from the companies mentioned above. Instead, they simply note that “someone” checked-in at a venue. They do, however, give the venue name, which is a hyperlink. So if someone just checked into Stubb’s Bar-B-Q in Austin on Gowalla, you’ll see a link back to the Gowalla page for that venue. Likewise, if someone uploads a geotagged picture to Flickr, you’ll see a thumbnail of the picture in Vicarious.ly’s stream, and clicking on it will take you to that picture’s Flickr page.

It’s fairly amazing to see just how much activity there is even today, the day before the conference starts. Tomorrow and the weekend should be insane. “The amount of real-time, location-based information we’re indexing is staggering. We wanted a powerful way to showcase that, so we built Vicarious.ly and targeted the launch to coincide with a massive gathering of geeks,” co-founder Matt Galligan says about the project.

You’ll note just how much of the activity are check-ins from either Foursquare or Gowalla. Those two are likely to be the two main competitors in the location war that will take place this weekend. (If you’re surprised not to see tweets in the stream, it’s a bug that SimpleGeo hopes to squash tonight).

For more on SimpleGeo, which has a powerful set of tools to easily provide geolocation infrastructure for other companies (such as the new hot startup, StickyBits), check out this and this.

CrunchBase Information

Information provided by CrunchBase

Starbucks Fans Can Become 'Baristas' on Foursquare

2010-03-11T23:43:36+00:00

Starbucks will give loyal customers a barista badge on Foursquare -- and get information about their behavior.

For The Trifecta: MSNBC Extends Its BreakingNews Brand To Facebook

2010-03-11T20:52:29+00:00

Last December, MSNBC acquired the Twitter account @breakingnews, which was started as a basic newswire by Michael van Poppel and gradually grew to 1.4 million followers (it’s now up to over 1.6 million). A month later, MSNBC announced that it had acquired BreakingNews.com, which will has become a web portal for the online newswire. And today, it’s managed to complete the trifecta: MSNBC has just launched a Facebook Page at Facebook.com/BreakingNews.

MSNBC spokesperson Gina Stikes says that the new Facebook account will only send updates for the biggest stories to break (you can still use its other feeds if you want to receive every story to come from the service). The page is obviously still quite new (it only has 645 fans right now), but you can expect that the grow quickly.

Just how quickly is the big, question, though: we’ll have to wait to see if MSNBC will be able to leverage its large community on Twitter to establish its Facebook page. In any case, it’s managed to take ownership of the term “breaking news” across a large swath of the web.

AOL Launches Lifestream As New Standalone Product. This Is What Google Buzz Should Have Been

2010-03-11T20:52:29+00:00

Aol launched Lifestream, a social aggregator and publisher, as part of their AIM platform at TechCrunch50 Last Fall. Since then it has gained nearly 2 million users, say Aol. Based on that success Aol is now launching Lifestream as a standalone product at lifestream.aol.com.

Like Friendfeed, Lifestream aggregates a number of third party social networks – Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Foursquare, Delicious, Digg, Flickr, YouTube, etc., so if you follow a Lifestream user you’ll see all of the content that user publishes on those networks, and Lifestream automatically pulls in content from people you already follow on those various social networks, so you don’t have to create yet another new friend list. Lifestream isn’t yet integrated with Google Buzz, but Aol says it may be coming soon.

Users can filter out content from specific networks if they like, on a per user or broad basis. A way to think about this – “noise cancellation for social networks.”

Lifestream also lets users publish back to social networks. Status updates posted to Lifestream can be posted back to Facebook, Myspace and/or Twitter. Lifestream also optionally notes your location in your status updates via GPS on mobile devices, or you can manually add it instead.

That’s not it though. Users can sign in to Lifestream using their Facebook account via Facebook Connect, making it unnecessary to remember separate account and credentials for the site.

You also have a variety of choices in how you use Lifestream. You can access it via the website, an AIR application, or via iPhone and Android applications. As I said above, the mobile applications are particularly useful because they auto-note your location for easy check-ins, and you can post pictures you take from the phone.

That mobile version of the product is what excites me most. You can see where your friends are checking into on, say, Foursquare, click through to a place page and then go there yourself and check in. And Lifestream allows you to follow places just like people, so you can see whenever someone checks in to your local cafe or bar. That ability to follow places is probably the single best reason to use Lifestream.

The Lifestream product is simple, intuitive and really, really useful. Frankly it’s what Google Buzz should have been – both an independent social network on its own, but very deep integration into all of the other social networks you are likely to use daily. It’s nice to see actual innovation coming out of Aol.

CrunchBase Information

AOL

Information provided by CrunchBase

Google Goes Live With “In-Stock, Nearby” Mobile Shopping

2010-03-11T21:04:08+00:00

In the range of thigs discussed at Google’s Search Evolution event in December Engineering VP Vic Gundotra demonstrated mobile shopping with real-time inventory information. Now Google has announced that product is live. Google is working with a limited number of retailers for the time being but is inviting others to apply to become part of the [...]

*** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above or, in Facebook, by clicking on the "View Original Post" link below. ***

Google Is Bing’s 4th Largest Referring Source

2010-03-11T21:04:07+00:00

What sites send Bing the most traffic? Here’s a surprise. According to Hitwise, Google is Bing’s fourth largest referring source. Below are the top five sites that drive traffic to Bing, or “upstream” to Bing, as Hitwise calls it: MSN is by far the top source, the last site visited by 42.7% of Bing users before they [...]

*** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above or, in Facebook, by clicking on the "View Original Post" link below. ***

The Problem Of Inconsistent SMB Contact Details – Part I

2010-03-11T21:04:07+00:00

Have you ever thought twice about how to find the correct contact details for a local business – i.e., their name, address, phone number? The answer should be so simple: just Google it. Well, the reality is not that simple. In fact, few questions in the local online search world are as complicated as this [...]

*** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above or, in Facebook, by clicking on the "View Original Post" link below. ***

Real-Time Google Map for SXSW

2010-03-12T00:38:19+00:00

Vicarious.lyVicarious.ly is a Google Map mashup that displays a real-time stream of what's going on in Austin, TX. The map displays geo-tagged content from Twitter, FourSquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Whrrl, Plancast, Brizzly and a few other location services. When you first load the map you see the last 15 minutes of activity stream by quickly and, from that point forward, new activity in real-time. The

Google Cuts Milo At The Knees With Its Blue Dot Specials

2010-03-11T20:52:29+00:00

Google just launched a new feature on the mobile version of Google Product Search which could take local shopping search startup Milo out at the knees. Whenever you do a Google product search from a mobile phone, blue dots will appear next to items which are in-stock at nearby stores. The image at right is from a search I just did for “HDTVs.” The blue dots are subtle, but they certainly distinguish those results. Google has partnerships with Best Buy, Sears, Williams-http://www.crunchbase.com/widgetSonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm to show local inventory, and it is inviting other merchants to apply to participate as well. Google VP of engineering Vic Gundotra previewed the local product search last December, but it is now live.

Highlighting local inventory in product search results is exactly what Milo does, although it works on the Web as well as mobile. Milo will have to try to keep one step ahead of Google now that its business has been targeted as a feature of Google Product search.

The good news for Milo is that nobody really uses Google Product Search. It is not even highlighted as one of the products on the Google iPhone app, for instance. Maybe that will change, now that it has a geo-enabled set of results.

When you are looking for stuff to buy, it always helps to know where you can buy an item nearby. The vast majority of people who shop on the Web actually just use it for research, and then go local to buy.

Milo CEO Ted Dziuba responds via a Tweet:

Google Product Search has availability for 5 retailers vs. Milo’s 49. Super cool web service, bro.

How long before Google closes that gap?

Google Product Search has availability for 5 retailers vs. Milo’s 49. Super cool web service, bro.

CrunchBase Information

Google

Milo

Information provided by CrunchBase

SecondMarket: Facebook And Zynga Dominate Transactions In February

2010-03-11T20:52:29+00:00

In January, private company stock marketplace SecondMarket published data on private company stock sales that they helped complete in 2009. And February’s report showed the transactions that took place in January, which showed a strong demand for consumer products and services startups. The majority of transactions in January were sales of Facebook stock. SecondMarket just released its February report, which you can download here.

Transactions more tripled in February, from $13 million in sales to $43.8 million in sales last month. A full 48% of the transactions were sales of Facebook stock, compared to 38% in January. And last month, we reported that sales are being completed for as high as $40 per share (or a $17.6 billion valuation). But we learned this week that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is in no rush to take the company public. LinkedIn took 18% of the transactions, and sales of both Twitter and Zynga stock were each 15% of the total. LifeLock rounded the group out with 4% of the total.

The transactions concentrated mainly in consumer products and services (85%) and media and entertainment (15%). Similar to January’s trends, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter attracted the most transactions on SecondMarket.

On the buying side, Facebook led the way with one-third of all buyside demand followed by Twitter (7%) and LinkedIn (5%). Interest in Zynga (3%) also rose in February. On the seller side, ex-employees of start-ups stepped up their selling activity in February, comprising over 80% of sales, the highest percentage in the past nine months.

Noticeably missing from the report was Tesla, which filed for a $100 million IPO in late January.

TechCrunch_Private_Company_Presentation_Final_2010_03_09

CrunchBase Information

SecondMarket

Information provided by CrunchBase

Barnes & Noble Uses Crunchies Endorsement On In Store Nook Posters. We Want One.

2010-03-11T20:52:29+00:00

We were somewhat sad when Barnes & Noble sent their PR firm to accept their award for the Nook for Best Gadget of 2009 at the Crunchies in January. Traditionally only Apple blows off the awards, and we’ve always been able to work around that.

But apparently Barnes & Noble are at least aware that they won the award. They are using it to promote the Nook on in-store posters, we learned recently. We sent TechCruncher Laura Boychenko over to the local Barnes & Noble last night with strict instructions to rip one of the posters off the wall and run like hell back to the office with it.

She failed in her task, but did take a few pictures and a video and promised to ask Barnes & Noble for one of the posters for our office. Less dramatic, but just as effective I guess.

I’m not suggesting anyone should commit a crime, but if someone were to obtain one (legally, mind you) and show up at our office with one of these we’d likely send them away with a thank you and a TechCrunch tshirt. No questions asked. Video is below.

CrunchBase Information

nook

Laura Boychenko

Information provided by CrunchBase

New Site Unmasks Chatroulette Players

2010-03-11T19:54:16+00:00

Does Chatroulette, the popular video chat site, lose its appeal if it loses its anonymity?