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TechCrunch (10 unread)

It’s Time For The Crunchies!

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 10:59pm CST by Michael Arrington

It’s hard to believe that nearly a year has gone by since we gave out those crazy gorilla awards to the best startup and product successes in Silicon Valley and around the world. Some of the photos from last year are here.

The Crunchies are back. We are once again partnering with some of our favorite blogs - thank you to co-hosts GigaOm, Silicon Alley Insider and VentureBeat (click the links for their announcements). Thanks as well to 1938 Media, our video production partner (see their first video below in the comments).

The Awards Ceremony will be held on Jan. 9, 2009, 7:30 pm at the Herbst Theater across the street from City Hall in San Francisco. The reception will follow and tickets will be released in December.

What we need from you right now: please nominate your favorite startups and products in fifteen categories. And remember, you’re judging them based on their 2008 performance. Nominations may be made until December 10, 2008 Midnight PST.

On December 15 we’ll begin the final voting process for the winners.

If you are a startup and want to encourage your users to vote for you, you can create a customized badge here.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Lonely Wrestlers Create Their Own Social Network

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 10:36pm CST by Erick Schonfeld

It’s not easy being a wrestler. Inside the ring your pounding an opponent’s head against the corner post, but outside the ring it’s hard to meet people. Nobody really wants to be your friend. Not even on MySpace. They say their your friends, but they are not really your friends.

Wrestlers aren’t stupid. They know everybody thinks they are just a bunch of clowns. That’s why the company that employs all the wrestlers you see on TV, World Wrestling Entertainment, created WWE Universe, a social network just for them and their fans. Okay, it’s not really a social network. It’s just a craptastic promotional vehicle. And some of those wrestlers aren’t so bright. But they are lonely.

Just because Mark Henry is the “world’s strongest man” doesn’t mean he doesn’t cry at night when all he has to keep him company is his pit bull, Theodore, and a can of beans. Or Zack Ryder. The poor guy might be a tag team champion, but when he goes home all he has to look forward to are watering his plants and watching reruns of Smackdown with his cat, Fluffy. Be friends with them. Don’t block them out of your life. They need you.

The only person who needs to be scared of these guys is Mark Zuckerberg. I sent Mark and Zack a message explaining that nobody is going to sign up to be their friends on the WWE Universe because everybody is over at Facebook. They didn’t respond so well to that news. Be scared Zuckerberg. Be very, very scared.

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Google Kills Lively

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 8:36pm CST by Erick Schonfeld

Even Google is getting into the downsizing spirit. It just announced that it is killing Lively, its browser-baseed virtual worlds that could be embedded into other Websites. Lively launched just last July. The death notice on the site says it will shut down on December 31, so we are adding Lively to the deadpool.

Lively just never took off, and was extremely far afield for Google. A post on the Google Blog explains the decision:

. . . we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business.

We should have known something was up when we noticed that it didn’t work with Google’s own browser, Chrome. It’s Google Website Trends chart says it all. After an initial spike, it flat-lined. Hype can only go so far.

Maybe Google didn’t kill Lively so much as mercifully pull the plug. This is a good sign actually that Google is willing to weed out non=performing products. What else is being cut at Google?

What else should be?

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Yahoo Brings Glue To U.S.: A Plethora of Aggregated Topical Third Party Content

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 8:28pm CST by Michael Arrington

Yahoo Glue, a new search results page design that the company has been testing in India, is rolling out to the US market this evening. You can view it at glue.yahoo.com, although Yahoo says it is rolling out in stages, so sit tight if you don’t see it.

It’s also a little different than the Indian version, and includes a number of resources beyond what India’s version of Glue offers. On a typical query, content from Wikipedia, Yahoo Shopping, Yahoo Answers, blog search results (from Google) and YouTube videos are shown.

For the US, Yahoo is starting with a limited set of topics and using a two column instead of a three column design. They’ve also left out the search results altogether. In this example for Barack Obama, prominent links to Memorandum (a political blog aggregator) are also shown.

Yahoo says they won’t use Glue to replace search in the US. Instead it seems to be a useful content page that brings in data from lots of different sources on topics.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Qik And Strands Each Trim 10 Percent Of Staff

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 8:09pm CST by Erick Schonfeld

The cutbacks continue, even at seemingly healthy startups. Social recommendation engine Strands let exactly 10 percent, or 14 people go (7 in the U.S. and 7 in Spain), the company confirms. Strands has raised a total of $55 million, still employs 125 people, and is hiring for other positions. It also just announced a mobile version for Nokia S60 phones.

Qik, which lets you stream live video from your cell phone, also laid off about 10 percent of its employees, which in its case amounted to five people. We got a tip that the reason for the layoffs is because the startup could not raise a $10 to $15 million round, but a spokesperson says that is not true and that we should stay tuned. We hope its not true because we love Qik. The company so far has raised only $4 million, but its investors include Marc Benioff and Marc Andreessen.

Also this week, Akamai is laying off 110 people (7 percent), KLA-Tencor is cutting 900 (15 percent), four people lost their jobs at Engine Yard (66 percent), and 7 at PC Magazine, which is ceasing its print edition.

We’ve added all of these to the Layoff Tracker, which is now up to 77,151 layoffs across 225 technology companies big and small.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
CrunchGear Review: BlackBerry Storm for Verizon Wireless

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 8:02pm CST by Peter Ha

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Mozilla Add-Ons Hit One Billion Downloads

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 7:02pm CST by Erick Schonfeld

In other Mozilla news, Firefox and other Mozilla products hit a major milestone today with the one billionth download of add-on software for the browser. That feat took three and half years.

Many of those downloads are never used more than once or twice, of course. But there is no doubt about it that Firefox is major software platform. Just look at StumbleUpon, it was built on top of Firefox.

What is atop the current list of most popular add-ons? Adblock Plus, followed by a bunch of download tools. And let’s not forget Greesemonkey at No. 9, which is it’s own Web development platform.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
This Week on the Crunch Board

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 5:45pm CST by Dan Kimerling
Make sure to look at the latest job listing on CrunchBoard. While doing that take a look at our new Crunchboard Service and Sales Directories. They are a great way to connect with the start-up community. Here’s some of jobs posted in the past week:
- Senior Web & User Interface Designer
  Online Computer Library Center - Remote
- ECommerce Marketing Associate
  Harvard Business Publishing - Watertown, MA
- Software / Customer Support Engineer
  Articulate - Remote
- Linux Server Engineer
  Slide - San Francisco, CA
- Web application developer
  ThatOne Company - Mountain View, CA
- Product Manager
  Life Events Media - San Francisco, CA
- Mojiva
  User Interface Engineer - New York, NY
TechCrunch is also still looking for a Ruby Developer to work on CrunchBase, as well as a fulltime writer to work on TechCrunchIT at our office in Atherton, CA.

International readers are encouraged to visit the British and French job boards as well.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Google Makes Up 88 Percent Of Mozilla’s Revenues, Threatens Its Non-Profit Status

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 5:33pm CST by Erick Schonfeld

Today, the (for-now) non-profit Mozilla Foundation released its financial statements for 2007 (embedded below). Revenues for the organization behind the open-source Firefox browser were up 12 percent to $75 million, with search-related royalties from Google accounting for 88 percent of the total, or $66 million. (Another $2 million or so came from other search engines). Those revenues come from Mozilla’s portion of the search advertising revenues generated by the default Google search box in the Firefox browser.

Google’s overall percentage of Mozilla’s revenues is even bigger than it was in 2006, when it accounted for 85 percent. And that proportion may continue to grow over the next three years, as Google just extended its contract with Mozilla.

But buried in the financial statements is the fact that the Mozilla Foundation is being audited by the IRS and its non-profit status is in question:

On the audit of the Foundation there has not been any formal notification of issues. There has been inquiry regarding its tax exemption. Management believes that it is conducting its operations in accordance with its original application for exemption and for which it received the advance ruling as a public benefit corporation.

The Foundation has an advance ruling as a public benefit corporation. The ruling period ended December 31, 2007. It submitted its public support test documentation as required by the advance ruling. While the Foundation did not automatically qualify as a public charity with public support at 33% of total support, it believes that it qualifies as a public charity under the facts and circumstances test with public support over 10%.

Mozilla argues that the search dollars should be treated as royalties, and thus not count as revenues under the tax code. There is little precedent for a non-profit generating so much of its “support” from what is, in effect, a commercial agreement. If the IRS rules against it, the Mozilla Foundation would lose its tax-exempt status. It would then be classified as a private foundation and have to pay an estimated $100,000 in excise tax for 2007 alone.

That’s peanuts, and wouldn’t change much at Mozilla—except for the fact that it is pretending to be a non-profit foundation when everyone knows it is a charitable arm of Google. What we still don’t know is how Google accounts for the $66 million it paid to Mozilla last year. Was it a charitable contribution, or lumped in with its regular traffic acquisition costs?

And here’s another conundrum: Why does it take the Mozilla Foundation more than year to issue its financial statements from 2007? After all, it is almost 2009.

mf-2007-audited-financial-statement - Get more Free Tax Forms

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First Guns N’ Roses Album In 17 Years Debuts Tonight On MySpace Music

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 5:32pm CST by Michael Arrington

Chinese Democracy, the first new Guns N’ Roses album since 1991, debuts tonight at 9 PM PST exclusively on MySpace Music, where fans can listen to it for free.

Well, actually it debuted on BitTorrent a while ago, but we’re not talking about that. Also, the band has previously released two songs, Chinese Democracy and Better, to radio stations and music sites in the past couple of weeks.

But tonight is the big debut, and for most people it will be the first time they hear the music. It will be available in 25 countries: US, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Russia, Turkey, Poland, India, Australia, New Zealand, Korea and Japan.

Remember this ’cause it’s important: listening to music on BitTorrent for free is illegal. Listening to it for free on MySpace isn’t.

The physical album goes on sale November 23.

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