Technology has helped to level the playing field across a wide range of industries, letting more individuals come to the table in fields such as publishing, entertainment and, of course, building web startups. And according to Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers partner Chi-Hua Chien, the next space ripe for a big tech-powered wave of democratization is commerce.
Posted 52 minutes 57 seconds ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

Hearst is best known as print publisher, but this year it has been making a big push into social media. Its latest effort is a Father's Day themed Facebook app for Redbook magazine. In order to use the Father's Day app, people need to "like" the Redbook Facebook page. Once you've done that, you can bring up a list of all the dads in your network. Then you can post a Father's Day message to any of their Facebook Walls, and optionally, on yours too.
Posted 52 minutes 57 seconds ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

tape.tv has been around for a while - since July 2008 to be exact. It operates like a mix between an online version of MTV and Pandora. Just like the latter service, on Tape.tv users can skip, like or dislike the videos as they play, so the service starts to tailor itself to their tastes. I came across it in various visits to Berlin over the last couple of years but have been frustrated that this great service has only been aimed at the German market. However, I'm excited that it's about to scale into new countries. The company has now raised €5 million ($6.2 million) in a Series B funding round. Participants include Atlantic Capital Partners GmbH , Dario Suter, Christoph Daniel and Marc Schmidhelny (DCM), prolific Berlin Angel investor Christophe Maire, alongside Investitionsbank Berlin and VC Kreativwirtschaft Berlin. The cash will be used to scale the business, appear on other platforms like smart TVs and launches into France and the UK in early autumn. The relaunch will also see the creation of an electronic program guide (EPG) for their own live shows and events.
Posted 52 minutes 57 seconds ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

Internet music service Pandora just announced its financial results for the first quarter of its fiscal 2013. The company had a total revenue of $80.8 million, a 58% increase year-over-year. Out of these $80.8 million, $70.6 million came from advertising revenue and $10.2 million from subscription revenue. Advertising revenue increased 62% year-over-year and subscription revenue increased 38%. Despite its increased revenue, Pandora still reported a net loss per share of $0.12 and Non-GAAP net loss of $0.09 per share.
Posted 52 minutes 57 seconds ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

Within HP's quarterly results today, a bit of a development on Autonomy, the company's $10.2 billion enterprise software purchase from last year that was profitable when HP bought it but in the last quarter saw "significant" declines in its core licensing revenue: its founder and head Mike Lynch is stepping down, and he is getting replaced by a HP man: chief strategy officer and EVP of enterprise software Bill Veghte. HP says in its Q2 earnings release that this is being done to help improve Autonomy's performance. In an internal memo to employees, which TechCrunch has obtained, CEO Meg Whitman says that the move is being made to as a mark of how HP is "investing to speed development across Security, Information and Management Infrastructure for both on-premise IT and in the cloud – with a key focus on software-as-a-service offerings." The same strategy will be applied to the company's Vertica business, Whitman noted in the memo.
Posted 52 minutes 57 seconds ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

Confirming rumors from last week, HP just publicly announced a layoff plan that will result a reduction of 8% of its workforce. Shortly after releasing the memo to Wall Street, HP CEO Meg Whitman sent a company-wide video message explaining the future of Bill Hewlett and David Packard's company. She acknowledges throughout that HP is currently in trouble stating in the beginning, "HP’s performance is still not where it needs to be" and "We have a lot of work ahead of us to get HP back on track." She also explains, a bit comically and perhaps erroneously, that "[HP] is currently rebuilding credibility one quarter at time, and to do that, we need to consistently deliver on what we say."
Posted 52 minutes 57 seconds ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

This afternoon at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012, our own Josh Constine sat down with David Kirkpatrick, author of "The Facebook Effect," to discuss what they thought about the future of the newly IPO'ed social network. Specifically, the two focused on the potential for Facebook's advertising platform, its competitive advantages over incumbents and competitors, and its potential acquisition targets which could help its platform expand.
Posted 1 hour 53 minutes ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

HP is going to announce Q2 results today but first breaking a bit of bad news: it has confirmed 27,000 job cuts that should save between $3 billion and $3.5 billion by 2014. The company is a tech behemoth: it employs 350,000 people worldwide, before these cuts were announced. This means the cuts are equivalent to about 8 percent of its workforce.
Posted 1 hour 53 minutes ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

Just a day after a gender discrimination suit was filed against one of Silicon Valley's most storied firms Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, an all-male panel of VCs at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference said that sexism isn't that much of an issue in the industry. "This business is a meritocracy by and large," said Greg McAdoo, who is a partner at Sequoia Capital and said that the firm has female partners. "I have no doubt that there are pockets of issues, because in humanity you're going to have that." He added, "We look for folks who can help companies become great businesses over time and we don't ask a lot of questions about gender or what have you."
Posted 1 hour 53 minutes ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

When you're stuck for three days in a big warehouse with the same group of smart people talking about the future of tech innovation over and over and over again (+beer), you start getting really silly. And some of the unique circumstances of year's TechCrunch Disrupt New York have given us plenty to be silly about. For instance, there are birds, live birds (!) in the conference hall, and in fact I can hear them right now chirping LOUDLY while one of the demo companies presents onstage.  The birds are so prevalent that they've spawned jokes from some of the speakers, like, "It's so hip of you guys to hold a conference in a bird sanctuary" in addition to a fake Twitter account, @CrunchBird, which tweets stuff like, "*Frightened fluttering from music,* ""Disappointed chirp.," "*quiet listening*," and my personal favorite, 啁啾 <a
Posted 1 hour 53 minutes ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

Bre Pettis of MakerBot stopped by our little show today and spent some time on the stage with John Biggs and other notables in the manufacturing space. But afterwards Pettis, co-founder and CEO of MakerBot, joined me on the TCTV couch to geek out a bit over the fantastic MakerBot Replicator. The company also has two MakerBot Replicators printing out random doodads and toys in our first ever Hardware Alley.
Posted 2 hours 54 minutes ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

A number of cable, satellite, and IPTV providers have introduced TV Everywhere services that let viewers watch TV content online. But satellite TV provider DISH will be the first to introduce a standalone subscription TV service over-the-top, with the launch of its new DISHWorld package of international channels rolling out on the Roku streaming box. DISHWorld is made up of a series of international video channels from and makes them available on Roku for $19.99 a month. The service allows DISH to take a bunch of content that doesn't usually have a huge audience, and doesn't cost a whole helluva lot to license, and make it available to niche audiences. And Roku is already a pretty popular device for watching international content.
Posted 3 hours 54 minutes ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

Last month, Marketo announced that it was acquiring social marketing startup Crowd Factory to add a social component to its marketing automation tools. Today the company is releasing its first products to come out of the deal. Marketo CEO Phil Fernandez says this represents the two companies' technology "all put together into a single hybridized product." Actually, Marketo is releasing two products, Marketo Social Boost and Marketo Social Promotions, as part of a new Marketo Social Marketing suite.
Posted 3 hours 54 minutes ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

Just over a week ago, the jury began deliberations on the ongoing patent infringement case between Google and Oracle. After waiting in the wings, with bated breath, the verdict is finally in, as Judge Alsup has this afternoon dismissed the jury and decided that the search giant's mobile OS did not in fact infringe on Oracle's patents.
Posted 3 hours 54 minutes ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

This time last year, Brett Martin took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York to launch Sonar, a mobile app that connects you to friends and other people nearby, based on your existing social networks. Fast forward to today and the Battlefield runner-up is rolling out a major update to its mobile app that will allow Sonar to finally become the "Here-Now" social network. The app previously focused on providing relevant information to users about others around them based on connections via Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and Twitter. Extremely useful for conferences like Disrupt, when you're at a party or maybe even starting a new job. So what's new? Aside from the usual under the hood tweaks, Sonar has crammed in Status, Sonar Presence, Notifications and Messaging. The status update serves as a hyperlocal broadcast tool for those within close proximity and even pushes out a notification to your friends when they're close by.
Posted 3 hours 54 minutes ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

Shaker won TechCrunch Disrupt SF last year with its 3-D virtual nightclub built on top of Facebook, and June 8th it will finally launch in North America with the help the of the music industry's Live Nation and BandPage. Until then you can signup for Shaker, and when you do, you'll get a classic album cover of Bob Marley, The Clash, or another legend remixed with your Facebook photos and data. The partnerships, promotion, and landing page all point to a big focus on music as a social lubricant for hanging out with people on Shaker.
Posted 3 hours 54 minutes ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

Google today launched version 2.0 of its search app for iPhone. Google completely overhauled the design of the app, which now looks and feels more like the app's iPad version the company launched last November. The new version feels significantly faster than the last one and the new design works especially well for image searches. Surprisingly, Google hasn't officially announced the update yet, but it's already live in Apple's App Store.
Posted 4 hours 54 minutes ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

President Obama has a "high geek quotient" according to his senior technology advisor, Todd Park. Park and U.S. CIO Steven VanRoekel announced five major federal initiatives at TechCrunch Disrupt today, along with a call to entrepreneurs to join in a new gold rush of data that will be released in the coming months. Like how the GPS industry helped pave the way for iPhone apps, Park and VanRoekel hope to catalyze new industries in energy, education, security, and the nonprofit sector with the new open data guidelines. Additionally, they're opening up an application process for an executive fellows program (apply here; we'll have a post soon with more details).
Posted 4 hours 54 minutes ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

President Barack Obama is famous for his affinity for his BlackBerry and science fairs, but the tech love goes a lot further than that. Todd Park, the U.S. chief technology officer, today described the President as having a "very high geek quotient" with a "go go go" attitude when it comes to new tech initiatives -- which, yes, he likes in and of themselves, but more importantly as a means to an end. The comments were made during a fireside chat at TC Disrupt in New York, where Park along with U.S. CIO Steven VanRoekel also announced the government's big plans for opening up its data and courting developers.
Posted 4 hours 54 minutes ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

David Lawee, Google’s VP of Corporate Development, sat down for an informative chat with MG Siegler at Disrupt NYC this morning, and it wasn’t long before the conversation turned to Google’s track record with mergers and acquisitions. “We've done 120 acquisitions since 2003, maybe one in 2002,” Lawee said. "And two-thirds of them have been successful."
Posted 4 hours 54 minutes ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

iOS and Android aren't leaving much room for Firefox to burrow into mobile. "We knew there was going to be a transition from desktop being primary to mobile and tablet being primary" said Mozilla's former CEO and current board member John Lilly today at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC. "What I worry about, the scary part is that for the first time the platforms and distribution are tightly controlled before innovation has really started" Lilly explained that Internet Explorer once dominated web browsing and people said "How the hell do you break that?" But Firefox and Chrome came along and now the market is almost evenly split. But Lilly says "mobile's not like that. Mobile is these tied-down vertical stacks that are controlled by Google and Apple, so we have a new impossible problem to become relevant on mobile."
Posted 4 hours 54 minutes ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

Amazon is continuing to grow its collection of streaming video titles at Amazon Prime Instant Video, and is today announcing another new agreement with Paramount Pictures bringing "hundreds" of new movies to the service. This deal isn't as large as March's partnership with Discovery, which saw some 3,000 new titles added, but it does introduce what are arguably more big-name movies. Included in the deal are titles like Mission: Impossible 3, Braveheart, Forrest Gump, Mean Girls, Nacho Libre and Clueless, to name a few, and Amazon says more will be added "soon."
Posted 5 hours 55 minutes ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

Earlier this morning, our own John Biggs was joined on stage by a handful of New York-based makers who have made a name for themselves by building physical things (or in one case, building something that builds other things). Biggs kicked off the panel with a simple question: — can we bring manufacturing back? Bre Pettis, CEO of Makerbot Industries, has two shifts of workers putting together all of his Makerbots in Brooklyn, and had a bit of advice for hardware creators looking to shift production to China. He recommended that until makers need to produce runs of 50,000-100,000 units, they’re much better off keeping the production process in the United States. It helps to keep makers intimate with their tech, not to mention makes it easier for them to handle any unexpected issues faster.
Posted 5 hours 55 minutes ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

Online video advertising startup YuMe has picked up another $10 million in financing from WestSummit Capital, closing out a $22 million strategic round that was originally announced last November. The round was led by Samsung Ventures and also included Translink Capital. YuMe founder Jayant Kadambi confirmed the raise, and told me by email that the funding will be used primarily to expand into more connected devices. YuMe provides a platform for delivering ads against online videos, but has recently been adding support for connected TVs.
Posted 5 hours 55 minutes ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story

[tc_5min code="517376342"] TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Alley is jam-packed with interesting startups and it's always frustrating that we can't get to film every single one. However, we do our best and you'll find that Techcrunch Jordan Crook and I manage to get through plenty in this walk-through. Amongst the companies we caught were Wibbitz, UppSite, Tokkster, Drippler and Clinch. You can view all of our Startup Alley companies from Tuesday here. And from Monday here.
Posted 5 hours 55 minutes ago - 05/23/12 - Full Story