RIM’s upcoming tablet might come packing a brand new OS instead of a large screen version of OS 6. According to Bloomberg, three separate sources indicated that the new operating system is coming from infotanment company QNX Software Systems that RIM bought back in April. This new system allows the BlackPad — or whatever it will be called — to have a fresh OS rather than being held back by the legacy parts of OS 6.

Perhaps this news, if it’s true, shows that RIM has put a bit more work into the upcoming tablet than I previously thought. However, other details in the Bloomberg report still doesn’t sway my original opinion that the BlackPad will be an also-ran. Even a new OS won’t save the BlackPad.

Virtual goods marketplace platform Playspan has raised $18 million in Series C funding led by Vodafone Ventures and Softbank Bodhi Fund, with existing investors Menlo Ventures, Novel TMT Ventures, STIC, and others participating in the round. This brings the startup’s total funding to a whopping $42 million.

PlaySpan powers virtual goods marketplaces across 1,000 video games and virtual world publishers and. PlaySpan-powered marketplaces lets users sell, exchange and purchase online game items, virtual goods, and game currencies for online games and applications. The platforms also allow publishers to managing global micropayments, ecommerce, and micro-transactions across 180 countries. And the company operates virtual goods storefronts on Facebook, MySpace, within games and on its standalone site.

As virtual goods becomes a booming business, PlaySpan has reaped the benefits of technology and media companies looking to incorporate virtual goods into their platforms. The startup has scored a number of high profile deals to power micropayments for social networks, game developers, media companies and gaming platforms. Customers include Sanrio, Adobe, Viacom/Nickelodeon, Disney and Warner Brothers.

This is an undoubtedly impressive client list, considering that the company was founded by 12-year-old, Arjun Mehta, in 2006. The company is actually run by the teenager’s father, CEO and co-founder Karl Mehta.

And PlaySpan has steadily expanded its empire, acquiring micro-transaction app developer Spare Change so that its marketplace can power transactions.

Mehta tells me that PlaySpan is adding 20 new partners per month and has signed over 100 partners in 2010 alone. The new funding will be used to expand PlaySpan into Europe and Asia, aiming to capitalize on the growth in Asian gaming markets.

PlaySpan faces competition from Live Gamer and others. And of course, Google is entering the space with the launch Google Games and the acquisitions of Slide and Jambool.

Today sees the public launch of SaveWave, a digital promotion, distribution, and rewards fulfillment company recently spun out of Sallie Mae's Upromise Grocery operations.

The company, which is based in Belmont, MA, launches armed with $2.3 million in financing from a slew of high-rollers (more on that below).

SaveWave will take over the technology and operations that power Upromise's all-digital grocery coupons and plans the introduction of a white-label program for consumer packages goods brands, retailers, membership programs, and media companies to deliver nationwide grocery rewards.

The startup plans to launch this white label platform for select partners in the coming months. It will also feature mobile applications for consumers to activate coupons from their smartphones, enabling them to reach consumers at the grocery store looking for deals.

SaveWave manages Upromise's grocery service, a program through which Upromise's 12+ million members can earn college savings rewards by activating grocery offers online and redeeming them through their supermarket and drug store loyalty cards, saving them the hassle of clipping or printing coupons.

With 22,000 partner stores nationwide, SaveWave's platform is able to work with what they say constitutes the largest network of retailers enabling digital coupons in the United States, straight from the get-go.

Coinciding with its public launch, SaveWave has scored a $2.3 million Series A funding round led by Flybridge Capital Partners and First Round Capital with participation from Founder Collective, IA Capital and several angel investors, including Ron Conway and Upromise founder, former Chairman and CEO Michael Bronner.

As part of the funding, Jeff Bussgang, a general partner at Flybridge and co-founder and former President of Upromise, First Round Capital's Josh Kopelman, and Upromise President, David Coppins, will join SaveWave's Board of Directors.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Although it seems as if Foursquare and Facebook are new bosom buddies now that Foursquare has officially joined the Places parade, along with Yelp, Gowalla and Booyah— the popular geo-location service is clearly treading carefully.

During Wednesday’s presentations, many of the partners presented the outlines of comprehensive integration plans. For example, Booyah’s CEO Keith Lee announced the launch of InCrowd, a new social game specifically designed to leverage the functionality of Facebook Places. By comparison, Foursquare’s presentation was bare bones— a mere gesture that at some point in the near future Foursquare will find a way to take advantage of Places. The truth is they have no idea how this Places partnership will shake out.

Of course, these rivals are no strangers. The companies have been working together since last year, when Foursquare added Facebook integration (to allow users to push check-ins to Facebook’s feed). That foundation has led to a high level of interactivity and, according to Holger Luedorf, Foursquare’s new VP of Mobile, about 20% of Foursquare check-ins are now pushed to Facebook. Thus, it makes sense for Foursquare to want to ultimately closely integrate with Places. According to Luedorf, who sat down with us after the Places announcement (see video above), Foursquare has known about the project for a few weeks and their relationship is generally friendly. “It’s interesting to see how this plays out, but the discussions so far have been very amicable,” he says.

However, given the overlapping functionality of Places and Foursquare, and yes, what I imagine are still fresh wounds from a (rumored) Facebook takoever that almost happened, I don’t blame Dennis Crowley for taking some time to plot his next move. Interesting indeed.

Do you like sex with other people? Do you like Android? While it is my opinion that those two questions are mutually exclusive, someone, somewhere matches those two criteria. Thankfully, Cosmopolitan Magazine is there for them.

Basically, this is an app that shows sex positions, albeit in a cartoony way. Fair enough. Android is for pornographers, after all. And that’s basically the news, but I’d like to inject a little outrage into this otherwise mundane story.

Read more…

Intel has just bought computer and software security company McAfee according to a release issued this morning. The all cash deal is worth $7.68 billion, or $48 per share. See the release below.

According the statement issued by Intel, McAfee will continue to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary, reporting into Intel's Software and Services Group. Intel says the “acquisition enables a combination of security software and hardware from one company to ultimately better protect consumers, corporations and governments as billions of devices – and the server and cloud networks that manage them – go online.”

McAfee is one of the largest security technology companies in the world and saw $2 billion in revenue in 2009. Cyber security, whether it be on computers or mobile devices, is a lucrative business as internet use is on the rise. And McAfee also offers smartphone security software, through the recent acquisitions of Trust Digital and TenCube. Clearly, Intel wants a piece of the pie.

In fact, in the release, Intel’s president and CEO Paul Otellin called security the “third pillar of what people demand from all computing experiences,” behind energy-efficient performance and connectivity.

Intel also just acquired Texas Instruments' cable modem product line.

Intel Corporation has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire McAfee, Inc., through the purchase of all of the company's common stock at $48 per share in cash, for approximately $7.68 billion. Both boards of directors have unanimously approved the deal, which is expected to close after McAfee shareholder approval, regulatory clearances and other customary conditions specified in the agreement.

"In the past, energy-efficient performance and connectivity have defined computing requirements. Looking forward, security will join those as a third pillar of what people demand from all computing experiences."

The acquisition reflects that security is now a fundamental component of online computing. Today's security approach does not fully address the billions of new Internet-ready devices connecting, including mobile and wireless devices, TVs, cars, medical devices and ATM machines as well as the accompanying surge in cyber threats. Providing protection to a diverse online world requires a fundamentally new approach involving software, hardware and services.

Inside Intel, the company has elevated the priority of security to be on par with its strategic focus areas in energy-efficient performance and Internet connectivity.

McAfee, which has enjoyed double-digit, year-over-year growth and nearly 80 percent gross margins last year, will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intel, reporting into Intel's Software and Services Group. The group is managed by Renée James, Intel senior vice president, and general manager of the group.

"With the rapid expansion of growth across a vast array of Internet-connected devices, more and more of the elements of our lives have moved online," said Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO. "In the past, energy-efficient performance and connectivity have defined computing requirements. Looking forward, security will join those as a third pillar of what people demand from all computing experiences.

"The addition of McAfee products and technologies into the Intel computing portfolio brings us incredibly talented people with a track record of delivering security innovations, products and services that the industry and consumers trust to make connecting to the Internet safer and more secure," Otellini added.

"Hardware-enhanced security will lead to breakthroughs in effectively countering the increasingly sophisticated threats of today and tomorrow," said James. "This acquisition is consistent with our software and services strategy to deliver an outstanding computing experience in fast-growing business areas, especially around the move to wireless mobility."

"McAfee is the next step in this strategy, and the right security partner for us," she added. "Our current work together has impressive prospects, and we look forward to introducing a product from our strategic partnership next year."

"The cyber threat landscape has changed dramatically over the past few years, with millions of new threats appearing every month," said Dave DeWalt, president and CEO of McAfee. "We believe this acquisition will result in our ability to deliver a safer, more secure and trusted Internet-enabled device experience."

McAfee, based in Santa Clara and founded in 1987, is the world's largest dedicated security technology company with approximately $2 billion in revenue in 2009. With approximately 6,100 employees, McAfee's products and technologies deliver secure solutions and services to consumers, enterprises and governments around the world and include a strong sales force that works with a variety of customers.

The company has a suite of software-related security solutions, including end-point and networking products and services that are focused on helping to ensure Internet-connected devices and networks are protected from malicious content, phony requests and unsecured transactions and communications. Among others, products include McAfee Total Protection™, McAfee Antivirus, McAfee Internet Security, McAfee Firewall, McAfee IPS as well as an expanding line of products targeting mobile devices such as smartphones.

Intel has made a series of recent and successful software acquisitions to pursue a deliberate strategy focused on leading companies in their industry delivering software that takes advantage of silicon. These include gaming, visual computing, embedded device and machine software and now security.

Home to two of the most innovative labs and research in the high-tech industry, Intel and McAfee will also jointly explore future product concepts to further strengthen security in the cloud network and myriad of computers and devices people use in their everyday lives.

On a GAAP basis, Intel expects the combination to be slightly dilutive to earnings in the first year of operations and approximately flat in the second year. On a non-GAAP basis, excluding a one-time write down of deferred revenue when the transaction closes and amortization of acquired intangibles, Intel expects the combination to be slightly accretive in the first year and improve beyond that.

Not according to me – I haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting both women in person, unlike Justin Timberlake – but according to security software company McAfee, which has just published the fourth version of its delightfully linkbaity report entitled “McAfee Most Dangerous Celebrities™” (see, I linked, so the strategy works!).

McAfee purports that its research shows that searching for photos, information or videos of the famous actress is super duper dangerous. According to the company, there’s a ten percent chance of landing on a website that's tested positive for online threats, such as spyware, adware, spam, phishing, viruses and other malware when looking for shots and whatnot of La Diaz on the Web.

Last year, actress Jessica Biel took the top spot in the ranking, which means … well, I don’t know what the heck that’s supposed to mean, but the stats don’t ever lie and if McAfee says Biel is now the third most dangerous celebrity on the Web instead of numero uno, than I’d like to see your counter-arguments, damned!

(On a sidenote, McAfee was just acquired by Intel for oh, $7.86 billion in cash)

Not that the report bears not a single nugget of uplifting news, fortunately.

"This year, the search results for celebrities are safer than they've been in previous years, but there are still dangers when searching online," said Dave Marcus, security researcher for McAfee Labs.

Thanks for giving us the heads up, Dave! Let us know when it’s safe again!

Here’s the full list of the top 5 celebrities from this year's study, with the highest percentages of risk (you’ll have to click the link at the top for the top 10 list):

As for less dangerous celebrities: McAfee says Justin Bieber (who is that? he keeps popping up in my Twitter stream continuously) ranked towards the bottom of the list at #46. Also not very dangerous: U.S. President Barack Obama (#49) and Sarah Palin (#50).

I’m in need of some very strong coffee now, if you’ll excuse me.

Credit card juggernaut MasterCard has agreed to acquire DataCash Group in a bid to drive its e-commerce payment expansion in the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and Australia.

U.S.-based MasterCard, which makes money from processing credit and debit card payments on its network, said it would pay 360 pence per share for the British processor of Internet credit-card sales, representing a 54 percent premium to the company’s Wednesday close.

The deal represents approximately £333 million (roughly $520 million), to be paid in cash.

The news has sent shares DataCash flying: they rose more than 50% today so far. DataCash is listed on the London Stock Exchange.

The news comes a couple of months after rival Visa acquired another major e-payment company, Cybersource, for a total consideration of approximately $2 billion in cash.

DataCash offers a single, comprehensive interface that provides e-commerce merchants with the ability to process secure payments across the world. The European payment service provider develops and provides outsourced electronic payments solutions, fraud prevention, alternative payment options, back-office reconciliation and solutions for merchants selling via multiple channels. The company also markets a fraud solutions and technology platform.

In 2009, DataCash says it processed more than 240 million transactions for more than 1,400 merchants in a variety of sectors. Last year, DataCash reported revenue of £36.9 million (US$58 million). The company employs 362 people worldwide with operations in London, Dublin, Mannheim and Cape Town.

Here’s how MasterCard president and CEO Ajay Banga pitched the buy:

"E-commerce represents an important part of MasterCard's growth strategy, and this acquisition will allow us to provide new services to our acquiring customers, as well as drive increased e-commerce penetration in both existing and new markets.

The acquisition of DataCash will expand our already significant e-commerce merchant gateway presence in Asia and Australia to European countries and other high-growth, emerging markets worldwide."

MasterCard expects the transaction to be approximately $0.05 dilutive to its fourth quarter 2010 earnings per share.

The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions as well as DataCash shareholder approval, is expected to close by the end of October 2010.

Sometimes, hurling a timeless classic into modern times can be a formula for success. Case-in-point P-Kama, an Israeli company with $1.8M in funding that purchased the licensing rights to market Rummikub online.

What’s Rummikub, you ask? True, it’s not as synonymous with boardgames as Monopoly is, but the tile-based game sells 3 million units a year globally. Add an avid following since the seventies, and you can quickly come to the conclusion that it might not be a bad idea to try pressing Rummikub’s luck in the times of the social Web.

That is precisely what P-Kama has done with its recently debuted Rummikub for Facebook app, which can also be played right on Rummikub.com thanks to Facebook Connect.

Rummikub is a multiplayer game whose objective is to create either a sets three tiles bearing the same figure in different colors, or sets of runs—three consecutive numbers in the same color.

The first player to place all the tiles on their rack on the table wins.

From Wikipedia:

Rummikub’s main component is a pool of 106 tiles, consisting of 104 number tiles and two joker tiles. The number tiles range in value from one to thirteen, in four colors (black, yellow, blue and red).

Each combination of color and number is represented twice. Players each have a rack to store tiles, without revealing them to the other players, similar to that used in Scrabble.

In Rummikub’s online version, game play takes place in both private and public rooms that accommodate up to four players at a time. Extra bells and whistles include video chat and throwing of tomatoes at slow-playing opponents.

Unsurprisingly, Rummikub is running a virtual goods ecosystem based on ‘Joker Credits’ as currency. The credits can be used to purchase entry to tournaments, as well as gifts and room themes. For example, gifts players can send each other during a game cost 1-3 Joker Credits, room themes can cost up to 20. Pricing is tiered, where 50 credits will run you $5, 150 credits will cost $10, and so on.

Will Rummikub be the next Zynga Poker? Probably not, but with a third of its users being women in the 20-40 yearold demographic (a virtual goods sweet spot), it could still make loot.

Less than one hour after Facebook struck the ceremonial gong, signaling the official birth of Places, the ACLU of Northern California was ready to cry foul play.

In a 429-word post titled, “Facebook Places: Check This Out, Before You Check In,” the ACLU branch rips the new feature for a perceived lack of user control, complaining (in dramatically bold font) that “in the world of Facebook Places, "no" is unfortunately not an option.” While this anonymous ACLU member may have a real knack for writing movie trailers, I don’t buy the case they’re building against Facebook.  To be honest, I’ve never been a fan of Facebook’s history with privacy, but they are making a real effort to dial up privacy with Places.

So while all sins are not forgiven, let’s start with a solid B for Places and a promise not to burn them at the stake (at least not today). First, let’s walk through what you need to know as a user (this post is updated with further clarification from Facebook’s Director of Policy Communications, Barry Schnitt).

Facebook will not automatically broadcast your location data. You cannot pass go, you cannot collect $200, until you give Facebook the greenlight. As a first time user, you have to check-in yourself via the iPhone app or touch.facebook.com or your friend has to check-in for you. If your friend tries to check you in, you have two options: pick “not now” or to accept friend check-ins (as implied, once you select yes, you will automatically accept friend check-ins). In their Places guide, the ACLU brings up the valid point that if you pick “not now,” you will continue to receiving annoying check-in requests every time a friend tags you. Of course, there’s an easy fix, simply go into your privacy settings, click on “customize settings” under “Sharing On Facebook,” scroll down to the second section (“Things Others Share”) and switch “Friends Can Check Me Into Places” to disabled.

Places will tell you when your friend has checked you in. Similar to photo tags, you will be notified every time a friend checks you in. And like photos, you can untag yourself. The ACLU and other critics are wagging their fingers at Facebook for automating this process and not giving the user the choice to accept or reject every single request. Facebook had to make a judgment call here, between enhancing control and making the experience easy and enjoyable. As a new user, I would be frustrated by a service that demanded my attention for every friend check-in. Of course there is a chance that a rampaging ex-girlfriend or arch nemesis will exploit this tool to slander your good name, tying you to trysts that never happened or houses of ill repute—- then again, there is that nifty difty defriend option.

Here Now is not the devil. This is probably the most controversial aspect of Places. The feature is enabled by default if you have loose privacy settings, however, it is not enabled if you’ve set your master privacy control to Friends of Friends or Friends or if you’ve customized your settings to be restrictive.

Under “People Here Now,”  you can see who else has checked into a location with you. This public check-in  (which is only public to those that have checked into the location) is only available for a short period of time. In a longer post detailing the features of Places, the ACLU chided Facebook for not giving users granular controls on Here Now. The ACLU claims that users can only choose between enable and disable and cannot narrow their Here Now audience to just friends or something more customized. While Here Now is technically an on or off switch, by turning it off and customizing your Places profile, Facebook effectively achieves the ACLU’s demands. As Facebook’s Director of Policy Communications, Barry Schnitt told us, “By configuring the Places I Check-In setting, which can be configured granularly, and turning off Here Now, you guarantee that only the people you specify will see you on a Place page. Their [the ACLU] suggestion adds complexity without adding any utility and we are very surprised that a privacy advocate would be taking such a position, especially after all of the progress we’ve made in making control on Facebook simple and easy to use.”

The default is friends-only. When you begin completing and accepting check-ins only your friends can see your activity, not your friends or friends or your college network, just your friends. I can’t really give Facebook a lot of credit for this one, it’s just good common sense. Under your privacy settings you can customize this further, even selecting which friends can see your check-ins. Considering the sensitivity around location, I think Zuckerberg & Co. recognized early on that any default less than “friends only” would be an open invitation for privacy sharks.

Your apartment is safe. During the press conference, someone asked the Facebook team what would happen if someone turned their apartment into a “place” on Facebook, how could they protect their privacy in that situation? We spoke to Facebook Product Manager Michael Sharin who says the company has a strong system in place to rapidly accept complaints from users. While there is no set time frame for handling a red flag, he says problems will be dealt with swiftly and often within 24 hours. See video below.

Sharing is not always caring: the ACLU’s best point. There is one place where I find common ground with the ACLU: Facebook’s policy when it comes to sharing location information with third-party applications. As a user, the applications you install will need your explicit permission to get your check-in information. That’s valid, however, if your friend has weak privacy settings, s/he is free to share your check-in information to applications and Connect partners. This can be easily remedied by unchecking a box in your privacy settings but it is permitted by default.  According to Schnitt, this exchange exposes information on your “check-ins, details about a place, ability to search for places and check-ins from friends.”

Not surprisingly, Facebook claims this is all in the name of creating “new social experiences with location.”

I completely agree that it will ultimately enhance applications (and Facebook’s bottom line) but this should be an opt-in service. For example, when you first check-in or accept check-ins, Facebook should immediately ask you if you want to give your friends’ applications access to your check-in data. To be fair to its users, Facebook needs to increase the visibility of this feature. Because nlike the other settings, like Here Now, this exchange takes place in the background and I suspect the vast majority of Facebook users will not know that their data is being quietly siphoned off by their friends’ applications.

If after all this you’re still thrusting your pitchfork in the air, you can always click here.

More information can be found on Facebook’s blog post here.

(Top image via Flickr/Colin Purrington)

Lunascape, the company behind the eponymous triple-engine browser for desktop PCs, has just released its first browser created specifically for the iPad. Dubbed iLunascape, the browser is available for free in the App Store, and it’s a more than solid alternative to Safari on the iPad.

Most importantly, iLunascape allows for desktop-like tabbed browsing on the iPad (a first for a free app). Up to six tabs can be opened at the same time, and users can switch between them easily via thumb taps. Tabbed browsing works great (and fast), especially because iLunascape comes with a iPad-specific UI that takes into account how most people actually hold and use the device (see below).

The so-called “In Reach Interface” clusters not only all tabs but also most buttons (page forward/back, search, home, etc.) at the bottom of the screen in both portrait and landscape mode. In other words, all major functions can be reached quickly, without having to move your fingers across the screen.

Other features include a screenshot capture and storage function, rotation lock, and “simple bookmarking”. iPad users should definitely give iLunascape a spin (again, it’s free). Other browsers for the device include Atomic ($0.99), Perfect ($2.99), and iCab Mobile ($2.99).

On the left is the logo for Facebook’s newly launched geolocational product Facebook Places, on the right is the logo for the current leader in the space Foursquare. Notice anything interesting?

So Facebook, between the hoodie, the gong and this I’m starting to think you guys are just baiting me. And while I do not think this was intentional, I’m once again way too sober to opine. I’ll let our resident MobileGear humorist Greg Kumparak take it from here:

“Bahaha. It’s a 4. In a square. And on that night, tongue and cheek were reunited.”

H/T: Tim Shey

Update: And because Foursquare shouldn’t have all the fun, here’s Sean Percival’s Gowalla-inspired homage …

More about Facebook Places:

• Facebook's Awesome Dark Knight-Esque Live Check-In Display
• Facebook Places Goes Live On The iPhone. Check-In While It's Hot (If You Can)
• Facebook Wants Advertisers To Help Build Out Its Directory of Places
• Facebook Has Been Working On This Location Feature For 8 Months
• Facebook Partnering With Gowalla And Foursquare For Places
• Facebook Places Coming To The iPhone App Tonight. Check-Ins With Friend Tagging
• Live From Facebook's Location Event (Video Stream)
• Spotted: Facebook Location In Action. Meet Facebook Places!

This is crazy – and terribly sad – and we didn’t become aware of it until a few hours ago. But former TechCrunch intern Andrew Phillips’ father died in the Alaska plane crash last week. We reported on Senator Ted Stevens passing in that crash, but we weren’t aware that Andrew’s father Bill Phillips, who was formerly Stevens’ chief of staff, was also on the plane.

Andrew’s younger brother Willy Phillips was also on the plane and survived, and is expected to recover fully. His worst injury was a broken leg, which occurred after the plane crashed.

Andrew and two of his brothers were on ESPN First Take on Wednesday morning to talk about their father. All three of the older brother play division 1 college football, and they plan on establishing a fund in honor of their father that will assist college athletes in time of need. We’ll make a donation and post details as soon as it’s established.

Thanks to ESPN for letting us pull this video into our system so that we can embed it properly (Andrew is on the right). And Andrew, our heart goes out to you and your family.

If you hate the idea of Facebook gaining a location element, you’re really going to hate this. It’s awesome.

Tonight, immediately after their Places launch event, the company flipped the switch (an actual switch, by the way) to make the location product live. While it was a few hours before the new location-enabled iPhone app went live, touch.facebook.com went live for millions of users around the U.S. right away. And Facebook had some giant projections to showcase that.

As you can see in the video below and image above, all across the U.S. people immediately began checking-in when Facebook turned the feature on. Oh look, there’s Vikas at San Francisco Fine Arts. Oh, there’s Alex at Jenkins Canyon. Etc. Those glowing dots are people checking in. And big clusters of glowing dots mean a lot of people are checking-in in those areas (New York, San Francisco, LA, and a few other obvious ones).

Obviously, Facebook was just showing people’s first names to placate those worried about the privacy ramifications of such a wall. It’s a little like that wall of sonar monitors from The Dark Knight — which is to say, awesome.

It’s also a bit like Apple’s App Wall:

More about Facebook Places:

• Facebook Places Goes Live On The iPhone. Check-In While It's Hot (If You Can)
• Facebook Wants Advertisers To Help Build Out Its Directory of Places
• Facebook Has Been Working On This Location Feature For 8 Months
• Facebook Partnering With Gowalla And Foursquare For Places
• Facebook Places Coming To The iPhone App Tonight. Check-Ins With Friend Tagging
• Live From Facebook's Location Event (Video Stream)
• Spotted: Facebook Location In Action. Meet Facebook Places!

Here’s some infographic perspective on the eve of Facebook’s copycat Facebook Places launch, which has some ringing the death knell for location based startups Foursquare and Gowalla.

A stroll through the Google graveyard is a lesson in how rarely it works out when successful companies stop focusing on their core competency to go after the little guys. Between Wave, Jaiku, and Foursquare precursor Dodgeball, Google’s a repeat offender in the “failing to kill the next big thing” department.

With the launch of today’s check-in utility, it seems like the Facebook product team might be following in the search giant’s startup-crushing footsteps. After all, when was the last time you asked a Facebook Question?

Image: Wordstream

Perhaps you’ve heard: Facebook just released their new location feature called Places. If not, we have about a dozen posts about it that we recommend. But the obvious next question is what this means for those already in the space — and specifically the current buzz leader, Foursquare. Sure, they’re partnering with Facebook on the API launch, but are they in trouble? They don’t seem too worried about it. Instead, it’s expansion time.

Foursquare is on the verge of opening their first office outside of their New York City headquarters, we’ve confirmed with the company. Shortly, they will open an office in San Francisco’s SoMa district. Both new Foursquare VP of Mobile, Holger Luedorf (who was on-hand at the event tonight), and VP of Business Development, Tristan Walker, will be based out of that office, we’re told. And they hope to hire a couple more people to work there soon too.

The building Foursquare has chosen as their west coast home is one that is becoming a hot bed for startups: the San Francisco Chronicle Building. Currently, both the mobile payment startup Square and the gadget community startup gdgt call that building home, among others. The choice also continues Foursquare’s tradition of taking over old media spaces — their current NYC headquarters is in The Village Voice building (which Foursquare just took over another floor of).

It’s interesting that both Foursquare and rival Gowalla were able to build their startups without a major presence in Silicon Valley up until now. Though, to be fair, Walker has been based out here from the beginning, as he was still a student at Stanford when he started at Foursquare (and actually just graduated). Gowalla is based in Austin, Texas.

Obviously the lack of major Valley presence hasn’t been detrimental to Foursquare’s growth — but the new office shouldn’t hurt either. But the real question is: who will be the first to check-in? My money is on Luedorf.

[photo: flickr/niallkennedy]

Total Beauty Media is adding to its quickly-growing fashion empire. The Santa Monica-based startup operates cosmetics tips and review site TotalBeauty, BeautyRiot, and ModernMan (the latter as a joint venture with Break Media). Now, it has acquired LimeLife, a woman’s lifestyle portal in an all-stock deal. The value of the acquisition is not being disclosed, but it is less than the $21 million raised by LimeLife since 2005.

Limelife is struggling as a women’s lifestyle site on the Web, but on mobile it is doing much better, with about 2 million monthly mobile visitors (versus only 750,000 for the Website). Much of this traffic comes from being placed on the carrier deck of many feature phones. LimeLife will bring the company’s total reach to about 6 million people a month, including its ad network of about 40 fashion blogs and other sites. Most of Total Beauty’s traffic is driven by search.

With the LimeLife acquisition, Total Beauty will also get some mobile technology still in development called MySnaps, which works as a Web bookmarking tool now. The mobile version will let women snap pictures of products they want to buy in stores and share them instantly with their friends, who get the to vote on it (similar social shopping ideas have been tried before, see JustBoughtIt and iliketotallyloveit).

Total Beauty is trying to pull together a cosmetics and fashion-oriented audience for advertisers. CEO Emrah Kovacoglu used to be the global digital brand manager for Procter & Gamble before leaving to start Total Beauty Media in 2007. “At P&G,” he says, “we couldn't find enough inventory online. I saw how much money we planned to shift.” So he created a place where women could learn about cosmetics, and rate and review different products. If he could bring the women, he knew he could get the advertisers. He estimates $300 million to $500 million will be spent this year in the U.S. on online advertising for beauty products alone.

The company has raised $16 million in three rounds from Wallington Investments and U.S. Venture Partners. Revenues are ramping from $2.5 million in 2009 to $10 million in 2010 well within reach. The first half of the year already brought in $4 million, and the majority of revenues usually comes in the second half. Sounds like just the kind of company Demand Media might want to buy.

At Facebook’s Places event earlier tonight, they noted that their iPhone app would be updated tonight with the new check-in functionality. Sure enough, here it is. Though the App Store update alert hasn’t kicked in yet, if you go to the actual page and redownload it, it should be the latest version (version 3.2).

As you can see, the new Places area is front and center in the app. Clicking on it brings up a list of your friends who have recently checked in to various places. Clicking on those friends shows more details about the place they are at.

Friend check-ins are sorted by those friends who are nearby and those who are elsewhere. Your stream will now show these Places check-ins as well.

One thing that’s oddly tricky is actually checking-in yourself. I seriously cannot figure out how to do it right now. Lemme know what I’m missing. We were told it may be a while before the full funtionality rolls out to the app, so perhaps Facebook is holding some small element back for the time being. [Update below from Facebook]

Still, on the touch.facebook.com version of the site the functionality is working and seems much more obvious.

You’ll also notice that Facebook has changed the Inbox icon on their new app. And to make room for Places, the Notes element of the app has been moved on to the second page.

Again, you can find the latest version of the app here — sadly, it’s only available for U.S. users for the time being.

Update: A number of people in the U.S. are also reporting seeing messages that Places isn’t available in their area yet. It appears that Facebook is slowly rolling this out. Stay tuned.

Update 2: I’ve just spoken with Facebook and they informed me that even though the app is live, the Places functionality isn’t rolled out to everyone just yet. That’s why some people see the message that it’s not available in their area — and why others can’t yet check-in. Facebook wants to make sure their servers can handle the load that is inevitably coming so it will be a roll out over the next day or two I’m told.

Here are some quick pictures of what the new app looks like:

As we heard tonight, Facebook has officially launched Places, the social network’s location-based platform. We know what Places will mean for Facebook users. Users will be able to check-in to Places (created by both people and businesses) via the web or through mobile apps. And the feature has an API so partners like Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and Booyah can allow their users to check-in to Facebook’s places. But what does this mean for businesses? Interestingly, Facebook seems to actively be targeting advertisers on the network. It is already distributing a how-to guide for registering a Place page for their businesses, the benefits and more. You can find the guide here and we’ve embedded the document below.

Facebook is wasting no time encouraging advertisers to start registering their businesses. The social network may be starting from behind, but it wants to ramp up its directory quickly and is encouraging advertisers to create their own Places Here’s how Facebook markets Places to advertisers in its how-to guide:

Places creates a presence for your business's physical store locations- encouraging your customers to share that they've visited your business by "checking in" to your Place. When your customer checks into your Place, these check-in stories can generate powerful, organic impressions in friends' News Feeds, extending your brand's reach to new customers.

Of course, many advertisers and businesses may be confused about the need for both a Page and a Place. But those can be merged. However, Facebook says that not all advertiser Pages and Places can be merged at this time and those businesses who should merge, will be contacted directly by Facebook.

One incentive that Facebook is using to encourage businesses to create a Places page is advertising. Facebook says that “Once you claim your Place, you'll be able to advertise it just as you advertise your Facebook Page. To advertise your Place, click “I want to advertise something I have on Facebook” in the ad creation flow and choose your Place from the drop-down menu.” Advertising is completely self serve and seems fairly simple. Currently, you cannot target people who check-in to your Place, but a business can target people who 'Like' your Place page if you have performed a Page to Place merge.

With these sorts of incentives and a potentially hot new feature that’s will be put in front of hundreds of millions of Facebook members, what advertiser and business wouldn’t want to create a Places page? Many businesses have already been flocking to Facebook as both and advertising and marketing platform, and now they can have their address, map, phone number, PLUS all the public social activity that is going on at a location. A merged Places page will include a considerable amount of information, including the number of check-ins, who checked-in to a place, number of Likes, the Places’ Wall, and more.

And by creating a social directory of local businesses, Facebook can turn on another massive revenue stream. We know that ad spending on Facebook is expected to be around $1.3 billion in 2010 but Places could boost this significantly as Places lets Facebook tap into the market for local advertising.

Of course, the race to create a widespread directory of places is already full of competitors. Between AOL’s Patch, IAC’s CityGrid, and even Google Places, technology giants are seeing the inherent value and revenue that come from having such a platform. But Facebook has two things that Google, AOL, and IAC cannot buy: a fast growing social user base of 500 million members worldwide and advertisers who are flocking in droves to spend money on the network.

Chegg’s textbook rental business continues to grow like crazy – we’ve estimated 2010 revenues of $130 million, for example. And the company is now starting to acquire businesses complimentary to their core focus. First up is CourseRank, founded in 2007 by three stanford students. Total funding raised by CourseRank is $0 – it’s “Mountain Dew funded to date,” says Chegg.

CourseRank helps students choose classes, and 95% of Stanford students use it, says the company.UC Berkeley, Duke, Cornell and other universities and colleges in the U.S. and Canada now use it as well. The company now has five employees.

From the CourseRank website:

CourseRank is a website that aims to streamline the process of choosing the right courses for each student, and helping students take advantage of the diverse opportunities offered at their university. The website is specifically tailored to each university and provides students with all the information they need to help plan their academic careers. Features provided by the website include: Student courses ratings and reviews, a planner to help organize your academic career and grades, a weekly schedule of your courses – which you can share with your friends, and a place for you to find your books for next semester!

Chegg has raised $144 million in venture and debt capital since 2007, and hired former Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig as CEO earlier this year.

]

Today at an event at their headquarters in Palo Alto, CA, Facebook unveiled their new Places product — their location/check-in solution. Obviously, their entry in this space has been rumored for a long time — a very long time. But during the Q&A session, someone asked how long Facebook has actually been working on this Places product. Since December, one of the engineers in charge of the product replied.

But he also revealed that there have been other “skunkworks” projects internally at Facebook surrounding location long before that. The past 8 months have just been specifically focused on what is now called Places. CEO Mark Zuckerberg stepped in to say that Facebook was focused on the question of “what is a good set of features and a good product?” He noted that they wanted to make sure they were building something different than what everyone else already had built.

Zuckerberg specifically called out the tagging aspect of the product as being unique. With Places, you can actually tag friends when you check-in.

“There was so much to do before we launched this,” Zuckerberg said with a smile on his face. He said that what they’re focusing on at launch is a solid core. The three main things they’re focusing on is helping people share where they are, helping people see who is around them, and helping people seeing what’s going on. The basics.

When asked about checking-in to watching television shows or the like, Zuckerberg joked, “there’s a lot of stuff we’re not doing.”

More about Facebook Places:

• Facebook Partnering With Gowalla And Foursquare For Places
• Facebook Places Coming To The iPhone App Tonight. Check-Ins With Friend Tagging
• Spotted: Facebook Location In Action. Meet Facebook Places!
• Live From Facebook's Location Event (Video Stream)

Madhu Yarlagadda, who joined Skype as Chief Development Officer last month, has left the company. Generally speaking executives don’t leave a startup as it jumps into the IPO process, and they certainly don’t leave after just a month on the job. Yarlagadda was previously a VP Engineering, Messenger, at Yahoo.

The New York Times says he left after scathing comments on TechCrunch about his new role at Skype came to the attention of Skype executives. The post they’re referring to has dozens of extremely detailed negative comments about Yarlagadda, although we’ve deleted the worst of them. That level of uniform negativity was unprecedented in our experience.

In the past we’ve occasionally wholesale deleted negative comments about an individual, particularly since most of these comments tend to be anonymous. But in this case we were threatened with legal action by his wife almost immediately as the comments started flowing:

One of your blog has total misinformation/lies that are being fed on a daily basis since July 6th, it will likely warrant legal action. We want to get in touch with your contact person before the situation escalates further.

That freezes us as our attorneys get involved, and at that point we contacted Skype for their position on the situation. Yarlagadda backed off though, and I was planning on eventually quietly deleting the negative anonymous comments.

But then Yarlagadda made another mistake – he reached out to former colleagues and asked them to write positive comments to counteract the negative ones. Some positive comments came in, but others simply pointed out his request. Said one commenter “Like many others, I received an email from Madhu yesterday pleading for me to write a positive testimony of his work on this website. I never liked him and am surprised he didn’t pick that up in our interactions. Maybe he just emailed everyone he still knows at Yahoo! I can’t say we had many negative interactions together but his reputation as a politicker was well known and so I stayed far away from him.”

I’m not very pleased that any of this happened. We spend a lot of time moderating comments and generally try to remove random negative stuff about individuals. But in this case the outpouring of negativity was detailed and overwhelming. And the threat of legal action ensured that we weren’t going to do anything very quickly about it. It’s just a bad situation all around.

Today at an event in Palo Alto, CA, Facebook unveiled its new Places product — essentially their check-in utility. Obviously, there has been a lot of talk about what this means for the current players like Foursquare and Gowalla. Well, Facebook is partnering with both of those guys. We hinted at this possibility a couple days ago.

Representatives from both Gowalla and Foursquare were invited to take the stage at the event to talk about how they plan to leverage Facebook’s new Places API. Both will allow you to check-in and publish the data to your Facebook feed. Your badges and pins from each of those apps will transfer over as well. As we expected, Facebook is playing nice with these guys — and they’re clearly excited to play nicely back given Facebook’s 500 million users.

Yelp and Booyah (maker of MyTown) are also launch partners for this new API. Booyah is actually making a new app called InCrowd build on the Places API. WIth Yelp, you’ll be able to transfer your check-ins both to and from Facebook as well.

One interesting thing Facebook brought up is the ability to quickly tag venues you find to save for later. This is expected to launch soon as a new feature.

Facebook says the Places read API will be available tomorrow. Meanwhile a write & search Places API is in closed beta.

More on Facebook Places:

• Facebook Places Goes Live On The iPhone. Check-In While It's Hot (If You Can)
• Facebook Wants Advertisers To Help Build Out Its Directory of Places
• Facebook Has Been Working On This Location Feature For 8 Months
• Facebook Places Coming To The iPhone App Tonight. Check-Ins With Friend Tagging
• Live From Facebook's Location Event (Video Stream)

Today at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, CA, the company held an event to show off their new Places product — essentially their check-in service. We spotted in the wild a bit early, but that was only on the touch.facebook.com site (the site built specifically for touchscreen devices). Later tonight, it will be a central part of the new Facebook iPhone app as well.

In the introductory video that Facebook showed off to kick off the event, they showed a bit of the app. It looks like its integration is seamless. There will be a new Places icon in the very middle of the app. Just as with Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt and the rest, you’ll be able to check-in to any venue you’re at. Or if the venue isn’t in the system, you can add it.

When you check-in you’ll be able to see which of your friends are in the same venue as you. And, interestingly, you’ll be able to tag friends who are checking in with you — this will obviously be huge given Facebook’s social graph.

This functionality will also work on the touch.facebook.com site, apparently.

Facebook is careful to mention the privacy ramifications of this. First of all, you can only tag people you are friends with on these check-ins. Also, by default, your check-ins will only be visible to people you’re friends with (though you can change this to be visible to everyone). You can also opt-out of having friends be able tag you in a location updates. This is found in the privacy page.

We’re at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, where the social network is finally unveiling its much-anticipated location feature, which will be called Places. We’ve already published the first screenshots of the new feature, but we’re about to get the full rundown on how it works and who Facebook is partnering with. The company has invited dozens of press to the event (it even shuttled some of them down from San Francisco), and it’s clear that it’s treating this as a very big deal.

I’m liveblogging my notes from the event below.

pic of zuck

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has taken the stage. Whenever we build something new we want to show to a bunch of people, we have a tradition of launch nights. The idea is to have everyone from the community come together, including people who want to write about, analyze, where we talk about the new things we’re doing.

“This will be a fun and interesting summer, we have a lot of new products coming out.” Today the thing we’re talking about isa new “Places” product we’ve been working on for a few months… a while. (people giggle — “I guess it’s been a little bit more than a few”.

We knew it was ready to go. I was out to dinner with my girlfriend in Menlo Park which I never go to. I’m showing her the product. She goes, hey Chris Cox and his fiance are at the restaurant right next to us. Isn’t that awesome?” It was at that moment, this serendipitous moment that we knew the product was ready to go.

Three purposes for this: Help you share where you are. Help you see who’s around you. And see what’s going on nearby.

Showing video of the feature. Shows it off on the iPhone app. The video feels a lot like something Apple would produce, showing friends chatting together with cuts to engineers talking about the product.

Michael Sharon, the product manager for Places, has taken the stage.

Getting started: launching it on touch.facebook.com and in a brand new iPhone app being released later tonight. A new icon will appear on the homesreen. Open it, and it will show you a list of friends, including those who are nearby. Looks a lot like Foursquare. As soon as you check in you’ll see a list of places around you. You can search for nearby locations. If they aren’t there, you can hit the ‘+’ symbol to add a place.
To add a place you type in a name and description.

ON a place page you have a recent activity section (a News Feed for that place). On the web, there are a number of different section. Far right has a cluster o profile images so you can see friends who have visited. Places is not about broadcasting your location to the world, it’s about sharing where you are with friends.

Tap Checkin button. You’ll see a preview of the story at the top, with a notice of what will happen (and a link to find out what’s going on). Once you agree, creates a new story on the Place page.

Here now lets you see friends and other people who may be checked in at the same place.

Photos is one of most popular peroducts on FB.

Can tag people in photos and status updates (use the @ symbol). Creates a story on their wall and on my wall. Everybody on FB is familiar with tagging in photos and status updates.

Tag friends with you as your’e checking in — you’ll see a list. It creates a story.

‘Why tagging’. Not everyone has an advanced phone, but people want to be part of it. Tagging is a way for us to connect that with everyone Facebook (so you just have to be friends with someone with an advanced phone is what they’re getting at).

When you hit “Allow”. It’s as if you checked in there yourself. Will show up on Wall, Recent Acitvity on Place page, and (one more).

If you click “Not Now” _ Shows up on firend’s wall and recent activity. But not on your profile. You don’t appear in the here now.

Privacy
Default checkin to be visible to friends only. :Can dial it down and restrict to a few specific people. Can remove any checkin from your phone or on the web.
In the here now section, only there after you agree to an opt in.

Tagging: You can only tag your friends. You can only tag your friends while you are checking in (if you want to check in a friend at a sleazy bar you have to check yourself in there). You’re notified whenever you’re tagged. You can always remove any tag.

You can opt out of having friends tag you at all. Can just hit ‘Disabled’

API
Read API available tomorrow. Write and Search API in closed beta. http://developers.facebook.com/docs/api/#places

Partners coming on stage.

Scott Raymond – CTO and cofounder of Gowalla.
Gowalla has a “continued commitment to Facebook”. UI/UX remains the same, stamps and photos inline. When you publish something you choose if you want to post to FB or not.

Holger Luedorf – VP Mobile and Partnerships from Foursquare.
“I think it’s a great thing for the industry. This validates that we’re on to something. This will be a much bigger thing going forward.” “I think there’s different reasons people use foursquare. Gaming element is one of them. Points/badges drove a lot of early engagement. Familiarized people with checkin. Have to keep in mind checkin is at the core of this. At foursquare we’re going to continue innovating and making it a better user experience.” Will have add to foursquare which lets you add information from websites to foursquare system and when you’re nearby you get reminded about it. With regard to Facebook API, looking forward to seeing how we’ll leverage that.” This was a bit odd — came off as a big promo for Foursquare with 20-30 seconds about Facebook.

Yelp has taken stage. Excited to use Facebook API. Our integration is straightforward, can share with just yelp or of course can share to Facebook. We’ll publish that, shows photo of business. Soon we’ll be launching something where you can read FB checkin into our Yelp mobile application.

Booyah CEO on stage. New product called InCrowd. In three weeks we’ve put out client app on iPhone, full Facebook places integration. Can read nearby listings from FB. Can write Checkins to feed. Can search. Has Graph API integration as well.

Facebook VP Product Chris Cox on stage. Ray Oldenburg sociologist talked about this. His take: there are three places that matter. Home, workplace, and the ‘third place’, which is bar, library etc. Where random run-ins happen. Made observation that tech was in danger of destroying the third place as people sit at home… Where is this headed? Maybe one day you go to a bar.

Put your magical ten years into the future phone down. Suddenly it starts to glow and says hey this is what you might order here, this is what your friends drink. Shows photos of what your friends did here. Physical reality we’re in comes alive with stories we’ve told there.

Q: If someone creates a place at my house what control do I have over that.
A: We have visibility rules so if you create a place it will only be visible to you and your friends but if enough people check in then we say it’s something a lot of people are interested in and make it public.

You can imagine world of things that can be built. Photo tag with location etc. (dodged question on monetization)

Rolling out in US first. Won’t have full coverage of all 500 million people using FB immediately. If you’re not in US can still see posts from friends who are using it in the US.

Blackberry/Android. Right now we do have plans to add to all applications that would be able to support it (no timeline). At launch I showed you eample of web version of Place page. If it’s your business can click link at bottom of page and claim that page of your own. It becomes a business page.

This was a skunkworks thing internally. It was around Dec last year that the team came together around this specific vision. One of main things team had to figure out — what is a good set of features/product that’s different from what everyone else has built?

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