Twilio, the service that enables developers to add SMS And telephony functionality to their applications with a relatively small amount of work, wants to make sure it keeps growing at a rapid pace. And to do that it’s turning to an age-old tactic: it’s slashing prices across the board.

Twilio is now serving nearly 20,000 developers, and it says that it’s using its growing volume to negotiate better deals with the telephony providers it works with (it’s also sacrificing some of its margins, but believes it will recoup those and then some as price adjustment drives further growth in its development base). And for many developers the changes are substantial — in some cases, CEO Jeff Lawson says that a developer using Twilio will see as much as 66% in savings.

The change primarily comes from the way Twilio charges for inbound and outbound calls. Before now any inbound call, and then any subsequent outbound call made as a result, cost developers 3 cents per minute. But Lawson says that many developers only used the first, inbound leg and didn’t take advantage of that second, outbound call, which meant they were paying 3 cents a minute for functionality they weren’t using. Today the two are being decoupled: developers will pay one cent a minute for inbound calls, and outbound calls are two cents a minute.

As part of the pricing restructure, Twilio has also decided to publicly disclose its volume pricing. Many services will only share these prices in secret, and will renegotiate them on a per-case basis. Lawson says that Twilio wants to keep everything transparent, taking a page out of Amazon’s Web Services playbook, so it’s posting its volume discounts online.

In addition to the pricing news, Twilio is announcing a few other more minor developments. Last week the company added new features to its API, including the ability to search for phone numbers using vanity names (e.g. 415-JSN-RULZ). It’s also launched a gallery of customers who are pleased with the service, and a gallery showcasing what developers have built.

In terms of growth, Twilio says that it has increased the number of developers on the platform 5x since the beginning of the year and that in a single day it now connects the same volume of calls it saw in all of January.

Just when you thought Apple CEO Steve Jobs couldn’t get more badass? According to SPA!, Bloomberg and about 10,000 nerds on Twitter, Jobs was stopped at the Kansai International Airport near Osaka in July for carrying, yes, ninja stars.

It just makes so much sense! I mean let’s say you’re Steve Jobs, you have your own private plane, you’re in Japan and you’re also a ninja …

According to SPA!, Jobs’ logic in bringing the shuriken (ninja stars) onboard his private plane was that it would be really silly to hijack his own plane. Fair enough.

Because of the weaponry fail, Jobs made it clear to airport officials that he wouldn’t be revisiting Japan any time soon says SPA!.

And while Apple declined to comment, Bloomberg, taking the hard hitting lead on this one, actually verified that the incident did happen to somebody (a social media ninja perhaps?), at the Kansai International Airport and that the aspiring warrior/passenger was forced to throw away the stars.

What’s Jobs going to do to top this? Tame a lion?

At least he wasn’t caught carrying a lightsaber.

Update: Double of course! Apple calls the story “pure fiction.”

"Steve did visit Japan this summer for a vacation in Kyoto, but the incidents described at the airport are pure fiction. Steve had a great time and hopes to visit Japan again soon."

Oh well, feel free to include more “Jobs as a ninja” Photoshops in the comments.

Founded back in 2007 by former PayPal, eBay, Luminex and Tesla Motors execs, MaxPoint Interactive this morning announced that it has secured its very first institutional round of $3 million in funding from Trinity Ventures.

MaxPoint offers advertisers proprietary targeting technology that allows its clients to “pinpoint” prospects up to neighborhood level, in a bid to increase in-store sales for brands across a variety of sectors.

The company’s system, which it says is already in use by consumer packaged goods brands, retailers, pharma companies and financial service organizations, is said to employ two unique technologies to drive in-store purchases for national and local brands.

By combining multiple data sets to form what it refers to as “Customized Consumer Profiles”, MaxPoint says it is able to identify the best potential customer for any brand – those that are both interested and capable of purchasing the product.

To accomplish this, MaxPoint draws from point-of-sale data from more than 65,000 retail stores nationwide, demographics, psychographics and other publicly available data sources – pretty much everything apart from personally identifiable information, in other words.

Subsequently, the company uses its so-called Digital Zip technology to find the best neighborhoods across the U.S. for the product or service in question, based on the characteristics of the people who live there.

MaxPoint Interactive says its Digital Zips segment the country into 34,000 distinct neighborhoods, each with approximately 3,400 households, allowing marketers to pinpoint locations within a retailer’s trade area and to more precisely serve up their targeted online ads.

Joe Epperson, CEO and co-founder of MaxPoint Interactive and previously senior finance executive for PayPal's Global Merchant Services group and a former member of the original eBay Motors executive team, cites research that has shown that over one quarter of online display ads are currently delivered outside the radius of a local store location. He adds:

“This means that national brands and retailers are wasting a large portion of their online advertising budgets, as these impressions are not driving in-store sales.

By introducing increased geographic and data set precision into the ad targeting process, we can deliver neighborhood-level targeting on a national scale, empowering brand marketers to focus their ad spend on their prime target consumers living within the radius of the store.”

It’s most certainly an intriguing approach, although a lot of what MaxPoint touts is possible with its technology relies heavily on the tastiness of its very secret sauce.

Graphs depicting how something works are all fine and dandy, but I’d love to get some reference customers speak up on how well MaxPoint’s innovative targeting technology lives up to all its lofty promises.

Socialwok, a product that ads a social layer to Google products and Microsoft Outlook, is taking its collaboration platform mobile today. The startup, which launched its Google Apps-focused product at TechCrunch50 last year, is debuting both an iPhone app and Android app to the public today.

Socialwok provides a social layer within Google Apps, Gmail and Outlook, creating a private social network within the application to share ideas, emails, files, Office documents from Microsoft Word, Google Docs and other rich media using status updates. Socialwok’s beauty is that it wraps a collaborative, social network around the most unsocial of email applications, allowing users to never have to leave their email clients.

The Android app has much of the same functionality as the web apps, including the ability to login with Google Apps or Gmail accounts, background syncing of status updates, feeds and contacts, view notes and emails in feeds, attach pictures, and notifications support for new posts and mentions.The iPhone app allows for access to your Socialwok account, the ability to drag and update of status updates in feeds and view notes and emails in feeds.

Since launching a year ago, Socialwok is now used by hundreds of thousands of users from over 10,000+ businesses. Socialwok, which employs a freemium model, has steadily been adding features and improvements to its application, including adding support for Facebook, Twitter and Buzz within its applications and releasing a new version of its HTML 5 mobile version for Android and iPhone browsers.

Earlier this year, Socialwok was chosen as one of the showcase companies for Google’s AppEngine technology at the company’sGoogle IO Developer Sandbox. And Socialwok was integrated as a pilot partner in Google’s recently launched Google Apps Marketplace.

Mid-2006, when Twitter was born, the domain name Twitter.com changed hands for $7,500, chief executive and co-founder Evan Williams tweeted yesterday night.

Roughly four years, 145 million users and 300,000 third-party applications later, I wonder what it’s worth today, particularly given the fact that the Twitter website still draws a massive crowd according to the same Williams.

I have no idea who the domain name belonged to before Williams bought it, or what is was used for (update: see comments if you care about knowing that sort of thing).

It does sound a heck of a lot better than Twttr, which is the name creator Jack Dorsey gave the messaging service initially (though that logo is still grand).

If you’d like to read more on the early days of Twitter, here’s a good place to start.

What’s the most you’ve ever paid for a domain name?

Liaise, which develops software that adds a collaborative layer over Microsoft Outlook, is stepping out of beta today and will be available for commercial download. Launched last fall at DEMO, Liase was the winner of the conference’s enterprise category and people's choice award. We have 100 free Liaise licenses for TechCrunch readers which sign up here.

Currently available for Microsoft Outlook 2010, 2007, and 2003, Liaise automatically captures, organizes and prioritizes action items as you type and receive messages. The software will analyze the content within incoming and outgoing emails, capture the important information (Liaise dubs these KeyPoints) which needs to be acted upon, and sets up a management list based on this information. Responses to Liaise messages sent from any email platform such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail, and from mobile email systems such as BlackBerry and iPhone, are automatically tracked by Liaise.

Over the past year, users in a variety of industries, including financial services, management consulting, internet, technology, healthcare and retail, have been beta testing Liaise. Now Liaise has taken their responses and attempted to make the platform better in the commercial release.

For example, Liaise now includes a dashboard for managing work and for keeping teams in sync. Action items can be viewed by initiative, owner, due date, or priority. Project information can be organized into reports, available for export and printing. Action item due dates are automatically displayed in the Outlook calendar.

The startup has added a new feature called Liaise Lists, which is a note-taking application that automatically captures actions by typing free-form notes such as project and team plans, meeting minutes and to-do lists. The software will identify, track, and organize actions, dates, people and priorities found in these notes, makes them available to be modified as plans evolve, and later sent as an email message.

Liaise has also been accepted into the Mircosoft BizSpark One program. Liaise is priced at at $50 per seat per year, with a 30 day free trial period. Liaise faces competition from Xobni and Gist.

Backpacks are a necessary part of school and around here, we’re not strangers to backpacks, messenger bags, and bags in general. We’ve looked at a ton over the years and recently wrapped up our last bag week where we looked at an absurd amount of bags.

School requires a different sort of bag than grown-up life and, well, there are different types of students. Not everyone carries all their books with them at all times and others shop for style over function. Then there’s the college gamer and the occasional student. No worries. We’ve got everyone covered.

Are the knives are out at Nokia or are executives voluntarily jumping off the cliff? Either way, Nokia Charman Jorma Ollila is the latest to tell the board that he will serve until the company's 2012 annual general meeting. The news comes less than a week after CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo announced he would step down on Sept. 21 in favor of former Microsoftie Stephen Elop. Anssi Vanjoki, head of mobile solutions only said he was off yesterday. These changes are happening uncharacteristically quickly at Nokia. I hope you're keeping up at the back.

Customer support startup Get Satisfaction has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Azure Capital Partners with O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and First Round Capital participating in the round. The company previously raised $2.3 million in seed funding from investors including SoftTech VC, FreeStyle Capital, and Kapor Capital.

Founded in 2007, Get Satisfaction develops and operates a network of customer support forums where customers can post their own questions, ideas, problems, or conversations about a product. Companies can also claim their board and put their own employees on to moderate the boards. Zappos, Foursquare, Twitter, Mint.com and Nike have all created customer support communities on the site. Currently there are over 40,000 communities that have been created on the Get Satisfaction platform.

More recently, Get Satisfaction has been tapping into the customer conversations taking place on social media sites. In 2008, the startup ear to Twitter to help its clients monitor Twitter for mentions of brands.

And earlier this year, Get Satisfaction launched a customer support tan for a brand’s Fan Page. Customers can begin wall discussions in the form of four topic types: Ask a Question, Share an Idea, Report a Problem, or Give Praise. When customers begin to post a question, Get Satisfaction searches for and suggests similar threads to give consumers instant answers to commonly asked questions. All questions, comments, and answers are discoverable via Google and other search engine. People can respond to any thread — i.e. voice a similar problem, suggest a remedy, emerge as an advocate in response to another’s complaint, or offer a new twist to a product suggestion. Community members can also make their experience heard by simply clicking ‘me too’. In turn, any question, idea or problem posted on a brand’s hub on Facebook will be automatically imported into the brand’s Get Satisfaction web interface, allowing marketers and customer support reps to access the conversation from their Get Satisfaction site.

The Get Satisfaction platform also connects with existing enterprise tools (such as Salesforce.com and Zendesk) to make CRM offerings, help desks, and other back-office solutions smarter. With the new funding, Get Satisfaction will invest in its team, product development, marketing, as well as focus on building partnerships with digital agencies, CRM providers, and distribution partners.

Over the past year, the company has also gone through a leadership transition. In August, co-founder Lane Becker stepped down as President of the company. And Wendy Lea took over for co-founder Thor Muller in early 2009 as CEO (Muller stepped into the CTO role). Today, the company has added Jeff Nolan as VP of Product Marketing and Tony Pribyl as Director of Strategic Partnerships.

The company has also revealed a new mascot (pictured here)-his name is JarGon the customer service robot (and our nemesis). According to Muller: JarGon is the customer service robot. He has no heart and isn't capable of love. He was created in a secret lab to frustrate customers, and Get Satisfaction is locked in an epic battle to protect the populace from this bumbling, metallic menace.

LoopNet, the publicly-listed operator of a massive online commercial real estate marketplace and one of the largest commercial property research databases, has acquired LandsofAmerica, which runs an online marketplace specializing in land for sale. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

The entire management team of the Austin, Texas based company – including its founders Allen Shannon and Jake Massengale – will remain with LoopNet to manage and grow the business.

LoopNet in a press release states that the newly acquired flagship website of the company, LandsofAmerica.com, generated almost 600,000 unique visitors to its websites in August 2010, about a quarter of LoopNet’s overall website traffic of approximately two million unique monthly visitors.

In addition, LandsofAmerica.com substantially expands LoopNet’s overall share of active land-for-sale listings. Combined, LoopNet-owned websites now feature more than 200,000 active land listings for sale across its properties.

LoopNet does not currently expect the acquisition to have a material impact on its 2010 financial results.

MyPunchbowl, a start to finish party planning site, has reached an important milestone today: the startup now has one million registered users using its online invitation and party preparation services. In conjunction with the announcement, MyPunchbowl is announcing the acquisition of the domain Punchbowl.com and rebranding the site as Punchbowl.com.

Punchbowl allows users to create beautiful online invitations and track RSVPs. The platform also provides tools that let you find supplies, organize an after party and even set a date, via an algorithm that recommends the best date for your party. The site also allows you to set up gift registries, save-the-dates, message boards, integrate Google Maps' to display the location, and share comments, photos, and videos. Basically, Punchbowl helps you plan and organize an event from start to finish.

Co-founder Matt Douglas says the rebrand was timed as the party planning season ramps up. Douglas says that October through January are the startup’s busiest months. And Punchbowl is announcing the addition of Michael Waxman-Lenz, the former General Manager of American Greetings, to the Punchbowl Board of Directors. Earlier this year, the startup added the former GM of Evite.com to its board of advisors as well.

Launched in 2007, Punchbowl has evolved steadily over the past two years. The site added birthday reminders, ecards, wedding planning tools, and also acquired a local business directory to boost vendor listings.

Earlier this year, Punchbowl signed a licensing agreement with Oriental Trading Company, and debuted a sleek invitation creator (which should be released to the public soon, says Douglas).

Competitors to Punchbowl include Socializr, Pingg, Someecards, Cocodot, and MySpace, Facebook and Evite.

Seedcamp, the roving pan-European startup programme which seems to have the momentum of a juggernaut these days, kicked off its big week this week in London at University College London with a record number of teams, 23 this year picked from 900 applicants, and over 100 mentors taking to teams from 16 regions throughout EMEA. And already there are general themes emerging from the teams presenting. Saving businesses money is one major theme - important in a recession. Plus, fashion startups are a trend in their own right as they start to address the rather antiquated fashion world. "Data" startups are also a trend, and the problems of the media world are also being addressed. But there is one elephant in the room which (almost) dare not speak its name: where were the really 'big play' consumer startups?

The advent of the Internet has gradually made a lot of things free, as in beer or otherwise. And people love free stuff, so unsurprisingly many turn to search sites to scour the Web for free music, movies, software and other digital media.

Which in turn significantly increases the risk of landing on websites filled with malicious links, code, ads and video viewing tools, security software maker McAfee now reports.

In said report, company researchers outlined several threats, including the threat of looking for “free" software, MP3s and streaming videos. The research found that adding the word "free" to a search for music ringtones, for example, resulted in a 300 percent increase in the riskiness of sites returned by major search engines in English.

The word "free" in other languages yielded similar results.

McAfee also reports that it has found thousands of malicious websites associated with fan clubs or comments made on social media sites, such as YouTube and Twitter.

Malicious advertising or "malvertising," where an ad is used to distribute malware or exploit the user's browser, is a common means of infection and not limited to unknown websites, McAfee warns. The company says that it identified "malvertising" on perezhilton.com earlier this Summer, and lots of other legitimate websites have shared that pain in the past (us included).

In short: a lot of free content is available on the Web, but that doesn’t mean it always comes without cost. Browse vigilantly. And please stop searching for pictures of Cameron Diaz.

But don’t forget to click our ads regardless – I’m told they’re perfectly safe.

Intel Capital has invested $30 million in four technology companies today, announcing investments in the cleantech, cloud computing and semiconductor manufacturing sectors. The investments were part of Intel's recently announced $200 million Intel Capital Invest in America Technology Fund, aimed to support investment in U.S.-based startups. The investments include:

Utah-based IT startup Adaptive Computing: Adpative Computing has raised $14 million in Series A funding led by Intel Capital with Tudor Ventures and EPIC Ventures participating in the rounds. This is Adaptive Computing’s first round of funding, after nine years of profitability, says the company.Adaptive Computing's software, Moab, helps companies manage complex cloud computing environments. Moab consolidates and virtualizes resources, allocates and manages applications, improves service levels, and helps reduces operational costs.

Ciranovo: Ciranovo provides an electronic design software helps engineers implement "mixed analog-digital" integrated circuits in advanced semiconductor processes. The software allow engineers to integrate premium functions such as WiFi, Bluetooth and WiMAX into their chips. Intel Capital's investment will be used primarily to expand the company's sales and customer support operations.

Joyent: Joyent, the Californian provider of cloud computing solutions, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Series A investor Intel Capital, with additional support from existing investor Greycroft Partners and new investor Liberty Global. This brings Joyent’s total funding to over $23 million. Joyent had previously raised $7 million from Intel in November of 2009. Joyent actually builds the technologies that power cloud computing nfrastructure, and uses those technologies to enable multiple third-party public, private and hybrid clouds. Intel Capital's investment will enable Joyent to expand international operations and invest in open-source Node.JS and other technologies in the company's core PaaS cloud offering.

Nexant: Nexant develops intelligent grid software and clean energy solutions that advance electric power grid and alternative energy technologies and services. The company’s energy software and services are used by Fortune 500 companies, utilities, transmission and distribution system operators, chemical and petroleum majors, financial institutions, government agencies and development banks. While it’s unclear how much Intel invested in Nexant, the company raised an undisclosed round of funding in July totaling $32.5 million. With the increasing energy consumed in data centers worldwide, Intel Capital's investment will be used to expand Nexant's software and services presence in IT and data center efficiency.

Earlier this year, Intel invested $15 million in eldercare website Caring.com, real estate investment ratings provider SmartZip Analytics and virtualization infrastructure services provider Virtustream.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently reported that a local startup called MentorWave Technologies was being acquired for its Quicksee product, which enables anyone to create and upload location-based, interactive 3D videos.

The reported purchase price was $10 million, and the general consensus was that Google would be buying the fledgling company for its technology, which would enhance its own geo products (Maps, Earth and Street View).

Both companies remained mum about any acquisition, though, until now.

In a brief message posted on the Quicksee website, MentorWave Technologies confirms having been picked up by the Mountain View Internet giant, not disclosing much else.

Update: We’ve learned that Google actually bought MentorWave for $12 million – we’ve updated the company’s CrunchBase profile to reflect that information.

The company has not confirmed the purchase price tag, however, and also doesn’t hint at future product plans, revealing only that the team will be joining the Google Geo team (which is obviously not much of a surprise).

Said team consists – at least – of co-founders Gadi Royz, Rony Amira and Assaf Harel.

We are delighted to announce that Quiksee has been acquired by Google!

We’ve learned a lot from our previous work at Quiksee, and we look forward to bringing our experience, creativity and insight to Google. Both Google and Quiksee share the same innovative vision, and while we can’t share any future product plans, we look forward to the opportunity to contribute and do great things together in the future.

We’ll be joining the Google Geo team and hope to have news for you soon. Stay tuned!

Quiksee Team

It's easy to be cynical about ad networks. I remember a media exec I once had drinks with who equated the online ad business to prostitution: "They are the only two major industries working on prepayment basis because both promise much bigger fantasy than they ever deliver."

Like I said, easy to be cynical.

Recently though, an ad network came my way that has interesting twist. Its name is Traffilliate and it doesn't serve banners, keyword ads, or paywall offers – all it serves are landing pages.

Developed originally as a for-internal-use-only tool at media group DMG, Traffilliate treats landing pages as the creative, serving the best converting ones to end users. Traffilliate currently serves some 5 million landing pages a day, which end up producing 30,000 conversions.

There’s not much set-up required to get going. The only resource-intensive aspect is generating several landing pages, done in advance by the advertisers or their agencies. Once the campaigns are pushed out, the actual decision-making of which landing page to serve a given user takes less than 30 milliseconds.

Other than the ad network model, Trafiliate also offers itself as a service. Traffilliate as a Service, or ‘TaaS’, is meant for advertisers that want to buy media outside of Traffilliate’s network. When used solely for conversion analysis and serving Traffilliate prices itself at half a cent per landing page served. Support for major ad servers comes out of the box. These include: DoubleClick, Google Content Network, Microsoft adCenter and Right Media Exchange.

Like many people today, I read Jose Antonio Vargas’ 6,000-word profile of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in The New Yorker. Unlike some, I found it neither boring nor damaging, but rather, thought-provoking. But actually, the thing that stuck out the most to me about the piece (beyond The West Wing stuff, which I still find humorous/interesting) wasn’t about Zuckerberg at all. Instead, it was something Chris Cox, Facebook’s head of product, said towards the end of the piece.

"Getting there first is not what it's all about. What matters always is execution. Always," Cox told Vargas for the piece. This was in response to the idea that Facebook had copied Quora’s (a company started by a bunch of ex-early-Facebookers) idea with Facebook Questions. But it’s actually something I was thinking about quite a bit this weekend, entirely unrelated to Facebook.

Specifically, what got me thinking about this notion was Yahoo’s response to Google Instant last week. In a post titled: “Back to the Future: Innovation is Alive in Search,” Yahoo passive-aggressively notes how they beat Google to the innovation of realtime search results. And as a bonus, they even throw in a few veiled hints that they could sue Google for copying their idea if they wanted to thanks to their “filed patent applications” and “first developed” “intellectual property.”

I couldn’t come up with a good angle at the time beyond simply writing two words:

Shut. Up.

There are few things that annoy me more than a company coming out with a press release or blog post immediately after another company launches something that amounts to little more than “FIRST!” Yahoo’s response here is worse than your average one because of its passive-aggressiveness and veiled threats that they’re never going to follow-through with.

Just about every company is guilty of this to varying degree — including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, MySpace, etc. But it’s nonetheless extremely lame.

First of all, if you feel the need to remind the world that you did something first, you failed. This may mean that you failed either with the product itself or with the strategy in deploying it. But it doesn’t matter. A failure is a failure. If something was that great and revolutionary, people would recognize it.

Yahoo goes out of their way to note that Search Engine Land did recognize that Yahoo was doing “instant” search a while ago — but that’s that blog’s job to know that stuff. I’m talking about the public in general. Do they have any idea that Yahoo did “instant” search first? No. Because it failed when Yahoo did it.

That’s not to say Google’s will be a rousing success — who knows. But they did do a much better job making the public aware of it. Rolling it out to the homepage tends to do that. And so far, the execution seems there.

Saying you were first to do something is just such a waste of time. If you did it right, people will know that you were first. Sure, that’s not always the case with some small startups and companies like Facebook copying them. But in this particular case, we’re talking about Yahoo.

But let’s talk about Facebook here since Cox made that statement. He’s essentially saying that “first” doesn’t matter, “best” matters. I absolutely agree with that. At the same time, Facebook has come under fire for implementing ideas that smaller companies came up with first — just think about the whole concept of “likes” which was taken from FriendFeed (which Facebook only later bought). That has to be scary if a company with the reach of Facebook starts implementing your idea. We’re seeing this to a lesser degree with the Twitter ecosystem now as well.

There’s no question that some startups get screwed by this. But I have to be skeptical of startups whose core value can be so easily copied by a larger competitor. A successful model isn’t, “we’re going to kill it as XXXXX for Facebook — unless Facebook gets into that space.” If you’re idea is that good, you have to assume Facebook (or Twitter, or whoever) is going to get into that space. Judging from Cox’s comments, that’s exactly what happened with Questions.

And Questions is an interesting example. While it was initially hailed as a “Quora-killer”, so far, it doesn’t seem to be at all. Quora appears to be so much better as a core Q&A service right now, and the community is excellent. Nothing is certain, but they look to be well on their way to building a lasting product that at the very least will have a good exit — regardless of what Facebook does.

And that’s the key. Even if you are doing something that a larger competitor is likely going to do, just make sure you do it better. As a startup, you may not have all the resources of a Facebook, but there are benefits to being smaller and more focused as well. Use those.

We’re currently seeing that with Facebook Places versus Fourquare too. Everyone was so sure that Places would be the “Foursquare-killer” when it launched. But so far, it lacks the utility of Foursquare. That’s not to say that Facebook won’t add any of that, but right now, Foursquare has the advantage and they need to maintain that advantage, which they likely will be able to do.

And now here’s the part where I apply this to Apple — so Android fanboys, stop reading or just go right to the comments and start trolling. While Apple does delve into this “FIRST” nonsense every once in a while (though they tend to do it more on the legal end with IP suits — which may be even worse), they definitely seems to subscribe to the notion of “best” being more important than “first”.

When the iPod launched in 2001, there were a ton of MP3 players already on the market. It didn’t matter. Apple nailed it. And won as a result.

Now we’re seeing that with the iPad. When it launch earlier this year, all we heard about was how it would fail because others had tried this before and failed. I mean, Apple was copying Microsoft for chrissakes, right? Again, it didn’t matter. Apple nailed the tablet.

To a lesser extent, we see this with the features implemented in the iPhone. Apple wasn’t first to copy & paste (as everyone was painfully aware), but when they did launch it, they were the best at it. Best — not first.

My point is that it’s a bad sign when companies start whipping out the “FIRST” card. If someone is doing something better than you, note what you did wrong in your execution and move on. Create the next great thing that someone else will have to yell “FIRST” at you over. Don’t fixate on the past and your failures — that’s quicksand. The sands of time don’t exist.

Cox’s statement seems to indicate that Facebook gets this. They’re aiming for “best” not “first”. And that’s undoubtedly part of why they’re winning right now.

Record books celebrate the first. People celebrate the best.

For all the crap Nokia has been getting lately about falling behind, not innovating, or releasing products that don’t really compare with the competition, you could be forgiven in thinking that they may be on death’s door.

So you’d probably be surprised to hear that Nokia still move more smartphones than the Big Two. How many you ask? Try about 260,000 a day. To put that into perspective, last I heard, Apple ship somewhere around 80,000 iPhones per day, and Android activate 200,000 devices per day.

Read more…

Once again I’m teaming up with Yael at the Tel Aviv Beer Tweetup to join you guys in some merriment on Thursday, September 16 from 7:30pm – 11:30pm at the Inbal Hotel in Jerusalem. You can RSVP here on Facebook or email rsvp at crunchgear dot com with the subject line “TWEETUP.”

Read more…

Angel investors SV Angel, led by Ron Conway invests so early in startups that he looks mostly at the team and current tech trends when making investment decisions.

Last year he was focusing on real time and location startups. This year, according to a confidential report to SV Angel investors that made its way into our hands, he’s looking at a whole slew of trends.

How a startup plays into these trends is taken into consideration when SV Angel ponders an investment. The trends include:

• Social
• Real Time
• Location Based Services
• The Urban Entrepreneur
• Mobile
• Flash Sales
• Behavior & Transactions

We’ve included a screenshot of the relevant slide, click on it for a larger view (or click here). The slide also contains sample startups in each category.

The most fascinating trend is the “Urban Entrepreneur” – which SV Angel says is represented by startups like Twitter and Foursquare. “A new field of entrepreneurs is developing where key insights are coming from founders in large cities” says the report. It adds “[technology tools]…have led entrepreneurs to find innovation in behavior, rather than technology, at least within social media.”

As the web becomes increasingly saturated with video, flash sales, auctions and live streams, there’s a growing need for a major portal to filter and organize this flood of incoming data in real time. One contender is Live Matrix, a TechCrunch Disrupt alum that is trying to index every live event on the web. While Live Matrix has been described as the web-version of TV Guide, founders Sanjay Reddy and Nova Spivack, are shooting for a more ambitious distinction: the Google for the “time dimension of the web.”

Spivack says, “We’re trying to show what’s when on the web—- we think Google and other search engines today show you what’s where on the web—- we’re trying to show you what’s happening in time.”

The founders took one step towards that lofty mission on Sunday evening, with their official beta launch. Although they are still waiting for traffic numbers to roll in, the founders told us that the number of content providers (which includes flash sales sites, like Gilt Groupe, to sports news programs, like ESPN3, and everything in between) has more than doubled with 300 new sign-ups in less than 12 hours. Before the launch, the site had 200 providers and was serving up roughly 100,000 live events per week.

However, even if that 100,000 turns to 200,000 in short order, that’s still a modest sliver of the “live” web. Of what’s on there, it can be difficult to find compelling, relevant options and the search function isn’t quite perfect yet. For example, a search of “Live Matrix” should theoretically pull up the homepage’s featured event: “Live Matrix Official Beta Launch,” instead I got something titled “Creating and Using A Salary Increase Matrix.”

Reddy and Spivack recognize the long slog ahead. Since Disrupt, the pair have tried to increase personalization, refine the user interface and enhance the portal’s usability. For the next release, due later this year, they will beef up the recommendation feature, search functionality, and continue to improve personalization, which they see as key to relevance. For the content providers, Reddy and Spivack hope to accumulate enough data, aka users and traffic, to create a premium analytics service. According to Spivack, this will eventually include predictive analytics that will tell providers what kind of audience (size and demographics) they can expect for future events.

For my full interview with the founders of Live Matrix, see video above. The co-founders defend their business model and elaborate on what we can expect from future iterations.

"Summer Davos" is the World Economic Forum's four-year old conference in China, titled "The Annual Meeting of the New Champions." It's all about the economic challenges and opportunities emerging markets. Wandering between panels where heads of multinationals, entrepreneurs, government officials and social entrepreneurs are talking about the Chinese consumer that's just waking up, trillions in foreign investment and where it's going and the time-bomb of shortages in food, water and energy as the world population goes from 6.9 billion to 9.1 billion in 2050, two things occurred to me: This is my version of porn, and I’m a total nerd.

By far the most interesting topic on day one was a panel on so-called "soft power." Soft power is the name of the game in China—both good and bad, and it's been on full display so far in Tianjin. Soft power is getting what you want through attraction not coercion. Over the course of the panel we got a few different views about the soft power of America, Japan and of course China.

Chatham House Rules dictate that I can't cite what individuals said, only the ideas. So let’s say "Guy A," who was Japanese, talked about the cultural spread of things like sushi, kung fu and chopsticks that don't individually do much, but collectively, he argued, bring East and West into greater cultural common ground. It's the reverse flow of America's Hollywood/McDonald's force of soft power that has made so many people around the emerging world crave the Western lifestyle. Guy B, who was Chinese, argued that China needed to do a better job of using soft power because it is largely misunderstood in the world. He suggested the importance of an international reputable China-based media service like the BBC, Reuters or CNN.

By in my opinion a third panelist, an American, came the closest to getting the potential for Asian soft power right. He said that China's soft power is its extraordinary example of economic ascendancy. The developed world used to assume that the trend in modernity and global domination was towards openness and in the last decade, China had fundamentally shaken that belief. It's certainly not a model of development with which everyone agrees, but there is no denying that at least in the medium term it has been hugely successful. "It's a new way to get things done," this guy said.

This issue of China's ability to "get things done" has been a recurring theme over the first day and a half of the conference. Because of the stigma of being too pro-China in the West, people are loathe to say it too publicly, but a lot of Western business people are jealous of China's ability to get stuff done while our leadership squabbles over healthcare, plays partisan games, lives in a perpetual election cycle and wastes time posturing over Mosques-that-aren't-actually-Mosques near Ground-Zero and appeals to wackos not to burn Korans. Ever-mustachio-d New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, dressed somewhat like a mafia boss in a tan suit and black crewneck, held court during today's opening session and summed up a lot of the domestic concerns when he called leadership in Washington "brain dead" – doing a flat-lining sound and saying there's not even a tiny blip of life.

Meanwhile, the entire event is being held in a elaborate, modern conventional hall in Tianjin—not exactly the sexiest of Chinese cities, and one I've heard called "Tianjersey." But give the city credit for getting things done: This conference hall didn't exist nine months ago and a fleet of shuttles and a smiling young staff has been swarming around attendees at every moment. An elected official from one of the largest Western cities said it couldn’t build a parking lot in that time.

There are little imperfections of course, but China is an iterator that throws money at the problem and figures it out later, not too unlike the Web 2.0 ethos. James Rogers of Duke Energy Corp. held a session I missed yesterday but according to hallway chatter, he emphasized that when it came to big projects like energy things aren’t innovated in a garage– they are innovated through trial and error and China is throwing a lot more money at that than the US is.

If China's decisive, economic heft is it's emerging soft power, what of Japan? Remember Japan? The last century's big Asian economic threat? Poor Japan. It seems an afterthought to almost every panel at the New Champions summit. And yet in Silicon Valley there is a full-on cult surrounding Japan, at the highest reaches of power from Steve Jobs to Larry Ellison to Marc Benioff to excitable super angel Dave McClure. This despite the fact that on the surface Japan shares few common values with the Valley: It's one of the most closed societies in the world, its business sphere is incredibly hierarchical and homogeneous and in terms of gadget innovation it tends to over-feature and over-design products that only an elite will pay up to own.

So why the Japan love? The lingering soft power of its culture of design, efficiency, order, and beauty-in-simplicity pioneered over the last few decades. The cultures are certainly different, but as China takes over as the Asian economic threat, so too will it take over as the dominant soft power influence of the region? It'd be a huge uphill battle given Western concerns about China's political system, but as America continues to mire in lack of decisiveness it's possible. And it’s probably a safer bet to the world embracing China than chopsticks or an International media service.

The Pew Research Center, which regularly surveys U.S. consumers about their media consumption habits, put out a report which shows that more people are getting their news online than from print newspapers. In response to a survey question asking people where they got their news yesterday, 34 percent answered online versus only 31 percent from a daily newspaper.

If this doesn’t sound like news, that is because nearly two years ago the exact same research organization declared that the Internet had taken over from newspapers by an even greater margin—40 percent to 35 percent. That question was worded slightly differently (Where do you get most of your news?), which might account for the disparity. But now the Internet is beating newspapers in yesterday’s news as well, which I’m not sure is something to crow about. (How about asking people where they got their news today?)

In the more recent survey, the same number of respondents, 34 percent, got their news from radio. TV still rules with 58 percent. I think we will definitely crush radio by the time the next survey comes out. TV will be more difficult to conquer, especially if you believe, as Pew claims, that 21 percent of American adults do not use the Internet at all. I still have hope for America, however, that most will join the enlightened third of online news readers like everyone reading this post (yup, I’m pandering now).

If I worked at a daily newspaper, I might try to find some better news in these numbers, such as the fact that traditional media is holding its own in term of time spent with the news. The time spent consuming news on radio, TV, and newspapers combined is 57 minutes per day, the same as it was in 2000. TV makes up 32 minutes of that, radio is 15 minutes, and newspapers make up 10 minutes. Online news, however, takes up 13 minutes a day, so the print guys really have nothing to celebrate.

However, there is a silver lining. Online news includes newspaper websites, as well as CNN.com and the sites of other traditional news outlets. So they are not losing their audience, so much as watching them shift to the Web. Now, if only they could charge advertisers the same for reaching that audience online as they can in print.

Mobile application platform HipLogic is launching a new platform today at DEMO, called Spark. While many of HipLogic’s applications are designed to jazz up non-smartphone devices, *Spark aims to give smartphones the ultimate home screen experience. The free app is launching to Android and Nokia phones today.

The platform combines all a user's essential social information – news, sports, weather, and social media profiles—on one home screen so everything they care about is front and center and updates in real time.

Once downloaded, *Spark’s home screen interface will allows you to update your status across multiple social networks (Twitter and Facebook); view and share news, sports and entertainment headlines; view the current weather conditions and view your Twitter stream. Via with partnerships with media companies like Astrology.com, CBS, Disney, ET and Sky, HipLogic plans to provide additional premium content.

As HipLogic CEO Mark Anderson says, "*Spark is like the love child between the iPhone's intuitive interface and the powerful, personalized, multi-tasking engine of Android." Essentially, HipLogic aims to save Android users from having to switch to a weather app, or a Twitter app, or a news app; Spark simply allows you to access this information from your home screen.

Founded by three veterans from Sun Microsystems, HipLogic brings sophisticated applications to the simplest cell phones by keeping all the complexity in the network. In essence, HipLogic is trying to bring the quick, easy interface of a BlackBerry to more simple, lightweight phones that are available for the mass market. Consumers can toggle between the original mobile operating system and an always-on smartphone-like interface for instant access to a collection of apps. *Spark is actually leveraging this technology to power its all-inclusive app.

Behind the curtains, HipLogic's application platform features a lightweight, JavaScript virtual machine connected to the cloud and aggregates info from network operators and the web to create mash-ups on mobile devices. Formerly known has Numobiq, HipLogic has raised a total of $18.5 million in funding.

Bebo is like a bad case of herpes – it just keeps coming back. They sold to AOL for $850 million in 2008. Then AOL, under new management, sort of just shut it down for tax purposes, selling it for next to nothing to Criterion Capital Partners. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong called the whole thing a huge distraction.

But if you think you’ve seen the last of Bebo, you’re wrong. A whole new team is in place, and with just 20 or so employees the site is profitable and growing with 6 millionish active users. So what next?

That’s exactly what I asked CTO Akash Garg today at Google Zeitgeist in Phoenix, Arizona. The interview is below.

How will Bebo carve out a place for itself in a Facebook world? Tagged seems to have done it by focusing on dating. Garg says the team is currently deciding what’s next. “Self expression, mobile and video will be strong components,” he says. But beyond that he won’t elaborate.

And when I asked if Bebo cofounder Michael Birch is involved with Bebo today, the answer was clear: “Michael Birch is not involved in any official way right now.” Is he involved unofficially? Watch below to find out.