Fan of Lady Gaga or John Legend but can’t make out what on earth they’re babbling about on Twitter due to your lackluster knowledge of the English tongue? Check out StarsFeed.com, a new site launched by Finnish startup XIHA.

While it won’t help you understand what 50 Cent tends to tweet (though this just might), it could be a way for you to gather what other celebrities talk about on Twitter.

The site features a directory of celebrities, and when you go to one of their profiles (e.g. Ashton Kutcher), you’ll see his latest tweets and bio in English. Change your language – since it was built using Google’s Translate API, there are about 50 to choose from – and you’ll see a “translate” option that allows you to quickly see them in your native language.

Granted, this is a just a tad gimmicky, and there are plenty of browser add-ons that make this even easier, but for the Finnish startup it is just another way to showcase its multilingual social network, dubbed XIHA Life.

According to a Reuters report, Hulu is preparing to IPO in the first half of 2011. Sources told the news organization that Hulu will be looking to raise between $200 million and $300 million in a deal valuing the company at about $2 billion. Reports about Hulu’s IPO ambitions first surfaced last summer, but this may signal that a filing might be imminent.

Hulu is expected to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission before the end of the year, which will set the company to IPO anywhere between January and May of 2011. Reuters’ source says the offering is “contingent on the renewal of rights to carry shows, some of which expire in a year.”

This is probably another way that Hulu is testing the waters for an IPO. While the company may claim high revenues ($100 million in 2009), it is still not clear how profitable Hulu can be, or how viable its long-term survival will be. Hulu already has to fork over as much as half or more of its advertising revenues to its TV network partners/backers (Fox, NBC, and ABC).

Hulu just launched its paid service, Hulu Plus, an ad-supported, premium subscription service that will run $9.99 per month and includes HD access to full season runs of shows from Fox, ABC, and NBC. This could end up bringing in revenue and profits, but initial reviews of the new service have not been entirely positive.

And there are other chinks in Hulu’s armor. You can't watch CBS shows on Hulu, and earlier this year Viacom decided to pull its most popular shows from Comedy Central. And Comcast has its own plans for streaming TV on the Web, probably involving its new purchase, NBC.

Competition is also increasing for Hulu, who has always had a longstanding rivalry with Netflix. With Google TV and Apple TV both playing in the same space, Hulu is going to be facing more competition for viewership.

So really, until we see the actual filing or financials, it’s difficult to tell how profitable Hulu really is.
That being said, Hulu is dominating video advertising. According to recent comScore reports, Hulu is generating nearly 800 million ad impressions per month, even more than YouTube (this measurement doesn’t take into account other typed of advertising like overlays, banner ads,)

Snaptic, which lets you capture, save and share notes, ideas, imagery, places and whatnot, has changed its company and service name to the far catchier Catch.com. Coinciding with the name switch, the company has released new mobile apps (called “Catch Notes” for Android and iOS devices.

The new Catch apps join the newly released Catch.com website, which uses mobile geolocation to help sort and find information based on locations sent from a mobile device.

The startup, which is backed by $2.3 million in venture capital and rivals Evernote and others in the note-capturing space, says there are currently 5 million active Catch users.

The AIR for Android runtime is now available in Android Market, enabling developers to push mobile AIR apps built with Adobe’s developer platform. You’ll need a handset equipped with Android 2.2 (Froyo) and obviously this doesn’t mean you’ll be able to run your native AIR desktop apps like you know them on your phone.

They’ll need to be specifically built for mobile devices, as Adobe evangelist Ryan Stewart points out.

There are only a couple of apps for AIR for Android so far, but another Adobe evangelist, Serge Jespers, has started a list of available applications on AppBrain and promises to keep it updated.

To be honest, that list needs to be filled with a lot more (and more robust) apps before one can actually thoroughly evaluate AIR for Android as a platform at face value, so for now consider this a soft launch.

DriverSide, the startup that wants to help car owners maintain their cars rather than buy or sell them, is getting into coupons. The startup is now providing users with coupons and special offers tailored to the kinds of cars users drive, the towns where they live, and the types of maintenance or servicing they need.

The site helps take the guesswork out of car-repairs, offering firm estimates for the cost of parts and labor, along with advice from certified mechanics. All you need to do is enter the make, year and model of your car, and DriverSide will help you keep up to date with maintenance and more. Plus, the site will notify you if there are any recalls or notices associated with your car.

You can either search specifically for discounts or will be served relevant coupons with searches and tasks on the site. For example, users can build out an online garage and identify the kinds of repairs they need, and DriverSide will show the users various offers available on the site. DriverSide will send you emails reminders before saved coupons expire and for relevant deals when servicing are due. Consumers can also browse through general coupons that are specific to their car make and location. DriverSide will provide discounts and incentives from its national network of repair facilities as well as from partners.

DriverSide, which has raised $10.3 million in funding, also recently scored a partnership with eBay motors.

The love/hate relationship between Yahoo‘s CEO and the rest of the world continues. Carol Bartz was recently interviewed by USA Today, and couldn’t help being her eloquent self again.

Here’s a round-up:

On Facebook, and Yahoo missing the ‘social’ boat (emphasis ours)

Social does not just equal Facebook. Social is how people interact anywhere.
…
What I don’t like is when somebody says, “The only way you find social is (the way Facebook operates).” Did we miss the boat on exactly how they do it? Of course we did. Everybody did.

Q: Who’s your biggest single competitor?

A: Facebook — not today, but they could be. If they keep going, they will have the vault of information on everybody in the world, and that’s valuable.

Q: Valuable, to the point of being scary?

A: Yes, creepy. I don’t care to find an old boyfriend. One time, just to see if they got fat and bald, but then leave me alone. But I’m old.

On Apple and iAd (emphasis ours)

Q: You’ve said that Apple exercises too much control over the ads on its devices, and you said that can’t last. Why?

A: If you want to run an ad on the iPad, it has to be approved by Apple. I don’t think it is for us to say this ad isn’t pretty enough and to go through this whole back-end process of approval. I don’t think in the long run that’s going to work.

Advertisers will have other options.

On intrusive advertising (emphasis ours)

Q: These sound very intrusive to me. Sometimes I want to look at the screen and see what I want to see. I don’t want the dog.

A: You can click on any of these and say, “Don’t show me this.”

Q: You are making me do extra work.

A: Oh, excuse me, please. You are getting a lot of value. This is not like a free lunch here. We just opened a data center in Buffalo, and in its first phase it has 50,000 servers. That is not cheap. So the very fact that you get all this great information is part of the deal.

On what Yahoo is (emphasis ours)

(aha!)

Q: Yahoo has great assets, but some people say they don’t know what the company does or where it is going.

A: That exists in New York City and about 30 miles outside Silicon Valley. The rest of the world seems to know.

Yahoo is the largest media company in the world. We are twice as large as the nearest competitor. We do it through innovative technology and bringing people information they need to manage their lives. We serve up — and these numbers I hope will astound you — 10 billion ads a day.

On mobile and the chances of a Yahoo phone/OS

Q: If you get a Google Android phone, all the Google applications just work. You are drawn into their world. Does Yahoo need a device of its own?

A: It isn’t Google that gets to do that: It is what the carrier wants to do. By the way, there are many instances around the world where what comes up are Yahoo applications, not Google applications, even on an Android phone. The only one that actually controls that precisely is Apple.

On Carol Bartz (emphasis ours)

Q: Would you have hired someone like you to be CEO?

A: Let me answer a question you didn’t ask. Am I the perfect person for the job at Yahoo? No. Am I good for the job? Yes.

Perhaps a search for another chief executive might be in order? Unless shareholders and the Yahoo board agree good is good enough, of course. Cough.

(Thanks to Chris Rowley for pointing us to the USA Today article)

Permjot Valia (@permjotvalia) is a prolific angel investor and in 2008 co-founded Flight & Partners. Here he talks about his frustrations with the UK Angel investor scene, especially the anti-entrepreneur 'pay-to-pitch' culture. In 2008/09, £44.9m was invested by UK Business Angels registered to Angel Networks in UK based companies. Across the 5,500 registered Angels that is less than £10,000 per Angel. These figures are very poor and do not bode well for future economic growth. So what is a UK based digital company looking for funding to do? I have invested in 20 companies in the UK over the last six years, and three companies in Canada as a Business Angel. I am by no means an expert but with the experience I have had in Canada with Angel groups and as of recently with Seedcamp, I do find the UK 'organised' angel scene very depressing. In North America, most Angel groups are run by Angels (whom for the most part have been successful entrepreneurs) for Angels. Across Europe most networks are run by administrators for the benefit of the network and not necessarily for the benefit of either the entrepreneur or the angels.

We’ve got tipster consensus on the fact that Facebook has started to roll out a more elegant Lightbox-like dark background version of its Image Viewer or what it is now calling Facebook PhotoTheater.

Perhaps this is the first sign of the general upcoming Facebook redesign we reported on before the press event earlier this week?

Apparently the more streamlined feature does hide most Facebook Image Viewer ads except for a single one in the bottom right corner, which functions as a proper ad “Why didn’t you like it?” survey et al.

In any case, screen caps of what viewing photos on Facebook will soon look like, above and below.

Khaki peddler The Gap is currently at the mercy of an angry online mob because of its recent logo change from the stodgy blue square enclosed “The Gap” to the American Apparel-esque “The Gap” with a blue square at the top right (see left). There’s now an epic Facebook post, mandatory fake Twitter account, a Gap logo generation engine as well as a spin-off redesign attempt which has not yet been revealed. Key takeway: The Internet takes branding seriously, we get it. But apparently not as seriously as The Gap itself, which recently filed suit against stealth social networking site Gapnote for trademark infringement.

While this isn’t a clear cut David and Goliath battle (The Gap has had its “Gap” trademark for a number of years) it’s interesting as The Gap, which recently had a monumental Groupon day boosting its tech hipster cred, is starting to take social media very seriously. As does Gapnote, based on the fact that it’s built its whole business around being a social network for past, present and future (heh).

From Gapnote CEO Greg Murphy:

“We wholly respect The Gap as a company and many of the core values its brand represents. We respect The Gap’s trademarks, but disagree with The Gap’s contention that it has the exclusive right to use the word "gap" (regardless of how it is used or combined) on the Internet with any conceivable business.”

The Gapnote fully intends to take this to trial, and Murphy thinks he has a case against the retailer as, “We have no intentions in becoming an apparel store now or anytime in the future.”

The Gap is demanding in the suit that the Gapnote both change its name and give up the URL Gapnote.com as it holds that the Gapnote’s branding is too similar to its trademark. Or at least one of its trademarks (see below). When the Gapnote conceded during negotiations that it could possibly change its font (the two logos are in fact sort of similar), The Gap was still after the Gapnote.com domain and Gapnote name, hence going to trial.

The Gap is also insisting that the marketing channels of the two companies are identical. By which we’re assuming both companies use the Internet for things. From The Gap’s lawyers:

“The proximity of the goods and services marketed under the two marks is extremely close, and their marketing channels are identical. The Gap has established an extensive presence on social media and networking websites and various online forums over the last several years.

Gapnote, not yet in existence (evidenced by the site's current caption "Coming Soon to an Internet Near You"), is marketing its proposed site as a social media and networking website and forum. The two marks are used online for the same purpose and compete for the patronage of an overlapping audience; the use of similar marks to offer similar products, as such, weighs heavily in favor of likelihood of confusion.”

I am so seriously not a lawyer, but this sounds to me like The Gap is saying that any company that uses the Internet and has the word Gap in its name is fair game. In that case, it might want to take a gander at Crunchbase.

In case you are a lawyer, I’ve included court documents and complaint letters as well as videos from a pleading Gapnote below. Warning, they’re a little depressing.

A tipster today emailed to point out that Flixster CEO Joe Greenstein gave his own app a five star rating on iTunes, and then went on to trash the competition. Both Movie Night Out and Showtimes got one stars. “It tries to do too much and fails,” he said of Movie Night Out. And Showtimes “does not include a full list of movies – just the current ones.”

Frankly I don’t give a damn about that. If a CEO wants to trash his competition, I’ll just give him a high five for being up front about it and actually doing it under his real name.

But damn there’s something really disturbing in that screenshot showing his ratings (embedded below). In addition to fluffing up Flixster’s ratings and trashing his competitors (all a-ok by us since it’s under his real name), Greenstein takes a moment to write an impassioned review/love letter to 22 year old pop singer Vanessa Hudgens.

I emailed Greenstein about it:

Joe,

We noticed that you’ve left a five star review for your own app, Flixster, and that you’ve left significantly less favorable reviews for competitors like Movie Night Out and Showtimes. Here’s what I want to know – Are you really that big of a fan of Vanessa Hudgens? You’re in your thirties, right?

Thanks,

Mike

Greenstein really likes Hudgens, and gives her Let’s Dance single a four star review. It’s not the Flixster 5 stars, but it’s close. And he says “This was fantastic – My favorite vanessa hudgens single ever – and I’ve loved all of them. The rhythm, rhyme and fortuitousness of this piece is elaborate, seductive and resonates deeply. Reminiscent of past greats from chopin to bruckheimer, truly a spectacular spactacular.”

Greenstein’s response:

If you are going to publish my personal opinions please at least clarify for your readers that this was a long time ago, Vanessa Hudgens was just a phase I was going through, and that I am now much more into Justin Bieber.

Snarky response? Yes, and points for that. But this is just so, so embarrassing.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the new Facebook Groups. It seems well-thought-out (yes, despite the sometimes annoying opt-out aspect) and well-implemented, but I’m just not sure what my use case for it is going to be. I want to use it, but I can’t figure out a reason to just yet.

Oh my god, it’s Google Wave all over again!

Okay, it’s really not. Instead, it almost seems like what Wave should have been when Google launched it as a consumer-facing product. Groups may lack some of the snazzy HTML5 bells and whistles and realtime technology of Wave, but it more than makes up for those in user experience and user interface elements that make this thing downright usable by human standards — something, sadly, Wave never quite achieved.

If Google Wave was overly-ambitious, Facebook Groups may be overly-social. Today, everyone seems to be complaining about the fact that any friend can add you to a group without your permission. But few people seem to recognize that this is exactly what Facebook is going for with Groups. Over the past few months, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and others have been playing up the fact that Facebook Photos is destroying its competition — and that’s entirely because of the social tagging feature.

Facebook Photos exploded because any friend of yours could tag you in a photo. At first, plenty of people didn’t like this either. But the convenience of what Facebook calls “social design” won out. And Facebook is wise to try to replicate that. To a lesser extent, they’re doing it with Places too — any friend of yours can tag you as being at a place with them. And again, there are plenty of people who don’t like that either.

Now, this concept may or may not work beyond Photos, but credit Facebook for trying something different. Most companies see what works or half-works and stick to that. That leads to a lot of products that do the exact same thing. It’s lame and boring. Facebook takes big ballsy bets. They don’t always pay off, but when they do, they do in spades (see: News Feed, Platform, Like Button, and Photo tagging).

Google also took a big ballsy bet with Wave, but they were the first to admit that they weren’t clear what it was trying to be. That ended up being a problem from day one. What is Wave? Well, it’s a… Uh… Sharing… Social… Oh, realtime… YOU’LL JUST HAVE TO TRY IT OUT TO SEE FOR YOURSELF. And that’s exactly why the early demand for Wave invites was unprecedented. But by the time those rolled out, Google still wasn’t sure what Wave was. And neither were the people using it. And so there wasn’t actually much to see.

Facebook knows exactly what Groups is for. They developed it for a specific purpose: to encourage more people to share. Zuckerberg noted that basically no one was using lists (5 percent of total users), so they had to make the concept easier to implement and understand. Hence Groups with friend-enabled additions.

Google also wanted people to share things with Wave, but they never fully articulated that. Just look at the features though: share words, share pictures, share videos, share links, share documents — this is exactly the stuff you can do with Facebook Groups too. Facebook’s implementation is just much, much more clear.

Granted, Facebook has a huge advantage over Wave — that is, 500 million built-in users. That’s why I think Google should have tried out Wave in Gmail (like Buzz) before killing it, or at least Google Docs. It’s kind of funny: people today (including me) are complaining about the email updates from Facebook Groups. But early on with Wave, a big complaint was that there were no email notifications so you had no concept of updates.

But I actually think Facebook has broader ambitions with Groups too. My guess is that it’s a short-terms solution to a long term idea. That idea is that sharing will rule the web. Facebook needs a way to get people comfortable with sharing. And how do you do that? By letting you do it with your closest friends at first in smaller groups. But once you’re comfortable there, maybe you graduate to sharing with your broader network. And eventually, the world.

And if that happens, Facebook, not Google, wins.

That concept may make a lot of people uneasy. But that’s exactly why Facebook is taking these baby-steps. And I’m all for that, because I’m sort of a sharing extremist myself, I guess. I’m an all-or-nothing guy. I either want to share something with everyone in the world or just with my private group of friends. I hope one day Facebook gives me that simple option (well, they sort of already have), but in the mean time, this is an interesting approach to take sharing to the next level.

It’s like a Google Wave that human beings will actually use.

[image: 20th Century Fox]

Plannr, a social messaging company which we’ve covered from inception to being acquired by Google sent out the following email to its users today, further confirming our reporting that the small group texting/planning startup is on to greener Googleplex pastures.

From my original post, “I could easily see this as a useful addition to an existing service and the heavy Google Maps and Yelp integration hearkens to this aspiration.”

In today’s ”Plannr service shutdown” email, Plannr explains that it will be deleting all user plan information in 30 days and has offered users an export option for all plans made through Plannr as an .ics file. Full text of the email, below.

Hello Plannr user,

Thank you for using Plannr. We've greatly enjoyed building Plannr and working with you to improve it over the last few months. However, we have decided to put our time and efforts elsewhere and are closing down Plannr.

We wanted to make sure you didn't lose any information about when, where, and with whom you have upcoming plans. Below you'll see a listing of your plans, locations, times, and attendees. The same information has also been sent to everyone who was a part of the plan, whether they had accepted, rejected or said maybe. We have also attached an .ics file with a copy of your plans that you should be able to import to most other calendar programs. Please note that some email clients attempt to automatically import this file, but you should download and import the Plannr.ics file directly into your calendar program to ensure that all plans are correctly imported.

We apologize for the inconvenience and hope you enjoyed using Plannr. Your enthusiasm for the product is what kept us motivated these last few months, so thank you.

If you have any questions, please contact team@everythingisthebest.com and include 'Shutdown question' in your subject line. We will completely remove/delete all data in 30 days.

All the best and happy planning!

Ben & Jason

I am still waiting for founders Ben Eidelson and Jason Prado to respond to my most recent “Can you confirm that you’ve been acquired by Google?” emails. So while we wait, here’s a picture they sent me back when Planner was still taking my calls. :-)

Between sites like Groupon, LivingSocial, and countless clones, at any given moment there’s bound to be a few great deals going on in your neck of the woods. Unfortunately if you want to capitalize on as many of them as possible, you’re going to wind up with a pretty overstuffed inbox. That’s where Yipit‘s deal aggregation comes in: the site will send you a single email that aggregates a half-dozen deals from services like Gilt Local and Groupon, so you can quickly find the ones that suit you best. The company was founded in late 2008 (we’ve covered it a few times since) and today it’s confirming the details of a $1.3 million funding round that it closed over the summer.

The investors on the deal are SV Angel, RRE Ventures, DFJ Gotham, IA Ventures, Mike Yavonditte (Quigo), Jason Finger (SeamlessWeb), Josh Stylman and Peter Hershberg (Reprise Media), Ben Sun, Ed Sim and Alex Zubillaga. News of the funding was first reported by Silicon Alley Insider back in June based on an SEC filing; the company has now confirmed the amount and the list of investors.

Depending on the city, Yipit can pull together dozens of available deals, but it typically only presents a handful of them based on your personal preferences (you check off what kinds of deals you’re interested in during the site’s brief signup process). However, if you don’t like any of Yipit’s daily suggested deals, you can still view a full list of them on Yipit’s website.

Yipit is in an interesting position. The need for deal aggregators is obvious given how many deal sites are out there, but it’s inevitable that this market is going to see consolidation and most of the clones will die off. Groupon, which is the clear leader in this space, recently launched deal personalization to help speed this process (it can now target an infinite number of businesses — it was limited to two daily deals per city before this). But even if the clones fade, sites like Yelp and Gilt Local, which both recently got into this space, aren’t going away any time soon. Which means there’s still going to be plenty of deals for Yipit and its ilk to aggregate.

Wait a second. It seems that everyone is missing one key element of the latest faux-controversy about Facebook. What is Jason Calacanis doing back on Facebook?

Calacanis kicked off the latest bitching session today by posting an email he sent to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg. In it, he chastises the social network for not having an opt-in policy for its new Groups feature. But wait — how would he even know how the new feature works? Didn’t he say over and over and over again that he was done with Facebook?

He deleted his account – on video even! And yet, a few weeks later, he was still there. At first he made it sound like a third-party site reactivated his account, but then he clarified to say that he had logged in to Facebook Connect to clear something up and believed that reactivated his account. Facebook said that wasn’t true, and that he must have pro-actively cancelled the deletion request. Calacanis went quiet after that.

We would have thought that since he was so adamant about it, he would have immediately deleted his account once again. But apparently not. As you can see now, about a month later, in August, he left this Wall post to his followers:

Note: if you stumble on my Facebook page it’s in hybernation mode. I just don’t trust the folks at Facebook with my data.

He’s so paranoid about Facebook, yet he decided to keep his account active? Weird.

Even weirder? A couple weeks later, he posted again on his Facebook Wall. This time, a link to his latest rant.

So apparently, Calacanis is done with Facebook except when it can help him promote his content. Or when it can be the fodder for new content, as we’re seeing today.

We agree that it is fairly lame that people can be added to any group. But that’s not a privacy issue — Calacanis’ (and Mike’s) own friend added them to this group! It’s just lame because of the insane amount of spam that can result from unknowingly being added to a group.

But this shouldn’t have been an issue Calacanis ever encountered. He deleted his Facebook account months ago, remember?

Update: Calacanis has responded.

While Twitter confirmed to us last week that it was “setting aside” its troubled @Earlybird deals program, Iraqi reader Wael Al-Sallami points out that Twitter is still suggesting the @earlybird account to Twitter users on its “Who To Follow” feature.

This is pretty strange for multiple reasons. In an email to TechCrunch, a Twitter representative confirmed that the account would no longer be serving up offers, and it was referred to as more of an experimental stepping stone on the way to “Promoted Products.”

“We've always said we'd experiment and move quickly. We're taking the learnings from @earlybird, including feedback from users and businesses, and investing that knowledge into our Promoted Products platform to help businesses grow their audience and provide great offers and information to users.”

Not only is the account not tweeting offers, it doesn’t look like the account has tweeted out  anything since September 22nd.

So why would Twitter be marketing a dormant internal account? For one of three reasons: Either Twitter forgot to flag it as deadpool (and its WTF algorithm is just doing its job), the account itself is still being built up for a different purpose or the project might be resurrected sometime in the future.

I’m guessing it’s the first reason (you’d think Twitter would write a WTF exception for a project they knew was over) but have contacted Twitter for more info and will update if I get more information.

I felt left out. Everyone’s complaining about all this spam from the new Facebook Groups, but I don’t have a single email. Then I checked my Gmail spam filter, and there they were, dozens of ‘em. Thanks Google!

But that doesn’t mean I missed out on all the fun. I still got to read a Fast Company article where the author got almost everything wrong. For example:

Also, after looking into Facebook Groups, even with its purportedly more user-friendly setup, there’s no mechanism to “force join” someone. You can set up a group, open, closed or even secret, and the only way to get new members is to fire off an invite to them, either via Facebook’s own network or to their extra-Facebook email address. The invitee then has an opportunity to reflect on the invite, and choose whether or not they want to join—it’s 100% opt-in.

Yeah that’s all wrong. Exhibit 1: Mark Zuckerberg joins a NAMBLA group, sans opportunity for reflection:

How’d it happen? I typed in his name and hit enter. He’s my Facebook friend, I therefore have the right to add him. Fast Company apparently didn’t actually use the product, and instead invented a “security loophole” to explain things:

We’ve been investigating the setup this morning and there may be one way, suggested by a programming expert we’ve contacted, that this thing could’ve worked: It’s a kind of hack, similar to form-based hacks that’ve been around for ages, where a user is sent a form that’s masquerading as something else. When they click the link, they’re signalling to Facebook that they’re actually accepting membership of the Group. But it’s a longshot, and Facebook’s likely to have been on top of this sort of security loophole.

Anyway, back to NAMBLA and Jason Calacanis. Calacanis, who’s making a career out of hating Facebook, was extremely upset about being added to that NAMBLA group. It’s a privacy issue, he says, and could result in a lawsuit.

Except, instead of taking the time to write that email, he could have simply hit “unsubscribe.” That’s what Zuckerberg did to remove himself from the NAMBLA group. See image to left.

Update: As Danny Sullivan points out in the comments below, as soon as Zuckerberg unsubscribed I lost the ability to add him to any further groups at all, another protection against spamming and pranks.

The only thing I don’t get is how that whole discussion with Zuckerberg vanished entirely from the NAMBLA group page. As far as I can tell, that’s the only real conspiracy around this story, and it’s a weak one at that. Perhaps Fast Company’s security loophole is the culprit.

So as this story comes to an end, the only thing we’re really left wondering is how in the world our new corporate parent will possibly be able to sell ads on TechCrunch again. I should probably take NAMBLA out of the title of the post at least.

Nah.

Josh Silverman, who until a few days ago was Skype’s CEO, has just joined venture capital firm Greylock Partners as an executive-in-residence. In a blog post announcing the move on Greylock’s website, the firm called Silverman a “visionary entrepreneur” and an “effective leader for amazing growth companies.”

Prior to joining Skype in 2008, Silverman served as CEO at Shopping.com, following a variety of management positions at eBay, including serving as Managing Director for Marktplaats.nl/eBay Netherlands; and leading the launch of eBay's European Classifieds business. Before joining eBay, Silverman was co-founder and CEO of Evite, the leading social event planning site on the Web. He sold the company to IAC in 2001.

From Greylock’s blog post: Josh is a natural fit for Greylock—a serial entrepreneur and experienced chief executive with experience, drive and talent for building disruptive companies. He is one of very few entrepreneurs who have created viral consumer products that millions of people around the world love. In addition to being an established entrepreneur, he is a terrific leader who has scaled multiple hyper-growth, billion-dollar companies. Josh's integrity, drive, and leadership are exemplary and will be a great additional aid to our portfolio companies.

During his tenure at Skype, Silverman led the company through a number of major events. eBay sold Skype for $2.75 billion last year, and this past August the company filed for an IPO. As Skype heads in a new direction, the company brought on Cisco’s Senior VP of its Enterprise and Service Provider groups, Tony Bates, to take the VoIP company public.

Silverman’s decision to go to Greylock makes sense. He has longstanding relationships with Greylock partners David Sze and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. And Greylock invested in Evite back in the day.

I know we’re not technically in a recession and Americans love their electronics— especially those that start with the letter “i”— but as a whole, electronic retailers need a reality check, or a swift kick to the gut.

On Wednesday, CrunchGear’s Devin Coldewey and I dropped by two product announcements, one for Cisco’s purportedly consumer-friendly ūmi and Logitech’s Google TV accessory round-up. It was a long parade of flashy products with decent specs and thought-provoking price tags. As I mentioned in an earlier post, ūmi truly does bring high-quality telepresence into the home (assuming you have a solid connection) but it will cost you $599.99 for the hardware and $25 a month— or $300 more per year— just to use the service. What exactly Cisco is providing to justify that $25 a month (besides extra padding for its bottom line) is beyond me.

Even other executives in the industry think $600 for consumer video calling is pushing it, especially when you consider that your target demo has been trained to equate video calling with “free” thanks to services like Skype and Google video chat.

When I asked Logitech’s CEO, Jerry Quindlen, what he thought about Cisco’s ūmi price point for TC TV, the polite executive merely said, “I don’t think anything that’s too expensive or isn’t easy to use is going to be successful, doesn’t matter who it’s from…if that’s where it [ūmi] is, and there’s a monthly fee, you know, that might be a tough sell in this economy.”

That’s suit speak for “Good luck, Cisco, see you at Overstock.com”

Of course, I whole heartedly agree with Quindlen but I can’t resist laying down that tired, if not apropo, idiom: pot, kettle black. To wrap up his presentation on Wednesday, Quindlen displayed a slide with Logitech’s entire mini-eco-system for Google TV: $299.99 for the Revue, the unit’s centerpiece, $129.99 for a mini-controller and $149.99 for a mountable camera for video chatting (requires the Revue for use). All told that’s $579.97 before taxes— notably less than Cisco’s one-trick-pony video chat solution but more expensive than many LCD and plasma screens on the market and roughly 6x the cost of Roku or Apple TV.

Logitech’s bundle may be the first set top solution for Google TV but it certainly won’t be the last or the least expensive. To put it bluntly, $600 for a set top bundle seems to be a tough sell in this economy.

Good luck Jerry.

See full video with Quindlen above,  interestingly, he mentions that the next wave of products will include gaming solutions for Google TV.

Think all that smack-talking and behind-the-scenes tension between early stage VCs and so-called “Super Angels” is about competition for deals? It’s also about competition for dollars. While roughly 100 venture capital funds have raised $9.2 billion over the first nine months of the year, investments in early stage funds are declining, according to numbers released by the Dow Jones today.

That $9.2 billion is a slight increase over the same period last year when 105 firms raised $8.9 billion. But the pension funds, endowments and other limited partners that keep VCs flush with power and cash are voting with their wallets in favor of more diversified funds that invest at multiple stages. That’s where roughly half of the money went so far this year. Capital raised by early stage funds on the other hand fell 12%, with 65 funds raising $3.4 billion. Here’s where it got weird: Funding for later-stage funds skyrocketed up 71% with five funds raising $1.3 billion. Later-stage funds are typically the smallest category, in part because the returns are the least lucrative.

Part of that late-stage rise was skewed by a $750 million close for Institutional Venture Partners. That said, I know of a few name brand investors raising late-stage funds now, so I’m betting we see the percentage of dollars going to late-stage funds continue to strengthen. Secondary and pre-IPO, late-stage rounds have become popular, and so far that game has been dominated by DST and Elevation, at least in the consumer Internet space. With early stage deals getting absurdly competitive, late stage is suddenly looking better for returns. Sure, valuations are high, but at least you’re paying up for a company that’s doing well, rather than paying up because there are too many investors trying to wedge themselves into each Y Combinator deal.

There’s likely little comfort in these numbers for those who feel early stage investing is too crowded. Sure the numbers are down, but there’s still $1.3 billion more coming into the asset class. (Note to Bin 38: You’re going to need a bigger table.)

It looks like short links are here to stay, at least for a while longer. Bit.ly, the largest independent link shortening service out there, closed a $9 million Series B financing. (Correction: An earlier version of this story had $10 Million as the amount raised. The actual amount was $8.9 million). The round was led by RRE Ventures, with AOL Ventures also becoming a new investor. Existing investors betaworks, O’Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures, SV Angel, Founders Fund, and a few angels participated as well.

Every day, more than 200 million bit.ly short links are clicked on and decoded by the link-shortening service. Bit.ly keeps growing despite no longer being the default link shortener for Twitter. In September, nearly 6 billion bit.ly links were clicked (or decoded), up from 3.4 billion six months earlier. Twitter now only represents about a third of bit.ly’s links, down from about 60 percent last December when it stopped being the default link shortener for Twitte (which now uses its own link shortener). Facebook, MySpace, and new services such as Formspring are more than picking up the slack.

Bit.ly has been able to scale up to this point with only $5 million in capital invested. It now has 17 employees. It’s first source of revenues comes from Bit.ly Pro accounts, which are used by 3,000 companies and another individual 1,000 power users. (TechCrunch uses Bit.ly Pro to shorten all of our blog post links we distribute through Twitter). And while there was a recent controversy over Libya shutting down some .ly sites, the issue doesn’t seem to be spilling over to bit.ly.

But the bigger opportunity for bit.ly is in all the data it is harvesting about which links people are sharing in realtime. Before the end of the year, in partnership with the New York Times, it will launch News.me, a project which began in the R&D Labs of the New York Times. That team is now working temporarily at bit.ly and using its underlying data to build a social news product which has yet to be unveiled. It will be a showcase for the kinds of news and information products which can be built on top of bit’ly’s data (see the never-launched Bit.ly Now). If you think about it, bit.ly knows what news is breaking because everybody is sharing it.

On sites which it helps to operate like News.me, bit’ly will make traditional advertising revenue. But as more media and commerce sites start building their own products on top of bit.ly’s data, it becomes more of a pure data business where it could charge by the amount of data consumed. And to the extent that bit.ly can figure out people’s intent based on their realtime sharing patterns, it could create relevant, topical ad units which themselves get inserted into the realtime stream in the form of Tweets, status updates or whatnot. A lot of that still has to be figured out, but the $10 million bit.ly just got should give it more time to experiment.

This morning there has a rash of reports claiming that Facebook Groups may be somehow violating your privacy, possibly heralding the latest in Facebook’s long string of privacy blunders. The uproar, if you can even call it that, was sparked in part by Jason Calacanis who was “force-joined” into an untoward group called NAMBLA without his consent, which could conceivably tarnish his reputation if the story popped up in a friend’s News Feed. But Calacanis wasn’t the first person to notice this potential problem: we were testing exactly this functionality last night. Our conclusion? If your friends are jerks, you could have a minor annoyance on your hands; for everyone else, this simply isn’t a privacy threat. The real problem, as plenty of others have noticed by now, is spam.

In his email decrying the new feature, Calacanis writes how it “seems as if anyone can add anyone” to a Facebook Group, which opens the door to abuse. But he glosses over one key point: in order for someone to add you to a group, they have to be your Facebook friend. And yes, if you’ve decided to ‘friend’ a bunch of people you don’t know (or know to be troublemakers), then you could have an annoyance on your hands. But the same has been true for ages on Facebook.

Think about it. Before the new Groups feature, there’s been plenty of room for similar abuse: a ‘friend’ could tag you in a photo doing something illegal; they could leave an embarrassing comment on one of your status updates; or they could tag you at a strip club using the new Places feature. Granted, some of these features (Photos in particular) have more robust privacy settings than Groups do, but ultimately if someone is going out of their way to use Facebook to defame you, they can probably find a way. Which brings us back to the question: why are you friends with this person in the first place?

Still though, there is a real problem with Groups, and it’s spam. Once you’ve been added to a group (which doesn’t require an opt-in on your part), you’ll be sent email notifications each time one of your friends posts to that group. That could pose a problem depending on how active your friends are — our own MG Siegler says he woke up to 300 new email notifications from the feature alone. As Anil Dash wrote in one tweet this morning, “I wanted to like groups, but now I’m on 50 unwanted email lists.”

It’s pretty easy to adjust your notification settings on a per-group basis, but Facebook’s default choice is a frustrating one, and it’s also strange given the rationale behind launching Groups in the first place. During Facebook’s presentation yesterday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked about ‘The Biggest Problem’”in social networking, describing how difficult it is for online social networks to mimic the different social spheres we have in the real world. One of the symptoms that result is the hesitation people get before they post something to Facebook: they wind up asking themselves if what they’re about to post is really relevant to their hundreds of friends, or if it’s just going to annoy most of them.

That’s the problem Groups is supposed to solve — instead of telling your family, friends, and coworkers about your morning jog, you can just tell your jogging buddies. But with this default email notification setting, Facebook may have actually increased the level of angst people feel before they post something. Now, instead of just showing up as an item in your friend’s News Feed, it’s actually going to be sent directly into their inbox, which is far more sacred to most people. Sure, that update may only be reaching a subset of your friends now, but the sharing threshold that Facebook was trying to bypass may be higher than ever.

Fortunately there’s a pretty easy solution to this that’s been around for ages: the daily email digest.

The Apple TV has been out for, oh, about a week now and we’re really curious what you think about it. Reviews from the usual technology pundits are good measuring sticks, but they often lack the perspective of the average user. We can attest that “reviews” are often penned from snap judgments just to meet a deadline. This is why the Internet deserves opinions from actual Apple TV owners.

All you need to do is upload your take of the Apple TV to any video sharing site and send us the link. We’ll contact a bunch of you asking for the raw video file that we’ll use in making a comprehensive meta-review. This is probably the best way for you to get 15 seconds of Internet fame while either loving or trashing the new Apple TV. (Yes, trashing is allowed)

Click through for the details.

When Automattic launched VaultPress, a subscription-based protection, security and backup service for WordPress blogs and sites in March, the company was flooded with requests for the new service. Still in private beta, VaultPress now has a long wait list of users wanting to use the service. But today, WP Engine, a powerful hosted WordPress platform for WordPress.com users who need more flexibility or existing WordPress.org users, is giving you a ‘golden ticket’ to VaultPress.

WP Engine, which launched in July, provides a enterprise-level hosting service for WordPress.com blogs or for WordPress.org users who are tired of managing servers and doing IT work themselves. WP Engine makes sure blogs have super fast page load times, and scale when hit with a ton of traffic.

One request WP Engine received was for extra security and backup services. VaultPress not only backs up all data on self-hosted WordPress blogs, but also monitors sites for suspicious activity or a hacking and will eventually fix issues automatically. WP Engine found VaultPress to be complimentary to their service, and struck a deal with Automattic to allows their users to automatically have access to use VaultPress for their blogs.

So by using a WP Engine WordPress site owners will be able to access a ‘golden ticket’ to VaultPress. WP Engine is the first company to partner with VaultPress and Automattic in this way. As of now, you can only get a ticket through Automattic or WP Engine.

WP Engine starts at $50 and VaultPress costs around $15 to 20 per month, so combining the combined services are fairly easy on the wallet.

Disclosure: TechCrunch currently uses the VIP hosted version of WordPress.com.

Photo Credit/IMDB

Well, not really … But doesn’t get much whiter than a rapper who name checks Peter Thiel. Inspired by the Facebook creation myth and The Social Network movie, Jay Kila the Viral Rapper (yes, you read that right) has created the above video, replete with animated Zuck.

Usually I’d pull lyric highlights, but the lyrics here are just so good overall that I’m going to include the whole song.

Lyrics below:

They call me Young Zuck just a punk
Tryna be in finals clubs no girls showin’ me love
But I don’t give a fuck
I was made to be great facemashin’ all my dates
As I crash the network — college aged Bill Gates
Not really a creep — okay, maybe social geek
You can check out my blog I’m telling it when I speak
Programmin up in my sleep I don’t got many peeps
For friends — Eduardo he was one of them
I guess — yes, well lemme get this off my chest
I believe I’m the best when it comes to CS
Facebook — yo, that was my idea
Don’t let them Winklevosses tell you that I steal
For real. I got the Napster as my bro
And he knows that this thing is about to blow
So I’ma hop on a plane to Palo Alto
Call up Peter Thief and well…you know

Chorus:
I’ll be C.E.O (yo!) x 2

Couple years go by I’m worth a couple of bill
And all these haters want a piece they jus need to chill
I look back on the site I was about to build
And never thought or dreamed that it could be this ill
I still got Asian groupies giving me brain
But now the phoenix is the name of my private plane
I abstain from doin’ drugs cuz I know cocaine
Can really cause some peeps to go kind of insane
But it’s kind of okay yea I’ve made mistakes
500 million friends ain’t that easy to make
I went from wiring in to be in Wired magazine
And there’s no AEPI when I fly Caribbean
Facebook — yo, it was meant to be
A social network expert or my destiny
jus a hacker turned legit a slacker and misfit
But my business cards say I’m C.E.O bitch

Japanese gaming company DeNA is considering an acquisition of San Francisco-based ngmoco, we’ve heard from multiple sources. The price, says one source, is north of $400 million, although that probably includes a very large earnout. ngmoco specializes in iPhone/iPad/iPod social games.

It has been called “Zynga for iPhone” and actually shares a board member with Zynga – Kleiner Perkins partner and former Electronic Arts executive Bing Gordon. One source says Zynga looked at ngmoco but “threw up a little” over the price and passed. Zynga did not respond to a request for comment, however.

ngmoco has been on a tear lately. They recently raised a venture round from Google Ventures and have become serious about developing for the Android platform. The company has raised more than $40 million to date.

DeNA hasn’t been shy about acquisitions recently. They acquired Mountain View, Calif.-based mobile social gaming studio, Gameview, in September. And later last month they invested in social game studio Astro Ape.

ngmoco has not responded to an email inquiry about the transaction.