It's not quite on the level of Steve Jobs returning to Apple, but every time a founder comes home it leaves me feeling all warm and fuzzy. This time it's the turn of Michael Birch who has re-joined Bebo as a strategic advisor, along with investing in the social network which he co-founded with his wife Xochi in early 2005 before selling the company to AOL in 2008 for $850 million. Since then, of course, Bebo has seen another change of hands: After being left to languish by AOL, who eventually shut it down for tax purposes, the social network was sold to Criterion Capital Partners for about $10m in June of this year.

It’s now nearly the end of the year, and you know what that means: end-of-the-year lists. Apple has just released a bunch, and now Google has too. As they do every year, Google has unveiled their “Zeitgeist 2010“. And they have some nifty interactive data visualizations once again — and now they’re in HTML5.

Google singles out the Olympics, the World Cup, earthquakes, the oil spill, and Lady Gaga among others in their post on the matter. But their charts focus mainly on the fastest-rising queries. Of note in the top queries, the top iPhone (iPhone 4) beat the top Android phone (Evo 4G), Twitter beat Facebook, and Chatroulette beat everyone. In fact, the service (which no one seems to talk about anymore) was far ahead of every other fast-rising query expect for the iPad, which was a close second.

It’s worth noting again that these lists are just for the fastest-rising queries of the year. While Twitter beat Facebook in that area, Facebook is far ahead of Twitter in terms of overall queries, for example.

Below, the top 10 fastest-rising queries of 2010:

1. chatroulette
2. ipad
3. justin bieber
4. nicki minaj
5. friv
6. myxer
7. katy perry
8. twitter
9. gamezer
10. facebook

And here were the fastest-rising queries in consumer electronics in 2010:

1. ipad
2. iphone 4
3. nokia 5530
4. htc evo 4g
5. nokia n900
6. blackberry apps
7. duracell mygrid
8. 트위터
9. otterbox
10. pdanet

Interestingly enough — we’re told that number 8 is “Twitter” in Korean.

Also cool, Google’s “Strangest Searches Of The Year”:

1. can a horse have ocd?
2. am i bipolar or overachiever?
3. why are americans afraid of dragons?
4. ninjas are better than pirates
5. why is a raven like a writing desk?
6. why does brian wilson dye his beard?
7. should i marry him?
8. i wish i could speak whale
9. why couldn’t you stand on the sun’s surface?
10. why does my baby grunt?

The Le Web startup competition filtered over 400 startups down to a final 16. We covered a few of the companies here, here, here and here. Today the last three finalists got the opportunity to pitch their startups to the assembled crowd at the conference, after which the judges judges retired to deliberate live their pick for the winner.

Chairman of the judges David Hornik said the judges changed the format of the awards and decided they wanted a winner with great originality, technology and virality. But decided all three finalists should win.

Our buddy Peter at J-List doesn’t have a lot of Yule Logs or mistletoe in Tokyo but he does have some Japanese goodies for you and yours. He’s offering one of the following prizes to one lucky commenter which, in theory, could reduce your overall shopping list by a few percent. Below you’ll five five items. Check them out and report back to me.

First up:
Itazura Cat Coin Bank
A little cat who steals money you put on the box. It’s cute, and a huge hit this Christmas.

Read more…

Well, we all knew this was coming. Like they’ve done time and time again, NMA.tv has delivered a hilariously over-the-top, strange animated video about a current event. This time, it’s WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange. Yes, the man everyone in the entire world is talking about.

And, naturally, we have plenty of tech companies making a cameo in the video. PayPal, Amazon, etc.

Enjoy it above.

On the “How To Get Acquired” panel here at Le Web, Microsoft Senior Director of Corporate Strategy and Acquisitions Fritz Lanman admitted to Loic Le Meur that Microsoft did try to acquire the social network Facebook. The Microsoft/Facebook acquisition talks were first reported by David Kirkpatrick in his book “The Facebook Effect.”

“Yeah we tried to acquire Facebook” Lanman responded to Le Web founder Le Meur, Facebook had a lot of similarities to Microsoft back in the day.”

Kirkpatrick quotes Steve Ballmer offering Zuckerberg $15 billion, also alluded to by Meur onstage. Microsoft ended up investing $240 million at that valuation instead because Facebook would not sell. While onstage, Lanman speculated that Facebook’s valuation could one day be as high as Microsoft’s.

Microsoft and Facebook currently work together in a search partnership where Bing users can view information about their friends’ Likes. Facebook’s new messaging service also has deep Microsoft Docs integration.

Full anecdote from the Kirkpatrick book below:

“Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had flown to Palo Alto to visit his young counterpart twice. As Zuckerberg is wont to do, he took Ballmer on a long walk. Zuckerberg told Ballmer that Facebook was raising money at a $15 billion valuation. But Ballmer had come with something more sweeping in mind. "Why don't we just buy you for $15 billion?" he replied, according to a very knowledgeable source. Zuckerberg was unmoved even by this offer. "I don't want to sell the company unless I can keep control," said Zuckerberg, as he always did in such situations.

Ballmer took this reply as a sort of challenge. He went back to Microsoft's headquarters and concocted a plan intended to acquire Facebook in stages over a period of years to enable Zuckerberg to keep calling the shots. But Zuckerberg rejected all the overtures. What Ballmer finally agreed to instead was an advertising deal that included a provision for Microsoft to pay a huge amount, $240 million, for a sliver of Facebook, 1.6%. Microsoft's investment gave Facebook an implied value of $15 billion.”

Germany-based business social networking site XING is acquiring also Germany-based online event management and ticketing services company Amiando, we’ve just learned.

XING is paying 5.1 million euros initially, and an additional payment of up to 5.25 million euros will be made on March 31, 2013, provided various conditions are met (such as the current management team remaining within the company and the achievement of specific financial performance targets).

It’s likely not a stellar exit for Amiando – they’ve raised an undisclosed amount of financing over two rounds, from firms such as Wellington Partners and AdInvest and a host of angel investors like Stefan Glaenzer and Lukasz Gadowski.

FYI: XING was also a Wellington Partners portfolio company (they went public in late 2006).

Amiando currently has a staff of 35 – all of whom will retain their jobs – and says it has supported some 100,000 events in 2009 alone. It’s unclear how much revenue it was generating, as only part of its solutions are premium, paid services.

With the acquisition, XING aims to offer its 10 million+ members integrated business event services, ranging from organization to marketing, billing and execution. According to the press release, their users have organized and promoted roughly 150,000 events via the XING platform last year, so it is a straightforward strategic deal for them.

Amiando founder and CEO Felix Haas will continue in his current position.

(Full disclosure: I’m a small investor in Oxynade / MyUpcoming, which competes with Amiando to a degree).

Ben Kessler woke up to an unexpected surprise on the doorstep of his New York home this morning: a Cr-48. Yes, the just-unveiled Google Chrome Notebook is already rolling out to those who requested one.

It was only two days ago that Google unveiled that the Cr-48 would be the first computer featuring their new Chrome OS. Google was quick to note that the 12.1-inch machine would feature no branding and was simply meant to be a test machine for developers, students, and a few other demographics. They asked people to fill out a form here to request one of the limited-quantity Cr-48s.

Kessler, who is the Communications Director for SeatGeek, says he simply filled out the form on Google’s site to request one. And *poof* less than two days later, here it is.

Google keeps saying that Chrome is all about speed. That’s apparently true about delivery speed as well.

Kessler was nice enough to send us some pictures of the device below.

Le Web. I'm still unclear on the unique selling point of Europe's "leading technology conference", and yet here I am, for the third year in a row, hanging out in a snow-bound venue four hundred miles from the centre of Paris, watching a succession of American entrepreneurs being interviewed – in English – by journalists who have flown in specially from California.

I'll say this, though: the food is good this year – really good.

Now, having satisfied my annual obligation to be snarky about Le Web, I’m free to talk about what passes for the big story of the conference, and indeed the biggest story of the world right now. Wikileaks. Specifically, the continuing DOS attacks against companies who are perceived as enemies of Wikileaks.

Judging by the hostile reaction to Paypal's Osama Bedier yesterday, the audience here in Paris is of a single mind on the subject. Julian Assange is a hero – a paragon of virtuous openness; a flesh-coloured bottle of sunshine, disinfecting the fetid swamp of global diplomacy. Those who would cross him – the Paypals, the Visas, the Mastercards and the EVERY SINGLE GOVERNMENT IN THE FREE WORLDs – are the enemy, and – inshallah – their websites will soon crumble under the crowdsourced vengeance of all of those who cherish our freedoms.

And then there's me.

I hate Julian Assange. I hate the way he's posing as a champion of truth and justice whilst hiding in the shadows and resorting to blackmail in a drawn-out attempt to avoid having to answer criminal charges in a publicly-accessible court of law. I hate the fact that he's trading on a myth that We The People have a right to know everything our governments are saying and doing in our name when, in fact, we elect people to act in our best interests on a global stage without necessarily giving us a heads up every time they want to have an off-the-record chat with a dictator. (If every tiny decision has to be made based on how it will play in public, then we'll soon end up with a whole load of crowd-pleasing decisions but very little actual diplomacy. Palling around with Chinese leaders or Arab kings might be a strategic no-brainer but it doesn't play great in the heartland.)

Also, I hate his hair.

But here's what I hate most about Wikileaks, and what no-one else here seems to be saying: that with this most recent round of leaks, the organisation has actually become a sworn enemy of openness.

The release of a quarter of a million diplomatic cables – documents which have made Wikileaks a top story around the world, and Assange a celebrity – has been variously compared to Watergate and the Pentagon papers. Of course the comparison is ridiculous. Both the Pentagon Papers and Watergate involved scandalous information that almost nobody knew. “Cablegate”, on the other hand, involved cables that were routinely shared between members of the US government and armed forces, and trusted figures from friendly nations.

Thousands – maybe millions – of people had access to the cables – which, as openness goes, is pretty impressive. Hell, even a lowly Private like Bradley Manning – the junior soldier with a grudge against the American military who allegedly leaked the documents to Wikileaks – had access to them. Now, however, thanks to Wikileaks, all of that is likely to stop. What's also likely to stop is the routine documenting of casual conversations, the candid sharing of opinions between allies – and a whole bunch of other acts of openness which if Wikileaks actually meant a word it said, the organisation should be all for. And for… what? So that millions of us who had no real business – beyond a basic prurient interest – in knowing what conversations are being had behind closed diplomatic doors could feel important. Well, great. Responsible openness' loss is a few million busybodies' gain.

But of course none of that seems to matter to the crowd at Le Web who applaud Wikileaks' Assange and showed their displeasure towards Paypal's Bedier. All that matters to them is that THE MAN is trying to HIDE SOMETHING, and he's being assisted by EVIL CORPORATIONS like Paypal and Visa and Mastercard. Possessed by that belief, it seems perfectly right and proper that those corporations should be made to suffer, and those behind the retaliation should be applauded for their denial of service attacks. The fact that many of the "hacktivists" are the same people who share child porn and harass the parents of dead children is immaterial: the enemy of the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Oh Amazon. Amazon Web Services stopped hosting the WikiLeaks Cables last week citing that the content was against its Terms of Service.

As first reported on The Next Web, at least one appreciator of irony has now uploaded them to the Kindle store, and you can now buy the otherwise free cables in Amazon Books under the title “WikiLeaks documents expose US foreign policy conspiracies. All cables with tags from 1- 5000.”

From the Amazon blog regarding pulling WikiLeaks from AWS:

“For example, our terms of service state that ‘you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content… that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity.’ It's clear that WikiLeaks doesn't own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content.”

This is about to get really interesting, as Amazon is now profiting off of content that it has very publicly stated was against its TOS.

Also this is the second Kindle books issue in the past couple of months, as Amazon recently came under controversy for the polarizing “A Pedophile’s Guide,” which eventually got pulled down because of a 10,000 strong Facebook group and mass customer concern.

Judging by some of the comments on the Kindle store page, customers are also not happy with the seeming hypocrisy of allowing the sale of the eBook. Stay tuned for how this will play out.

Viewing Internet content on HDTV is a painfully tricky affair these days but Snapstick thinks they can succeed where others have crashed and burned. Forget Google TV, Boxee Box and Apple TV for a moment. Snapstick’s whole philosophy seems different and that’s where it might have a chance.

Rather than relying on a box connected to the TV (Note: there’s still a box connected to the TV) for navigation and discovery either through a painful onscreen keyboard or a clumsy full size keyboard, content for Snapstick is found either via a computer or iOS device running the Snapstick app. Once you find the video, you physically snap the phone and *bam*, it starts playing on the TV.

The creators say that this method drops any barriers that others like Google TV and Boxee Box must deal with. If you can find the content on your phone or computer, Snapstick will get it onto your TV. Or so they say.

Read More

iPads are shaping up to be a popular gift this year (despite the certainty of a sequel just around the corner), but what do you get the spouse or kid who already has one of these machines? I’m glad you asked! Because I just happen to have 10 highly eligible iPad cases just waiting for your perusal.

Watch the video for a rapid-fire (yet still lengthy) tour of all the cases, or just scroll through the brief reviews and admire the pictures.

Continue reading…

We’ve already highlighted the four apps that Apple has chosen as their “award winners” for 2010. But they’ve also highlighted the following: Overall Paid iPhone Apps, Overall Free iPhone Apps, Overall Grossing iPhone Apps, Overall Paid iPad Apps, Overall Free iPad Apps, Overall Grossing iPad Apps.

Below, find the full top 10 lists for each of those. One thing interesting to note: the top three grossing iPad apps for the year are all made by Apple themselves (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote).

Also interesting:

• MLB At-Bat.com 2010 beat out Angry Birds as the top-grossing iPhone app — even though it’s currently free. That’s because the baseball season is over, but in-season the app is $15.
• Facebook is the top free app for the iPhone (and very likely the top app overall, though Apple doesn’t break that down). But they don’t have an iPad app. As a result, the third-party Friendly for Facebook is the #9 paid app on the platform (though it just went free too).
• Apple has also created “key trends” lists in the year-end App Store look for the first time. They are: Shoot, Edit, Share (camera apps), Augmented Reality, Fun for Foodies, New News, Generative Art & Sound (music/visual apps), Tech for Tots, The Cloud, Quick Fix Games, Hardcore Games, Retro Revival Games, Multiplayer Games, On The Grid (location-based apps), Personal Trainer, Band In Your Hand, Interactive Stories, Mobile Office, Magazines & Newspapers, Pen & Brush, and Zombies. Yes, Zombies have their own category.

Below, the full list:

=============================
Overall Top 10 PAID iPhone Apps
=============================

Angry Birds
Doodle Jump – BE WARNED: Insanely Addictive!
Skee-Ball
Bejeweled 2 + Blitz
Fruit Ninja
Cut the Rope
ALL-IN-1 GAMEBOX
The Moron Test
Plants vs. Zombies
Pocket God

==============================
Overall Top 10 FREE iPhone Apps
==============================

Facebook
Angry Birds Lite
Words With Friends Free
Skype
Tap Tap Revenge 3
The Weather Channel®
Paper Toss
Bing
ROCK BAND FREE
Talking Tom Cat

==================================
Overall Top 10 GROSSING iPhone Apps
==================================

MLB.com At Bat 2010
Angry Birds
Call of Duty: Zombies
Bejeweled 2 + Blitz
FriendCaller 3 Pro
Zombie Farm
TomTom U.S.A.
TETRIS®
Plants vs. Zombies
Doodle Jump – BE WARNED: Insanely Addictive!

===========================
Overall Top 10 PAID iPad Apps
===========================

Pages
GoodReader for iPad
Numbers
Angry Birds HD
Keynote
Glee Karaoke
WolframAlpha
Pinball HD
Friendly for Facebook
Star Walk for iPad

===========================
Overall Top 10 FREE iPad Apps
===========================

iBooks
Pandora Radio
Netflix
Google Mobile App
Solitaire
Movies by Flixster – with Rotten Tomatoes
IMDb Movies & TV
Kindle
Google Earth
Virtuoso Piano Free 2 HD

================================
Overall Top 10 GROSSING iPad Apps
================================

Pages
Numbers
Keynote
LogMeIn Ignition
SCRABBLE for iPad
Documents To Go® Premium – Office Suite
Angry Birds HD
Real Racing HD
Plants vs. Zombies HD
Proloquo2Go

================================

Apple has just announced their year-end top lists for iTunes, which they call “iTunes Rewind”. These lists span music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, etc. But the most interesting list is probably for apps.

Notably, they break the top apps of the year into whether they’re designed for the iPhone (and iPod touch) or the iPad. And this year, they’ve selected four apps that they’re especially featuring as “award winners” for 2010. Those are: Hipstamtic [iTunes Link], Plants Vs. Zombies [iTunes Link], Flipboard [iTunes Link], and Osmos [iTunes Link].

Those apps can probably expect their download numbers to explode. Right. About. Now. As you can see in the image above, they’re actually highlighting Angry Birds instead of Osmos, but in an email sent out to the press, Osmos got the nod.

More: The Full List Of The Top iPhone And iPad Apps Of 2010

Zynga SVP of Mobile David Ko just took the stage at Le Web 10, where he was interviewed by our very own MG Siegler. Here are our notes (paraphrased and cut short):

You’ve been with Zynga for a month now, and you’ve already got to announce an acquisition. Feel free to disclose the details right now.

Last week was a big week for Zynga. We just acquired Newtoy, who have created one of the best mobile games experiences today in our opinion.

Will it be a separate studio?

Yes. We want to leverage their knowhow, so we renamed it, but we will keep the team intact. They’ll continue to develop their own products.

Mobile is a huge opportunity for us. We have a huge user base to leverage, and they have some really exciting IP. Stay tuned.

Let’s talk about the Android platform – what are your thoughts on that?

We want to connect the world through games, so we want to be on any device on any platform, but to also get the experience right. We’ve been focused on the iPhone and iPad primarily so far.

We want to move to other platforms – you’ll see Mafia Wars for Android later this month for example.

What about Nokia, Windows Phone, Blackberry …?

Our goal is to understand the limitations of devices and go from there. We basically want to offer seamless experiences everywhere on the planet.

You were at Yahoo for 10 years. Do you want to talk about the situation there right now, and your recent decision to leave?

I was at Yahoo for a little over 10 years, it was a great experience. I wish them all the best.

But you had a lot of responsibilities there … why leave all that to do only mobile at Zynga?

I’ve met Mark Pincus a couple of months ago, and I was always impressed with Zynga as a company. The more time I spent with Mark and the management team, the more I became impressed.

They don’t really have a strong mobile presence, though.

Yes, there are lots of opportunities for growth right now. Remember that Zynga today has a huge subscriber base: 45 million daily active users yesterday for example.

There’s the huge Facebook association. As you move more into mobile and other sites … how important is that for Zynga?

We stand for being social, and the reality is Facebook equals social. But there are other users looking to access our service through other sites. So we take that into account, and we look for more partnerships in that regard.

What about Facebook and its own mobile strategy with Connect etcetera? Are you guys working with them?

There are things they’re doing we can leverage, so we want to look at how we can do that under the current partnership in place with Facebook.

Moving on to international markets. What’s the status on Zynga’s expansion outside the United States?

We just launched Farmville in Japan through one of our partners, Softbank, mobile-only to start with. We’re very excited to see how that goes. In Asia today, many folks will access the Web through mobile first, so that means we have to diversify away from the high-end smartphones, so we have a lot of work to do in that regard.

We just launched CityVille last week, and it’s been the fastest-growing game for us to date. We saw 3 million daily active users yesterday, and that’s across 5 different languages.

Zynga’s revenue numbers are growing fast, but mobile is a minuscule part of that, right?

We’re definitely just getting started on that level.

Google has invested in Zynga. What’s the relationship with them like?

We haven’t announced anything publicly, so I’m not going to comment on that.

Why the lack of focus on Android so far though? You have a couple of thousands of people working there, right?

Well, there is a lot of fragmentation in mobile today. But we’re working on it, so stay tuned for more announcements soon.

Le Web 10 host Loic Le Meur just finished his on-stage interview with Alexander Tamas, Partner at one of the most watched technology investment firms on the planet, DST / Mail.ru Group.

That’s quite a presence you have: Groupon, Zynga, Facebook and … Twitter?

Not Twitter (smiles).

What is DST?

The firm originated in Russia, grew out of social networking company called Mail.ru, and at some point we started making international investments. Facebook was our first one.

How big is your stake in Facebook now?

It’s hard to say, we’ve made some straightforward investments and then we bought as many shares from early employees and investors as possible. We’ve definitely invested more than $500 million in total though.

So Facebook was your first investment – how did that come about?

Well, we owned and ran a social network in Russia, but the dynamics there were different, we were actually ahead of most social sites. Every single one of our countries became really big. So, we knew there was money in it, and we realized quickly that it was only a matter of time for Facebook to become really large worldwide.

Did you lead the Mail.ru Group IPO as well?

Yes, that was last month.

Is it the biggest tech IPO in Europe to date?

In the past few years, yes. The initial market valuation was about $6 billion, we’re now at roughly $8 billion.

So when’s the Facebook IPO planned?

I don’t have any comments on that (smiles).

Do you sit on the Facebook board?

No we actually don’t, but we obviously have good relationships with management and other board members. our perspective is that it’s entirely possible to be a major investor in a company without being on the board, as long as you have an open dialogue with the people in charge.

You got in late, what was Facebook’s valuation at the time?

We got in at a $6.5 billion valuation. It’s difficult to say what the valuation is now – although I can tell you the secondary market ones are based on limited information and generally not super accurate.

We haven’t purchased Facebook shares in quite some time though.

The Zynga investment came after Facebook?

Yes.

Why haven’t they been acquired yet?

If you’re a founder of company like Zynga, with fast growth and massive revenues, it only makes you wealthy on paper, right. So you used to have two choices: sell or take it public. Now, companies can get liquidity early on, so it takes the pressure of.

We invested $150 million in Zynga, but we didn’t disclose at what valuation.

So Groupon was almost sold …

I can’t comment on the rumors, but I can tell you that they’re going for it. They realize they have something special and there’s a lot of potential for Groupon to become a generation-defining company. They’re shooting for the stars.

By the way, I’m always amazed when people discuss valuations of private companies without actually knowing the financials. The truth is most people can’t say whether investments come cheap or expensive, as commentators. It all depends on how you measure growth, and most people tend to think linearly.

When we invested in Groupon, they sold 4 million groupons, a month later it was 25% more. The potential was obvious. They’ll hit 20 million groupons sold next week.

How does a startup get an investment deal out of DST? Is Twitter big enough, as an example?

It’s definitely an interesting company, but there are more. What we look at is that you have to be on a path to become a clear leader in your segment, companies that could theoretically go public today. We want to know all companies, but we focus our investments on those with long-term sustainability.

You know, we’re not an early-stage investor. We’re really small, with no people on the ground. So we can’t really help companies when they’re just getting started, apart from writing a check, and that’s not what we want. There are many more capable firms for that.

So startups should give you a call when they hit a $1 billion valuation?

Not really, we’ll also talk to you if you’re clearly on a path to becoming a $1 billion company down the line.

What about Foursquare?

There are lots of opportunities for them, they’re seeing good growth, so it could become a really interesting company for sure.

You’re (sort of) a European fund – why don’t you invest more here?

Groupon, Zynga and Facebook really just happened to be US companies, we look all over the world for companies. We tick boxes, and we can do that anywhere.

Many of the startups in Europe for some reason want to sell out early. That’s not what we’re looking for. There aren’t enough role models here, so less confidence.

Do you look at Asia, more specifically India, China and Japan?

It’s definitely a geography we’re looking at. We know a lot of the companies there already.

What’s your advice for young entrepreneurs?

Not many people have the opportunity to really change the world. If you have an urge to build something that could, don’t focus on the money, but the legacy you’ll leave behind.

It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a generation-defining company, so I applaud people for shooting for the stars. It’s a much more rewarding thing than doing it for the money.

I mean, look at Le Web, it’s not just about the money right, it’s also the community, helping out startups throughout Europe.

Loic: yes, we actually got a few offers, but we’re not looking at that right now.

Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg and CEO Toni Schneider were interviewed by our own Alexia Tsotsis at Le Web 10 today. Our live notes (paraphrased):

Can you talk about your vision from blogging and how it changed from 2003 to 2010?

I really wanted software for my own blog, there was no Javascript at the time. By the time people started to really think about Web apps, WordPress was becoming more than just a blogging tool, but more of a CMS.

So now people use it to power their websites not just their blogs.

What’s the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org? You transferred the trademark recently right?

Tricky one.

We started as an open source project, but where we were in 2005 we weren’t sure how to take it to the next level. What if it could be one-click simple, so that became WordPress.com. And then millions of people started using it, but we still had to consider the .org part.

We looked at the situation, and we decided the trademark belongs in a non-profit organization.

What are the challenges of building a business based on open-source technology?

The biggest challenge is to start a business based on an open-source project that wouldn’t actually kill the open source project and scare away the community. Our goal has been for both to reinforce each other, and it has worked. Both have seen growth.

How big is WordPress?

There are about 30 million publishers right now. That’s roughly 10% of all websites in the world. We’re currently getting about 300 million unique visitors on WordPress.com a month.

Are you making money?

We’re focused on growth right now, so we’ve invested a lot in infrastructure and so on. We haven’t been focused on revenues so far, but I can tell you we’re break-even.

How big is the company right now?

We’re about 74 people. In terms of revenues to sustain our growth, I’d say we make a little under $1 million a month from all our services combined.

(TechCrunch: that’s roughly $10 million a year, based on that statement and what we’ve heard from other sources.)

Where does most of the revenue come from?

Most comes from premium services, the hosting service etcetera.

What’s the exit potential for Automattic?

Our goal’s not to be acquired.

Day two of Europe’s largest tech conference, Loic Le Meur’s Le Web 10 kicks off today in a couple minutes. Le Web brings in over 3,000 attendees from 26 countries worldwide and today’s talks include such notables as Zynga’s David Ko, Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg and Toni Schneider and 500 Startup’s Dave McClure. The event will be live streamed in its entirety courtesy of Ustream and you can watch the video above and here.

DAY 2 – DEC 9, 2010 – Pullman PLENARY ROOM

08h00 – Welcome Buffet Breakfast
09h00 – Welcome Back
Geraldine & Loïc Le Meur, LeWeb Founders

09h05
"Wisdom of Crowds"
Yossi Vardi, Investor & Entrepreneur

Money Talks

09h25 – Money Roundtable
Moderated by: Travis Kalanick, Entrepreneur & Angel Investor
Philippe Botteri, Vice President, Bessemer Venture Partners
Jeff Clavier, Founder & Managing Partner, SoftTech VC
Bernard Liautaud, Partner, Balderton Capital
Barry E. Silbert, CEO & Founder, SecondMarket, Inc.

09h55 – Thomas H. Glocer, CEO, Thomson Reuters
Q&A with Jeff Clavier, Founder & Managing Partner, SoftTech VC

10h25 – Alexander Tamas, Partner, DST International
Q&A with Loic Le Meur, Founder, LeWeb

10h45 – From a Simple Idea to a Global Success
Phil Libin, CEO, Evernote

Q&A with Loic Le Meur, Founder, LeWeb

Browsing the Platforms

11h00 – Matt Mullenweg, Founder and Toni Schneider, CEO, Automattic
Q&A with Alexia Tsotsis, Writer, TechCrunch

11h20 – Mitchell Baker, Chairperson, Mozilla Foundation
Q&A with Robert Scoble, American Blogger, Tech Evangelist & Author

11h50 – Keynote
David Ko, SVP of Mobile, Zynga
Q&A with MG Siegler, Writer, TechCrunch

Making a Difference…..

12h10 – Shai Agassi, Founder & CEO, Better Place

12h30 – Jack D. Hidary, Chairman, SmartTransportation.org

12h50 – Mel Young, Co-Founder, Homeless World Cup

13h10 – 14h30 – LUNCH BREAK

Tech & Innovation

14h30 – Thought Controlled Computing
Ariel Garten, CEO, Interaxon

14h50 – Salim Ismail, Executive Director, Singularity University

15h05 – Henri Seydoux, Founder & CEO, Parrot
Q&A with Loic Le Meur, Founder, LeWeb

Start-Up Competition Finals

15h25 – Introduction
David Hornik, General Partner, August Capital

15h30 – Start-Up Competition Finals
Hosted by Michael Arrington and David Hornik
3 companies, 9 minutes total each (5'demo & 4' Q&A)
Featuring Panel of Judges:
Jean-David Blanc, Entrepreneur/Business Angel (Founder of AlloCine)
Brent Hoberman, Founder & Executive Chairman, mydeco
Xavier Niel, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors & Chief Strategy Officer, Iliad
Jacques-Antoine Granjon, Founder & CEO, Ventes-Privee
Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet, Founder & CEO, PriceMinister

16h20 – Panel How to get acquired?
Moderated by: Loic Le Meur, Founder, LeWeb
Anil Hansjee, Head of Corporate Development, Google EMEA

Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet, Founder & CEO, PriceMinister
Fritz Lanman, Senior Director, Corporate Strategy, Microsoft Corporation

16h50 – Startup Competition Awards Ceremony

17h05 – Ustream Contest Announcement powered by BuddyMedia
John Ham, Founder, Ustream

Erinn Marzo, Vice President, Strategic Brand Partnerships, Buddy Media

17h15 – Keynote
Dave McClure, Startup Investor & Troublemaker

17h30 – Keynote
Social Media And Big Business: Trends for 2011
A forward looking view by industry analyst Jeremiah Owyang, partner at Altimeter Group based off recent research on how large global brands are organizing, and spending on social media.
Jeremiah Owyang, Industry Analyst and Partner, Altimeter Group

17h45 – Keynote
Howard Lindzon, Co-founder & CEO, Stocktwits.com and Founder, Social Leverage
18h00-18h05
“The Network: reaching the parts other network providers have been unable to reach”
Gary Shainberg, Vice President, Global Technology & Innovation Support, BT Plc.

18h05 – Gary Vaynerchuk, Host, Wine Library TV, Author, CrushIT,
Q&A with the LeWeb participants and Loic Le Meur, Founder, LeWeb

18h35 – Closing Remarks, Geraldine & Loic Le Meur, LeWeb Founders

Factual, the open database company, closed a $25 million series A financing, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures. VCs Ben Horowitz of AH and Danny Rimer of Index will be joining Factual’s board. Ron Conway’s SV Angel and former Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz also invested, as did some of the previous angels who put in about $2 million earlier this year (only half of which was previously disclosed). “The company has very significant aspirations,” says Rimer,” what they are seeking to do is extremely ambitious. We believe they will need a lot of funding.”

Factual started out as sort of a wiki for databases. Anyone can create or add data to Factual, and it has all sorts of APIs to make it easy for Websites and developers to build apps on top of the data. It also lets developers and consumers visualize this big data in all sorts of ways. But over the past few months, the company started to focus on a few key areas, especially local. It is also building datasets around healthcare, education, entertainment, and government.

But its big push right now is in local. It has a places database filled with the names, locations, addresses, phone numbers, and other info on 14 million businesses in the U.S. Geo apps like Booyah rely on this places database for their services. Factual’s biggest potential customer, however, is Facebook. Right now, Facebook Places in Japan and the UK is based at least partially on Factual data. If Factual can grow with Facebook Places, it has a chance to win the bigger business in the U.S. and elsewhere. It probably doesn’t hurt that Marc Andreesen sits on Facebook’s board.

Factual was founded by Gil Elbaz, who earlier co-founded Applied Semantics (that company was bought by Google for $100 million and became AdSense). He wants to build a big data company that creates and maintains valuable datasets that other Websites and developers can then build their apps on top of. Access to the data is very cheap or free at low volumes, but once an app starts to take off, Factual starts to charge data licensing fees based on how much data is used.

MSKYNET, a company that allows businesses to create and analyze the usage of 2D barcodes called SPARQCodes, launched a service today helps local businesses connect their customers with their online presences, such as Facebook, Twitter, Gowalla, and Foursquare. MSKYNET raised $550K in seed funding back in August.

SPARQCodes are very similar to normal QR codes, but differ slightly because they link to a URL instead of embedding their payload data in the QR code itself. The new feature, which is called ‘Connect N Share’, is very straightforward — it makes it easy for businesses to generate QR codes that link to the business’s presence on Twitter and/or Facebook. The idea is to direct customers who are waiting in line or for their food to scan a code that they see on the wall, which leads them directly to the business’s Facebook page.

Setting up your QR code printout using the new feature is actually pretty slick. First, you type in the name of your business — the web app will try to automatically find the matching Facebook and Twitter accounts (you can tweak this if it guesses wrong). Enter your address, and it will try to pair it up with your Foursquare, Gowalla, and UrbanSpoon accounts. Add a logo, hit ‘Build it!’, and you’re done. The site will spit out a printout with your QR codes, directing visitors to your business to scan them.

Businesses with more substantial social media presences can direct users to a list of sites that are relevant — a restaurant might also include Yelp in their mini-portal, for example. Founder Jesse Chor says that the company is mainly targeting small businesses and franchises, which tend to value a social media presence, but do not usually have the technical expertise to make their own QR codes.

There is one caveat to this: customers will have to log into your Facebook or Twitter account to like or ‘follow’ the business if they are not logged in already, so the experience may not be as seamless as ‘checking in’ via a smartphone’s native Facebook application for example.

The codes and the analytics that come with them will be provided free of charge, but businesses will have to pay to include additional social media services that may crop up over time. Chor also stated that MSKYNET will charge for "customer retention programs," in the future, but did not elaborate on what they might be.

MSKYNET is far from the first company to offer QR code analytics (see here for a good list of other services), and it isn’t the first to target local businesses either — Google has its own business-facing QR code features, too, as do some other QR code companies.

Back in the old days — say, 2004 or so — the only way to get computer games was from retail outlets. Then Valve’s digital distribution platform Steam came along, allowing gamers to pay for and immediately download games from both Valve and major third parties (it’s a little like Apple’s App Store). And it’s done very well — Steam now has over 70% of the digital game distribution market, and some retail stores have gone as far as banning games that install Steam because it’s eating up so much of their business.

WeGame, a 4-man startup that’s been around since 2007, wants in on the action. Up until now the company has been primarily focused on building software that lets gamers record and share their in-game exploits using screenshot and video capture tools. And now it’s also launching a digital distribution store that will let gamers pay for and install games, in much the same way they would using Steam. If you want to try it out, you can sign up for the private beta right here.

So why would anyone use WeGame instead of Steam? Founder Jared Kim says that the current situation — where Value controls so much of the digital distribution market — is bad for developers. Valve gets a cut of each sale (even when it’s selling competitors’ games) and also manages which games get featured in the store. Kim says that WeGame will be a better deal for developers (it will take a smaller cut than Steam) and because it’s a third party that doesn’t make games of its own, developers won’t have to worry about handing over money to a competitor.

So far, WeGame has partnerships with Shanda/MochiMedia (who will offer 250 browser-based games), Bigpoint, Perfect World, Subagames, and CMUNE. Down the line it hopes to be distributing AAA titles like Trion World's forthcoming game Rift.

For now, all of the games being distributed through WeGame are free to play — WeGame is doing revenue share and CPA deals with game publishers to monetize these games. Down the line, it will also introduce transactions, so gamers can purchase software the way they do on Steam.

Of course, in order for the marketplace to be attractive for developers, it needs users. WeGame currently has 1.7 million registered users and 1 million installs of its desktop client; around half of these users are active — nothing to scoff at, but a far cry from Valve’s 30 million users on steam.

WeGame has a long road ahead of it. Kim sounds confident that it will be able to line up quality games (he says publishers are eager to have popular options other than Steam), but it’ll need to give gamers a compelling reason to make the switch, too. And at this point I don’t think the integrated screen capture software will offer a very strong incentive.

WeGame raised $3.5M back in 2008 from True Ventures, Jeff Clavier, Aydin Senkut, Ariel Poler, Naval Ravikant, and Ryan Scott.

If you’ve got a friend or family member who’s planning a trip, you’re going to want to make sure they’re prepared. Yeah, sure, with extra socks and stuff, but what I’m talking about is making sure they don’t come back from a three-month tour of rural China with a grand total of 15 pictures on their iPhone, because “it’s good enough.” No, they need to take along something that can take a beating and still produce memorable images. And a few accessories wouldn’t hurt, either.

Depending on how much you want to spend, there are a lot of good options out there, though it depends on what kind of travel is going on. Here’s a gift guide for the new traveler in your family.

Continue reading…

Shares of Chinese video site Youku soared on its IPO today, closing at $33.44, which is 160 percent above its offering price of $12.80. Since Youku’s 15.8 million shares of American Depository Receipts (ADRs) represent 16 percent of the total shares, the closing price gives Beijing-based $Youku a market cap of roughly $3.3 billion. In other words, it is worth more than $AOL (owner of TechCrunch), which has a market cap of $2.7 billion.

Earlier today, I referred to Youku as the YouTube of China, but it is more like the Hulu of China. About two thirds of the videos on YouKu are syndicated from traditional media companies in China. The company was founded in November, 2005 and the site launched in December, 2006. YouKu never really relied on user-generated content because it took longer to develop as a phenomenon in China than the U.S. “Unlike the US, we are still in the development phase for user generated content so we didn't rely on that,” CEO Victor Koo tells me.

YouKu boasts 40 percent penetration rate among the 420 million Chinese people on the Internet, or about 200 million unique visitors a month in China (comScore estimates a smaller 78 million). Koo describes the IPO as a “graduation ceremony” in China and hopes to leverage it to extend his lead there among mainstream video sites. The company currently relies on video advertising, and recently launched a paid subscription service in beta along the lines of Hulu Plus.

“The revenue growth is certainly growing faster than user growth,” says Koo. Most of its $35 million in revenues for the first nine months of the year came from advertising, and grew 135 percent. Viewer growth is closer to 50 percent. Even with that stellar growth and huge audience, the company still lost $25 million in the first nine months of the year. The reason for this is because advertisers in China don’t value viewers as much as they do in the U.S. Part of that has to do with vast differences in disposable income, but Youku captures more and more of Chinese consumers’ time, then it should be able to eventually charge more for its advertising as well.

But the $3.3 billion valuation is based more on the idea of owning the YouTube or Hulu of China than any tangible economic results at this point. Since it has no earnings to speak of, that gives it a trading multiple of 94 times revenue. The Internet bubble has now officially been resurrected in China via the New York Stock Exchange.

Facebook’s mobile presence has long been an important part of the site — Facebook now gets over 200 million users between its various mobile web sites and smartphone applications. And because so much content gets posted from phones, Facebook has seen fit to port over its extensive privacy controls to mobile. The site initially launched a mobile version of these controls back in August, and soon they’ll be getting an upgrade.

The new controls being announced today have to do with the applications that you’ve connected to Facebook. Between all the apps you use Facebook Connect for, and the ones you’ve installed on Facebook proper, there’s a good chance that you’re sharing your data with a lot of different sites — some of which you may have forgotten about.

To help manage this data flow, Facebook launched a dashboard for connected apps in October — you can see which apps are using your data, how often they’ve accessed it, and what exactly they’re looking at. And over the next few weeks, Facebook is adding these controls to its mobile site.

This may not seem like a huge deal, but remember that web-connected smartphones are spiking in popularity and will outnumber PCs in the next few years. And through efforts like Facebook Zero, Facebook is drawing users who may not even own computers.

The political paralysis over network neutrality might be a microcosm of the broader political paralysis in America. Last week, after FCC chairman Julius Genachowksi laid out his Title I compromise strategy to finally resolve this seemingly never-ending debate, radical left and right wing groups conspired to destroy any possibility of consensus. On the left, activist groups like Free Press called Genachowki's initiative a "fake net neutrality proposal," while many of the radical right questioned the FCC's legitimacy and called for a complete retreat from any kind of government involvement in technology policy.

So can the center fight back against this unholy alliance of radical netizens and Tea Party libertarians that seem intent on crushing any kind of network neutrality compromise?

One of the feistiest voices of this broad center – which now incorporates most of Silicon Valley, many of the larger ISPs and media companies, the Obama administration and prominent technology investors like Ron Conway – is Gigi Sohn, cofounder and CEO of Public Knowledge. While she is certainly closer to the radicals of Free Press than to the radicals in the Tea Party, what distinguishes Sohn – as I found when I skyped her on Monday – is her willingness to try to work with Genachowski to sculpt a compromise to this hideously complex issue.

But, according to author and legal scholar Larry Downes, whom I also skyped on Monday, this center probably won't hold. Downes believes it’s "almost a certainty" that the dispute is now headed to the law courts for two to three years, where the only real beneficiaries will be hardline conservatives and radicals, and, surprise surprise, the high priced lawyers hired by either side to drag out this critically important issue forever.

If you missed the part one of this special two part series about the latest twists and turns in the ongoing network neutrality saga, you can view interviews with Andy Kessler and Richard Bennett here.

Sohn on compromise

Downes on why compromise won’t work