Disruptions can happen to any industry anywhere in the world, which is why this year TechCrunch Disrupt is going global. The conference we launched last year in New York and San Francisco is coming back to both cities, but we are also adding a third Disrupt in Beijing. All three conferences will be filled with all-star speakers, the best new startups that launch on our stages, and the coup of working WiFi.

The first Disrupt will once again take place in New York City on May 23-25, preceded by our ever popular Hackathon on May 21-22 in which pizza-fueled developers gather to hack together a product in 24 hours. Anything can happen at these events. Last year, Charlie Rose kicked off the event by interviewing legendary VC John Doerr, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz told Michael Arrington to “#@*k off,” and a real company emerged from the Hackathon—GroupMe, which later raised $10.6 million. During the main event, we launched two dozen startups, and the winner was an international startup, Soluto. That told us something.

Today, we will begin taking submissions for Disrupt NY.  If you are a founder building a company that is going to change the world, we want you to launch at Disrupt. Nowhere else offers the audience, investors, or media spotlight that Disrupt offers. Please submit your application HERE on our Disrupt application site powered by Producteev.  We will be accepting submissions starting today and for the next eight weeks through Sunday, April 3, 2011 at midnight PT. We accept companies on a rolling basis, so please submit as soon as you’re ready for consideration.

Disrupt San Francisco will take place in September. And yes, you saw that right, we’re heading to Beijing, China for TechCrunch’s first international Disrupt at the end of October. Specific dates to be announced shortly.

TechCrunch has long been a blog that covers more than just the Silicon Valley echo-chamber and in the future we want to be anywhere top entrepreneurs are building companies. It’s hard to think of any place more exciting, challenging and lucrative than China right now. As home to the world’s largest Web audience and two of the five largest Web companies in the world, China proves the best Web entrepreneurs are no longer all in Silicon Valley.

We’ll we working with Kai-Fu Lee’s Innovation Works to bring it all together.  And just like in New York and San Francisco, we’ll have a Hackathon, lively onstage debates showcasing big names from both Silicon Valley and China, and a Battlefield startup competition.

So mark your calendars and save the dates.  Applications for Disrupt New York are now open.

If you’d like to become a foundational part of the Disrupt experience and learn about sponsorship opportunities, please contact Jeanne Logozzo or Heather Harde for more information.

Speaker inquiries, please submit here.

Whatever, it’s Friday: looks like American singer/rapper T-Pain (real name: Faheem Rasheed Najm) got himself a tattoo while in Hawaii.

He eloquently tweeted about the event thusly: “I get a tatt every time I come to Hawaii. I think this ones pretty sweet, unless facebook shuts down soon 0_o”

There’s really not much I can add to this, except that I’m not really impressed with his new tattoo. Lucky for me, I DON’T HAVE TO [Like] IT.

Related: Israeli Man Tattoos YouTube Logo On Bicep. Chad Hurley Mildly Impressed

Update: Bonus video – our own Greg Kumparak interviews T-Pain at CES:

In the seemingly never-ending discussions about Europe vs. Silicon Valley - how much digital ink can be spilled on 'why Europe will never be the next Silicon Valley', 'why Europe will definitely become the next Silicon Valley' and 'Silicon Valley and Europe: a comparative look at fauna and flora' anyway? - I'm quite amazed by how often pundits point out we could use more role models in Europe's tech industry. The idea seems to be that, inspired by their story of how their startup became the next Google, aspiring entrepreneurs need only look at people who've built or even exited companies and became fabulously famous and wealthy in the process. I disagree.

Show me a handmade device case like this one from Kickstarter, and I’ll show you the money. I love ‘em. The DODOcase is a prime example. High-quality material, a SanFran-based labor force, and honest marketing. Btw, we have a big DODOcase giveaway coming next week for Valentine’s Day. You’re going to love it.

The Rustic Case for iPad and Kindle 3 is from the same thread. This mostly wool sleeve is just that, a sleeve to hold your precious slate. But the handsome look, top-shelf materials and fair price ultimately sells the case. But there’s a catch. They need help. That’s where you and Kickstarter comes in.

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When you buy a new smartphone, is the first thing you look at what the specific absorption rate (SAR) is of the device you’re interesting in spending cash on? Me neither, but according to some health organizations, we should be paying attention to mobile phone radiation.

Rather than try and convince people to stop using their smartphones for phone calls (ain’t gonna happen), Israeli startup tawkon has developed applications that let people minimize exposure to cellular radiation while they continue using their mobile phones.

Essentially, tawkon monitors and analyzes your mobile phone’s radiation using proprietary technology, enabling you to "talk on" as usual and receive prompts to avoid radiation when you really need to. According to the company, radiation levels emitted from mobile phones can fluctuate significantly during a call, due to a variety of dynamic factors.

Tawkon alerts users when those radiation levels cross a predefined threshold, and offers suggestions to reduce exposure, based on real-time environment and usage factors.

Apple has opted to reject the somewhat controversial application – for whatever reason – and hasn’t communicated with the startup in many months. The company does have applications for BlackBerry devices, and recently launched an Android-compatible version.

Now, the company is releasing a “limited edition beta” version specifically designed for Google’s Nexus S (which, in case you’re still with us, boasts a SAR more than 50 percent lower than the Nexus One, its predecessor).

Its timing is impeccable – starting next month, the City of San Francisco's cell phone right-to-know ordinance (PDF) goes into effect, requiring retailers to disclose Specific Absorption Rate values for cell phones.

Here’s a video of the tawkon Android app:

After reporting Q4 2010 earnings yesterday, AT&T has published additional statistics on the number of mobile broadband connections the telecommunications company has facilitated in the last quarter. The company says that in terms of emerging devices (this includes non-phone wireless connections), 2 million connected devices were added to the network in the quarter.

Included in this category are what AT&T refers to as embedded computing devices, which are tablets, netbooks and laptops. AT&T says that more than 6 million connected devices have been added to the network over the past five quarters. The total number of emerging devices, including postpaid and prepaid embedded computing devices, connected to the AT&T network – both for consumers and businesses is nearly 11 million.

Business users and consumers can use AT&T wireless connection plans for more than 940 specialty devices, including eReaders, netbooks, digital photo frames, personal navigation devices, telematics, home security monitoring and smart grid devices. The company says its wireless network will add support for a number of additional devices this year, including Vitality’s GlowCaps, which are pill caps designed to help patients take medications regularly through a series of reminders, including light, sound, text message and phone call alerts.

AT&T will provide a wireless plan for the Pandigital Novel eReader and the new Garmin GTU 10. And AT&T says that it has signed an agreement with BMW to add a suite for safety and infotainment services to the car company’s future models.

Of course, as the iPhone arrives at Verizon, wireless connections via non-phone devices could be a growing business for AT&T. The company saw 27.4 percent growth in wireless data revenues, up $1.1 billion versus the fourth quarter of 2009, driven by messaging, Internet access, access to apps and more.

It should be interesting to see if this particular sector will continue to grow for AT&T.

At this point most of us are feeling pretty cool about ourselves for at least retweeting the #Twitterrevolution, first in Tunisia and now in Egypt. But only when us Internerds watch mainstream television do we realize that pundits are trying to give the Bush administration and the Obama administration credit for events which might irrevocably change the landscape of North Africa and the Middle East as we know it. Events that were, at least initially, mediated through Facebook and Twitter.

Of course The Daily Show host Jon Stewart takes a skeptical Gladwellian view to the entire situation, “If two speeches and a social media site is all we needed to spread democracy then why did we invade Iraq, why didn’t we just, I don’t know, poke them.”

He brings on The Daily Show correspondent and “Senior Tweet Analyst” Samantha Bee to defend the opinion that social media played the biggest role in the protests as opposed to “Team Local Conditions,” represented by the amazing Aasif Mandvi. Bee’s defense, “Duh @JonStewart this is something you’d know if your oversized old person phone got Twitter #burn.”

On a more serious note: When they were younger than I am now, my parents were witness to a student movement that eventually toppled a dictatorship in Greece through the radio. Communication in its sundry and consistently evolving forms is and always has been as powerful a utility as electricity and running water, and it’s important that we protect it as such no matter what its incarnation.

You can find the full video (which you should watch a couple of times) here.

Web-based affiliate management system and “incentive engine” Zferral has bought SaaS web app store Cloudomatic for cash and equity. Cloudomatic was founded by OnSwipe co-founders Jason Baptiste and Andres Barreto, who will continue on as advisors. The price of the acquisition was not disclosed.

Says Barreto,

“There is a huge pain point for web app and SaaS companies when it comes to distribution, there is no doubt that referral and affiliate systems are by far one of the most efficient customer acquisition strategies, we are very excited to see how zferral's growth is taking this to next level, making it very easy for any SaaS company to get up and running with their referral program"

In conjunction with the acquisition, Zferral will also integrate with billing startup Chargify to enable Chargify customers to easily create and manage billing for their affiliate programs.

Zferral has seen a 380% paid subscriber increase in the past month and is projecting further growth. And CEO Jeff Epstein is still on the look out for talent, noting that the company is still “aggressively seeking awesome people.”

So if you’re awesome, watch your back. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Nokia this morning announced two deals with leading Chinese Internet companies SINA and Tencent, who will be integrating with Nokia's Ovi Maps in China. Millions of users of SINA's microbloging service and Tencent's massively popular online community QQ (636 million users and counting) will be able to share their location through Nokia mobile devices, check-in to locations and upload content tied to location, such as recommendations and reviews of restaurants, shops and movie theatres.

Attention publishers and authors!

For a while I’ve been kicking around the idea of writing a semi-regular book review column here on TechCrunch. I don’t mean the pure “tech” books of the O’Reilly oeuvre, but rather works concerning digital culture and how technology is affecting politics, journalism, art and society as a whole. It would probably include the occasional novel too. And might – might – take the form of a very informal book club.

The idea is far from fully-formed – and I have to make sure it doesn’t clash with Andrew Keen’s excellent TCTV show which often features authors as guests. But if you’re a publisher or an author and you have a forthcoming book that might fit the bill, do please feel free to let me know – either via this handy web form or by sending a copy to me c/o TechCrunch, 410 Townsend Street (Suite 100), San Francisco, CA 94107.

Ebooks and non-US titles welcome. But if it’s self-published, it had better be good.

(Image credit: Freefoto.com)

It was almost exactly two years ago that we first wrote about a company called Heroku. At the time, the Y Combinator startup was little more than a good idea: ease the development and deployment process a lot of other startups face by putting it in the cloud. Last month, Salesforce bought them for $212 million in cash. It’s no wonder that a new startup, StackMob, doesn’t mind being called a “Heroku for mobile”.

Truth be told, that is a pretty good way to describe what they’re doing. They’ve created a cloud-based system to ease the development and deployment of mobile applications. Or even more simply put, “we’re trying to solve the backend services for mobile applications,” is how co-founder Ty Amell phrases it. They want to be the single integration point for all the backend needs that an app developer may have.

And like Heroku, this has the potential to be huge. Mobile app development is exploding right now. But at the same time, there aren’t a ton of experts at it that aren’t already locked up by either larger companies or well-funded startups. That means that a lot of great ideas are either being left on the table, or take way too long to come into being. StackMob’s goal is to condense development time by weeks if not months, by taking care of a huge range of needs that can be streamlined rather than forcing the developer to learn everything and implement it themselves.

What kinds of things? It’s all across the backend board really. OAuth, social services (Twitter, Facebook, etc), storage solutions (Joyent now, Amazon coming shortly), advertising (coming soon), messaging (including Push), APIs, analytics, etc. A developer can pick and choose what they want or need to include from StackMob. And in some cases, it’s as easy as filling out a web-based form. “Everyone keeps reinventing the wheel everytime. Haven’t we learned our lessons yet?,” Amell asks.

Currently, they’re focused on the iOS platform, but the grand goal is to work across many of the popular mobile platforms — including, of course, Android. But iOS is a good place to start as StackMob’s tools combine nicely with the SDK tools Apple provides to developers to get them going. Plus, StackMob co-founder Pouyan Salehi is ex-Apple.

And while post-Salesforce/Heroku, ideas like this seem ripe for anyone to try to take advantage of, Amell and Salehi actually started StackMob well before the Heroku deal made this so hot. In fact, they already got funding well before that. While they haven’t disclosed it previously, they took a seed round from Harrison Metal, Baseline, Founder Collective, CRV, and some individuals back in May 2010. (Though they’re still not disclosing the amount.) Yes, those are a number of the same guys that funded Heroku. Funny how that works, huh?

StackMob launched a very small alpha test in late November/early December. And they’re now comfortable enough to talk about the basic ideas of how the service will work. The plan is to launch a beta version by late February or early March.

The model for this is a freemium one. Everything will be free to start out. It’s only if you decided you want to actually deploy your app that they’ll charge you based on how popular your app is, and how much of their backend resources it’s taking up. But not to worry, both Amell and Salehi are adamant about your work and data being your own. If you chose to leave StackMob for whatever reason, you’ll be able to take your work with you. “We want to make sure that developers know that they own their data,” Salehi says.

“Mobile is where the web was in ’97 or ’99,” Amell says. “It’s booming — but there’s no framework or infrastructure. There’s no Ruby on Rails. No Django. Nothing that helps with that kind of stuff. There are apps that get really popular, but they don’t know how to monetize,” he says. ”We want to bring an experienced backend and ops team to the masses,” is how he finally puts it. In other words, Heroku for mobile!

StackMob is currently a team of 5 people working in San Francisco. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about them in the coming months.

It happens, sometimes. I have what I think would be a fun idea for a joke, only to discover – often half-way through writing it – that someone else has already beaten me to the punch(line).

Today, for example, I wanted to write something about Demand Media’s IPO. Given the hideously cynical nature of their business, the dreck that passes for their content, the appallingly low rates paid to their writers (who have – apparently – created $1.5bn worth of value) and now a plagiarism scandal (wait – they don’t even write their own dreck?), it’s clear that Demand is a hideous company. In fact it’s absolutely no exaggeration whatsoever to say that buying shares in them is the web content equivalent of buying stock in Nestle Africa or stocking up on Fanta in the 1940s. I mean, yes, there’s clearly money to be made, but I wouldn’t want that kind of karma.

Still, the fact remains that – as I wrote in my Sunday column last week – Demand’s brand of SEO horseshit represents the future of web content. And with that in mind, I thought it might be a lark to put together a mock up of what that particular dystopian hellscape might look like. Say, the front page of NYTimes.com, as written by Demand.

Imagine, then, my disappointment on discovering that Danny Sullivan has beaten me to it. Here’s his Demanded-up version of the New York Times’ online edition, with every headline turned into an annoyingly specific, Google-friendly question…

Click the preview (or here) to see the full version, and to read Sullivan’s thoughts on Demand.

The world is watching in shock at the moment as reports continue to flood in of Egyptian protests mounting and the government pre-emptively striking back before tomorrow’s planned demonstrations by cutting off the nation’s Internet connection, along with access to social media services like Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry.

Along with The Arabist and CNN’s Ben Wedeman, Reuters is now reporting that users in Cairo are experiencing phone and Internet shutdown. “Egypt has shut off the internet,” read one headline.

Reuters is also reporting that the Egyptian Prime Minister’s office denied that Facebook and Twitter have been shut down despite countless claims to the contrary.

The flood of communication blackout reports on Twitter and elsewhere came shortly after a gruesome video of an Egyptian protestor being shot was posted by the AP. One source with relatives in Cairo says he is communicating with them via landline and they are confirming reports that riot police are setting cars on fire. “You can not text message in Egypt at the moment,” he said.

No one either inside or outside of the country quite understands exactly why and how the blackout is happening or how it will end but it is believed that these efforts are an attempt by a 30 year-old regime to quash protest organization by a social media and tech savvy youth  .

As TC’s Mike Butcher points out, the major service providers in Egypt are TEDATA, Egynet DSL and Vodafone. Vodafone has been quiet about the issue since it denied blocking Twitter on January 25th.

Naturally, you can follow the movement on Twitter on #Jan25 and #Egypt. Angel investor Shervin Pishevar has also conceived of an open mesh router network that could function as a backup in situations where governments try to shut off communications. Pishevar is looking for volunteers and those interested can tweet at @Shervin.

Image: Ahmed Shokeir

Back in August we wrote about a Y Combinator-funded company called Whereoscope that helps parents keep tabs on their kids using a location-aware smartphone application. Now we’re hearing that the startup is about to be acquired by a company that’s in an entirely different space: Zynga.

Our understanding is that a term sheet has been signed but the deal has not yet closed, so it’s not a sure thing yet. Both Whereoscope and Zynga declined to comment.

If it does close, we believe it will be for sub-$5 million, likely in valuable Zynga equity. Given the fact that Zynga isn’t exactly focused on child location monitoring, this is probably a talent acquisition. But it’s a quick and positive outcome for the founders, especially given that the app launched less than six months ago.

Whereoscope’s application provides a straightforward way for parents to keep tabs on their kids using a concept called geofencing. Here’s a description from our launch coverage:

During an initial setup process, you designate a handful of key locations, or geofences, that your children often visit — their school, home, a best friend's house, etc. You can elect to receive a push notification whenever your child leaves or arrives at one of these areas. Your child doesn't have to actually do anything to check in, so there's nothing for them to forget. And, if your child were to "accidentally" disable the application, Whereoscope can send you a warning giving you a heads up.

It seems obvious that  Zynga will eventually want to launch mobile games with location components, which the Whereoscope team would be well-suited for. And it isn’t hard to imagine a game that includes geofencing, where users are rewarded in-game for visiting certain venues in the real world.

A week ago Facebook shares were being traded at $28.26 per share, a $70 billion valuation. In this week’s auction at SecondMarket the per share price declined just over 7%, to $26.25, a $65.5 billion valuation with around 2.5 billion shares outstanding. That’s a $5 billion decline in valuation. 670,000 shares were sold for a total of around $17.5 million.

Did it peak? I have no idea. We still have to update our two week old chart showing a high valuation of $50 billion. Maybe things are just cooling down for a while. We’ll know more after next week’s super confidential Facebook share auction.

Here’s the email.

To Facebook market participants:

Thank you to those who participated in this week's SecondMarket auction for Facebook shares. The auction was successful and partially cleared (94.6%) at a per share price of $26.25. Next week, the floor price will be $24.96 and we will require a minimum sale of 25,000 shares.

If you own shares that you are eligible to sell and wish to participate as a seller, please complete the attached Seller Information Form and submit it to SecondMarket at fb@SecondMarket.com by Monday, January 31 at 7:00 PM EST. To verify receipt of your sell order, you must receive a confirmation email from fb@SecondMarket.com. If you do not receive a confirmation email, your sell order has not been received by SecondMarket and may be excluded from the auction.

Please see below for detailed results on previous auctions and for next week's auction timeline.

Previous Auction Results:

Total Shares Cleared to Date: 3,391,265 over six auctions

Clearing Price in Most Recent Auctions:
January 24, 2011: $26.25
January 12, 2011: $28.26
December 15, 2010: $22.75
December 8, 2010: $21.90

Next Week's Adjusted Auction Timeline:

- Monday, January 31 at 7:00 PM EST – Seller Information Forms due
- Monday, January 31 at 8:00 PM EST – Buyers informed of share quantity available and minimum purchase amount
- Wednesday, February 2 at 12:00 PM EST – Buyer Information Forms due
- Wednesday, February 2 at 5:00 PM EST – Participants informed of auction results
- Wednesday, February 2 at 8:00 PM EST – Transaction documentation distributed to buyers and sellers
- Friday, February 4 at 4:00 PM EST – Completed transaction documentation due from buyers and sellers
- Friday, February 4 at 7:00 PM EST – Notice sent to Facebook, Inc.

By reading this email, the recipient acknowledges and agrees that all of the information contained herein is confidential and that the recipient will keep this information confidential. The recipient further agrees that it will not copy, reproduce, or distribute this email in whole or in part.

Please contact us at fb@SecondMarket.com or 212.668.3919 if you have any questions.

Please note that the information in this email does not constitute an offer to sell to, nor a solicitation of an offer to buy from, nor shall any securities be offered or sold to, any person in any jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

Sony has announced the PSP2 (temporarily named the “Next Generation Portable”), perhaps the final boss of handheld consoles. It’s far more powerful than its destined competitor, Nintendo’s 3DS, and incorporates social and locational data, 3G, a monster 5″ OLED screen, and a number of other features detailed here. It is to be one of the linchpin platforms for the world’s most recognizable entertainment electronics company, a stomping ground for new games, media, and services. And I think it’s going to go down in flames.

Why? It’s got its competitor beat on nearly every spec, it’s got the backing of droves of Sony fanboys, and million-selling franchises just waiting to be put on its crisp 960×544 screen. How can it fail? I’d say by not addressing the fundamental needs of a handheld gaming console and ignoring strong trends in the market.

Continue reading…

Some worrying reports are coming out Egypt right now – to add to all the other worrying reports I guess.

Respected blog The Arabist reports that DSL and 3G services have been taken offline in Cairo. This is confirmed by CNN correspondent Ben Wedeman, on the ground in Cairo.

Now, coincidentally or not, this has come literally within the hour after AP TV posted a video of a man being shot point blank by police. The man appears to be dead, though that is not confirmed.

The main ISPs in Egypt at TEDATA, whose own site appears to be down, Vodafone, and Egynet. In addition, Italy-based Seabone has reported that there was no Internet traffic going into or out of Egypt after 12:30 a.m. local time.

I recently over heard someone saying of MySpace – “It used to be dirty, underground, seedy and successful. Now it’s prom at a private school.” The company is struggling to reinvent itself. But traffic continues to plunge. Comscore says they had 80 million worldwide unique visitors in December. They had around 90 million in October before the big redesign. A year ago they had 120 million uniques, says Comscore.

So it’s no surprise they let half their staff go, some 500 people, in early January.

Another, smaller, social network has apparently found a say to be relevant in a Facebook world. San Francisco based Tagged logged revenues of over $30 million in 2010 and are profitable with a staff of 50. We reported on that in late 2010 when I interviewed founder Greg Tseng. They’ve been profitable for the last three years.

And now they’re hiring. In an email to Tagged staff that we’ve obtained, Tseng gave an across the board 10% raise to every full time employee. And he let them know that they intend to double staff from 50 to 100 employees.

How are they doing it? They’re focusing on something Facebook has ignored for the last several years – letting users meet other users on the site. Facebook wants to mirror your real world social graph and doesn’t provide many tools to meet new people. Tagged is all about that, something we discussed extensively in our interview last year.

The email is below.

Dear team,

As announced at today’s team meeting, we have delivered another record year in 2010, increasing revenue to over $30 million and completing our third straight year of profitability!

Who made this happen? WE ALL DID.

So, I am delighted that these results allow me to announce that Tagged will be awarding a 10% raise — across to the board — to every full-time employee effective January 1, 2011. Congratulations!

When the company does well, we all do well, so this is a well-earned reward for everyone. It is also in anticipation of big 2011 plans which will require all of us to contribute 110%.

This year, we aim to increase revenue to over $50 million, double our team from 50 to 100 full-time employees, and have our most productive year ever in product development. These are all important steps toward achieving our mission of enabling anyone to meet and socialize with new people.

I hope you are as excited as I am about 2011 and congratulations again on a record 2010.

Best,
Greg

LinkedIn’s S-1 filing was released today, and the filing includes a wealth of information that we’ve never seen before. This includes sales, profit, revenue breakdown and more. One interesting data point shared in the filing is LinkedIn’s largest shareholders and how much each shareholder owns.

Out of the 5 percent stockholders, the company’s largest shareholder is LinkedIn’s founder and chairman Reid Hoffman and his wife Michelle Yee, owning 19 million shares or 21.4 percent of the company. He’s followed by Sequoia Capital (16.8 million shares or 18.9 percent), Greylock Partners (14 million shares or 15.8 percent) and Bessemer Venture Partners (4.6 million shares or 5.1 percent).

Seqouia was LinkedIn’s earliest investor in 2003, followed by Greylock in 2004. Bessemer participated in LinkedIn’s three later rounds in 2007 and 2008.

Among the executive officers and directors, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner holds 3.8 million shares, or 4.1 percent of the company, CFO Steven Sordello owns 1 million shares or 1.1 percent of the company, and VP of Product Deep Nishar owns 970,000 shares or 1.1 percent of the company.

Until we know the offering price, we won’t know how much these shares are worth.

Has the pixel to print tipping point been reached? Last July we reported that Amazon’s Kindle eReader books had surpassed hardcover books in terms of sales, selling 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books. Now that lead also holds for paperbacks as well with 115 Kindle books being sold for every hundred paperbacks.

The statistic for hardcover books itself has doubled, with three times as many Kindle books as sold as paperbacks in 2010. Free Kindle books are excluded from this number or it would be much higher.

The Kindle store now has over 810,000 books, with over 670,000 of them priced at $9.99 or less. This number includes 107 New York Times bestselllers.

Because of its aggressive focus on digital Amazon had its first ever $10 billion quarter. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos predicted this digital to print milestone would happen in the second quarter of this year, so it has come ahead of expectations but, in any case, was inevitable.

A week and a half ago, after Apple announced their blowout earnings for the holiday quarter, I wondered if the third and final pillar of Microsoft’s financial strength over Apple was about to fall: profit. In 2010, Apple surpassed their longtime rival in market cap and revenue, but profit has remained elusive (mostly because Microsoft mainly sells high-margin software while Apple mainly sells relatively lower margin hardware). Well it’s still elusive — for at least one more quarter.

As I suspected, Microsoft was barely able to eek out a profit win over Apple. For the quarter, Microsoft earned $6.63 billion in profit compared to Apple’s $6 billion. Assuming the trends hold, Apple should indeed take the profit crown next quarter.

Let’s look at the numbers. Apple’s $6 billion profit quarter was easily their best ever — a full $1.7 billion above their previous record (set only the quarter before). Microsoft, meanwhile, saw their profit dip a bit year-over-year, by around $30 million. Microsoft’s profit did rise quarter-to-quarter, but not as high as Apple’s did. Instead, Microsoft’s profits were up about $1.2 billion quarter-to-quarter.

The holiday quarter is typically the best for both companies. So next quarter should produce a dip for both. But again, following the trends, Microsoft’s should dip further than Apple’s.

When Apple passed Microsoft is revenue for the first time October, they beat them about about $4 billion. This most recent quarter, they pushed the revenue gap to almost $7 billion. Apple now holds about a $70 billion edge over Microsoft in terms of market cap.

As Reuters noted yesterday (while incorrectly guessing Apple would pass Microsoft in profit today), the last time Apple’s profits were ahead of Microsoft’s was 1990. Times were much different than. Microsoft was just releasing Windows 3.0. Apple was gearing up to release System 7. Microsoft was rising, Apple was falling.

Times have changed. And we should see that fully next quarter.

The Oscar nominations came out a few days ago, and like a bunch of dorks we've been discussing the merits of each movie in our little chatroom. So far we've unofficially given thumbs up to Winter's Bone and Black Swan, while Devin and Greg have admitted to liking The Social Network. (I patently refuse to watch the movie.) Why am I bringing this up? Because every year around this time unscrupulous individuals leak their Oscar screeners to the Internet, allowing the rest of us to join in on the fun.

One enterprising gentleman has put together a spreadsheet with various screener-related information for your perusal. It's actually a continuation of a long-running spreadsheet, tracing the origins of screeners, leaks, cam copies, and the like for the past several years.

Continue reading…

Professional social network LinkedIn has just submitted its S-1 filing with the SEC, indicating that it will file for a public offering. The maximum proposed total offering price is $175 million but this is just a placeholder amount. The company also announced the filing on its blog.

In terms of revenue, during the nine months ended September 30, 2010, LinkedIn’s net revenue doubled to $161 million from $80.6 during the same period in 2009. Net income for the first nine months of 2010 came in at $10 million.

LinkedIn’s total net revenue in 2009 was $120 million, which LinkedIn obviously surpassed in 2010. The company took a $3.9 million loss in terms of net income, with 2010 as the first profitable year for the network. As of September 30, 2010, LinkedIn had $89.6 million in cash. The company currently has 990 employees and over 90 million members.

LinkedIn also shed light on its revenue breakdown by source. According to the filing, 41 percent of 2010 revenue came hiring solutions ($65.9 million), 32 percent came from marketing ($51.4 million); and 27 percent came from premium subscriptions ($44.1 million). Net revenue from LinkedIn’s hiring solutions products increased $42.2 million, or 178 percent from 2009 to 2010.

Other interesting things to note from the filing, with regard to LinkedIn’s risks:

“We expect our revenue growth rate to decline, and as we continue to invest for future growth, we do not expect to be profitable on a GAAP basis in 2011.”

“The number of our registered members is higher than the number of actual members, and a substantial majority of our page views are generated by a minority of our members… If the number of our actual members does not meet our expectations or we are unable to increase the breadth and frequency of our visiting members, then our business may not grow as fast as we expect, which will harm our operating and financial results and may cause our stock price to decline.”

In terms of competition, LinkedIn says this in the document:

Other companies such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter could develop competing solutions or partner with third parties to offer such products. We face competition from a number of smaller companies in international markets, such as Xing in Germany and Viadeo in France, that provide online professional networking solutions, as well as Internet companies in the customer relationship management market, such as Salesforce.com (Chatter and Jigsaw).

With respect to acquisitions, LinkedIn paid $560,000 for mSpoke and $3.9 million for ChoiceVendor.

Microsoft earnings just got released prematurely 10 minutes before market close, and aside from growing revenues 5% in the 2nd quarter to $19.9 Billion, the company’s slides reveal some impressive growth numbers for their Entertainment and Devices devision, which generated $3.7 in revenue this quarter versus $2.4 last year, and sold 8 million Kinects, a motion controller for the Xbox 360, in the two months since its launch.

All in all division revenue is up 55% this quarter. Included in this number are sales of Xbox 360, the Kinect, the Zune and Windows Phone 7. Xbox Live memberships grew 30% and Xbox 360 console unit sales were up 21%, making“the world’s fastest growing game console” according to Microsoft. For those of you that have given up on Microsoft understanding consumer electronics, its increasing dominance in the gaming and device sector is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Said Microsoft CFO Peter Klein about the division’s success,

"We are enthusiastic about the consumer response to our holiday lineup of products, including the launch of Kinect. The 8 million units of Kinect sensors sold in just 60 days far exceeded our expectations. The pace of business spending, combined with strong consumer demand, led to another quarter of operating margin expansion and solid earnings per share growth."

Watch out Wii.

Amazon just released results for its for its fourth quarter ending December 31, 2010. The company’s sales came in at $12.95 billion, which is up 36 percent from $9.52 billion in fourth quarter 2009. Net income increased 8 percent to $416 million in the fourth quarter, or $0.91 per diluted share, compared with net income of $384 million, or $0.85 per diluted share, in fourth quarter 2009. Analysts expected $0.88 per share on revenue of $13 billion, which is short of the quarter’s sales of $12.95 billion.

Founder and CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos said in a statement: We had our first $10 billion quarter, and after selling millions of third-generation Kindles with the new Pearl e-ink display during the quarter, Kindle books have now overtaken paperback books as the most popular format on Amazon.com. Last July we announced that Kindle books had passed hardcovers and predicted that Kindle would surpass paperbacks in the second quarter of this year, so this milestone has come even sooner than we expected – and it’s on top of continued growth in paperback sales.

As usual Bezos and Amazon remain coy about the actual number of Kindles sold but refers to sales in the millions of third-generation kindles. And for every 100 paperback books Amazon has sold, the Company has sold 115 Kindle books; and the company has sold three times as many Kindle books as hardcover books. Additionally, the U.S. Kindle store now has more than 810,000 books.

Amazon’s North America sales, were $7.21 billion, up 45% from fourth quarter 2009. International sales, which include Amazon’s U.K., German, Japanese, French, Chinese and Italian sites, were $5.74 billion, up 26% from fourth quarter 2009. Worldwide Electronics & Other General Merchandise sales grew 60% to $7.39 billion.

For the full year, net sales increased 40% to $34.20 billion, compared with $24.51 billion in 2009. Net income increased 28% to $1.15 billion in 2010, or $2.53 per diluted share, compared with net income of $902 million, or $2.04 per diluted share, in 2009.