Amazon announced a new licensing deal this morning with Discovery Communications, the media company behind cable TV channels including the Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Investigation Discovery, Science and Military Channel. Under the terms of the agreement, Amazon Prime customers will now have the rights to stream series and specials from those channels, as well as from the company’s 25-year programming library, through Amazon’s video streaming service.

The TV channels include a bunch of popular shows, like Discovery Channel's “Dirty Jobs,” TLC's “Say Yes To The Dress” and Animal Planet's “Whale Wars,” the company announced, as well as other fan faves like “Cake Boss,” “Mythbusters” (super hooray!), “Man Vs. Wild” (so awesome), and “Shark Week.”

The videos will be available at no extra charge to Amazon Prime customers who pay the $79/year for the service, which also includes free two-day shipping and access to the Kindle Lending Library.

Amazon also notes that there are now over 17,000 titles now available for streaming, and more than 120,000 available for rent or purchase through Amazon Instant Video. Last month, when Amazon signed a similar deal with Viacom, the number of streaming titles was brought up to 15,000, so this is a notable boost in content. For what it’s worth, in December, the count was 13,000. If Amazon keeps up this pace, Amazon Instant will look a lot different by the end of 2012.

The company, which has been promoting Prime through free subscription on its Kindle Fire tablet, reportedly has 3 to 5 million Prime customers, according to a Bloomberg report from February, which was lower than the 10 million analysts had previously thought.

While deals like this one with Discovery, will certainly help flesh out Amazon’s library, that alone will not be enough – Amazon Video’s success is also hinged on the success of its Kindle Fire tablet. According to new figures from IDC, the Fire accounted for 16.8 percent of all tablet shipments in Q4 2011, or some 4.7 million units, making it the largest "Android" vendor. This, despite the fact it was only available in the U.S., makes for a promising start in terms of taking on its Android-based competition. However, the Fire is still a long ways off from competing with Apple’s iPad, which accounted for 15.4 million units, or 54.7% of all Q4 2011 shipments. And that means Amazon Video, too, is a long, long way off from taking on iTunes.

Oh, Pinterest…

Over the course of the past few months, what was once a colorful haven for Midwestern mothers and Mormons is now an even more colorful haven for even more pin-tastic peeps. The growth has been staggering, even in what many would call an overly social era. But surrounded by Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc., Pinterest has really made a name for itself.

And while many are scurrying to set up their pinboards for FOMO‘s sake, we in the tech world are curious as to what’s going on behind the scenes. What’s the growth rate? What does the demographic data look like? Referral traffic? Marketing? How does Pinterest really stack up against the big guys?

The questions never end, mainly because Pinterest kind of came out of left field and threw the entire model on its head. It’s not for women, but it is mainly women. It’s not overbearing in terms of rules or policies (at least not more so than its competitors), but still seems to be a very “white-bread”, nice place to be compared to the deep black hole of nasty awfulness that is the Internet. The epicenter of its popularity is in the Midwest — that’s not to say that Midwesterners aren’t tech savvy, but they’re usually not the early adopters of anything.

It’s this big question mark, Pinterest, and we all want to better understand it, especially considering that the network is still building itself out. Just recently, Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann teased an iPad app and revamped profile pages at SXSW this week.

Luckily, the folks over at Internet Marketing Inc. took all the data we have on Pinterest, like that comScore study and the Shareaholic referral traffic study, and whipped up a comprehensive guide to “The Power of Pinterest”.

These are the tidbits I found most interesting:

• The number of Pinterest users to visit the site daily has gone up 145 percent since the beginning of 2012
• Pinterest content is very different in the UK, and more centered around venture capital, blogging resources, web analytics and the like
• Over 80 percent of pins are actually re-pins rather than brand new content
• Pinterest user growth is better than that of Facebook and Twitter at the same point in their history
• As expected, 80 percent of Pinterest’s user base is female
• Brands are having a helluva time leveraging Pinterest — Better Homes & Gardens has 25,000+ followers on Pinterest, compared to 21,000 on Twitter

Check out the full infographic below*:

*none of the data in this infographic is directly from Pinterest, but rather assembled by third-party sources like comScore.

Today, Google is announcing a partnership with a NY-based company called Signpost, which will now run deals on the Google Offers website and in subscriber emails. Signpost, which has $1 million in seed funding from Google Ventures, Spark Capital and other angels, has been flying under the radar in the local deals space. The company recently tripled its employee base and now claims revenue has been growing at a rate of 100% month-over-month.

The company also recently announced a partnership with Nimble Commerce, and says it has other partnerships in the works as well.

According to Signpost CEO Stuart Wall, the company has shifted its business model since we covered them back in fall 2010. Now, it’s basically a marketing platform for small businesses, or what he calls an “AdSense for local commerce.”

For $100/month (15% of which goes to the publisher for commission), Signpost creates an e-commerce (and/or m-commerce) presence for its business customers, then works with them to create campaigns. Normally, these campaigns involve something of value that’s sent out – that is to say, an offer. Signpost gives the businesses access to its 1,200 partners, which now includes Google Offers, to run the campaigns.

Walls says that 95% of his business customers get a better CPM, CPC, and CPA, than they would have gotten on Yelp or AdWord’s local averages, because of its targeting capabilities. And Signpost customers seem to agree – 90% of the small businesses renew the service each month.

Last month, Wall says Signpost’s merchants received 8 million uniques across its publisher sites. The CPA for its customers is now around $12, he adds.

“Compare that with sites like Yelp,” (which has CPM’s around $600), says Wall. “There are a number of sites out there that charge on a CPM basis, which, if you actually do the math on what the CPA is, it can be north of $300. We think Yelp is in that category.”

The other problem with many local advertising platforms, explains Wall, is that they’re just driving impressions. In that case, while the number of people who see the offer may be high, the number of people who actually go visit the business is often “terrible,” he says – which is why closed loop transactions are key focus for Signpost.

The company now has content in 50 U.S. markets, not all of which have a Google Offers presence yet. But everywhere Google Offers is, Signpost is established.

“We do work with a number of flash sales sites,” Wall explains of the new deal. “I consider what Google Offers does as being in Groupon category. We only look to customers who drive high quality consumers for our small business customers, and we think Google Offers falls into that category. We’re excited to work with them,” he says.

OMGPOP, the New York-based gaming company that has made a huge comeback over the last month thanks to its Pictionary-like game Draw Something, is eying a TV show based on the game, according to a source familiar with the matter. The game has surpassed 25 million registered users, with more than 10 million daily active users.

If the company made such a move, it would highlight OMGPOP’s ambitions beyond games. It’s also a sign of changing times as unique brands are starting to emerge on smartphones and then cross over into other mediums. The trend is usually in the reverse direction with game shows like Family Feud coming onto Android and iOS. But now we’re seeing developers like Angry Birds-maker Rovio work on a concept for a feature firm and Outfit7, which is known for its talking character apps, work on merchandise like toys and T-shirts.

OMGPOP’s chief executive Dan Porter couldn’t comment on the show. But he did share some new statistics on the games.

He says the game is up to 1 billion paid ad impressions per day. That excludes house ads and promotions that upsell users to the paid version of the Draw Something. When I last talked to the company, they hinted that they were under six figures per day in advertising revenue. But I hear that a casual mobile game like Draw Something would have an eCPM, or effective cost per thousand impressions, of around 20 to 30 cents. (Yes, it’s low because there’s that much inventory, which is really hard to fill.) On that, you can back out a rate of around $200,000 per day. He does say that the company is getting better at filling inventory as they partner with more mobile advertising networks though.

Porter also added that Android now makes up just over one-third of daily downloads, thanks to performance enhancements. Many Android apps have issues working properly on the platform’s many devices, so developers that go out of their way with quality assurance testing can see a big bump from having their apps actually function.

Like I reported last week, the overnight success of the game has drawn interest from a number of investors and prospective buyers. Last I heard, there was a definite term sheet for $25 million from Institutional Venture Partners, but it’s not clear if OMGPOP is going to move forward with investors. Porter had said at the time that he was in a position where the company didn’t really need to raise funding.

Cashier Live, a Chicago-based, bootstrapped startup providing Point of Sale (POS) systems to retailers, has just launched a new iPhone app that moves a bit into Square’s territory – at least that’s the company’s claim. Simply called Cashier, the app is a complete POS system on the iPhone, and aims to compete with Square’s own Register app for iPad.

However, unlike Square, which has a broader focus on small and medium-sized businesses and even individual merchants who could never before afford to take credit cards, Cashier Live is 100% focused on retailers, specifically small and medium-sized retailers and franchises.

The company already has over 15,400 stores using its other product, an inventory management app called Retail Inventory, Cashier Live founder Tom Greenhaw tells us, so they’re expecting “solid traction” with the new Cashier app, too. The startup also has 6,630 businesses using its online cash register, Cashier Live, which the new iPhone aims to either supplement or replace. Today, all of those business customers will receive an email alerting them to the new iPhone app’s existence, he says.

While Greenhaw admits that it’s likely that Square will eventually bring its iPad-based cash register system to the iPhone (after all, the top review for the app is “please make this iPhone compatible!”), he’s excited to have gotten there first, at least.

To process transactions, Cashier Live has partnered with credit card processor Mercury Payment Systems. The transaction fees for this service vary and are set by Mercury, which means that in some cases, it may be higher, lower, or on par with Square. In other words, it’s not as disruptive an offering as Square, with its locked-in rate of 2.75% per swipe.

However, like Square, Cashier Live’s app doesn’t require a contract to use, and it will provide next-day deposits as well, so as to compete on speed. Merchant verification and underwriting will be provided by Mercury at this time, though, unlike Square, which manages this in-house.

There’s also another major difference between Cashier Live and Square: pricing. The company sells this combo barcode scanner/credit card swiper case for the iPhone for use with the product for $550.00. Square’s dongles, meanwhile, are handed out for free. Of course, Square doesn’t do barcode scanning, but $550 is high even for commercial barcode scanners, which are often around a couple of hundred for wireless versions. Adding in the credit card swiping, when competing with Square’s free dongle, shouldn’t shoot the cost up that much more if the company really wants be competitive with Square.

Greenhaw admits the pricing may seem high. “One thing I’d definitely say is that the Cashier app is geared towards brick and mortar business,” he explains. “Something like the Linea Pro [scanner] looks expensive when compared with a free dongle, but it’s built for high volume retail stores and businesses who are more than willing to pay for something like that.”

Greenhaw also notes that this case will be an alternative in the future. (Pricing is not set, but the plan is to keep it at $100 or less. But the case doesn’t do barcode scanning – the app will use the phone’s camera instead).

In addition, where Square provides its service sans monthly fees, Cashier Live has monthly plans that start at $20/month and go up to $75/month. In other words, the company is less focused on disrupting the credit card processing industry, and simply focused on bringing traditional processing and barcoded inventory management to mobile.

That said, the Cashier app itself has a simple interface, and ties into the inventory management system and associated barcode labeling its business customers use. It also provides a customer-tracking system where businesses can include name, birthdate and email address for use in receipts, running promotions and viewing sales history. Reporting is provided too, as are integrated services from Quickbooks and local inventory marketing via Milo, with more integrations planned for the future.

You can see the app in action in a demo video here.

Cashier Live was founded in 2009 by Tom Greenhaw and son, also Tom Greenhaw. The company launched in 2010 and rolled out its inventory app in June 2011. The founders are bootstrapping the service using money from their consulting company and haven’t taken outside funding at this time.

I’m no athlete, but I’ve found that a passing knowledge of sports comes in handy when conversations take a turn for the awkward. The question then is where do sports fans (and wannabes like me) go to get the skinny?

With publications and websites all vying for our limited attention spans, they’re turning to increasingly impressive ways to grab our attention, and Sports Illustrated is no exception. After building a presence in the Android Market and on the iOS with their Swimsuit Editions, the folks behind the long-running magazine have announced that the Sports Illustrated app has finally made the leap to the iPhone. It seems they’re in the mood to celebrate the occasion too (or at least capitalize on sports-hungry iPhone fans), as the magazine's latest issue is rocking a smartphone-friendly makeover.

Now that in and of itself isn't a huge surprise for SI — they've used Microsoft Tags in the past to liven up their Swimsuit Edition, allowing smartphone users to view exclusive video content if they used a separate barcode scanning app. Once a user fires up the new (or for Android users, updated) SI app, they'll find that code scanning functionality has been folded into the app itself, allowing SI to own the experience completely — no more having to search through the App Store for a compatible barcode reader before getting access to the good stuff.

Also new to the app is an augmented-reality viewer, which SI uses to impressive effect with the cover of their latest print issue. No bikini-clad women here — they're giving all the augmented reality love to the stars of the NCAA. Firing up the AR viewer and pointing it at the cover of their NCAA Basketball Tournament Preview pops up images that link to preview videos and player interviews.

It’s a very cool way for Sports Illustrated to deliver additional content to their subscribers, and I suspect SI will to continue to run with these sorts of print-digital convergence events for a while, if only out of necessity. Magazine sales (especially standalone or newsstand sales) have slumped pretty dramatically over the past few years, and players like SI have to balance the expenses of pushing out a print product along with building out their online coverage. Augmented print issues like this are nice, but it seems as though they’re really trying to highlight the strength of their digital platform — after all, that’s where the real money is.

For the last year or so, Index Ventures’ Saul Klein has been living in Israel, not soaking up the hot sun (well, maybe a little of that) but the local startup scene — the “Silicon Valley for the rest of the world,” as he calls it. Now he is gearing up to move back to London, and at the same he is taking part in a new initiative to continue building those bridges: the UK Israel Tech Council.

The group, associated with a new UK-Israel Technologies Hub based at the UK Embassy in the country, sounds like the kind of high-level effort that sits fairly far above the workings of startup life: some 35 “top business leaders and officials from both countries to develop an ambitious strategy for creating the UK/Israel tech partnership,” the group says. They include the British Ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould; non-executive chairman of the UK-Israel Technologies Hub Haim Shani; Yossi Vardi; and senior executives from Virgin Media, Google, Alcatel Lucent, Amadeus Capital, NICE Systems, Pitango Venture Capital and Index, among others.

But at the same time, it is a signal of how some significant efforts are being invested to tap further into the evolving startup culture in the country, and to make sure there is mindshare at all levels concerning that.

Klein says that in his 17 or so months in Israel, he came to see just how much the Israel startup scene has evolved– whereas once it was squarely focused on “hard technology”: security, enterprise, semiconductors and the like. “Israel has not developed a reputation for consumer or Internet companies,” he says.

That, however, is changing — although some of the companies coming out — Soluto to remotely manage other people’s IT problems, or eToro offering a real-time “social” trading platform — are still drawing on the strengths of the hard technology know-how that put Israel on the tech startup map in the first place. (Soluto was a Disrupt winner in years past and Index invests in it; other Israeli startups in Index’s portfolio include MyHeritage and online shopping portal Abe’s Market.)

Klein calls Israel a “startup nation,” more so than anywhere else he has been. “At the moment there is more venture capital invested per capita in Israel than anywhere else, including Silicon Valley,” he says. “It has more patents, and a higher percentage of GDP spent on R&D than anywhere else in the world.” He also says that Israel alone launches more companies annually than the rest of Europe combined.

Going to Israel was a natural move for Index, Klein says. The company, which was founded some 20 years ago in Geneva, “is used to having to go where the entrepreneurs are. It’s not like Sand Hill Road here.”

And he says the creation of organizations like this new council are an important part of staying in the game: “We've been missing out on the opportunity in terms of the connection between the UK, Europe and Israel,” he says. “When those Israeli startups are looking to hire talent, or get funding, or find customers, they go to the Valley. When they stop in London, it’s just to change planes.”

Naomi Krieger, the director of the UK Israel Technologies Hub, says that they have already run one event in the last couple of weeks to get the ball rolling:

A number of UK-based executives from the likes of the BBC, Ogilvy, BBH and Samsung were taken around to meet Israeli startups working in new media. “The UK is strong on producing content but Israel is strong on coming up with innovative and new ways of getting that content to consumers,” she says. “Those executives came away with five or six business opportunities each they plan to follow up on.”

In addition to the digital sector, the other three areas that the council will focus its efforts are life sciences, cleantech, and — here’s a curve ball — the Israeli Arabic Internet industry. The last of these, she says, takes into account that there are already a number of Arabic media organizations in London, and that there is a lot of potential tapping into what Arabic-speaking Israelis are working to create. A new chapter in tech diplomacy, perhaps.

Though it’s far and away the best iteration of Android to date, 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich has only made its way to a very small percentage of the Android population. I mean, we’re talking less than five percent, and that’s generous.

Luckily, HTC is doing its part to bring the cold creamy goodness of Roboto, facial unlock and a brand new UI to its handsets.

First on the list to receive the update are the HTC Sensation and the Sensation XE. The rollout for these phones has already started, and will continue over the next few weeks. After that, the Sensation 4G from T-Mobile and the Sensation XL will get their invites to the Ice Cream Sandwich social.

Here’s HTC’s official word:

We're in the early stages of rolling out Android 4.0 for the HTC Sensation and HTC Sensation XE and upgrades will be more widely available in the next few weeks. The update for the HTC Sensation 4G and HTC Sensation XL will follow. Please note, once we start pushing out updates it will take time for all carriers in each country to get the update. We are working closely with our carrier partners to nail down update schedules for our other smartphones and will have more to share very soon.

The Taiwanese phone maker also outlined the rest of the handsets that are approved for Ice Cream Sandwich, a full list of which can be found here.

Zynga said today that it is registering for a $400 million secondary offering of shares as it tries to manage a lock-up period for employees that might negatively affect the company’s share price. Employees aren’t allowed to sell shares until a certain number of days after the initial public offering. Most of those shares are tied to a lock-up date on May 28, but a certain number can be sold starting around April 30.

Zynga won’t receive any proceeds from the sale. Like in its initial public offering, Morgan Stanley and Goldman, Sachs & Co. are the lead underwriters, while Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, and J.P. Morgan are contributing book runners. Bloomberg first reported about this offering yesterday, and Zynga’s shares dropped about 3 percent on the news. They’re currently trading at $13.60 ahead of the market opening, up 1.7 percent from yesterday’s close.

The company says it’s doing this to “facilitate an orderly distribution of shares and to increase the company’s public float.” Zynga is trying to avoid a situation that has happened to other companies with recent initial public offerings. LinkedIn’s shares dropped to an all-time low a week after its lock-up period ended, when employees were finally allowed to start selling their own shares. Demand Media’s shares also fell 7 percent following the end of its lock-up period.

Most of Zynga’s outstanding shares are subject to a lock-up that ends on May 28. But non-executive employees will be able to sell a certain amount of shares until the third business day following Zynga’s first quarter earnings report, which will happen during the last week of April.

So the big date is on May 29, then there’s another release on July 6 for directors and executive officers. There’s another lock-up release data for directors and executives on August 16.

Automattic is announcing a new feature for large-scale sites hosted in WordPress.com VIP SaaS program (TechCrunch is a VIP publisher)—Featured Partners for third-party integrations. Basically, the program allows companies that have integrated their services with the WordPress platform to promote and seamlessly enable their tools for large-scale VIP sites, which account for one billion page views each month.

WordPress.com VIP will vet potential Featured Partners and review their code, to ensure a tight integration with the WordPress.com VIP platform. Chartbeat, ContextLogic, Daylife, Livefyre, MediaPass Subscriptions, Ooyala, SocialFlow, Uppsite and Mobilize with Wibiya are the first to join the program.

While these services could previously work with VIP blogs on an individual basis (i.e. outside of any WordPress.com relationship), the VIP team is now actually reviewing and endorsing these services. WordPress.com is also working to make sure the integrations with these services are seamless for the publisher. With Automattic’s endorsement, these services could be more attractive to a large site.

We’re told there is no category exclusivity for the Featured Partner program. Automattic will continue to add more plugin partners across various services & verticals (mobile, social, video etc.). Currently, WordPress powers 15.8% of the world's top one million sites, up from 8.5% in 2010.

With news of Apple’s new iPad selling out its first run due to overwhelming demand, 2012 is off to a galloping start for the tablet market; and because of that IDC is upping its forecasts for how many “media” tablets will be shipped this year. The analysts predict that the number will top 106.1 million units, up from their previous forecast of 87.7 million units, due in part to strong demand for that new iPad, but also a number of other devices at a range of price points.

Indeed, while Apple will continue to be the single biggest tablet maker on the market, Android, collectively, will continue to hold its own against it, with some notable devices like the Amazon Kindle Fire doing particularly well. But it will not be until 2016 — four years from now — that IDC thinks that Android shipments will outnumber those of iOS.

Even though the Kindle Fire was available only in the U.S. in Q4, IDC says that the $199 device accounted for 16.8 percent of all tablet shipments in Q4 2011, or some 4.7 million units, making it the largest “Android” vendor. Samsung, despite its multiple Android tablets, was bumped down to second-biggest Android maker with a 5.8 percent share of the market. Barnes & Noble and Pandigital, the other top Android tablet makers, both saw their shares of shipments slide. The tablets to watch, it seems, are those that combine low price with high content promise.

None of that was a match for Apple, however, which accounted for 54.7 percent of all shipments in Q4, or 15.4 million units. While that was a rise of 110 percent over the year before, that still did not outpace the overall growth of the tablet market, which IDC says grew by 155 percent between the two quarters. Overall, Android tablets accounted for 44.6 percent of all sales, while RIM’s PlayBook slipped down to 0.7 percent from 1.1 percent a year before.

A couple of things worth noting about IDC’s numbers, taken from its quarterly tablet and e-reader tracker:

Although many predict that e-readers will eventually die a death blow dealt by tablets, for the moment their fortunes look okay. They grew less than half as well as tablets did — up by 64.3 percent between Q4 2011 and 2011 — but they are still on the rise, with e-reader makers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo in total shipping 10.7 million units in the quarter.

IDC gives no weight to Microsoft and its new, tablet-friendly Windows 8 platform in its “media tablet” forecasts. As we saw last month, there are a number of devices being built on the OS, and if you believe all the reports, there will be more coming from the likes of Nokia to add to that. These are not expected to start shipping in earnest until much later this year. In its forecast, “others” apart from iOS and Android account for only a tiny sliver of overall shipments — and, by default, sales.

And that’s the other point always worth remembering about shipments. This tends to be the metric tracked most closely by analysts, because they get their numbers from device makers but also the channels that receive and distribute them; the shipment numbers are based on estimated demand. Ultimately, though, sometimes these shipments are out of sync with how a product actually gets bought — although analysts usually say that in the long run those corrections are accounted for with fewer shipments in subsequent quarters.

The news is out today that Yuri Milner has stepped down from the role of Chairman of Mail.ru and from the Board of Directors. But this is more interesting than the bare facts would suggest. Mail.ru is through the phase change of its IPO and now CEO Dmitry Grishin will combine his role with the role of Chairman. There are no other changes to management or to the Board. Given recent politics, it does all seem rather Russian.

Milner brought Grishin as a co-founder of Mail.ru ten years ago, so the two men know each other very well. So it’s not as if Mail.ru is not in safe hands. Its sites reach approximately 84 per cent of Russian Internet users on a monthly basis and the Company is the world’s fifth largest Internet business, based on page views (ComScore, December 2011). Usefully, it holds strategic minority equity stakes in Russian social network VKontakte (a 39.99 per cent stake) and Qiwi, formerly OE Investments (21.35 per cent interest). The Company also holds small minority stakes in international Internet companies including Facebook, Zynga and Groupon as well as a number of small venture capital investments in various Internet companies in Russia and Ukraine.

More interesting is Milner’s next moves with his power-player fund, DST. There have been rumours that key a lieutenant of DST was late last year seen walking around with the Samwer brothers in their the Rocket Internet incubator building in Berlin, meeting various staff. Combine that with rumours that the Samwers are preparing to raise a huge billion dollar fund to effectively clone Silicon Valley startups all over the world faster that the companies there can scale, and you have a very interesting set of circumstances.

It looks like Yuri just got the free time he needed.

It was bound to happen sooner or later, but it looks like all the heated conversation we’ve seen over user privacy in mobile apps has now finally boiled over into a class action lawsuit, filed this week in the Western Division of the U.S. District Court, Austin Division.

A list of 13 plaintiffs, acting “on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated,” have filed a suit against a series of high-profile companies that make some of the most popular mobile apps around today. The list names 18 companies in all: Path,  Twitter, Apple, Facebook, Beluga, Yelp!, Burbn, Instagram, Foursquare, Gowalla, Foodspotting, Hipster, LinkedIn, Rovio, ZeptoLab, Chillingo, Electronic  Arts and Kik  Interactive. Coincidentally, the suit was filed on Monday, the same day that Yahoo filed a patent infringement suit against Facebook.

And it looks like the lawyers representing the plaintiffs — the Austin firms of Edwards Law, Carl F. Schwenker, and the Jordan Law Firm — appear to have filed this week in an attempt at maximum effect: the suit was made public right in the middle of the SXSW interactive event that brings upwards of 20,000 tech types to the city, including those from the companies named in the suit, and of course exactly the kind of people who use these apps regularly.

Some of the defendant list seems to be intentionally doubling up actions: for example, Gowalla is now owned by Facebook; and Burbn is the developer behind Instagram.

The suit’s intention is summed up in a quote that kicks off the 152-page complaint: “Don’t take things that aren’t yours,” from Robert Fulghum’s All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten. It goes on to describe “surreptitious” gathering of information about users of mobile apps made by these companies, and the need to prevent this from continuing to happen.

Apple, meanwhile, is named because it facilitated the passage of this information from users to apps. Although Amazon and its Appstore and Google are also described in the text of the suit, they are not named as defendants at this point.

To be clear, there have not yet been any proven cases of how this data is actually getting used for anything other than what the apps have been designed to do: whether it is to link up users with their friends in the case of social features; or give a users’ location in the case of location-based apps. Some believe that it could be used for commercial purposes not intended by the user of the app in question.

There have already been some cases of the app makers, such as Path, apologizing for the problems people have found with the aspect of their app that shares data, and trying to explain better how and why it works the way that it does.

But if the defendants are found to have acted wrongly, the payouts could be big:

The named plaintiffs — most of whom reside in Austin — do not specify an exact amount of damages but if this suit progresses and actually goes to court, and if more pile into it, could run into very high sums: the lawyers name a list of basic damages around privacy violations and out-of-pocket expenses, but also statutory  damages that run into the tens of thousands of dollars for each individual violation; $1,000 for theft of address book data; and treble damages for intentional wrongdoing.

We are contacting the defendants for their response.

Here’s the full suit filed on March 12:

Yahoo reared its patent troll head this week, and it’s not just Facebook that has reason to be worried — at least, judging by the extremely broad features that it’s being targeted for. Yahoo could easily sue Twitter, Pinterest, Google and many other popular web services whenever it thinks it would be most lucrative since their products are also covered by Yahoo’s patents.

It’s not enough to simply say nasty things about Yahoo. The web’s leaders need to take a united stand against patent trolling over vague, underlying concepts.

Rather than give you the jargon-filled abstracts of the patents Yahoo is suing Facebook with, let’s look at what features they pertain to on Facebook and across the web, which will show this is more than an assault on the popular social network. This is Yahoo’s war on innovation.

View As

Control for enabling a user to preview display of selected content based on another user's authorization level - Google+

Facebook has long had a feature that lets you view how your profile appears to a specific friend or the public, and with the launch of Timeline the tool began appearing on profiles themselves. Just click “View as…” in the drop-down at the right of the Timeline profile.

Google+ offers a nearly identical feature.

Customized Content Feeds

Dynamic Page Generator - Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, most content feeds

Nearly all of Facebook’s pages are generated according to a “user’s preferences”. The news feed pulls updates of friends and sorts them by affinity for the author, which are technically preferences for who you friend and what you Like. The Events section shows what a user has RSVP’d to, and starting two weeks ago brand Pages have gained a prominent, personalized section of how friends have interacted with that Page. Twitter’s feed, Pinterest’s home page, Google+’s stream, and nearly any content consumption service with some sort of login functionality also infringes on this patent.

Authenticated Identity

World modeling using a relationship network with communication channels to entities – Google+, Quora, Foursquare

This pertains to communication between online entities that represent real-world entities such as people, businesses, and places. Facebook’s greatest differentiator from its most popular predecessors has been authenticated identity — that user accounts on the service directly model real-world entities. An extension of this is Facebook’s real name policy. Facebook’s wall post, comments, and messaging systems all depend on users interacting with real people, not avatars or fictional entities. Google+ and Quora both have real-name policies and messaging as well, while Foursquare allows real-world businesses to communicate with real-world people.

Unified Messaging

System and method for instant messaging using an e-mail protocol

Facebook launched its unified messaging product in November 2010 that lets users seamlessly communicate across asynchronous messages, instant message chats, and emails. Facebook’s innovation here was dynamically recognizing what was the most relevant medium to deliver a message through, such as delivering a chat if you were actively online, or a message to your mobile device if you were browsing the mobile news feed. This feature is one relatively unique to Facebook, but some smaller group messaging services may also provide it.

Ad Sorting

Method and system for optimum placement of advertisements on a webpage – Google, social games, anyone that does ad retargeting or segmentation

Facebook’s ad system most likely ranks ads not only by the bids of advertisers, but on factors determining how likely a user is to click. Facebook now uses social context in ads that shows what friends Like the Page of the advertiser.

This social context increases click rates, and so Facebook probably shows ads that can include social context more prominently so it’s more likely to earn money on clicks. Google and many sites also optimize ads based on your past behavior, such as +1 button clicks, and through cookie retargeting. Social game companies, likely including Zynga, show different ads to big spenders.

Spam Detection

System and method to determine the validity of an interaction on a network – Google+, Twitter

Social networks use this concept to assess the likelihood that a message, post, or comment is spam. Facebook analyzes an author’s past behavior, keywords, the destination of the link, and posting frequency to identify spammers and either hide or reduce the prominence of their messages, news feed posts, and comments. Facebook also applies this filtering to its Comments Box plugin. Twitter similarly weeds out spammers this way, and Google recently began making spam comments less visible.

Content Relevance Sorting

Online playback system with community bias - Pinterest, Quora

Concerning how a content stream for one user can be refined based on the tastes of their peers, this patent likely covers how Facebook decides which posts are relevant to show in the news feed. Posts by users or Pages that receive a lot of Likes and comments, especially from friends, are given more prominence in the feed. Pinterest likely uses the re-pins and likes of friends while Quora uses upvotes and answers to determine what to surface on a user’s home page.

Privacy Settings

Method and system for customizing views of information associated with a social network user – Google+, Twitter, location services

This patent on privacy settings covers the ability to set certain content as visible only to viewers in a specific list or who have a particular characteristic. Facebook lets users set up lists of friends or choose specific friends that can be permitted to or prevented from seeing content. Privacy buckets let users restrict visibility of content to only oneself, friends, friends of friends, and public.

Google has similar privacy lists (Circles) and specific person privacy controls, while Twitter lets users set their accounts as private and only show tweets to those who’ve been approved. Foursquare and other location services let users restrict visibility of content to those with a particular relationship to them, bringing a whole other class of companies within striking distance of Yahoo.

In 1768, the Enlightenment was in full swing, and the printing press was being employed liberally as a method of disseminating knowledge among the (then still relatively few) literate and learned. Few general-purpose reference works existed (the earliest came only a few years before), however, with much essential knowledge split between many smaller, more specific volumes. On Optics, or On the Use of Leeches, or Travels Among the Savages of the New World, that sort of thing. That year, the Encyclopaedia Britannica printed its first edition: three volumes comprising a compressed but useful near-totality of human knowledge.

It is difficult for us to conceive of, having grown up with reference works, and more difficult still for a new generation raised with the Internet and its promise of instant access to virtually any work or knowledge. So it is likewise strange to attempt to put in context the fact that 2010′s Encyclopaedia Britannica will be the last one printed. Some will stroke their chins, some will wail and tear their hair, some will shout for joy. But most, perhaps most tellingly, won’t care – indeed won’t ever notice.

The passing of any institution as old as this one, even if it isn’t going away completely (they actively maintain a subscription-based reference site), is a moment on which to reflect. Especially when print and knowledge are in such upheaval.

The question of print versus online is different when you’re not talking about cheap paperbacks versus e-books, or news magazines versus blogs. This Encyclopaedia sells for $1395, and at 32 volumes, it would be out of place on any but the most expansive libraries. Only 8000 copies of the 2010 edition were sold; 4000 are being warehoused. Just before the dawn of the web, in 1990, they sold 120,000.

It’s a no-brainer for the company: 99% of their revenue comes from their other businesses. And as companies like Kodak and Polaroid can attest, an iconic product isn’t the same as a successful product.

Is there anything to be said in the print edition’s defense? There are some high-level arguments about the value of keeping hard copies of data, and certainly there are some demographics better served by books than the internet. But as far as an actual product, the encyclopaedia is nearly friendless. A few professors or old-fashioned types may value the sets, but it’s hardly a secret that if your goal is the storage and distribution of valuable knowledge, a bulky, expensive, 32-book set is not the way to go about it.

They’ve built a company that has lasted two and a half centuries on the supposition that “Facts Matter.” When faced with the choice of continuing to make the same product they offered 244 years ago and continuing the mission they started 244 years ago, Encyclopaedia Britannica chose the latter. It’s a choice many companies would be proud to make, but few will ever have that opportunity. It’s not every day someone makes something that lasts a quarter of a millennium.

Venture firms like to pull in experienced founders to become entrepreneurs in residence — people who typically come in without a clear idea of what they want to do, who may simply be tasked with thinking up a new company.

Y Combinator is now bringing this type of free-form entrepreneurialism to its seed-stage fund. With a twist.

If you’re a prospective founding team (or a uniquely promising individual), it is now letting you apply to join its next class of founders without an idea. This might sound contrarian at first, but it perfectly fits the early-stage startup model, where the team is what makes the company win, rather than the initial concept. Here’s more, from the description out today from Paul Graham and Co:

Why are we doing this? Partly because we realized we already were. A lot of the startups we accept change their ideas completely, and some of those do really well. Reddit was originally going to be a way to order food on your cellphone. (This is a viable idea now, but it wasn’t before smartphones.) Scribd was originally going to be a ridesharing service.

Another way to look at this is that YC now has an even lower-friction way to attract talent. Which, again, is sometimes what VCs do with EIRs. But better, because unlike venture portfolio companies in various stages of maturity, each YC class is chock full of other companies iterating on and often completely switching plans. It’s not hard to imagine that talented people without ideas of their own might become cofounders around stronger projects if they don’t finalize their own, even if that’s not the primary intention here.

If this new piece of the YC program proves to be successful — the firm is careful to describe this as an experiment — I suspect we’ll see it get adopted by the many other early-stage firms, accelerators and incubators out there.

Let me catch you up: Matt Spaccarelli, an everyday guy from California, recently took AT&T to small claims court regarding its questionable throttling practices. The judge ruled in his favor on February 24 and ordered AT&T to pay Spaccarelli $850 on the basis that the throttled speed does not live up to AT&T’s much-advertised promise of the nation’s “fastest network.” Anyway, the social consumer activist site PublikDemand recently rallied support around the story and posted a series of tips on how any consumer could do the same.

Now, two and a half weeks after Spaccarelli’s case was settled in small claims court, a lawyer for AT&T is reaching out and offering a slightly new settlement if he signs an NDA to stop talking about his case. But that’s the normal part. The letter starts out by explaining that since Spaccarelli is using his wireless data plan for tethering — a fact he admitted in court — AT&T “has the right to terminate [his] service.” It’s ’bout to get nasty in here.

As far as I can tell Spaccarelli does not need to sign this NDA. There’s also nothing in this initial letter that guarantees AT&T will not cancel his service based on tethering at a later time anyway. He might lose his service with AT&T, but I’m completely surprised he’s still there. Instead, he should simply pursue the small claims initial ruling of $850 and move to a different carrier. It’s very clear through the wording of the letter that AT&T is more interested in shutting the guy up than using his troubles to improve their wireless service. I wouldn’t want to support a company like that.

AT&T just doesn’t get it. The court ordered the massive wireless carrier to pay $850. That’s it. Their fucking lawyer probably charges $850 an hour. Instead, AT&T is going to have to clean up from yet another viral marketing mess.

UPDATE: AT&T just sent over a statement to TC concerning Matt Spaccarelli.

Mr. Spaccarelli reached out to us to initiate a discussion, and naturally, we responded to him to hear what was on his mind and discuss his data usage. Mr. Spaccarelli has said he tethers a second device to his smartphone, which is something that our unlimited data plans don’t allow. For customers who tether, we have plans that allow them to do just that.

On March 30th, Facebook will forcibly migrate all Pages onto the Timeline redesign, but Facebook tells me it only took 10 days for 8 million of the more than 37 million Pages that have been set up to opt into the change. The stats are a sign of success that show the added features are ones admins want, considering tons of Facebook Pages get set up and forgotten about.

However, it will take a while to see whether Timeline actually helps Pages market more effectively. So far the most popular Pages that have switched haven’t seen growth rates increase. With more to look at, the Like button might be overshadowed.

Reach Generator which launched at the Facebook Marketing Conference and allows Pages to pay a fixed fee to guarantee distribution of their content to over 75% of their fans is picking up customers. Dr. Pepper reached 83% of its 8 million U.S. fans over a 28-day period, had a 140% increase in people talking about it on Facebook, and saw an 80% increase in engagement. Ford plans to buy logout page ads where big photos of their cars can be featured, which wouldn’t fit in Facebook’s tiny traditional sidebar ads.

Typically when Facebook launches redesigns they’re met with fear and apprehension. But Timeline’s big flashy cover banner seems to be pretty for Page admins to resist. There are some concerns about the removed ability to set a custom promotional app as a default landing page, but those are offset by eagerness for pinned posts, bigger photos, and more presentation flexibility.

Brands also probably didn’t want to get left behind by competitors, leading roughly 1 million Pages per day to migrate to Timeline in first days after its launch. Now they’re likely taking the time to go back, hide irrelevant or weak posts, and add milestone moments to their story. 2 weeks after launch and 2 more before the forced migration, Facebook tells me a “significant percentage” of Pages have switched. In its S-1 Facebook noted that 37 million Pages had been set up as of December 31, 2011.

While the long-tail of Pages are actively migrating to Timeline, Facebook’s most popular Pages have been conservative with their adoption. Only 8 of the top 20 Pages have migrated, and none of those have seen their rate of new fans increase significantly according to Inside Network’s PageData tracking service. In fact, some are seeing slower growth, possibly because users have to re-learn where the Like button is.

Today, Microsoft is launching the first startup accelerator* in the company’s history in an effort to encourage more entrepreneurs to build their cloud-based applications using Windows Azure. The program will take place at the Microsoft Israel Research and Development Center, and is a part of the Israel R&D Center’s outreach program Think Next as well as the Microsoft BizSpark program for startups.

Like most accelerators, Microsoft will provide the typical accouterments, including free office space, coaching, mentorship, legal assistance and more, but in this case, it’s specifically after companies building cloud-based startups. The companies will be provided with free access to Windows Azure, but will not receive seed funding.

According to Zack Weisfeld, Sr. Director of Strategy and Business Development at Microsoft’s Israel Development Center, the decision to launch the company’s first accelerator in Israel had to do with the center’s strategic location for Microsoft, and is part of its ongoing efforts to bring startup culture back to the company.

Israel has a very active startup community, Weisfeld explains. “We have 4,900 startups in Israel today, and the third largest V.C. spending in the world after Silicon Valley and New England,” he says. He also notes that out of the startups participating in Microsoft’s BizSpark One, a sort of “best of breed” selection from the larger BizSpark program, 25% of the companies are located in Israel.

“Because we have such an innovation-driven and startup-driven R&D center, we basically came with a proposal to basically change the way Microsoft deals with entrepreneurs,” Weisfeld says of the program’s beginnings. “Part of that proposal was to start, for the first time in the world for Microsoft, our own startup accelerator.”

The new accelerator aims to tap into the region’s activity, by encouraging startups to launch using Microsoft software.

The Windows Azure Accelerator, as it’s called, will be the first of many themed accelerators Microsoft plans to launch in the same space. The program will also serve as a blueprint for future accelerators Microsoft plans to launch globally, Weisfeld says. And those global programs will arrive sooner than later, it seems.

“I don’t think we’ll wait a year,” Weisfeld says, “we’re going to learn a lot through the first class…we’ll be ready to move as soon as possible to other places.”

During the four-month, biannual program, entrepreneurs will have access to 850 square meters of newly renovated, shared workspace in the center, which also includes meeting rooms, a usability lab, and a place to record their demo videos. Over 30 mentors from the industry (names TBA) have been lined up to provide leadership, coaching and support. These include startup CEOs, investors, marketing experts and more.

The startups will also receive all the software currently available through Microsoft BizSpark, including, of course, access to Windows Azure. Companies will receive two years (up to $60,000) of Windows Azure, Weisfeld tells us. This is the same offering available through the BizSpark Plus program, which is now offered to TechStars and all members of its Global Accelerator Network. This new program, too, will function as a member of that network, we’re told.

Startups in the program may choose to use open source software, Weisfeld says, but Microsoft “would like” them to use Azure. (Read: should use Azure).

Although the new program is being positioned as an accelerator, unlike many of today’s incubators, there isn’t seed funding involved, nor will Microsoft take an equity stake in the participating companies. However, there will be something else of value offered: access to Microsoft’s partners who may serve as potential customers.

“We know it’s so critical, even in early stages, for startups to have access to people who may use whatever they produce or can start working as beta customers.” Weisfeld says. “We’re going to work both locally and internationally [on that],” he adds.

Microsoft will reach out both to its own customers with whom it already has relationships with, he says, but will also be doing grassroots-level work when necessary.

The program will culminate with two demo days, one in Israel and a second in the U.S. The first class, which will include 10 companies, will be announced April 22nd at Think Next 2012, which is sort of like a TechCrunch Disrupt-style event for Israel.

As for what’s in it for Microsoft? Besides the obvious (Azure adoption), it’s about an attempt to reinvigorate Microsoft culture.

“We believe that for the Israel R&D center, it’s going to make the center much better. We’re going to have fast-moving, agile startups that want to change the world working closely with our engineers,” explains Weisfeld. “It’s going to make us much better by working with them.”

Interested startup founders can apply to the program here: accelerato.rs/azure/apply

* UPDATE: To be clear, it is Microsoft itself, and those involved with The Windows Azure accelerator, who are positioning the program as the “first-ever” accelerator run by the company. Microsoft, however, has involvement with TechStars, including with its Kinect Accelerator, it should be noted. In that case, though, TechStars takes its usual 6% equity stake, which may be the reason for the distinction. Also, the Azure accelerator will be run by two Microsoft employees, who are in the process of being hired now from the outside startup community.

Here’s further explanation, per Weisfeld:

“Windows Azure Accelerator is the first Microsoft accelerator. The one in Seattle is a TechStars accelerator. Startups get funded and equity by TechStars. The Kinect accelerator is operated by TechStars. It is not a Microsoft accelerator.

WAA is the only by Microsoft, at Microsoft, run by our employees. This is certainly our first direct accelerator. The other one is a TechStars driven accelerator.”

The Spectrum has been a busy little diva the last few days, strutting in and out of our NYC studio like she belongs there. So much in fact, that I’ve given her a gender and started to refer to her in gender-specific pronouns. A scary thought, to say the least.

Matt seems less perturbed by her presence, though I was (and still am) more than willing to duke it out with him over the value of this here phone.

Here’s the deal: The LG Spectrum has solid specs — 4G LTE, 4.5-inch 720p TrueHD display, 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and a solid little 8-megapixel camera all at a reasonable $200 price (on contract, of course). It also happens to look and feel cheap. This is my main beef with the phone, and to me it was a deal-breaker.

Matt, on the other hand, sees potential in the Spectrum, viewing the price-point and the specs as a winning combo (despite the fact that it’s likely to be the ugliest phone in the store). But is that enough to stake his word on it and give it a Fly?