The Next Social Network? It's Web 2.0, And It Knows Where You Are

The Web 2.0 Summit kicks off next week here in San Francisco. Epicenter's Julie Sloane and I will be there, blogging and passing out cards (and just plain passing out).

The official theme this year is "The Web's Edge," whatever that means. But based on murmurings I've read recently, I'd like to propose a less official theme: "The Socialization of Presence."

I got to thinking about this after reading Chris Messina's thought-provoking blog post riffing on Google's acquisition of the social messaging service Jaiku. If you're not familiar with the news, see our coverage on Compiler.

Chris' post refers to a meme started earlier this year by Web 2.0 conference co-chair Tim O'Reilly called the "Web 2.0 Address Book," a nebulous product (yet to be invented) that's basically a location-aware contact list. The idea is that all of our real social apps already exist in the form of e-mail, your phone, IM and Twitter. We just need some glue to make everything work together.

Messina extends the idea to a possible scenario: Rather than calling somebody or sending an e-mail or a Twitter or an IM, you just open up your contact list and click on their name. Wherever they are, your communication reaches them via the most convenient and appropriate means. So, they're walking on the beach, their iPhone rings. If they're in a meeting, they get a text message. If they're at their desk, they get an e-mail. If they're in Asia, they're probably asleep, so they get a voicemail.

Another name for it is the "presence-enabled phone book."

Last month, Jaiku's Jyri Engeström argued that this location-aware utility is the key piece of functionality missing from the iPhone. Not a surprising point of view considering it's pretty close to where his company is headed. Jyri points to O'Reilly's post which makes the same point.

Messina, however, argues on the iPhone's behalf. He asserts that Apple's browser-centered "dumb device" is the perfect tool with which to surf the social presence web. He brands the iPhone the Sputnik of this new frontier, the first of many devices to come. Logically then, since Google bought Jaiku and since the company is rumored to be building its own mobile platform, this is one of the holes we can expect the so-called GPhone to fill.

And for anyone weary of joining yet another social networking platform in order to participate, worry not. You're already a member. This new presence-aware social network is the web.

In Messina's vision of the future, your "presence" doesn't just exist on Facebook or Google. Rather, it lives in that layer of information which can be assembled from the pieces stored on every service you're a part of. Obviously, microformats would play a key part in such a scenario. Standards like hCard and hCalendar can be used to track where you are and what you're up to. OpenID can verify your identity, making your location data accessible to you and your group of friends. Instantly, anyone who wanted to get in touch with you could just look you up in their contact list and see where you are, what you're doing, what you'll be doing this afternoon and the best way to get in touch with you right now.

Actually, I should amend that last sentence -- anyone you trust would be able to get in touch with you. That's one of the complicated caveats here, and one that Messina touches on in his post. In order for this presence network to properly blossom, we need to overcome the hurdle of privacy. Not only do we need more secure and innovative ways of safely establishing and maintaining our identities, but we all need to get more comfortable with putting our information out there in the first place.

More importantly, we also need to free up all of our personal data that's already out there, languishing in closed networks like Facebook. Sadly, that might prove to be the most difficult hurdle.

Photo: Heyjules via Flickr

Google's Zeitgeist Speakers Even Wowed Googlers

Miguel Helft of the NYT has already detailed some of the speakers who headlined Google's Zeitgeist conference this week: Bill Clinton (teleconference), Al Gore, David Cameron (Britain's Conservative Party leader), Dick Parsons, Fred Smith, Tom Brokaw, and the decidedly un-digital Yvon Chouinard (founder of Patagonia). What Miguel didn't mention was how impressed even dynastically wealthy Googlers in attendance were by this line-up. The admiration, by the way, extended to Google's own Eric Schmidt, who is a shoo-in to be the next billionaire-turned-national-politician.

One interesting tidbit: A conference attendee says that Bill Clinton was full of praise for Al Gore (who deserves it), and even went out of his way to mention Gore several times in a short presentation. Gore, meanwhile, whose celebrity (and influence?) arguably now exceeds that his former boss, did not mention fellow-speaker Clinton once.

We're interpreting here, but we assume that Gore is still ripped about the Monica incident. If so, we have some advice for the Nobel winner: Let it go, Al, let it go! (And some more: Run for president!)

AOL (TWX): Some Firings Delayed Until Dec 16? Bad Idea

We have heard that some folks slated for termination at AOL next week will be granted a 60-day reprieve (until December 16), with the aim of reducing the number of people let go next week--and, thus, the media attention around the layoffs.

We can't confirm this, and it is such a bad idea that it just doesn't sound right to us:

• Layoffs are painful for all involved, but they are far less damaging to a company's reputation when taken in one lump. AOL already has a reputation for "death by a thousand cuts." Adding another cut here won't help. It will also be yet another round of "holiday layoffs."
  
• Delaying some layoffs will not reduce media attention about "AOL Layoffs"--it will prolong it. It will also keep remaining employees in a state of gallows-desperation for the next two months, which is not conducive to work required to get AOL back on track.
  
• The layoffs have already received considerable media attention. Whether they end up being 500, 1000, 2000, or 3000 won't change the coverage much. A second round, moreover, will just thrust AOL Layoffs into the headlines again.

We imagine this logic is obvious within AOL and Time Warner, too.

On That Apple (AAPL) iPhone Open-API Rumor

This afternoon's rumor-mill (MarketingVox, Mac Rumors) is spitting out an interesting tidbit about Apple opening APIs for the iPhone to third-party developers.

Is it true? Probably not: Our Apple analyst, Dan Frommer, says that, for now, Apple wants to control the whole iPhone value-chain, the way it does with iPods, and suggests that, in any case, Apple might wait until the next version of Mac OS comes out. Frommer also suggests that people don't buy BlackBerries, etc., because of the third-party apps, so these apps wouldn't be a big selling point. Lastly, he observes that, as an iPhone user, he would want to be assured that third-party apps wouldn't brick his phone the way a third-party email app has crippled his Treo--and he knows that no one understands this risk better than Steve Jobs.

All that said... As Facebook is demonstrating now, and Microsoft demonstrated in the 1990s, the value that can be created by owning the "platform" that becomes the industry standard is mind-boggling. And given that Mr. Jobs was on the losing end of that platform battle in the PC wars, we're confident he understands the value that could be created if Apple could make the iPhone the industry-standard mobile development platform.

NYT Adds Reader Comments to Front Page!*

We're always impressed with the New York Times' (NYT) progressive use of its web site, but seeing reader comments above the fold on the Home page was still startling. Hats off to the company's web team for this smart move !

(No, it won't save the company's dying print business. But it shows an impressive ability to adapt to the new conversational/interactive media reality. And it will help increase user loyalty, and, with it,the site's popularity.)

UPDATE: A reader suggests that this was merely a test, as his screen wasn't showing the comments. (Good thing we got the screen shot below). We hope the NYT concludes the test was successful.

Jamba CEO, Fox Mobile President Hood Resigns

Lucy Hood, President of Fox Mobile Entertainment and CEO of News Corp./VeriSign mobile entertainment venture Jamba has resigned. Jamba COO Lee Fenton will take over in the interim.

Hood says she's "eager to pursue more entrepreneurial ventures" and "looking forward to the next opportunity," which usually means "I can't stand it here" or something worse. But this split looks to be a bit unusual. The Jamba/News Corp. press release announcing her departure is closer to a mash note: It includes a 364-word bio and this glamour shot.

Send Word Now Raises $8.5 Million Series C

Send Word Now has raised $8.5 million in Series C financing. Southpaw Asset Management led the round; many of the company's existing investors, including Ascend Venture Group, also participated. Silicon Alley-based Send Word Now sells voice- and text-based alerting services and two-way mobile messaging services. Customers include Boston University, Wal-Mart, and Pfizer. Last August, the company raised $10.6 million. Release

Internet Evolution

CMP has started a new collective blog at the new Internet Evolution, and asked me to get involved along with a roster of very, very interesting people, including these folks, and a long list of others:

1. Craig Newmark of Craigslist.com
2. John Grimes, CIO, U.S. Department of Defense, and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration
3. Philip Rosedale, CEO, Linden Lab
4. Ralph Szygenda, CIO, General Motors
5. Don Tapscott
6. Thomas Dolby
7. David Weinberger
8. Robert Scoble
9. Cory Doctorow
   

For some reason the Groucho Marx quip -- "I would never join a club that would have me as a member" -- comes to mind, although I really don't feel that way in this case. I have kicked off with the so aptly titled post, So This Guy Walks Into A Bar, And ..., where I deftly sidestep the reasons that CMP would ask me to be involved in the Internet Evolution project: I'm flattered, but baffled. However, I do divulge something, a project I have dreamed up. I plan to write a series over the next six months at Internet Evolution, leading -- I hope -- to a book. My working title is The Social Revolution: Why The New Web Matters, and my next post will be What's The Web Worth?. Stay tuned, Edglings: more to follow.

Still Looking For Typepad Template Hacker

I want to make some changes to my Typepad style sheets and templates. Last time I went down that rat hole (no offense, Six Apart) I barely got out alive.

Any designers/hackers out there interested -- I'm paying real money -- can contact me by leaving a comment on this post.

Ooprint's Blogger Business Cards

I love it! Business cards with a tag cloud:

I don't think I am going to switch from Moo cards, but I like the ooprint designs, and the tag cloud could actually be helpful as a way to forestall that quintessential American cocktail party question, "What do you do?" (My usual answer, by the way, "As little as possible."). You could just hand the interrogator a card and let the tag cloud explain. Maybe I could craft a tag cloud, and get it on the back of my next batch of moo cards? Or maybe the design geniuses at moo will just offer this as a service. Or ooprint could start offering moo-sized cards with the tag cloud on the back? Looks like a looming global competition for the all-important technoid geek business card market!

Yahoo Messenger For Vista

I got a demo of the new Yahoo Messenger for Vista, which has been redesigned to take advantage of Vista-specific features. Since it was the first time I was seeing Vista, I must admit that I was operating at a disadvantage, but what I saw suggests that Yahoo is continuing its Messenger strategy of developing the Messenger client that best takes advantage of the specific operating system, like Vista's transparent windows.

Yahoo has introduced tabbed windows for IM in this version, which means you can drag one independent chat window onto another, and wind up with one chat window with two tabs. Or you can drag a tab off to create a new window.

Yahoo is also trying to integrate other services more closely with Messenger. For example, Fantasy Football is supported by the automatic creation of a group in the Messenger contact list.

The product is not in beta yet, but Yahoo plans to roll that out as soon as possible, and to continuously be rolling out new functionality as more user roll onto Vista.

My sense is that the adoption of Vista will be much slower than Microsoft would have us believe, but Yahoo is being sensible, building a Vista version of Messenger with basic functionality immediately. I just hope that Yahoo continues the push on the Mac client as diligently, since that client is woefully behind the curve relative to the Windows client.

Cultural Dissonance

Cultural Dissonance

I have taken the DLD conference off my upcoming events. The request for me to speak has been withdrawn.

I have never attended the DLD conference, which is managed by Hubert Burda Media, a German publishing company I have had no contact with, so there is little social capital involved. But I think this is an interesting case in cultural dissonance: since this has occurred in the past few years with two European conferences. In both cases I was asked if I would like to speak, to which I responded, yes. And in those cases, subsequently, the offer was taken back. With apologies, etc., very politely. Nonetheless this has never happened in the US, where I have spoken countless times. Maybe it is some subtle interpretation of 'would' that I am missing, as in 'would you do this if we ask you to?' with emphasis on the if.

Or perhaps it is just a different model of developing conference programs. I have served on dozens of US program committees, and people are solicited for proposals, but once you accept them as speakers you do not reneg later.

Well, I am scaling way back on conferences in general, and I can happily forego yet another travel opportunity. But being called 'Steve' in the last email rankled more than being told there were far, far too many wonderful speakers vying to participate.

GMail to Kick Up Free Storage - Where's My GDrive Already?

I'm regularly outspoken about my concerns that Google is going to take over the world and start passing out brain implants - but the fact of the matter is that I love Google services. Today's announcement that more GMail storage is on the way is heartening, but you've got to wonder: why is this mighty giant messing around with anything other than a total storage solution for all my data across all their apps? Where is the GDrive already?

Google told analysts more than a year ago that it wanted to store 100% of our data, a "golden copy." Perhaps its failure to do so yet is a sign of the finite power it truly holds. Or perhaps its just a ruse to lull cynics like me into a false sense of security. That's probably not what's happening.

I should probably pay $50 for super Google, as advocated this morning by Amit Agarwal in reference to the news. See also one estimate of forthcoming free storage capacity over at the blog Googlified.

Finally, I'm sure there are some of you out there that still haven't seen the following video about the future of Google and the web in general. It's not to be missed, it's thought provoking and funny. See you in the "hive mind" if it ever arrives!

How to Fix Yahoo!: Building a Yahoo! Platform

As part of our focus on Yahoo!'s next 100 days this week, I am going to dive into how I would go about fixing the company. Or at least starting along that path. According to comScore, Yahoo! is the 3rd most visited collection of web properties worldwide (trailing only Google and Microsoft), reaching about 61% of the global web audience. In the US, the company's websites are still #1, and actually have a broader ad reach then Google domestically. Yet Yahoo!'s total revenues for the first six months of 2007 were less than Google's revenue for just the last quarter.

Though that serves as a table setter for the problems at Yahoo!, I won't get into financials in this article, as that is not my forte. Instead I will focus on what can be done to create a more useful and meaningful Yahoo! for users, one that can keep people on the site and drive them to use their search engine. Remember that Google controls ~50% of the search market share and pay-per-click text ads on search results drive a significant portion of their revenue -- search share is very important to Yahoo!

The Platform is the Killer App

The killer app on the web is the platform. We've talked about this before on this blog in terms of social networks and AJAX start pages, and software like Google Gears, the Adobe Integrated Runtime, and the Dojo Offline Toolkit that let developers take the web out of their web apps and have added credence to the idea that the platform of the future is the Internet.

Social networking darling Facebook has realized the power of the platform, which is part of the reason for all the hype, so have start pages like Pageflakes and Netvibes, who are building sophisticated (and increasingly more social) web platforms for developers. These platforms are beneficial for users because, like a desktop operating system, they allow people to aggregate the applications they use in one, central, organized location for quick access. For developers, platforms are a central location to launch new applications to the greatest number of people. For these reasons, the platform itself becomes the web's killer app.

One need look no further than this year's hottest gadget, the iPhone to see how beneficial a strong platform can be for a service or product. While Apple didn't provide a platform for developers in the true sense of the word, the number of iPhone-specific web apps that have been developed for the phone grows daily. These applications extend the functionality of the device and add value to users at no cost to Apple. Often, it is third party applications on a platform that attract new users or retain existing ones.

Building a Yahoo! Platform

Yahoo! needs to realize that the web platform is getting more and more important. Google already has, and is building a platform around their start page, iGoogle, by encouraging developers to build "gadgets" specifically for it. For Yahoo!, a platform can unify their services -- which right now are scattered -- and add utility to their page that will keep users there long enough to conduct searches. Yahoo! controls some of the hottest and most useful properties on the web, but has not figured out how to tie them together. They've started to bring some of their acquisitions under the single Yahoo! sign-on umbrella, but that still doesn't bring my del.icio.us links, my Flickr photos and my fantasy sports team management to one central location.

The good news for Yahoo! is that they already have a property just waiting to be turned into a full fledged platform: My Yahoo!

My Yahoo! is one of the oldest and most popular start pages on the Internet (I've used it since 1999), visited by about 50 million people monthly. The path toward a Yahoo! platform begins with My Yahoo!, which has been undergoing a major update via their new beta site. Many of the changes the My Yahoo! beta showcases are good: drag and drop page organization, more customization tools, multiple pages, and the ability to create a module out of any RSS feed are all great features. Yahoo! has also wisely begun to utilize their start page as a way to tie their various services together -- for example, I can add a static module for my del.icio.us bookmarks or my Flickr images. But there is still a lot more they need to do. Below I will outline three things I think they need to do to compete with the other fledgling platforms on the web.

1. An Open API

When it comes to developer APIs, Yahoo! is at the forefront. According to ProgrammableWeb, Yahoo! ties with Google for having the most APIs (25), which is why it boggles my mind that they don't have one for My Yahoo! the way Google does for iGoogle, or Facebook, or Pageflakes, or Netvibes do. Even more amazing, Yahoo! actually already has a widgets API, it's just focused in the wrong direction: on the desktop instead of toward their own web platform.

"The bottom line is, if we expect you to make My Yahoo! your home on the Web, then we need to deliver the content that’s important to your life. Hence we’re working around the clock to add more and more relevant modules to choose from." -- My Yahoo! Team, June 2007

The best way to add more relevant modules is to open the platform to anyone. Why have a team of people adding only "official" modules and working from a limited perspective when you could have thousands of developers doing the work for you for free? Look at the explosion of applications on Facebook's platform as an example of how well this works. Right now there are over 2300 apps on Facebook, created in just the first two full months of the platform, and that is about 500 more than there were 12 days ago.

Sure not all of those apps will be great, and many of them will likely be downright awful. But the chances of adding applications that are useful to your users and will potentially attract new ones greatly increases when you open up your platform. Further, it is now your users, rather than a small team of paid employees, who are deciding which applications are useful to them. Yahoo! could still retain editorial control by approving applications before adding them to the site, or by featuring modules vetted by the editorial staff.

Certainly for a content company like Yahoo!, opening up their platform might seem like giving their competitors a way to leech users away from their own content, but in reality the opposite it a true. It actually means giving users access to competitor content while keeping them on your site, which is a net positive.

2. Richer Applications

Currently most My Yahoo! modules are one-way, meaning that they give you information but you don't really interact with them. I can get my email via a My Yahoo! module, but I can't compose and send or even read a full email without leaving the My Yahoo! page. Some widgets have basic input functions -- like the reference or stock quote widgets -- but query results are still returned on a separate page, rather than inside the widget.

iGoogle's YouTube app can play videos directly in the app.

For My Yahoo! to be taken seriously as a platform and compete with Facebook and iGoogle, they'll need to support richer applications. That means applications that can be interacted with on the page, such as a dictionary app that loads the definition I am after without sending me away from my My Yahoo! page, or a Games application that lets me load a game of Literati right inside my start page, or a Flickr app that lets me upload photos and manage my galleries without actually visiting Flickr.

One of the reasons people get so excited about Facebook and other burgeoning web platforms is that there exists the potential for nearly any sort of application. With the right apps, Facebook could theoretically become a one stop shop for web surfers to consume information and perform tasks. Support for richer applications would put Yahoo! in the mix for creating the web platform that demands the most of your attention.

3. Make the Platform Social

This is probably the last step Yahoo! should take when building their web platform. Richard and I have both talked about turning start pages into social networks (here and here), and this is certainly where I see these companies going. As Richard said, it seems to be almost a natural evolution -- once you have the users, why not allow them to interact? But Yahoo! needs to focus on building out their platform for developers before turning it into a social network.

It's no secret that Yahoo! has long wanted a social network. There was their famous failed attempt to buy Facebook last fall, and they have since been linked with bebo as well. When Yahoo! launched the beta of their new My Yahoo! service last March, they hinted at the prospect of making their start page property more social, so it is possible they already have plans to do so.

I think growing a social network around their platform makes more sense than purchasing one. My Yahoo! already has 50 million users (by December 2006 numbers) -- or a lot more than Facebook. Since we're already using My Yahoo! to tie Yahoo!'s services together and already want it to be the hub for the Yahoo! universe and the web at large, it makes sense to build in a social network, rather than purchase one from the outside an go through the headache of figuring out how to get it integrated.

Conclusion

Certainly the Yahoo! platform won't fix Yahoo! by itself, but I think it should be a major part of their plans going forward. Turning My Yahoo! into an open platform for rich internet applications does two things: 1. it can unify Yahoo!'s services under one umbrella -- something they have long struggled to do, and 2. it adds utility for users and gives them less reason to leave Yahoo!, and the longer people stay on the page, the more likely they are to start using Yahoo! for search.

I think Yahoo! is actually in a better position to create a winning platform than Google is right now. Their start page is already established and has an enormous user base, they have a rich developer culture built around their other APIs and they can seed their platform with some of the best content on the web.

What do you think of my proposed idea to turn My Yahoo! into a platform? Do you use My Yahoo! now? Would you if it was the platform I envision? Would that be a step in the right direction for Yahoo!? Leave your thoughts below.

Sony Walkman A910 Series Players

Sony Corp. has announced a new Walkman series which will hit the Japanese shores in the first week of November. The A910 Walkman series has a large 2.4” display and plays music, video and also broadcasts TV (1Seg, Japan’s equivalent to DMB) and FM. There’s also an Electronic Programming Guide (EPG) which can help user to schedule upcoming TV shows and also record them.

As for the storage, it will come in 4, 8 or 16GB options and can play 36 hours of music, watch 6 hours of TV or record for 16 hours. Regarding the price: NW-A916 (4GB) for 30,000 Yen ($261), NW-A918 (8GB) for 35,000 Yen ($305) and NW-A919 (16GB) for 45,000 Yen ($392).

Palm unveils low cost Centro

Palm has finally announced its Centro device to be available from October 14 exclusively on Sprint network. Centro is till date Palm’s lightest and smallest smartphone. It runs on Palm OS and features a touchscreen display (320X320 pixels) along with a QWERTY keyboard making it ideal for messaging, web surfing and IMing. The phone also has a 1.3 megapixel camera, microSD expansion slot, music player, Google Maps and a bunch of Sprint apps.

Hutch is now Vodafone

Hutch is facing an identity crisis again. Initially, it was known as Orange and then transformed itself to Hutch and from tomorrow, it will be recognized as Vodafone. That’s right. And this is being done because of the deal which took place between Vodafone and Hutch Essar in May 2007. Not only the name but the Pink Hutch logo, the lovely Pug dog all will be canned. Instead there will be the “Speech mark” logo used by Vodafone globally.

Though Hutch Vodafone is planning to go on advertising frenzy to unveil its new identity, it would be interesting how consumers react to this. It wouldn’t mean much to the existing users but can easily confuse the potential ones.

LG’s lightweight E200 series notebooks

Laptops are meant for carrying around. That’s what LG Electronics is trying to convey with its new X Note E200 notebook series. The exact specifications are not known but E200 will feature a 12” screen and it weighs just 1.8kg. LG managed to shove off extra pounds by including a detachable optical disk drive. Apart from that, the notebook is based on Intel’s Napa platform which means that it is 20% faster than the existing lot. It is priced at around $1500.

Are you ready for SMS2.0?

UK based Affle and one of the leading GSM operators in India, Airtel have been pilot testing SMS 2.0 which says that it can revolutionize the text messaging experience. To be precise, it is an application for Series 60 phones which replaces the default SMS application with SMS2.0.

Sandisk Sansa View PMP

Sandisk has rolled up its sleeves and unveiled Sansa View to take on the mighty iPod Nano. Just like the new Nano, this skinny player can play videos. Measuring just 8.8mm, Sansa View comes in capacities of 8GB or 16GB and boasts a 2.4-inch display (320X240 pixels). For the videos, it has proprietary software to convert the videos to be compatible with the player and on the audio front; it can play MP3/WMA/WAV files. There’s also a FM Tuner. A single charge can give around 35 hours of audio playback or 7 hours of video. And yea, if the built-in storage capacity is less for you, there’s also a support for microSDHC cards. Pretty neat!

Apple Sells One Millionth iPhone

It took just 74 days for iPhone to reach the magical milestone of 1 million. Yup, Apple’s target of selling 1 million iPhones by September has been achieved and nonetheless we can say that the recent price drop helped it to reach faster.

If Only Users Were Gold: Skype Hits 10M Simultaneous Users Mark

Skypehas some more encouraging news following yesterday’s announcement that it has teamed up with MySpace to provide that social network’s users with free Skype calls.

Early this morning, 10 million users were connected to the Skype global network at the same time. That’s a tenfold increase over their celebration on October 20, 2004 of having 1 million simultaneous users.

However, in light of the recent bad news concerning the state of Skype, you may want to hold the applause and remember that lots of users don’t always translate into lots of money.

Weather Derivatives Provider WeatherBill Takes $12.5 Million More

San Francisco-based weather insurance site WeatherBill has taken $12.5 million in a round led by New Enterprise Associates and Index Ventures. Original investors Allen & Company, Atomico Investments (Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom), del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter and Howard Morgan also participated.

Barney Schauble, a partner at Nephila Capital and WeatherBill’s risk capacity partner, will join WeatherBill’s Board of Directors. Total funding for Weatherbill to date is now $16.5 million.

WeatherBill was founded by former Googler David Friedberg. The company offers weather insurance policies to businesses - such as ski resorts, farms, airlines, construction companies, and amusement parks - with more than $1 million in net worth that have suffered losses due to unfavorable weather in the past.

Users choose a weather station via a Google Maps mashup and choose whether you want it to pay out for each hot, cold, rainy or dry day. Temperatures are set by the user by degrees and precipitation by inches.

WeatherBill hedges their own risk via their weather algorithm and also sells their risk on the back end to a number of hedge funds, in theory delivering a guaranteed profit regardless of the weather.

CEO David Friedberg says that Weatherbill has hundreds of customers and faces such high demand that it needs to bring more people aboard to increase capacity. The site has launched not only in the US but Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, and Norway as well.

See our previous WeatherBill coverage here and here.

Ezmo: Another Online Music Application Nibbling At iTunes

We’ve come a long way since the record industry sued MP3.com in 2000. Listening to copies of your digital music online is quickly becoming commonplace and Norway’s Ezmo is another web application helping push the trend.

Ezmo, like Anywhere.FM, is a clone of iTunes on the web that just came to the United States. Their Flash based player lets you upload your music to the web, organize it into playlists, and share with your friends (just 10). Unlike Anywhere.FM, Ezmo lets you not only pull music from iTunes, but upload music from your Windows Media Player and Winamp music collections too. However, Anywhere.FM still wins out in my mind for the time being. I find it easier for me to use because its user interface stays truer to iTunes. Their buddy radio is also an easy way to consume new music on par with Last.FM. Ezmo only lets you share music with ten friends.

The two companies compete with a host of other online music locker/streaming services like Mp3tunes, Maestro, imeem, Streampad, Songbird, and MediaMasters.

However, as labels and artists free themselves from DRM, sites like these open up a way around iTunes’s stranglehold over digital music sales. DRM-free music is compatible with the extremely popular iPod, which could turn these sites into another point of sale for digital music on the device (unless they become free). Anywhere.FM has already let listeners buy songs they listen to through Amazon’s new digital downloads service. Add to that a compelling simplicity missing from older online sites (Yahoo Music, Rhapsody) and these might be the type of convenient services Ian Roger’s is looking for.

Private BuyOut Of Ancestry.com For $300+ Million

Spectrum Equity Investors has led a $300 million investment to acquire a majority interest in Provo Utah-based The Generations Network (the parent company of Ancestry.com, MyFamily.com and other sites) according to a source with knowledge of the deal.

The Generations Network competes with a number of new Internet startups that we’ve recently covered. Its Ancestry.com site competes with Geni and MyHeritage. MyFamily.com competes with Story Of My Life, Our Story and others.

Geni’s last round of financing valued the company at $100 million. But none of those competing sites, or even all of those sites aggregated, have caused any financial pain yet for The Generations Network. The company is pulling in $150 million or so in yearly revenue and is hugely profitable according to our source.

This is a liquidity event for many or most of TGN’s shareholders, although it is apparently not a complete buyout. Employees and possibly some outside shareholders still have equity in the entity, which is almost certainly preparing for an IPO or other larger liquidity event.

The most recent Comscore data says TGN had 8.2 million unique worldwide visitors in August. They’ve raised $95 million to date, although the last round of financing was closed in 2001.

The company is not responding to requests for comment.

Playyoo Offers Peek Of Its YouTube For Mobile Games

London, England based Playyoo will today announce the launch of its Playyoo Game Contest and give a sneak preview of its community-based platform for mobile casual games at the Adobe MAX event in Chicago.

The Playyoo Game Contest is open to independent mobile game developers using Adobe Flash Lite; prizes include cash and promotional goods. Winners will be selected by Playyoo members based on download popularity and user ratings as at February 28, 2008.

Officially launching in December, Playyoo will offer a sort of YouTube for a mobile gaming that offers free games for mobile phones, user-generated content, social interaction and personal expression. Features will include:

• A “Easy discovery and download process” that will allow mobile phone users to find games of interest through the Playyoo platform. The site will provide personalized recommendations based on each user’s preferences and those of friends.
  
• Game creation tools that will allow users with no experience to design their own games
  
• Social networking features that will allow developers and users who interact with others

Playyoo promises an interesting offering that in part seems to be a logical, interactive step forward from the tried and million times cloned YouTube model. Playyoo will compete directly against Greystripe, another company offering free mobile games, but with licensed product as opposed to UGC (see our previous coverage here). I suspect there will be room in the market for both models, the interesting part to watch will be seeing which model becomes the more popular over time.

Plug To Be Finally Pulled On Findory

Personalized newspaper service Findory is finally closing, after remaining on life support since January when development ceased.

Founder Greg Linden has now posted that the site will now be shut November 1.

Linden took the opportunity to preach the gospel of personalized news, despite Findory’s failure:

Some day, online newspapers will focus on your interests, building you your own unique, customized front page of news. Some day, search engines will learn from what you do to help you find what you need. Some day, your computer will adapt to your needs to help with the task at hand. Some day, information overload will be tamed.

Strangely, despite a fairly smart looking platform, there has been no apparent effort at selling the site and/ or backend; I would have thought an eBay exit would have suited the site well. Findory will now properly join the TechCrunch Deadpool.

More Adobe AIR Apps

Lots of new Adobe AIR applications are launching today at the Adobe Max conference in Chicago. In addition to those in the previous post, they include:

—A new Adobe Media Player that lets you watch shows in Flash either online or off and manage your shows in an iTunes-like application. Videos from CBS, PBS, Yahoo Video, Blip.tv, Revision3, and others are available.

—A dedicated eBay Desktop for power eBay users.

—A desktop version of AOL’s Top 100 Videos.

—A video puzzle from Nickelodeon.

—Apps for Salesforce.com.

—A stock-market visualization app called Market Replay from Nasdaq.

To try most of these apps, you will have to install the latest version of Adobe AIR.

Developers who want to create AIR apps can get the second version of the beta, released today, here.

Yahoo Search Just Got Smarter

Yahoo is adding some major features to its search engine today. For instance, images from Flickr and playable videos are now embedded in the main results page. A search for a major rock band like U2 brings up information from the artist’s Website, along with a list of songs that can be played as 30-second audio streams (courtesy of Yahoo Music).

Do a search for a restaurant or hotel, and results from Yahoo Local come out on top, with links to maps, ratings, and reviews. Type in “bourne ultimatum,” and the top result is a widget from Yahoo Movies with a trailer you can click on, audience reviews, and show times nearest you. Search for “Vancouver,” and the top result is a widget from Yahoo Travel, with links to a guide, hotels, restaurants, flights, and maps. Type in “digital camera,” and you get shortcut results from Yahoo Shopping.

Customized results also come up for searches dealing with health, sports, and events—all without you having to specify what type of search you are trying to do. Instead, Yahoo attempts to figure out your intent based on the search terms and the topics associated with them (Google espouses a similar Universal Search approach, as does Microsoft).

But the most important feature is an Ajax assistant pane that drops down when it detects you hesitating while typing in a search term. It gives you suggestions to complete the keywords, as well as related concepts that you might want to try. So if you type in “energy savings,” it suggests click-able links to related terms such as “energy star,” energy efficiency,” and “thermostats.” And this one is close to home for me. Type in “office sublets” and it suggests “small office sublets in new york city,” since Yahoo knows my zip code.

Yahoo has really nailed guided search with this release—as long as what you are looking for can be found somewhere else within Yahoo. That’s my one pet peeve about Yahoo’s new search upgrade. All of these shortcuts are helpful, but they are not all objective. Most of them (the search widgets, not the keyword assistant) point back to Yahoo.

New Technorati CEO Has A Challenge Ahead

Technorati today announced its search for a new CEO was over, with Richard Jalichandra being appointed to the role, some 6 weeks since Technorati’s founding CEO David Sifry stepped down and 5 months since it was publicly confirmed that Technorati was seeking a new CEO.

Prior to joining Technorati, Jalichandra held roles at Exponential Interactive, Fox Interactive Media and IGN Entertainment. Most recently Jalichandra was Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Battery Ventures, an advisory board member at MyYearbook.com and Pixsy, and as an M&A and strategy consultant for several other startups.

The once great Technorati has floundered in recent years as attempts to broaden its product offering resulted in its core blog search product suffering for lack of development and support, all at the same time that Google Blog Search came to the fore. More recently, Technorati started downsizing staff as the approx. $20 million raised over three rounds started to dry up.

As I’ve noted previously, I’ve always had a soft spot for Technorati. When I started blogging in 2002, the only way of tracking the blogosphere was Technorati and perhaps to a lesser extent Daypop, which was never as good. Jalichandra’s challenge will be to focus Technorati on achievable goals, whilst purging the company of the excesses of the past. Technorati’s failed Digg clone WTF (the most unfortunate acronym I’ve ever seen) should be the first to go. Core competencies in blog search, in particular with focus on filtering results from spam blogs must be a priority. Given the new competition from Techmeme on the popular blog list side, a more frequently updating service from Technorati should be on the to-do list, with perhaps more contextual lists; say popular blogs by vertical and filtered results based on link age, for example link popularity over 1, 3, 6, and 12 months, then maybe an all-time popular list would be nice.

If you’ve got any advice for Jalichandra on how Technorati can rise from the endangered list, let him know in the comments

Google To $2000/Share? Somebody Muzzle Blodget

Henry Blodget made his name by predicting outlandish price increases for Internet stocks in the late nineties. A lot of people lost a lot of money (or, all their money) by listening to his recommendations. The government charged him with securities fraud in 2003 and he was subsequently banned from the securities industry for life.

But Blodget is a bit of a one trick pony, and he likes to stay in the headlines. So he continues build cases for big valuations of Internet companies. The only difference is he publishes these thoughts on his blogs. And people still listen to what he has to say.

He isn’t always bullish (he’s recently trashed Yahoo and eBay). But he can’t seem to contain his regular predictive outbursts that such-and-such stock is worth massively more than it is now.

When he’s talking about Facebook being worth $6-$20 billion that’s ok, because it isn’t a public stock and no one is going to go out and throw away their life savings. But when he builds a case for Google’s stock to go to $2,000/share, he’s crossing a line.

Remember a couple years back when some analyst floated the idea that Google could eventually be worth $2,000 a share–and was ridiculed from coast to coast? Well, first it’s worth noting that Google is now almost a third of the way there. Second, it’s worth noting that $2,000 a share would mean a market cap of about $750 billion, which–given a reasonable time horizon–just isn’t that far-fetched.

The problem is that Blodget, like all analysts, build authoritative sounding but essentially bullshit predictive models to back up whatever prediction they’ve just pulled out of their ass. When Blodget predicted a massive Amazon price increase in 1998, for example, he used three models: price to revenue multiples, revenue growth assumption, and an earnings multiple growth model. When you read it, it sounds like he really knows what he’s talking about. But he’s really just predicting future growth based on past growth and backing it up with a lot of smoke and mirrors. If the data doesn’t fit or doesn’t exist, a common trick is to use a competitor’s or analogous company’s data instead. One way or another, a model can be built around that headline grabbing prediction.

Blodget builds his Google $2,000 prediction on similar models - in this case he talks about a multiple on free cash flow.

But market conditions change and these models just aren’t capable of taking that into consideration. Anything could derail Google’s current growth rates - a credit crunch, a housing collapse or a recession could all have a big impact on consumer spending and the advertising market, and impact Google massively. The market, over the long run, is fairly efficient at predicting the value of companies. If Google really was going to go to $2,000 per share, it would be priced there already, minus only a discount based on the time value of money. It isn’t, and so if you’re betting that Google is going to $2,000 that means you are betting against the market and all its participants. And all you have to go on are Blodget’s bullshit predictive models.

We are often criticized for being overly optimistic about young startups. That’s worth arguing over, but if we get it wrong at least we’re not moving the market. Venture capitalists do their own due diligence and don’t last long if they place too many incorrect bets. But when journalists start writing about public companies, stock prices can (and do) move, and people can lose a lot of money.

Blodget wants to stay in the headlines, but he has little concern for those that follow his advice. “If it doesn’t happen, don’t come whining to us,” he says in the Google post. That’s a disclaimer of sorts, but it also shows that he’s not all that interested in the fallout that may occur from his words. And if his past predictions are any indicator of Blodget’s ability to pick stocks, a fallout is almost certainly coming.

Update: Well, I sure was wrong. Blodget nails it in a new post valuing TechCrunch at a cool $100 million. My thoughts at Crunchnotes.