May 2013
3 posts
4 tags
Yahoo! buys tumblr.. All cash, tumblr stays separate, people keep their jobs.
Most importantly, less pressure to turn tumblr into a cash machine in the near future.
Sounds like a decent deal to me.
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This Week in Viral Web Apps: Social Roulette - where you have a 1 in 6 chance of deleting your Facebook.
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“The future is extremely hard to see through the lens of the present. It’s...”
– - What a stupid idea. by Dustin Curtis
In which Curtis previews and dismisses both Pinterest and Vine many months prior to their debut and subsequent hyper-popularity.
April 2013
25 posts
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WatchGhost is on a mission to simplify blogging. It is funding now on Kickstarter.
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“I think there are a lot of people that think we don’t know how to generate...”
– Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley at TechCrunch Disrupt NY
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Google has finally announced the complete sunsetting of the Meebo bar. Google acquired Meebo for $100MM+ just under 1 year ago and switched off many of Meebo’s products.
This is one product shutdown that many users will likely welcome.
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Instapaper joins Betaworks.
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New Gawker looks very Medium. New Gawker also supports the theory of annotations as the new comments.
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ValleyWag is back [with riveting coverage of socks].
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REVEALED! The Insecurities of a Business Insider...
Business Insider, in the tradition of the Huffington Post, have developed a reputation for sensationalist click-bait headlines. The publication has also mastered the the art of the slideshow, turning countless listicles into 10,000+ pageview generating slideshows. This is all understandable, and even forgivable, when your livelihood (read: revenue stream) depends on your ability to generate...
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Quote of the Week:
@devindra I can’t wait to see how the tech blogs cover the budget battle, immigration reform, and the war in afghanistan
— Dylan Tweney (@dylan20) April 19, 2013
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Remember when TheFancy was easier? When “unfancy”-ing items took just 1 click instead of 3? When browsing categories took 1 click, and not navigation through obnoxious floating dropdown menus?
Those were good days. Simple days. Days for product discovery. Days less focused on SHOPPING PLEASE BUY THIS BECAUSE IT’S COOL, and BECAUSE PLEASE.
Sometimes business models win. And...
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Blogging startup Medium has announced the acquisition of the long-form science and technology publication Matter.
No immediate changes will be made to Matter’s operations, but it seems like the Matter team will assist in guiding some editorial for Medium - and if we read between the lines a little, it sounds like Medium’s tech may power a new version of Matter.
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QuoteRed. It’s like Pinterest for snippets of text.
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Twitter has forced micro-payment startup Flattr to remove support for flattr-ing creators via the “favorite” button on Twitter, based on a violation of Twitter’s API usage terms. Flattr, of course, takes issue with Twitter’s reasoning.
Obviously undeterred, Flattr has added the ability to support and donate to YouTube creators with a simple click of “like”...
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Men’s outfitter 20Jeans has raised a cool $1MM. Where Everlane and Bonobos continue to successfully create brands around generic but stylish “legacy” clothing (higher consumer cost, meant to least), 20Jeans is addressing the mid to low cost men’s market, providing basics (jeans, tees, etc) for just 20(ish) bones (think a web-only H&M/Forever21).
Two...
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A recent Piper Jaffrey report confirms the obvious: Teens are getting bored with Facebook.
I’ll draw an even bigger conclusion without fancy data: The only people not bored with Facebook are MOMS and grandparents.
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Motif announced $25MM in new funding. The startup offers pre-assembled and diversified portfolios of securities based upon specific themes.
Some investment $$$ + $9.95 buys your position in death, housing recovery, or Obama supporters themed portfolios.
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The Winklevoss twin capitalists have apparently bought big into Bitcoin.
Tomorrow’s Headline:
Anonymous Orchestrates Bitcoin Price Crash, Vow to Hold Value Hostage Until Winklevii Divest
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Jetsetter Acquired by TripAdvisor →
TripAdvisor, a user generated travel review company, has confirmed their purchase of the private travel booking service Jetsetter. The value of the acquisition has not been announced.
Jetsetter spun out of Gilt Groupe as a complentary service, offering Gilt’s luxury-loving customers access to bookings at leading upscale hotels and resorts worldwide. Gilt’s recent...
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Wayfair Learns how to Internet →
Wayfair, formerly CSN Stores, ditched their niche home decor store network in favor of turning a non-descript brand name into a full-service home decor ecommerce destination.
The company flipped the switch today on a new and obvious pinterest-like feature that allows customers to clip and share product photos, and view other customer’s clippings for [p]inspiration. TechCrunch noted:
...
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“The brand we’re attempting to build here is to be the premier capital provider...”
– -via NYT DealBook
Gerchen Keller Capital, a Chicago-based startup investment firm, plans to invest in lawsuits. Feels a bit yucky, but deeply interesting.
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A Guide to Harvard's Tech Startup Scene →
In the case that the existence of such has plagued your cerebral cortex.
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March 2013
11 posts
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Target Acquires Cooking.com →
The big box discounter is getting competitive in ecommerce. The acquisition of Cooking.com is likely the first of many to come.
It’s been two years since Amazon acquired the Quidsi brands (Diapers.com, Wag.com, Soap.com, etc.) and just about as much time since WalMart completely reworked their online strategy.
This, in 2013, means things are still very much up for grabs and about to get...
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Crowdfunded College →
If the benefactor/patron/family-backed loan model (MyRichUncle, BuzzFund) didn’t work for college funding, maybe a incentivized crowdfunding program will?
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Don’t act surprised when Groupon, in a desperate last effort to re-focus as a local/small business commerce focused company, buys Zaarly before the deals giant finds their inevitable destiny was Wootification.
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Ecommerce (and founder) Fragmentation
I will admit to being only slightly obsessed with fintech, ecommerce, and payment startups. I find them deeply interesting. That’s why I’ve likely spent more time posting and analyzing them here than any other technology sub-industry.
It seems like a new ecommerce or payment startup is launching every week, or established tech companies feel the need to finally launch a payment...
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This Week in Payment Tech
It’s been the week for payment tech news, with the past two days supplying most of the news. Here’s a recap.
Balanced, the payment platform for marketplaces, added support for bank payments increasing the possible ways their clients (who include peer-to-peer marketplaces Zaarly, TheFancy, and CrowdTilt) can accept payments.
Plastiq raised a $6M Series A. The company provides simpler...
February 2013
10 posts
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Google+ + TheFancy →
Because fCommerce didn’t work, but maybe g+commerce will.
This, months after the Facebook launched “Gifts”.
Transactional desperation?
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On Failure as a Founder →
“If I can leave with one piece of advice to young founders. Please think really hard about taking other peoples money. If I had failed using my own money, I could live with it. But having a team of investors believe in you, only to let them down is an incredibly difficult thing to deal with. Try and finance your product yourself for as long as you can.”
Real talk.
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SquareSpace + Stripe →
THIS IS NEWS. Why?
1) It’s simple. Simple website creation and management with SquareSpace. Simple story setup (and migration tools for people that might find Shopify a bit too cumbersome/big for their needs). Simple credit card processing with Stripe, with none of the extra bank stuff and expensive monthly fees added.
2) It’s simple. Small businesses should use their time doing what...
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The Life and Death of [a] Hipster
AOL announced today that Hipster will be heading into the deadpool on February 16th. Here’s a fond look back.
Tuesday, 11 January, 2011
Fresh out of TechStars, Hipster stealthily debuts to Hacker News. Typical Hacker News discussion ensues.
Hipster Virus.
Hipster pioneers and popularizes the viral beta-signup landing page, amassing tens of thousands of prospective members in the process....
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“Forums are the dark matter of the web, the B-movies of the Internet. But they...”
– -Jeff Atwood, announcing the launch of Discourse. An open source forum platform.
I’ll be interested to see if “webmasters” are still interested in hosting forums, or if there will be any future overlap with Branch/Quora. That’s all silly talk, though. The discourse has just...
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Paying With Phones: Nobody Cares because Nobody... →
…”but smart phones are going to replace wallets! Like, soon!”, said every futurist, ever.
New data from ComScore suggests otherwise.
[credit: ComScore via CNET]
Takeaways
1) If digital wallets were enjoying any real measure of success, we would be reading more news about their success. Companies like to brag, but not about how little traction their products have.
2)...
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Signs of Contraction?
3 announcements of dramatic downsizing in the past 24 hours does not make an industry-wide trend, but the recent announcements from Ecomom, 20x200, and Indaba Music do not seem to be isolated incidents. Wine retailer Lot18 announced a large round of layoffs and a business model restructuring in early January. Layoffs at the social network Lockerz were announced just days later.
Funding...
January 2013
19 posts
7 tags
