SV Angel, the angel fund founded by super-angel Ron Conway, is losing one of its general partners to a portfolio company. Brian Pokorny is now the CEO of fast-growing Silicon Valley-based Dailybooth.

Dailybooth, the runner up in the “best social app” and winner of the “time sink” categories at this year’s Crunchies Awards, is “your life in pictures.” Some 6 million monthly visitors share pictures and status updates with eachother. “It’s a community for self expression,” says Pokorny.

A typical interaction: a users posts a photo, taken with their webcam, showing what they’re eating, what they’re feeling, or perhaps with friends in the background. Other user then respond via text or photos. Some strings go on for hundreds of responses. Here’s an example.

The company, originally incubated by Y Combinator, has raised just under $1 million from notable investosr such as Sequoia Capital, SV Angel, Betaworks, Kevin Rose, Caterina Fake, Chris Sacca, Joshua Schachter, Gary Vaynerchuk and Aydin Senkut.

Founders Jon Wheatley and Ryan Amos will remain in their current roles at Dailybooth.

Pokorny has worked with Conway on his various investments since 2006, and has racked up quite an angel portfolio of his own. He owns stakes in Twitter, Square, Milo, Blippy, Bump, Tweetdeck, OMGPOP and others.

He’s staying close to SV Angel, too. In addition to his new role as CEO of Dailybooth, Pokorny will remain as a Strategic Partner with SV Angel where he will continue to provide key insights into sourcing and evaluating investment opportunities in social media and other sectors.

“I’m excited to have Brian join one of our hottest portfolio startups and lead it to the next level,” said Ron Conway via email. “He will remain part of the core team at SV Angel as a strategic partner, and I look forward to working with him in this new role.”

SV Angel has also been in the new recently – they are reportedly closing a new $10 million fund, the first time the fund will take outside investors to participate in their startup investments.

Retweet.com, which put itself up for sale last month, has sold for $250,000 in an online auction on Flippa. The auction saw a fair amount of interest with 45 bids in total, but it appears that the winning party came in with a “buy it now” offer for $48,000 more than the current bid to take ownership of the Tweetmeme competitor.

Like Tweetmeme, the site aggregates the most popular links on Twitter, and also provides third-party websites with buttons that lets their visitors easily retweet articles. Although the service isn’t as popular as Tweetmeme, it has been able to accumulate respectable traffic, and it’s ideal name give it significant branding power. According to the company’s listing on Flippa, there is not yet any revenue.

At this point, we don’t know who the buyer is, though we heard rumblings last month that a major social news site was interested. We’re looking for more information and have contacted the team behind Retweet.com for details. We’ll update if we learn more.

[thanks Matt Binder for the tip]

Tags: retweet, tweetmeme, twitter

Every day, thousands of businesses choose the cloud. More than 2 million businesses have adopted Google Apps over the last three years, eliminating the hassles associated with purchasing, installing and maintaining hardware and software themselves.

We've found that when businesses begin to experience the benefits of cloud computing, they want more. We're often asked when we'll offer a wider variety of business applications — from accounting and project management to travel planning and human resources management. But we certainly can't and won't do it all, and there are hundreds of business applications for which we have no particular expertise.

In recent years, many talented software providers have embraced the cloud and delivered a diverse set of features capable of powering almost any business. But too often, customers who adopt applications from multiple vendors end up with a fractured experience, where each particular application exists in its own silo. Users are often forced to create and remember multiple passwords, cut and paste data between applications, and jump between multiple interfaces just to complete a simple task.

Today, we're making it easier for these users and software providers to do business in the cloud with a new online store for integrated business applications. The Google Apps Marketplace allows Google Apps customers to easily discover, deploy and manage cloud applications that integrate with Google Apps. More than 50 companies are now selling applications across a range of businesses, including:

Neuer zweiter Mann in Afghanistan: Martin Kobler wird neuer stellvertretender Sondergesandter der Vereinten Nationen in Kabul. Der Diplomat hatte zuvor als Büroleiter unter Außenminister Joschka Fischer gearbeitet, derzeit ist er Leiter der Kulturabteilung des Auswärtigen Amtes.

Provokation mit Mode und Musik: Junge Kreative in Lissabon zeigen, dass die Millionenstadt viel mehr zu bieten hat als Jugendstil und historische Gemäuer. Besucher können den Wandel miterleben - bei Kuduro-Partys, im MUDE-Designmuseum oder auf der jetzt startenden Lisboa Fashion Week.

Facebook’s move into location has seemed inevitable for some time, and it now appears that the company will officially reveal its plans at next month’s Facebook developer conference – f8.

According to The New York Times, the social network will incorporate location in two ways: (1) its own features for sharing location and (2) APIs to let other apps – like Foursquare and Gowalla – offer location services to Facebook users.

Presumably, Facebook will make sure to address privacy issues with its location features — for example, perhaps with settings that allow you to share your location only with a select group of friends. The Times’ report doesn’t detail the specifics of such features, though it notes that the social network updated its privacy policy late last year in preparation for a location launch.

Facebook will be rolling out its location features to an enormous user base — there are now more than 400 million users of the social network in total, 100 million of which access the site via mobile regularly. The company also has its own native apps for all of the major mobile platforms. All of this gives Facebook’s location features an enormous edge over the competition.

The Times’ report suggests that the competition isn’t the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla, however, but rather Google and its huge base of local small business advertisers. Of course, the startups aren’t ignoring this opportunity either — earlier today, Foursquare shared details of upcoming features it plans to release to help local businesses utilize checkin data.

With Facebook entering the space though, the other players will need to look to create value in ways beyond check-ins and knowing where your friends are located at any given point in time. That’s why Foursquare seems to be so focused on partnerships and gaming, while Gowalla is making moves (as recently as last night) in virtual goods.

In any event, location remains the huge trend so far in 2010, and literally each day seems to bring new indications of which way it will all play out.

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Reviews: Facebook, Foursquare, Google, Gowalla

Tags: facebook, foursquare, social networking, trending

The social networking site plans to roll out features next month that will give its 400 million users the option of sharing their location with friends as part of their news feeds.

Twitter has just announced that it is launching a new anti-phishing feature that allows Twitter’s Trust and Safety team to monitor all links submitted through the service for potentially malicious attacks. Part of the new feature will involve the use of Twitter’s link shortener twt.tl, which may now start popping up in some of your emails and direct messages.

At this point, it’s not really clear which links are being converted to Twitter’s twt.tl shortened links. We just ran a test at the TC office with two different links: one for an article on GigaOm, and another for a bit.ly link that pointed to a page on Google Buzz. The links I received on my Twitter client were both unchanged, but both were converted to twt.tl links in our Email notifications (obviously neither of them had malicious content).

From the Twitter blog:

Today, we’re launching a new service to protect users that strikes a major blow against phishing and other deceitful attacks. By routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service, we can detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links across all of Twitter. Even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody clicks on it, we’ll be able keep that user safe.

Since these attacks occur primarily on Direct Messages and email notifications about Direct Messages, this is where we have focused our initial efforts. For the most part, you will not notice this feature because it works behind the scenes but you may notice links shortened to twt.tl in Direct Messages and email notifications.

Image via ToastyKen

Jubel trotz Niederlage: In Florenz verlor der FC Bayern knapp - und zog trotzdem in die Runde der besten acht Champions-League-Vereine ein. In einer turbulenten zweiten Halbzeit sorgten Arjen Robben und der Rückenwind für den entscheidenden Treffer der Münchner.

The first rule of the iPhone developer program is: You do not talk about the iPhone developer program.

Before you create software for the iPhone, Apple demands that you sign away a laundry list of rights, including the ability to sell rejected apps through other channels, the ability to sue Apple for more than $50, and the ability to reverse-engineer or modify the iPhone or its SDK — and even the right to talk about your agreement with Apple.

The iPhone Developer Program License Agreement (.pdf) spells out all these requirements and more. Previously secret, the agreement has been acquired and published with the help of the Freedom of Information Act.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reported Monday evening that it gained access to a March 2009 version of the agreement. EFF noticed that NASA had developed an iPhone app, so the cyber-rights foundation then used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the agreement from NASA. The space agency judged that the FOIA trumps the Apple agreement, so they turned the Apple document over to EFF.

The contents of the agreement are hardly surprising, The EFF’s Fred von Lohmann summed up the highlights:

• A ban on public statements, forbidding developers to speak about the agreement.
• Apps made with the iPhone software development kit can only be distributed through the App Store, meaning rejected apps can’t be served through the underground app store Cydia, for instance.
• Apple indemnifies itself against developer liability surpassing $50, meaning if developers get sued, Apple will be liable for no more than $50 in damages.
• No reverse engineering, or enabling others to reverse-engineer, the iPhone SDK.
• No messing with Apple products. That means no apps that enable modifying or hacking Apple products are allowed.
• Apple can “revoke digital certification of any of Your Applications at any time.” No surprise there: Your app can be pulled even if it’s already been approved, which we’ve already seen happen a number of times.

“If Apple’s mobile devices are the future of computing, you can expect that future to be one with more limits on innovation and competition … than the PC era that came before,” von Lohmann wrote. “It’s frustrating to see Apple, the original pioneer in generative computing, putting shackles on the market it (for now) leads.”

Though the agreement may appear one-sided, Apple’s nondisclosure agreement for developers was more strict when the App Store first opened. Apple imposed a nondisclosure agreement in 2008 forbidding developers to discuss developing for iPhone OS 2.0. Developers were turned off by the NDA, because it stifled them from discussing programming tips with one another. Apple later dropped this part of the nondisclosure agreement, saying its purpose was to protect its intellectual property.

iPhone Developer Program License Agreement (.pdf)

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

When I wrote that location would be this year’s Twitter at SXSW, I also meant that Twitter’s geolocation would be this year’s Twitter at SXSW. The service has just turned on geolocation on its website today for the first time.

While Twitter’s geolocation feature has been live through its API since last November, there was no sign of integration into the main twitter.com site until now. As you can see in the screenshot above, for tweets tagged with location, right next to the source of the tweet there is a location placemarker. When you hover over it, it turns blue, and clicking on it brings up a little Google map showing the location that tweet was sent from.

You can see these maps as overlays both on individual tweet pages, and on tweets in your main stream. In some cases, depending on how Twitter geolocation API is being used, it looks like place names are even passed through to Twitter. For example, here’s a tweet sent from Foursquare that also says where the tweet is being sent from.

The timing of this move by Twitter is significant. Earlier today, the New York Times reported that Facebook would unveil its answer to location next month at its f8 conference. Twitter’s first-ever Chirp conference takes place just one week before f8. Google, meanwhile, is in the game with Latitude and to some extent Buzz (but could have been in it a lot more). And of course, every app and their mother appears to be launching with some sort of location functionality at the SXSW in Austin, Texas, which begins on Friday. Many of those apps use Twitter’s geolocation API to pass the data back to Twitter, so it makes sense that this would be a good time to turn the functionality on for the website.

Update: It looks like Twitter has just turned off the location functionality after having it on for a bit. Look for it to come back shortly — certainly some time before SXSW.

[thanks Chad]

Spam and phishing have been ongoing problems at Twitter for some time, and tonight the company announced that it is stepping up its efforts to stop them with some new features, described as being able to “detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links.”

In a blog post, Twitter writes that the protection works by “routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service … even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody clicks on it, we’ll be able keep that user safe.”

How exactly they do that, we’re not sure, but Twitter notes that you’ll start seeing short links using its own “twt.tl” URL shortener in direct messages and email notifications. As users who have been victimized by phishing scams (and those annoyed by the constant barrage of dodgy DMs) can likely attest, it’s a feature whose time has most certainly come.

Tags: phishing, security, twitter

The millionaires are back.

The number of U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more, not including primary residence, jumped 16% to 7.8 million in 2009 from 6.7 million the year before, according to a report released today by Spectrem Group.

That follows the 27% decline in the millionaire population in 2008.

The number of Ultra High Net Worth households, or those with a net worth of $5 million or more (not including primary home), rose 17% to 980,000 in 2009.

The millionaire population is still far short of the 9.2 million counted by the Chicago wealth-research firm at the peak in 2007. But the trend shows that the recovery is well underway–at least for the wealthy.

“The nation’s millionaires–together with its Ultra High Net Worth households–are bouncing back from the recession,” said George H. Walper Jr., president of Spectrem Group.

In addition to the millionaire groups, the broader affluent population, those with a net worth of $500,000 or more, climbed 12% in 2009 to 12.7 million.

The data, of course, should be taken with a grain of salt, since all millionaire-population estimates are just that, estimates, and they all vary. Spectrem’s study is based on a statistical model that tracks the portfolios of wealthy investors and factors in the changes in value for the broad asset classes they hold. The changes in value are calculated on a weighted basis, reflecting their importance in the portfolio.

But assuming the trend is correct (and I think it is), the question is why the wealthy are recovering so quickly while the rest of the country is mired in joblessness. My hunch: most of the wealth of the wealthy is financial investments, which have rebounded significantly in the past year. Most of the wealth of the middle-class is real estate (primarily in the home), which hasn’t recovered nearly as much.

In other words, capital has recovered. Labor hasn’t.

What is more, as I’ve written before, unemployment seems to have hit the lower rungs of the wealth ladder much harder than the top.

Why do you think millionaires have recovered so quickly?

Despite CEO drama, plummeting traffic and even declining mobile website usage, MySpace Mobile for Android is the most popular social app in the Android Market and the third most popular downloaded application overall.

While Facebook might dominate social networking apps on the iPhone, Facebook for Android leaves much to be desired. It’s not as bad as it was six months ago, but it still pales in comparison to the offerings for BlackBerry — let alone the iPhone.

MySpace Mobile for Android on the other hand, integrates itself extremely well within the Google ecosystem and the Android platform. You can even update your status via voice, using a widget available in the MySpace app.

AndroidStats, a site that tracks the rankings in the Android Market, shows that MySpace Mobile for Android has consistently been a big winner for the platform. We think the great integration with the platform has something to do with that.

Let’s throw the question to Android users: What app do you prefer, Facebook or MySpace on your Android phone? Does strong mobile integration make a social network more appealing? Let us know!

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Reviews: Android, Android Market, Facebook, Google, MySpace, iPhone

Tags: android, myspace

Back in October we wrote about Appboy, a social network for mobile app developers and users. Since launching, Appboy has continued to evolve into a community for both developers and users to find and rate apps, as well as submit ideas for new mobile applications. Appboy has just rolled out a big update to its site which improves the design, adds stronger integration with Facebook and Twitter, and makes it easy to keep up with what your favorite app developers are doing. The site has also launched a new companion iPhone application and started a new partnership with Best Buy Mobile.

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New Look and Feel

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The Appboy Profile pages have been given a total facelift. Now, in addition to displaying your user activity and favorite apps, users can link their Twitter accounts with Appboy and auto-publish any #appboy tweets directly to their Appboy page.

For users, this feature might not get a ton of play, but for app developers it becomes a pretty handy way of keeping your Appboy profile up-to-date with little fuss.

Users can also now login with either Twitter or Facebook Connect. We really like that Appboy has embraced other social networks instead of trying to force users to keep everything in the Appboy garden.

You can also now follow other users, which is especially helpful when you want to keep up with what’s happening with your favorite app or app idea.

The App Pages have also received a new coat of paint, with an easy way to vote “Love It” or “Hate It” on an app’s page. Comments and reviews can now be viewed separately, which is nice when you just want to distill one group or the other. Plus, users can now add related links, videos and reviews to an app page which can help provide better context.

User reviews are also now ratable — Digg style — which allows the most helpful reviews to appear higher on the list.

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iPhone App

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In addition to a new website design, Appboy now has its own iPhone app. The free app gives users all the functionality of the website right on the iPhone. That’s really nice, especially when you are looking for a new app or want to leave a review for something you just purchased. Sure, the App Store works for that too, but what is nice about Appboy is that it is a community.

Check out these screenshots to see the app in action. As you can see, the interface matches the website and it’s very easy to get around and rate or learn about apps and app ideas.

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Best Buy Mobile Partnership

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One of the most unique features of Appboy is that it isn’t focused on just one platform; it’s focused on mobile apps in general. So whether you have an Android device, an iPhone, a BlackBerry or a Palm Pre, you can find, rate and suggest ideas for new apps.

Best Buy just launched a new mobile site, Best Buy Mobile, and Appboy powers the Apps section for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. The top 10 apps from each platform are fed into Best Buy’s site and those apps come directly from the Appboy community.

This is a pretty big step, considering the relative age of the site, and we think it’s because Appboy has shown itself as being committed to the mobile community as a whole.

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Looking Good

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Appboy continues to be a great resource for developers and users wanting to connect and share what’s cool and what sucks in the mobile app space. The new iPhone app is a really nice addition to the site and we hope that the Best Buy partnership will bring even more users into the community.

How do you find out about new mobile applications? Let us know!

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Reviews: Android, Digg, Twitter

Tags: android, appboy, apple, apps, iphone, iphone apps, mobile apps

Twitter has just announced that to protect people from scams, links in direct messages and sent via email will be shortened using its own URL shortener. It’s a welcome move. Still, I was curious about any impacts this might have for good marketers who are not trying to scam people. Good news, on [...]

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Tonight, Google is hosting one of their Campfire One events at their headquarters in Mountain View, CA. They’re using the event to launch their new Google Apps Marketplace. This is the app store that business applications can use to reach the more than 25 million people and 2 million business that use Google Apps for their domains.

Here are the links to our extended coverage on the Google Apps Marketplace:

• Google Apps Marketplace: Instantly Connect Your App To 25 Million Users, Profit.
• Socialwok Takes A Stroll In The Google Apps Marketplace
• Web-Based Productivity Suite Zoho Finds A Place In The Google Apps Marketplace

Below, find our live notes from the event.

Vic Gundotra, Vice President of Engineering

• Two million businesses have “gone Google”
• 25 million users.
• Everything you need is now in the cloud for businesses
• Tonight we’re launching the new Google Apps Marketplace
• It’s great for developers – who get access to these 25 million users instantly
• It’s also great for users.
• It’s simple to integrate.
• Build your app. And you don’t have to use App Engine. You can use whatever you want.
• And you can sell your app in the Marketplace.
• What does Google ask in return? A one-time fee of $100. And a low 20% rev share.
• Over 50 launch partners.

David Glazer, Engineering Director

• I want to walk you through the “how” now – build, integrate, and sell.
• Google Apps now has a large and growing number of extension points (we’ll be adding more over time)
• there is a central management system
• Universal integration to Google Apps navigation system.
• We use OpenID to manage authentication. Single sign-on.
• And we use OAuth for secure access to data. The OAuth grant of trust is built into the Marketplace.

• We have a complete manifest.
• Time for a demo. Here’s a developer showing off a “hello world” application.
• Easy step-by-step process to get your application in the Marketplace.

• It might take a couple of days for the app to show up in the Marketplace when you submit it.
• A domain admin simply then clicks the “Add it now” button.
• Then just three clicks left – 1) agree to terms of service 2) grant data access (such as to your calendar) 3) enable the app
• You can even see it in the apps drop down if you’re in, say, Gmail.

• Here’s Intuit now showing how to take a real app – for payroll – to show how easy it is to itegrate.
• Intuit is the largest payroll provider in the nation.
• We usually serve small companies, many are less than 20 employees.
• Another demo, this time from Atlassian – a software development company
• You can easily embed your information inside of Gmail.

• The thing I’m most excited about is the studio activity bar.
• With this, Google Talk can be used for instant collaboration.
• All of this is available today. In fact it’s being used by 40 developers in a bus traveling from SF to SXSW in Austin, TX.

• Another demo, Manymoon – a social productivity app.
• We used open standards to convert free users to paid users.
• Everything you’ve seen so far will be live later tonight – for this next demo, it will be coming soon.
• Gmail contextual gadgets – like when a YouTube video is embedded in Gmails – soon third-parties will be able to use this.

• Here’s a demo from Appirio – a cloud solution provider.
• Glazer is now reiterating the main points about the Marketplace.

David Garrard from Google

• When I joined not only was there no Google Apps, there were no apps. Gmail launched soon after I joined.
• I joined to lead our enterprise initiative. It was the idea to take the innovation that happens quickly on the consumer side and putting it into the enterprise apps.
• Cloud computing is the right formula for that
• Three years ago we started with a modest effort. In Feb 2007 we immediately signed up 9,000 business — now we have 25 million active users and 2 million business.
• And the growth rate is accelerating.
• Higher education has really started moving towards the cloud with us.

• And it’s happening in the Fortune 500 companies. And no companies that size have gone back.
• Though it’s still not perfect, even today.
• People always ask, ‘when are going to build x or y’ the answer is we probably won’t – we want to be a platform in the cloud.
• Because of that we can put emphasis on our existing apps.
• We’ll be talking more at Google I/O (which is already sold out).

And that’s a wrap.

Later this week, thousands of ironic t-shirts will be arriving in Austin for the 16th annual South By Southwest Interactive festival.

At about this time, it’s traditional for tech publications to publish handy guides to “surviving SXSWi” – packed with useful advice that’s basically interchangeable with that for any other festival since the beginning of time.

“Drink plenty of water!” “Prepare for some late nights!” “Plan ahead to make sure you don’t miss anything!” “Pack sturdy shoes!” “Always use a condom!”. Useful advice for SXSWi, certainly, but also applicable for Oktoberfest, Glastonbury, Woodstock and the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia (although for the latter, replace ’shoes’ with ’sandals’ and ‘condom’ with ’sprig of silphium’).

This year, though, I decided to use my experience of past SXSWi’s to produce something more useful. A very specific and completely foolproof guide on surviving this year’s event. And here it is…

Tip One: Don’t go to South by Southwest Interactive.

I’m serious. It sucked last year, and it’s going to suck again this year. You’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise. The idea that SXSWi is a conference – or even a festival – for people doing interesting and useful things in technology is a fallacy. In reality, it’s just a non-stop orgy of bullshit fanboyism – a chance for people with stickers on their laptops to go and add more stickers to their laptops; an opportunity for sweaty dorks in Diggnation t-shirts to line up for two hours in the hope of getting Alex Albrecht to – I dunno – sign their laptop, I suppose, or maybe give them another freaking sticker. Even the parties – which are basically the only reason to go – are horrible: the free bars runs out too soon, and they’re always rammed with the kind of people who you could be forgiven for assuming have never been inside licenced premises before.

“But Pure Volume at 2am is pretty awesome!”

No it isn’t. You were just drunk. You’d lined up for three months to get in with your stupid plastic entry tag and you had to convince yourself that the experience was worthwhile because the only alternative was to kill yourself. Free vodka Red Bulls are not worth the hassle. Take your lead from the pros: buy a couple of bottles of vodka and a case of Red Bull and host your own party in your hotel room. Except you can’t, can you? Because you’re sharing with your friend Dan and he has to be up early for the “Google Hackathon”.

“But we’re launching a new app, and it’s going to be awesome.”

No it isn’t. But I completely understand why you think it will be. With all those fanboys in one place, where better than ‘South by’ to launch your awesome new location-based app?

Two years ago, Twitter was the undisputed hit of the festival. Everyone was using it – to find parties, to silently heckle panels, to do all the things that one can do with Twitter. Last year those same people were so desperate to find the new Twitter that they mistakenly handed that crown to Foursquare on the basis that a relatively small number of Web 2.0 scenesters used it to find out where their friends were partying. And yet, despite that auspicious start, and a shit-ton of publicity since, Foursquare has failed to capture the imagination of even most early adopters, particularly those outside of San Francisco and New York. Foursquare was resolutely not last year’s Twitter. Last year’s Twitter was Twitter.

That won’t, however, stop a billion start-ups blowing their entire launch budget on flying their whole team – armed with sacks of flyers and amusing stick-on bugs and branded candy and more fucking stickers – to Texas, confident in the knowledge that their app (with its stupid cutesy name) will be the hit of the festival. It won’t be. It will just be yet another location-based app sloshing about in a sea of location-based apps that may be temporarily useful while a thousand early adopters are crammed into an area of less than one square mile. The moment the festival is over, you’ll be dead.

Instead, this year’s hot location-based app will be… Twitter. You’re welcome. Call me Nostradamus.

Last year, while in Austin, I wrote a column for the Guardian talking about the awfulness of the event, saying..

“None of this is surprising, of course, as it all fits neatly into what social media has taught us – that the moment a service or community gets too big, too mainstream or too commercialised, the early adopters declare it “over” and move on to the next cool, niche thing. And it’s why I really hope that next year one or two of those early adopters will organise – and I mean that in the loosest sense – a user-generated unofficial fringe conference to sit alongside the main event. Ideally it will be a bit nerdier and more businessy, and a lot more fun, than SXSW and will have plenty of space for unofficial “core conversations” and a great product launch or two.”

Sadly, unless it’s a very well kept secret, there’s no such rival event and this year’s SXSWi will be more of the same bullshit. And for that reason, I’m totally serious when I say that you shouldn’t go. Instead – while your rivals are distracted in Texas, pissing their money up the wall and ejaculating over their laptop stickers during yet another Evan Williams keynote – you should use the time instead to stay at home and work on building your start-up.

Your liver will thank you, your investors will thank you, and most importantly so will millions of real-world users who really want you to create something new and innovative rather than being sucked into the hype and churning our just a better, prettier Twitter-meets-Gowalla clone for the approbation of your peers.

Yeah?

Yeah.

I’m moderating the “Unsexy & Profitable: Making $$ Without Hype” panel on Saturday at 3:30pm in Hilton A/B.

See you in Austin.

(Photo of Gary Vaynerchuk and Kathy Sierra by Randy Stewart)

Are you treating social media like a checklist?

A recent study by Econsultancy called “The Value of Social Media” shows that companies are overwhelmingly using the “Big 4″ of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Linkedin for their social media efforts.

And while I don’t have any issues with those sites (in fact I wrote about Facebook marketing in-depth here), but is treating social media like a checklist really the best possible solution for your company?

There’s More Out There if You Look For It

Every day, 22 million Americans eat at McDonald’s. But, there are 108 million other people that eat at restaurants each day in America that are NOT McDonald’s.

A recent feature on CIO.com on “10 of World’s Strangest Social Networks” gets it all wrong. Somebody’s “strange” social network is someone else’s potentially thriving customer community. And when you stick 100% to the Big 4, you miss those opportunities.

Sure, the StachePassions social network (for mustache aficionados, natch) is a little unusual on the surface. But, if you think it through, many companies could succeed by participating in this community. Of course facial hair supply. But, what about photographers or digital cameras? What about Baskin Robbins – with a promotion offering free samples (and extra napkins)?

There are more than two million specialty communities on the Ning platform alone, giving you ample opportunities to find your fans and customers.

It’s About Engagement, Not Eyeballs

I worry that by focusing so much on the Big 4, we start to look at social media through the prism of audience size, which is a vestige of the old marketing. Remember, social media is about meeting your customers in their house, on their terms, and working together. And if your customers are on VampireFreaks.com (which has 2.2 million members), then maybe that’s where you should be as well – even if that means you don’t participate on Twitter.

I’m not saying you have to have a social presence in every single place one of your customers has an account. That’s impractical and unnecessary. But, in the rush to “do” social media, companies are forgetting that the communities that are most social (and thus carry the most potential) are those that are topically focused.

Do you really know where your customers are in social media? Are you ready to look harder?

MySpace thinks it can survive even thrive as a repository for all things music, Avatar and Twilight for the under-35 crowd.

Google’s call for medium-sized cities to pilot its high-speed broadband network has attracted the marketing wit of another locale: Greenville, South Carolina.

Citizens of Greenville have launched the “We Are Feeling Lucky” campaign –- an obvious play on Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button — an effort that will culminate in citizens trying to form “the world’s first and longest human Google chain.” Glowsticks will apparently be involved in the event, scheduled to take place on the evening of March 20.

The site makes heavy use of Google products and services — likely not a coincidence — in getting its message across. There’s also a social media component, with “We Are Feeling Lucky” having a YouTube channel featuring citizen videos, a Facebook event for the “Google on Main” event and a Twitter hashtag: #LuckyGVL. Here’s one of the YouTube clips featuring a variety of Greenville residents:

While citizens work to spread the message and draw Google’s attention, a formal proposal from the city is in the works to be submitted to Google by the March 26 deadline.

Greenville joins a growing list of cities that are getting creative in hopes of landing Google’s fiber. Topeka, Kansas, drew headlines when it unofficially renamed itself Google, Kansas. Duluth, Minnesota, went viral (to the degree a video about a public infrastructure proposal can) with a YouTube video. Columbia, Missouri, has 5,000+ fans of a Facebook Page supporting Google Fiber in their town.

When Google announced its plan to launch the fiber network test, the company made it clear to us that it has no plans to become an ISP. Nonetheless, it appears that lots of cities would be more than happy to serve as the test bed for its vision of a faster Internet, which its claims will have speeds of up to 100x typical connections.

Which campaign for Google Fiber has been your favorite so far? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: Google, google fiber

[From time to time we invite guests to blog about initiatives of interest, and are very pleased to have Allison Schwam, Senior Search Analyst at Backcountry, join us here. -Ed.]

When you don’t have to sacrifice your love of the outdoors for your career or vice versa, it’s something special. In fact, my love of both skiing and marketing has grown dramatically since I took my job at Backcountry. Getting to work with Google, specifically managing our AdWords account, is an online marketing geek’s dream come true. Combine that with every skier’s dream of Utah powder, and life is good.

Day traders wake up every morning to check their portfolio — I get up and check my AdWords accounts. Backcountry sells gear and equipment for the outdoor enthusiast from ski boots to tents, and we sell all of it online. My job is to drive valuable, qualified traffic 365 days a year to Backcountry using AdWords. The AdWords platform lets me manage hundreds of campaigns and hundreds of thousands of keywords with relative ease. I have access to huge amounts of data that are revealed as daily ebbs and flows in impressions, clicks and bids. If you do a Google search for [telemark ski gear], you’ll see our ad:


Backcountry was founded in 1996 by two self-proclaimed ski bums, John Bresee and Jim Holland. Since then, the company has grown to hundreds of employees. I’ve been working here for over two years. Ultimately, our goal is to “crush it,” as some ski town folk say: work hard, play hard.

A typical powder day for me is like this one last Friday when Park City got 12 inches of new snow overnight. Here’s how AdWords helps me manage both work and fun.

7 – 7:45am
Roll out of bed.
Get the coffee going.
Fry eggs and bacon.
Check snow totals.

If it looks like a good ski morning, I first check my email and glance over our AdWords campaigns. All I need to do is my daily reporting to see that I’m on target for my revenue and cost goals. As long as things are okay, I email my boss to say I’ll be out slaying the white dragon.

Just as I have the ideal tools to maximize our online campaign performance, I have the tools avid skiers covet for deep days: fat, rockered skis, stiff ski boots, Gore-Tex jacket and pants, helmet, goggles, merino wool layers, etc. After I grab my gear, I’m off.

7:45am – 12noon

My commute to The Canyons Ski Resort takes 10 minutes. My friends and I know how to get the most out of our time on the mountain, balancing chair lift time, snow quality and vertical. Does that sound a bit like cost-per-click, conversion rate and top-line revenue? Take this lift to that lift, ski the trees while we wait for that chair to open, get after our favorite steep lines. Next thing you know:

Photo by Jim Harris

Face shots are invigorating. Hard to explain, best to experience! After a few glances at the time and collecting my thoughts, I make my way off the mountain.

12pm – 5pm

I head a few miles down the road to the office. As the afternoon goes by, co-workers will emerge from their cubicles; sometimes because legs are cramping up but also to share stories about how the morning was. Where did you ski? How was the snow? Smiles all around.

I settle into work knowing what I need to succeed at my job is at my fingertips. AdWords gives me visibility into my programs to prioritize and understand trends. It also makes it easy to add and edit my account without getting bogged down in manual work. I regularly use Keyword Performance Reports to monitor both head terms and tail terms to stay on top of revenue opportunities. I’ll take into account the average order value and also the percentage of clicks that turn into sales (rate of conversion) in order to manage our keyword bids. As I do bid updates, I also check the AdWords Preview Tool to see how our ads are ranked and what is going on with our competition. We don’t really focus on “cost-per-click” but instead on “cost as percentage of revenue,” which means the more people purchase, the more ads we can run. So the higher the return on advertising spend, the more room we have to grow our paid search presence.

5 pm – 8 pm

I like this afternoon time in particular because it’s quiet and I can really focus on data-crunching. Uninterrupted time and a strong cup of coffee are essential for doing long-term analysis.

Campaign Performance Reports are great for identifying long- and short-term trends as seasons shift or for changes in demand by brand. We just wrapped up our winter sale, so this is a great time for me to run an Ad Performance Report to analyze which versions of ad copy had the strongest clickthrough rates for future reference. Finally, Google Insights for Search is a fun tool. It’s a great way to connect with our buyers by discussing big-picture trends with the brands we carry. We can look at AdWords Campaign performance and try to tie it back to general search volume in the marketplace and identify product searches on the rise. In short, given our metrics focus, AdWords gives me the information I need to make decisions about specific keywords, bids, and our overall spend.

There are typically the same few folks hanging out at the office this late. We’ll exchange some pleasantries, and as the lights get turned off I’ll shut down my computer.

When I earned an undergraduate degree in marketing and cultural anthropology, I had only a vague idea how I was going to create a career with behavioral and analytical activities. It turns out online marketing is an exciting mix of real-time data and customer service. AdWords lets me manage campaigns very efficiently, so I have time to dig deeper and do the strategic analysis that makes this job about much more than just meeting revenue goals.

Finally, I picked Park City because it’s more than a ski town. Here fanatical skiers, trail runners, bikers, snowboarders and climbers can live year round and still have a meaningful career. I’ll always be grateful to companies like Backcountry and Google for making this possible: Backcountry for fostering the passions of the outdoor enthusiast, and Google for innovation in creating the forums and tools that really work for us.

Posted by Allison Schwam, Senior Search Analyst at Backcountry

Fünf Treffer erzielt, kein Tor kassiert: Mit einem deutlichen Erfolg gegen den FC Porto hat sich der FC Arsenal für das Viertelfinale der Champions League qualifiziert. Überragender Spieler war der dänische Angreifer Nicklas Bendtner.

Mollie Vandor is the Product Manager for Ranker.com and Media Director for Girls in Tech LA. You can find her on Twitter and on her blog, where she writes about the web, the world and what it’s like to be a geek chic chick.

Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes — lately, it seems like there’s a new natural disaster wreaking havoc on poor planet Earth every week. From our television sets to our Twitter streams, it’s impossible to ignore the devastation these disasters leave behind. And, no matter where you’re watching from, it’s hard not to feel just a little bit helpless in the face of such colossal catastrophes.

But when it comes to natural disasters, modern technology is making it easier than ever to take control by creating your own emergency response system — no high pitched beeping required. There are tons of tools to help you create emergency preparedness plans, keep in touch during a disaster, and get your life back after one strikes. Nothing will keep you safer or saner during a natural disaster than having a good plan in advance.

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Create a Plan

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According to FEMA, the best way to avoid significant damage during a disaster is to prepare an emergency response plan in advance. The FEMA website is a great place to get that process started. In fact, they offer an easy checklist of items you should consider when putting together your plan: Escape routes, family communications, utility shut-off and safety, insurance and vital records, special needs, caring for animals, and safety skills. It seems like a lot, but fortunately, there are plenty of resources to help make all that planning much easier.

Figuring out your escape route is probably the top priority when it comes to emergency preparedness. And, making sure that your loved ones know where to go and how to meet up could help keep your family together when everything else is falling apart. That’s where Google’s MyMaps service comes in handy. MyMaps lets you plan a route using landmarks, lines, and shapes, and lets you easily share that route or access it on your mobile browser. Of course, the most reliable option in a disaster is still the lo-fi hard copy of that escape route. MyMaps lets you print perfect copies so you can laminate them and stick them everywhere from the fridge door to the kids’ backpacks.

And while you’re throwing things in those backpacks, also think about including an ID card, in case your child is separated from their caretaker during a disaster. You can easily order ID cards online at places like Life360, a site that offers multiple mobile and web-based emergency planning services, including ID cards for your kids and a messaging system that contacts your entire network of family and friends during a disaster.

Of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of emergency preparedness apps. From the ICE app for iPhone and Android, which stores your emergency contacts and medical information, to the self-explanatory Emergency Preparedness Checklist (iPhone), there are plenty of quick, easy and mobile options to help you get a jump on your emergency planning.

Plus, if you share my proclivity for destroying any home improvement project you come within five feet of, there’s also an easy online guide to help you shut off your utilities, from the Washington state Department of Health. And, the only technical knowledge required is the ability to print the super-simple instructions and tape them up near your door.

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Keep In Touch

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One of the scariest parts of any emergency is not being able to reach the people you love — and knowing that the people you love might not be able to reach you. And, of course, you want to stay abreast of all the breaking news about whatever it is that’s going on. Fortunately, one of the best advantages of our constantly-connected world is that there are multiple channels for communication. When one channel goes down during a disaster, you might still be able to get through on another one.

The first thing to do is make sure you have a backup plan for keeping all your gadgets in good working order during a disaster. Now might be a good time to invest in a solar charger for your iPhone or Blackberry, for example — not to mention a hand-cranked emergency radio, flashlight and flares. Or, you could just hit up the Red Cross Store for a gadget that does all of the above, and charges your MP3 player too. If you’d rather just upgrade your existing gadgets, check out the Emergency Radio app, which turns your iPhone into a supercharged scanner for police, fire, NOAA and other emergency radio frequencies.

Even without any extra apps, your 3G-enabled phone will likely help you stay connected in case of an emergency. Even though phone lines may be down or jammed, the 3G network won’t necessarily be out as well. This is how Twitter status updates helped locate a missing person during the recent Chile earthquake. So, having an app for Twitter, Instant Messenger, or even Facebook on your mobile device might help you keep in touch with loved ones who can’t get through to you via more traditional means of communication. And, a quick status update telling everyone where you are and how you’re doing could help give loved ones peace of mind in the middle of the chaos that comes with a catastrophe.

Speaking of peace of mind, FEMA will actually e-mail you disaster updates in real-time, so you can stay up to date on the latest breaking disaster news. Most college campuses have similar services, so students — and their parents — can receive regular text messages and e-mails during an emergency. The FCC actually maintains a pretty good list of these services. And, of course, you should always know the right resources for specific information about the particular types of catastrophes that are common to your neck of the woods. For example, during the recent Hawaii tsunami warnings, residents could receive up-to-the-minute reports from a variety of sources, including NOAA.

So, bookmark your local emergency services sites, or add them to an RSS feed or special start page. Create a Twitter list of the people you trust for breaking news about your area, or set up an old fashioned phone tree using e-mail over 3G as a backup in case the phone lines go down. No matter what you decide to do, make sure you have plans in place for staying in touch across multiple means of communication. You never know what will work and what won’t if a disaster really does strike.

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Get Your Life Back

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Once the immediate threat of a natural disaster has passed, you may find yourself facing an awful lot of cleanup, not to mention plenty of paperwork, as you try to recover your assets. This is why it’s important to catalog your stuff before that happens. This will make the process of an insurance claim much easier.

The first step in setting up a cataloging system is to get yourself organized. There are plenty of apps for that, and options for Blackberry users as well. Once you’re organized, you can start scanning all of your important possessions and papers into a web-based app, which will store them in the cloud. So, no matter what you lose in a disaster, you won’t lose your records too.

Use Home Inventory for iPhone or Star Home Inventory for Blackberry to track all of your stuff from the comfort of your mobile device. If you have a Mac, you can also use DeliciousMonster to scan all of your books, movies and more into your computer by their bar codes. Or, just hook up a standard barcode scanner directly to your laptop. Publish your stuff to the web to make sure your data is safe in case your desktop is destroyed. And, to really be on the safe side, create a Google Docs account, and back up your important insurance papers directly from your desktop.

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The Last Word

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Despite how far modern technology has come, we still haven’t figured out a perfect way to prevent natural disasters. Preparation is still the best defense. Proper planning means that if a disaster does strike, you’ll know what to do, where to go, and how to recover — which is some pretty powerful stuff indeed, even in the face of the forces of nature.

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More social media resources from Mashable:

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- 5 Ways to Use Twitter to Avoid a Backchannel Disaster
- How Companies Are Using Your Social Media Data
- The Science of Building Trust With Social Media
- How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting Student Engagement
- 3 Ways Educators Are Embracing Social Technology

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, BradenGunem

Tags: disaster, emergency, how to, List, Lists, social media

The entire family of devices built on the iPhone OS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) have been designed to run only software that is approved by Apple—a major shift from the norms of the personal computer market. Software developers who want Apple's approval must first agree to the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement.

So today we're posting the "iPhone Developer Program License Agreement"—the contract that every developer who writes software for the iTunes App Store must "sign." Though more than 100,000 app developers have clicked "I agree," public copies of the agreement are scarce, perhaps thanks to the prohibition on making any "public statements regarding this Agreement, its terms and conditions, or the relationship of the parties without Apple's express prior written approval." But when we saw the NASA App for iPhone, we used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to ask NASA for a copy, so that the general public could see what rules conrolled the technology they could use with their phones. NASA responded with the Rev. 3-17-09 version of the agreement (it has reportedly been revised somewhat since—please send us the current version if you are able).

This "license agreement" is particularly relevant right now, given the imminent launch of the iPad and anytime-now issuance of the U.S. Copyright Office's ruling regarding jailbreaking of the iPhone.

So what's in the Agreement? Here are a few troubling highlights:

Ban on Public Statements: As mentioned above, Section 10.4 prohibits developers, including government agencies such as NASA, from making any "public statements" about the terms of the Agreement. This is particularly strange, since the Agreement itself is not "Apple Confidential Information" as defined in Section 10.1. So the terms are not confidential, but developers are contractually forbidden from speaking "publicly" about them.

App Store Only: Section 7.2 makes it clear that any applications developed using Apple's SDK may only be publicly distributed through the App Store, and that Apple can reject an app for any reason, even if it meets all the formal requirements disclosed by Apple. So if you use the SDK and your app is rejected by Apple, you're prohibited from distributing it through competing app stores like Cydia or Rock Your Phone.

Ban on Reverse Engineering: Section 2.6 prohibits any reverse engineering (including the kinds of reverse engineering for interoperability that courts have recognized as a fair use under copyright law), as well as anything that would "enable others" to reverse engineer, the SDK or iPhone OS.

No Tinkering with Any Apple Products: Section 3.2(e) is the "ban on jailbreaking" provision that received some attention when it was introduced last year. Surprisingly, however, it appears to prohibit developers from tinkering with any Apple software or technology, not just the iPhone, or "enabling others to do so." For example, this could mean that iPhone app developers are forbidden from making iPods interoperate with open source software, for example.

You will not, through use of the Apple Software, services or otherwise create any Application or other program that would disable, hack, or otherwise interfere with the Security Solution, or any security, digital signing, digital rights management, verification or authentication mechanisms implemented in or by the iPhone operating system software, iPod Touch operating system software, this Apple Software, any services or other Apple software or technology, or enable others to do so

Kill Your App Any Time: Section 8 makes it clear that Apple can "revoke the digital certificate of any of Your Applications at any time." Steve Jobs has confirmed that Apple can remotely disable apps, even after they have been installed by users. This contract provision would appear to allow that.

We Never Owe You More than Fifty Bucks: Section 14 states that, no matter what, Apple will never be liable to any developer for more than $50 in damages. That's pretty remarkable, considering that Apple holds a developer's reputational and commercial value in its hands—it's not as though the developer can reach its existing customers anywhere else. So if Apple botches an update, accidentally kills your app, or leaks your entire customer list to a competitor, the Agreement tries to cap you at the cost of a nice dinner for one in Cupertino.

Overall, the Agreement is a very one-sided contract, favoring Apple at every turn. That's not unusual where end-user license agreements are concerned (and not all the terms may ultimately be enforceable), but it's a bit of a surprise as applied to the more than 100,000 developers for the iPhone, including many large public companies. How can Apple get away with it? Because it is the sole gateway to the more than 40 million iPhones that have been sold. In other words, it's only because Apple still "owns" the customer, long after each iPhone (and soon, iPad) is sold, that it is able to push these contractual terms on the entire universe of software developers for the platform.

In short, no competition among app stores means no competition for the license terms that apply to iPhone developers.

If Apple's mobile devices are the future of computing, you can expect that future to be one with more limits on innovation and competition (or "generativity," in the words of Prof. Jonathan Zittrain) than the PC era that came before. It's frustrating to see Apple, the original pioneer in generative computing, putting shackles on the market it (for now) leads. If Apple wants to be a real leader, it should be fostering innovation and competition, rather than acting as a jealous and arbitrary feudal lord. Developers should demand better terms and customers who love their iPhones should back them.