Toyota’s recall frenzy really took off in the winter of 2009 as floor mats galore were sent back for a good scrubbing. Like the Grinch taking the tree and all the presents to fix one little light bulb, Toyota seemed at once haughty and suspicious until they finally threw in the towel in January and offered a number of mea culpas. You’ll also recall that last November we were in an economic doldrums, cars weren’t selling, and anything manufacturers could do to get a leg up in the auto race was fair game. Toyota’s fall, then, definitely reduced their sales and although it’s hard to assess the improvement in competitor’s numbers (almost everyone has seen year-to-year decreases in sales since 2008), it’s clear Toyota’s non-issue was the industry’s gain. Although I don’t want to belittle the lives lost in the single tragic Lexus accelerator issue, it’s abundantly clear that Toyota was unfairly blamed for a number of issues that weren’t its fault.
TechCrunch

Freelancer.com focuses primarily on providing a marketplace for remote workers. Freelancer.com now caters to a user base of 1.7 million small and medium-sized businesses (up from 1 million in October 2009) and says it has outsourced more than 725,000 projects to date.
TechCrunch

Compass Labs looks at Twitter streams and tries to determine when someone has an intent to purchase a product, then it serves up related ads either through direct messages or through banner ads on third-party Twitter clients. So if you Tweet, “I’m looking for a Canon camera” it will reply in stream or on a banner with an ad from a camera retailer for that camera. Compass Labs uses natural language processing to parse out the Tweets that have serious intent versus just talking about a product generally. Campaigns can be set to target people at different parts of the purchasing cycle, from exploratory to ready to buy right now.

Of course, advertising on Twitter recently came into question after Twitter revised its Terms of Service, prohibiting any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API. But Compass Labs says that it complies with Twitter’s TOS because it serves display ads, which are not in-stream and simply uses real-estate on a publisher site, much like an ad network. In fact, the startup expects that Twitter will actually embrace Compass Labs’ solution as an example of how to monetize while benefiting the entire Twitter ecosystem.

Founded by Google and Yahoo veteran Dilip Venkatachari (he led Google’s mobile ad business), Compass Labs will use the funding for product development as well as bulding out sales and business development channels. The company now has a number of advertisers and publishers using its platform (Venkatachari declined name these partners) and is starting to see revenue from its network.

TechCrunch

You never know where you are going to see something innovative—even right here the heart of the “Sili-corn Valley” that is Central Ohio. This week, I met a gentleman by the name of Dan Rockwell at the local Mobile Monday gathering, and we had a short conversation about his company’s latest mobile app called Chump Dump.

The somewhat irreverent concept is both funny and serious; gain points for ceasing to follow people on twitter. The app recalls Crispin Porter’s Whopper Sacrifice campaign for unfriending people on Facebook, but has a much purer and utilitarian result in mind—clean up the list of people you follow on Twitter using game mechanics, actual metrics and crowdsourced conversation. As funny or rebellious as the app seems on the surface, when you get down to it, its goal is functionally sound and it gets people to ask the real question “why am I following this chump on Twitter?”

Read more…

TechCrunch

Back in January Conan O’Brien was supposed to come to San Francisco for a SF Sketchfest Tribute and Q&A about his career. And then, he lost his dream job as he said, “shit really hit the fan” and he had to cancel. He finally made good on that gig last night at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, and it was far more revealing than his 60 Minutes interview. I’d gone expecting to hear an “Inside the Actor’s Studio” style retrospective. What we got instead was more than three hours of O’Brian, Patton Oswalt and Andy Richter drinking heavily on stage and talking about how the Internet has utterly ripped the media business in two over the course of their careers.

“Those men behind the curtain—the great and powerful Oz—are scared shitless right now,” O’Brien said, adding that the chaos is so high that anyone in the audience could just as likely be running a major network in a few years. O’Brien opened by saying he was choosing to see opportunity in the volatility in his business, but over the next few hours it was clear that it wasn’t that simple.

What O’Brien went through with NBC was a more public version of hundreds of conversations I’ve had over the last ten years with people in old-media, music, independent book stores, and travel agencies—especially people who are mid-career and young enough to want to disrupt things, but old enough and have paid enough dues that it somehow feels unfair when the industry is ripped out from under their feet. To me, this three-hour out-pouring of enthusiasm for the future mixed with nostalgia of the past was like any conversation I used to have when I still worked in old media newsrooms. I wish he’d been this frank in his network interview—because this is the everyman story of the Web’s disruption. If it hasn’t happened to your industry yet—wait. It will.

If I could just embed a raw bootleg video, I’d end this post here. But given the theme of the evening, it was sad but somehow not surprising that SF Sketchfest emphasized several times that no video or photos were allowed—a contrast to O’Brien’s comedy tour when he welcomed fans to record and do whatever they wanted with the footage. That means these raw, authentic confessions and advice to the younger creative generation can’t run on the platforms where audiences would most appreciate them.

So here are my highlights instead. (I wasn’t taking notes, so I’m paraphrasing here.)

Just How Much Has Changed: O’Brien talked about when he got the Late Night Show job in 1993. He was so unknown that no one could find a photo of him to run with the news story. Imagine: No TwitPic, no Facebook profile image, no Flickr—nothing. Newspapers ran a gritty image they snapped from the television screen instead. And it took him several days to get a photo together to send out.

Today, anyone with his level of experience at the time would have thousands of clips from YouTube, from tried-and-failed cable shows, live video from standup gigs, maybe an appearance from a Funny or Die skit, not to mention thousands of images online. On the one hand, he said it had opened up opportunity for funny people everywhere, especially women, African Americans and other minorities that don’t get as many plum jobs in the entertainment world. But on the other hand, if he were up for that job today, he admits there’s so much competition he probably wouldn’t have been given a shot.

Cream Rises…or Does It? O’Brien made the point repeatedly that “cream rises to the top” online and that if you consistently put out funny stuff, you’ll start getting paid to write or perform funny stuff. But he also talked about how the Web and the reality TV/ Paris Hilton generation had set a precedent that you could be famous not for any talent, but just for making a spectacle of yourself.

He cut himself off talking about the latter, saying he was trying hard not to be judgmental—but this is clearly an idea with which he struggles. He talked about kids coming up to him and saying they were going to be on his show one day and when he asked what they did they said “nothing,” but they were “going to be huge.” He said a few decades ago if someone had said that to David Letterman or Johnny Carson the answer would have been that they sing, dance, act or something.

Success Was Being Left Alone. When O’Brien first took over Late Night the network wanted to put him on a week-to-week contract. He fought back and got a series of 13-week contracts. He and his staff did their job with the feeling that the anvil could fall at any moment. But because no one had much hope pinned on the show, they were largely ignored and allowed to do whatever they wanted. They’d throw stuff out there, and if it worked it did, if not, they’d throw more stuff out the next day. The contrast to his practically non-existent honeymoon period on the Tonight Show is obvious.

Here’s the good thing about a Web-distributed entertainment world—there’s a lot more of the former because the gate keepers are disrupted. It’s no longer an age where there are only three networks. If you want to entertain people and do good work, there a million steps in between all and nothing.

Developing a Thick Skin Is Bullshit. O’Brien said the biggest thing that held him back from both writing and performing was a fear of being criticized because he’s incredibly sensitive. He punched a big hole in one of the biggest clichés in fame—that you just have to develop a thick skin. He says he’s still just as sensitive and criticism still hurts just as much. The secret is to just keep going anyway, because you will get criticized no matter how brilliant you are.

This is clearly something that’s gotten more pronounced in a Web age, but there may be a silver lining to that. In a time when every video, photo, blog post and Tweet can easily be trashed by others, people learn that criticism is inevitable early on.

Longevity Is the Most Overrated Thing on TV. O’Brien talked about how people on TV measure success in how many years their show runs, and that he thinks that’s the wrong metric. It’s not about how many people watch you for how long, it’s about the connection you have with those people, he said. To anyone in the room, this was clearly heartfelt. I’ve heard O’Brien in interviews before the Tonight Show debacle, and he always seemed glib and jokey—almost to the point of insincere. But last night—and I’ve heard during his comedy tour—he was raw, clearly shaken by what happened with NBC and clearly touched by the outpouring of support he got from fans, enabled largely by social media.

He said several times how much people loving his work enough to support him – even if that support was a mere two-second Tweet for “Team Coco”—meant to him and how it kept him going. He clearly didn’t want to leave the stage. He threw the clock off the table when he sat down asking why there was a time limit, and towards the end sat on the edge of the stage taking questions from the audience long after they’d said they would take “just one more question.”

The evening was billed as a tribute to O’Brien, but he turned it into a tribute to his fans connected around the world by social media instead.

TechCrunch

MySpace has announced that it is planning to launch a new “Editor’s Pick” category in its application directory next week, allowing members to quickly sift through the platform’s best apps. MySpace had previously shown a handful of featured apps as users browsed its Apps Directory, but these rotated and there was no way to browse through them. Now, users will be able to access a stable list of the best apps as determined by a team of MySpace employees who work with the applications on a daily basis (all apps will be chosen by merit, not through paid sponsorships).

MySpace is beginning to accept submissions from developers today, which can be sent in by following these instructions:

If you’d like to be considered for this category, please send an email to developerrelations(at)myspace dot com. Include “Editor’s Pick Category” in the subject line, and provide a reason why you feel your application should be in the spotlight and why your application stands above the rest. Be sure to include the a 200 character description and an 128×128 icon image.

Since social networks began to offer support for third party applications (a trend that began with the launch Facebook Platform in May 2007), one of the biggest issues facing users has been weeding out the best applications from the countless spammy and useless apps available. Last summer Facebook announced that it was going to launch a Verified Apps program that would offer approved applications extra exposure and benefits not afforded to standard apps.

We’re still waiting. In November Facebook announced that it would charge a $375 fee for developers to apply – a fee that we likened to a protection racket. To make matters worse, Facebook is running behind on the program (which was supposed to launch ‘early this year’), and developers are getting antsy.

At this point it’s unclear how similar MySpace’s Editor’s Picks will be to Facebook’s Verified Apps program – the MySpace program is certainly less structured that Facebook’s, and I suspect it won’t be nearly as comprehensive. But it’s still something that lets members know that the applications they’re using can be trusted.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

We were disappointed when a browser script showed us a Magpie redirect behind a shortened link in a Skype testimonial today. Then we used a search on the service BackTweets to find out who else is buying fake Tweets on the service. It’s so revolting and pitiful that it’s kind of sad.

Sponsor

Each of these companies have more than one campaign running and these are all just from the last 6 hours! Magpie is spewing Tweets through peoples’ accounts all day long. All of the links are obscured by URL shortening service is.gd (hope they are getting a cut!) and the clicker ends up on the advertiser site. Clearly disclosure isn’t mandatory; but even if it was this is just creepy, is it not?

Update: As a number of commenters and at least one of these companies have pointed out, it’s not the companies themselves buying these ads – it’s most likely outside affiliates. So direct your frustration to whoever is in charge of affiliate programs at these companies, not in house ad buyers.

Apple

We thought Apple was able to secure enough mind control with its design prowess that it didn’t have to pay for it! We presume that when most of these people say they bought one of these devices recently, they are flatly lying. Apple is paying them to lie like a robot to their friends on Twitter. Nice.

Skype

We especially like that one of the users here is named “High and Noble.” Uh, yeah.

Cisco’s Flip

The company that makes those Flip cameras just got bought by Cisco for almost $600 million dollars – because everyone loves the Flip.

Box.net

We know and like the people at online storage company Box.net. Their CEO didn’t respond to our inquiry about the use of Magpie, but we’ll give him a hard time about it next time we see him. The last user in this picture is an account that just aggregates other peoples’ Tweets about farting – and then throws in Magpie ads. Classy all around!

StubHub

Ok, so StubHub might not be the kind of company you’d be shocked to find out participates in this kind of thing, but the informal language and appeals to family in this one struck us.

FatCow

Ok, we don’t know FatCow Web Hosting from a hole in the wall but the language here again is really remarkable. Dear FatCow “fans”: you are allowing yourself to be turned into a lying robot zombie for a few dollars a month! Have you no shame?

So there’s the Twitter-sphere for you! Bring on “real time search,” bring on a globally connected community, bring on vapid, vile, stupid shilling. It all seems pretty sad to me. And to the advertisers out there – is this cynical scheme the best you can do to engage with all the new ways people are communicating online? That’s pretty bad.

You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Rick Turoczy, Sean Ammirati, Lidija Davis and Phil Glockner. We won’t try to sneakily sell you anything!

Discuss

Thanks to a slip of the fingers on Posterous (and Robert Scoble’s serious Twitter addiction), new images of Michael Arrington’s pet Internet-tablet project — the CrunchPad — have shown up looking very, very close to a finished product. As you can see in the gallery below, the (supposedly) $200, WiFi enabled pad has gotten dressed up in multiple colors and been shoved into some fairly handsome looking packaging. There’s no telling if this means the device is any closer to a buy-able reality, but one thing is for sure: a microblog is no place for secrets.

[Via Scoble's Twitterfeed, Arab Crunch]

Filed under: Handhelds

Leaked pics of the CrunchPad make it look dangerously close to availability originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What goes well with a communication-enabled water dish? Why, a Twitter / RFID-enabled kitty door, of course! The so-called Tweeting Cat Door is undoubtedly the most hilarious, insightful and useful DIY contraption we’ve ever seen to wed RFID, social networking and computer programming. Essentially, this homegrown cat door was crafted to only open when Gus or Penny walks up with their super special RFID tags; once they approach, a mounted camera snaps a picture and uploads it (along with a quip) to Twitter. Don’t deny it — your feline is steaming with envy from the corner of your desk right now.

[Via Switched]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Household

Intelligent cat door utilizes Twitter, RFID masterfully originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Gaming

Latest PSP2 rumor covers familar ground, adds pre-Xmas release date originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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