Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/347551371/
Since it’s free to play, Funtactix CEO Sam Glassenberg tells me, the company plans to make money through virtual item sales. Moondo’s a fun idea with potential stickiness, especially for young teens, but I strongly suspect the site’s somewhat odd cartoonish graphics will turn off older players, as will the 85 MB client install (though a web version is planned for October.)
Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/346840985/
It is a sad ending for Xdrive, which now will be best known for giving birth to MySpace (both Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe worked there). In an e-mail to staff explaining why AOL is powering down Xdrive and other businesses, EVP Kevin Conroy explained (bold added for emphasis}:
The changes described below are in no way a reflection of the hard work and creativity of the people who built and maintain them.
- Personal Media: Bluestring, Xdrive and AOL Pictures will be sunset. These consumer storage products haven't gained sufficient traction in the marketplace or the monetization levels necessary to offset the high cost of their operation. We have found that building media management applications within the context of a social experience is a more rapid and effective way to grow the business. For example, today the Bebo audience is uploading over three million photos per day. To effectively grow the XDrive online storage business we would need to focus on subscription revenues vs. monetizing through advertising revenue, and this business model is not in strategic alignment with our company's goals. We are exploring plans to migrate our users assets to ensure the best possible transition experience.
Subscription businesses are so AOL, circa 1999.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/347691796/
Recently Twitter has tried to raise the bar even higher by removing accounts that appear to be trying to game the system. A lot of spammy accounts are just being deleted.
But what happens if someone finds a way to get others to follow them by exploiting some vulnerability in Twitter? The service would be overrun with spam overnight.
That appears to have happened today - I, along with 7,000+ other people, are now following user johng77536, even though I never hit the follow button (the account is following zero other users). The account, which is just two hours old, is now one of the top 100 Twitter accounts (it is currently #63), and growing fast. There are two posts in the account, both linking to a site called hotmoda.com.
This is the first time we’ve heard about Twitter being exploited in this way. Our guess is they found a vulnerability in the API and are going to push this for all its worth before being shut down. We’ll see how quickly Twitter responds.
We did a search for the username and came up with this link, where a user with the same name purports to be John and/or Lena Granger (who may well have nothing to do with this).
Update: Per the comments below, it looks like the vulnerability is being used for at least one other account (image), which links off to the same hotmoda site.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/347840357/
Since launching the CrunchBase API less than two weeks ago we’ve seen a great response from developers, who have already developed a number of impressive plugins and applications. The CrunchBase API offers access to information from thousands of tech companies, VCs and startup entrepreneurs. It's free to use, there are no accounts to sign up for and no request throttling. The API returns clean, pretty-printed JSON, and only basic attribution is required. Here are some of great applications already in the wild:
CrunchBase WordPress Plugins
Two plugins sprung up that make it easy to insert the CrunchBase widget into WordPress blog posts. The first, developed by Vaibhav Gadodia, queries the CrunchBase API to determine the CrunchBase URL for a company. Joost de Valk, the author of numerous WordPress plugins, also released a CrunchBase widget plugin that supports all of the CrunchBase entity types (companies, products, people, and financial organizations).
CrunchBase Social Graphs
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Finnish readers Mikko Kivelä and Bemmu Sepponen have generated whopper social graphs using the full web of CrunchBase data. One of the graphs maps company connections in CrunchBase, while the other is concerned with the people involved. They also created a fun text file that counts the degrees of separation from any company to Google (TechCrunch is 2 away). We’d love to see a version of They Rule using financial organizations instead of board members.
Semantic CrunchBase
Quite possibly the most exciting use of the CrunchBase API is Semantic CrunchBase, a RDF/SPARQL mirror of CrunchBase that adheres to the principles of the Semantic Web. Semantic CrunchBase comes to us from active Semantic/RDF community developer Benjamin Nowack. A RDF/SPARQL interface enables queries to be run against the CrunchBase data. For example, you can query for all the companies that were funded during January 2008 (which you can already do via a web interface with our advanced search page). Semantic CrunchBase is a great add-on that will open up new doors with respect to the applications people can create with CrunchBase data.
If you are doing something cool with CrunchBase data we’d love to see it. Become a member and post on the CrunchBase Google Group. Follow us on Twitter. Subscribe to the CrunchBase Blog.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/348012168/
One of the biggest draws for massively multiplayer online games (MMO’s) is the satisfaction that comes from earning in-game items and abilities. Unlike simple Flash games where your accomplishments vanish the moment you step away from your computer, MMO’s allow you to acquire virtual goods and work your way up a skill ladder, in the hopes of eventually becoming powerful enough to dominate over everyone else. Unfortunately, many people simply can’t spare the hundreds of hours a game like World of Warcraft takes to finally reach this leet status.
Today sees the launch of Moondo, a new gaming “world” that is trying to merge the best parts of MMOs and the casual games that litter the web. The Moondo world is comprised of a number of multiplayer minigames that feature 3D graphics that rival those seen on most MMOs. Each minigame is intended to require only about 15-20 minutes, though they include multiple levels that should keep gamers satisfied for hours at a time.
What differentiates Moondo from most other multiplayer minigames is the introduction of persistent goods and a leveling system. For example, a shield that a user might acquire during the course of a shooting game could later be used on the platform’s driving game. As gamers continue playing, they progressively acquire more goods and skills, and the platform’s matching system ensures that they are only pitted against players of comparable experience. At launch, there are two games available (an FPS and a racing game), but that number should grow quickly, as Moondo says that the platform is designed so that it can pump out a new game every 8 weeks.
Moondo’s biggest challenge lies in making the powerups and levels acquired by each gamer seem worthwhile. It’s one thing to be known as a powerful wizard or knight in a persistent world like World of Warcraft - everyone knows you’ve earned it. But when such advantages are carried over to smaller minigames, it might just make them unbalanced and less fun.
For the time being Moondo is only available as a standalone client on Windows, but the company plans to roll out browser support (so that it should be platform-agnostic) by October. The game is the first product from Funtactix, a Benchmark and JVP-funded company that has spent the last eighteen months developing the platform that powers Moondo. Another company that is introducing persistent accomplishments to casual gaming is CasualCafe which we covered here.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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