Pownce vs Digg: Who Will Kevin Rose Back?

I’ve speculated previously on the growing conflict Kevin Rose has between his roles at Digg and Pownce, and now it would appear that we may finally be on the eve of Rose being forced to decide between the two.

Leah Culver, a co-founder of Pownce with Rose has made a bizarre post to Digg suggesting that Digg’s new features were a direct copy of those from Pownce:

Since I originally came up with the Pownce gender list, I’m somewhat miffed that Digg copied Pownce.

Culver also linked to an image on Flickr which she subsequently deleted.

The first and most obvious question: has there been a complete break down in communications and trust between Pownce’s founders that they now find it necessary to air their dirty laundry (ironically) on Digg? Second: why did Culver delete the picture after posting the link on Digg? Was pressure brought to bare?

As much as we all admire Kevin Rose’s tenacity and creativity, there is always a point where you can be wearing too many hats. Rose has three (Digg, Rev3, Pownce), which I’m guessing is at least one too many, possibly two.

Google Analytics in AIR; That’s What I’m Talking About

Having just bought a Mac after ten years of Windows, I feel as though I have a heightened appreciation for products and services that are pleasurable to use. And while I love websites that implement Ajax or Flash effectively, few online destinations can match the usability of a well-designed desktop application.

That’s why I found Google Analytics AIR beta, publicly released on September 17th, to be such a breath of fresh air (no pun intended, really).

This unofficial AIR version of Google Analytics delivers the functionality of browser-based Google Analytics but with greater usability and a richer experience. If you haven’t heard of AIR (once named “Apollo”), it’s a platform developed by Adobe that enables web developers to deploy their web services outside of the browser so they function more like traditional applications.

This is the first AIR program that I have tested that really gets me excited about the platform. As a beta program, it’s not perfect (I ran into a few errors), but overall it has been executed very well. It’s also nice to see such a full-functional program developed using someone else’s API (in this case, Google’s).

Check out Google Analytics AIR beta and give the developer, Nico, your feedback to help make this thing even better. If you don’t already have AIR, you need to download it to use any AIR-base applications (as with Flash).

Thanks Orli.

Correction and Update: Google doesn’t actually have their own API for Analytics; Nico says he had to make his own to build this program (not exactly sure how that works).

He also says that both Adobe and Google are involved in this project now. Adobe has included the application in its Showcase program, and Google product managers and engineers are providing him with feedback and helping him make it more secure.

Nico says that beta 2 of Google Analytics AIR will be available around the time AIR beta 2 is released to the general public. He’s currently focusing on improved international support and the integration of AdWords.

Real Time Search Soon At Twitter

We just got word from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey that the company will be launching a real time search feature “very soon.” Type in a keyword or keywords and any time a Twitter is created that includes those keywords, you’ll be notified via IM or SMS. They’ll add the the ability to access this via their API in the near future, Dorsey says.

The feature hasn’t launched yet, and we’re unsure on some of the details. For example, I’m not sure if you can limit results to just people you are tracking, or if you can get results via RSS or email instead of or in addition to SMS and IM. Either way, Twitter is clearly adding features and functionality at a quick pace, which is good to see. Hopefully, the worst of the downtime is behind us, too.

The fuzzy image to the right is a sample user interface that we received from Twitter.

Update: Dorsey says in the next couple of weeks they’ll allow historical search as well. Also, for now, searches can only be done on all Twitter users. Over time, users will be able to refine searches by friends, geography, time and/or language. For now, results are only returned via SMS and IM - RSS, email and the API will come later.

Parakey: Did Investors Get Left Out In The Cold?

When Facebook acquired Parakey in July, everyone assumed the stockholders of that fledgling startup would be popping the champagne bottles. No matter what the acquisition price (it wasn’t disclosed), if the sellers got Facebook stock in return for their Parakey shares, it would likely be worth a fortune down the road.

It turns out that wasn’t the case. The acquisition price, say two sources close to the deal, was paid in cash and was “less than $4 million,” providing investors with just a 2x return on their investment. Meanwhile, Parakey founders Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt were rewarded handsome stock options to join Facebook as employees in lieu of any cash compensation.

The primary investor in Parakey was Sequoia Capital, but a number of angel investors also participated in the sub-$2 million round that closed in December 2006. The investors were told about the acquisition in mid 2007 just prior to it closing. The terms of the deal were fully disclosed to them, including the number of shares that were being granted to Ross and Hewitt.

Some of those investors clearly weren’t happy with the fact that they were getting a 2x cash return while the founders received different, and likely far more lucrative compensation. Their preference would have been to receive Facebook shares or simply to have kept Parakey as an independent entity with a chance for a larger liquidity event down the road. But reputation matters in silicon valley and they made the decision not to disrupt the deal to avoid being labeled as difficult investors. Clearly, though, it left a bad taste in their mouth.

Even as investors are lining up to fund new Facebook applications, some others are saying they’re unlikely to invest in startups that are focused only on that popular social network/platform. The fact that Facebook is now involved in directly funding some of these application developers via fbFund only makes them more wary - the company may simply pick off the most talented developers and leave the companies, and any investors, behind.

It is often hard to muster up much sympathy for the venture capitalists that fund all of the startups popping up in silicon valley and elsewhere. But their money keeps the system running smoothly. If they don’t see a fair return based on the risk they are bearing (most startups fail outright and are a write off), that well oiled machine could come to a grinding halt.

In this case its not clear that investors were treated unfairly. They did get double their money back for a six month investment, after all. But the Parakey acquisition is an important data point that will be considered by others in the future. Just because Facebook comes knocking on your door doesn’t mean its going to be a big payday for everyone involved.

GarageSeek Rates Mechanics, But Yelp Will Kill This Category Too

It seems like every time you turn around there’s another site out there trying to help you rate this, that, or the other thing. There’s Rapleaf (people), StreetAdvisor (neighborhood), YourStreet (neighborhood), SodaRatings (soda), and the list goes on (we wrote about Urbanspoon yesterday). Now there’s a new one in private beta, GarageSeek, for rating mechanic’s garages in your area.

With GarageSeek users will be able to share their experiences with mechanics and rate them on several different metrics. When live, the site will provide a potentially very useful service, the ability to check reviews and avoid hiring a shoddy mechanic. However, while a complete database of real reviews is useful, a lot of review verticals don’t offer a real reason to contribute when they start and fragment reviews across multiple domain names users may not care to remember.

Yelp largely solved the chicken and egg problem that comes with user review services, even if they allegedly paid users for reviews to start. They raised over $16 million and generated traction on the service through having a system seeded with content, rewarding top users with over-the-top parties, and focusing on a service that a wide variety of people use frequently, restaurants. The other large people-driven review site, Insiderpages, had the advantage of $9 million in financing and starting back in 2004. Despite this, Insiderpages went through a slew of layoff and eventually sold off to CitySearch for $13 million.

Yelp is already in the auto repair category, and is poised to expose their audience to other review verticals as well. They’ve already moved into non-geographical service reviews such as media outlets. The one question these review verticals need to ask themselves is “Can niche vertical review sites survive up against one general review site, Yelp or otherwise”? My feeling is no.

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