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Posts Tagged ‘provider’

2009 TechCrunch50 winner Redbeacon, a service that pairs consumers with service providers, is releasing a number of new features today, launching a distribution relationship and sharing key data from their beta trial. The 50,000 foot view is, this startup has legs.

Users go to Redbeacon and search for real world service providers (housekeepers, plumbers, handyman, personal trainers, etc.). The service sends you firm quotes from local service providers, based on price and other factors, such as previous reviews and expertise with the specific job you want done. You can book an appointment online, and Redbeacon takes a 10% fee from the service provider.

The service first went live in the San Francisco bay area in October, and now has thousands of local service providers.

Most queries receive firm quotes within an hour, they say, and many get quotes within minutes. 100% of queries have received firm quotes, and “a very high percentage” of users are then booking appointments, says cofounder Ethan Anderson.

But the beta period has given the company much needed feedback, too. Service provider profiles need to have a lot more information, they say, for users to feel comfortable booking with them (and perhaps bringing them into their home). So the company has greatly expanded profiles to give that information. Redbeacon has also created better tools to allow users and providers to communicate before, during and after a job.

User can now upload more information on a job, such as a picture of the problem (a hole in the wall for a handyman, etc.). That leads to more and better quotes, says Anderson.

New Features, New Deal

Today Redbeacon is adding a social feature to the product that allows users to ask friends about which quotes they should accept, or to recommend different providers. They’re doing this through Facebook Connect, and allowing users to post their questions directly onto Facebook. This has the added benefit of viral marketing, of course.

Recent studies have shown that people love to ask their friends for advice when it comes to buying goods and services, and the success of services like Aardvark, which allow exactly that, aren’t surprising.

Redbeacon is also adding organization memberships and badges for services providers (BBB, etc.). This gives extra assurance to users that the provider is legitimate.

First Distribution Deal

Redbeacon is also announcing their first third party distribution deal, with Bigtent. These deals push the Redbeacon product directly into third party sites in exchange for a revenue share with the partner. Look for more of these over time, says Anderson.

The Value In Redbeacon: Real Reviews

Redbeacon provides a valuable service that blows away things like the Yellow Pages. But there’s also a hidden gem – the service knows for sure when a transaction occurs, so a review by a user is going to be legitimate. All those problems with fake review on Yelp will be avoided on Redbeacon.

Redbeacon pulls in review from Yelp, Google, etc. as well. But over time the review data they gather will be far more valuable than those services, simply because of verified transactions.

What’s most amazing about Redbeacon is that the startup has held off on raising any outside capital at all until now, despite a feeding frenzy around the company (multiple venture capitalists and angel investors have begged us for introductions over the last few months). I’d imagine that fast will soon be over. Now’s the time to raise a good round of financing and push Redbeacon to multiple markets beyond the bay area.

Yesterday brought news that Facebook is planning to launch its location offering at its f8 conference in the end of April. In first reporting the news, the New York Times noted that “the company was not trying to beat the smaller location-based social networks, such as Loopt, Foursquare and Gowalla.” From what we’re hearing, that’s true — because they could be using some of those services to federate check-ins.

How do we know? Because it appears that a Facebook employee has been showing the app around to friends. One person who has seen it notes that the icon for the location feature has a pushpin on a map. This was apparently a beta version of an app, but the functionality, if Facebook chooses to go with it, would likely be built into the massively popular Facebook iPhone app.

When reached for comment, all Facebook would say is, “We are constantly experimenting with new ideas and products internally. We don’t have anything more to share at this time.” That’s not exactly a denial at all.

What Foursquare and Gowalla (the two location apps specifically cited by a source) had to say was more interesting. Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley danced around the idea of working with Facebook on such a feature, but notes that anyone can access their check-in data through Foursquare’s API. And in fact, plenty of users are already pushing their check-ins to Facebook through Connect, he notes. Also, this page is sort of interesting. It’s what we call a placeholder.

Meanwhile, Gowalla founder Josh Williams said a bit more:

It’s no surprise that Facebook is wading into the location waters (cannonball!) — our ultimate goal at Gowalla is to provide the easiest and most fun way to share location with friends, regardless of where that information is distributed… Facebook, Twitter, etc. It will be important for folks like Facebook and Twitter to clearly spell out how this information is used and displayed.

That suggests that both Facebook and Twitter have been looking at ways to import check-in data. Twitter already syndicates the data through its Geolocation API, but as more and more players get involved in the space, it wouldn’t be surprising at all for the upstart players like Gowalla and Foursquare to ask the platforms (Facebook and Twitter) to make it more clear which data is being sent from where. And make no mistake, based on what we’re hearing, that’s exactly what Facebook aims to be with location: a platform. Yes, like their good buddies Twitter.

[photo: flickr/24oranges.nl]

Last night a bunch of us from TechCrunch went to see the midnight first showing of Avatar. Sure, we’re hosting a screening in San Francisco today at 4, but we just wanted to see it right then.

Verdict: Flawless. Epic. Awesome. I can’t wait to see it again in three hours.

We’re pleased to announce that all attendees will get a medium popcorn and medium soda free of charge, thanks to our four sponsors:

Building43 – A great resource for learning about how to leverage the web’s newest tools.

Mashery – A powerful API management service.

Kontera – Provider of in-text advertising generated based on the content around it.

SingleFeed – Helps retailers manage product listings on multiple shopping sites through one feed.

The tickets for the screening tonight are long gone, and we have a short waitlist (most of the waitlist should get in). But just for fun we’re giving away five last tickets. Want one? Just tell us a joke (we need a good laugh right now). Just type it in, link to a video, or whatever. Whoever is funniest gets the tickets. We’ll pick the winners at 2.

Here’s one of my favorite all time:

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Google is obsessed with speed. By many accounts its Chrome web browser is already the fastest out there, and it runs laps around the two big boys: Firefox and IE. But that’s not good enough for Google. And so now they’re also working on their own web content transportation protocol.

To be clear, despite some of the wording ins its blog post, SPDY (pronounced “speedy”) isn’t about fully replacing HTTP, the standard web protocol since 1996, but it is about augmenting it, to make delivery faster. How much faster? After doing some initial internal tests with Chrome, Google claims that the top 25 websites in the world can load up to 55% faster with SPDY.

Of course, as Google notes, those tests were done in Google’s labs, likely under optimal conditions. SPDY in an average home during daily use may produce different results. But again, this protocol is still very young, so it’s entirely possible that things could get even faster. To that end, Google is asking for the development community’s help. They’ve posted some early documentation and code samples, hoping for feedback.

In the docs, Google lays out the difference between HTTP and SPDY:

SPDY is intended to be as compatible as possible with current web-based applications. This means that, from the perspective of the server business logic or application API, nothing has changed. To achieve this, all of the application request and response header semantics are preserved.  SPDY introduces a “session” which resides between the HTTP application layer and the TCP transport to regulate the flow of data. This “session” is akin to an HTTP request-response pair.

I reached out to Google just to confirm that they weren’t going to try and do something completely crazy like change the “http://” we all know and love with “spdy://”, don’t worry, they’re not. As stated above, SPDY will create a session of sorts that resides between HTTP and the data transportation.

What will be interesting about this protocol is if it’s optimized for Chrome over the other web browsers. It would seem Google wouldn’t do that, since its ultimate goal is to have people using the web through any means as quickly as they can (so as best to serve their ads more often). But when you’re developing both a protocol and a browser, it seems likely that Google will have an advantage to offer the best experience.

A few startups are also working on ways to deliver web content faster. One, FasterWeb, which we covered in July, is hoping to improve web surfing speeds tenfold next year. Their approach is different, optimizing content on the provider or ISP end.

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Last year, there was a lot of coverage of Google striking a deal with satellite imagery company GeoEye to be able to use the high resolution images from its new GeoEye-1 satellite for their Google Earth and Maps products. The exclusive deal saw Google shift away from its partnership with rival DigitalGlobe, which provides many of Google’s rivals with imagery. Now, it looks like Google is back on board with a new DigitalGlobe satellite.

In a post today on its Lat Long Blog, Google reveals that DigitalGlobe has just launched their next-generation satellite dubbed WorldView-2 (no idea if this is to one-up GeoEye-1), and that the company will be getting new imagery from it. In the post, Google notes that it works “directly with several commercial satellite imaging providers.” Presumably, that means the deal with GeoEye is still in place, and now Google has found itself on yet another state-of-the-art satellite that peers down on all of us, gathering data.

Now, the government has regulations on just how closely Google and these companies can look (mostly because the government itself wants to be the only ones that can see really, really close up on us). But still, this is starting to get mildly creepy. I’d love to know how many satellites they are using up there to get their imagery.

It was recently revealed that Google was breaking away from TeleAtlas as the provider of its mapping data in the U.S. (though it is supposedly still using it for some other parts of the world). One reason they can do that is because they now have so much data from this satellite imagery (as well as their Street View imagery).

Is it tin hat time yet?

Watch the WorldView-2 launch below.

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Well this is interesting. Fresh off a wave of good karma following the revelation that it was not behind blocking Google Voice on the iPhone, AT&T appears to be looking to draw the ire of consumers with regards to the service once again. The telco giant has sent a letter (attached below) to the FCC asking them to investigate Google Voice. Yes, you read that right. But this actually goes much deeper than that. Once again, this is about net neutrality.

While AT&T may have not blocked Google Voice from being on the iPhone, it clearly does not like the service (no surprise there). From AT&T’s letter:

According to Google, non-discrimination ensures that a provider “cannot block fair access” to another provider.9  But that is exactly what Google is doing when it blocks calls that Google Voice customers make to telephone numbers associated with certain local exchange carriers.

Yes, AT&T is calling out Google for violating net neutrality principles.

Here’s where this gets pretty interesting. AT&T is really upset because they tried to do the same thing a couple years ago. Back in 2007, AT&T and the other telecos were trying to block access to some rural phone customers because the giants felt local carrier fees were too high, WSJ reports. Google has acknowledged that it does block some access, but says that it’s to things like adult voice lines. That’s obviously a big difference, but AT&T is claiming that Google doing exactly what it was banned from doing by the FCC two years ago. From Reuters:

AT&T cited media reports that Google Voice was blocking some calls to phone numbers in certain rural areas in order to cut down on expenses. Phone companies are banned from blocking calls.

And so now we’re stuck with the rather humorous situation where AT&T is playing the net neutrality card. Of course, what’s hilarious here is that AT&T (and Verizon) just got done saying that net neutrality should not apply to wireless communications mere days ago.

AT&T is trying to argue there’s a difference between regular Internet net neutrality and wireless net neutrality, but that’s garbage. More and more, the lines are blurring with the way people access the web. Sure, it used to the case that people used wireless lines only for phone calls and text messages, but the rapid rise of smartphones and other mobile devices that use things like AT&T’s 3G wireless cards have changed everything.

Meanwhile Google, a huge proponent of net neutrality, also appears to be going against it in this case. What a mess. Both of these companies need to realize that you can’t be selectively for and against net neutrality.

Update: Google has responded on its public policy blog. Basically, they are saying that software should not have to be regulated by net neutrality rules, despite what AT&T says. Interesting, but it seems that Google Voice is going well beyond the range of your typical software. We’ll have more on this shortly.

ATT Letter to FCC on Google Voice v7 clean –

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One nice feature of the Twitter web app Brizzly is that it has an explanation for why each trending topic on Twitter is popular at any given moment. And because these explanations are user-editable, they’re always up to date. Now Brizzly wants to share that data with the launch of “Let’s Be Trends,” its trending topic API.

The idea is to have other Twitter third-party developers use this data in their apps. Let’s Be Trends features both “current trends” and “get trend” actions that will allow apps to call the most recent popular topics on Twitter as well as the explanation for any one trend upon search, respectively.

“Brizzly users are coming up with awesome explanations,” co-founder Jason Shellen tells us. He wouldn’t share any exact stats for how often users update these trending topic explanations, but says they do so “quickly.” Quite vague, but based on my own usage of the site, it certainly seems true.

While landing third party apps for this data would be great, the big fish to catch, obviously, would be Twitter. Currently, it uses the third-party service “What The Trend?” to display information about trending topics. Right now, it only shows that information on the main Twitter homepage when you’re logged out, but it has been rolling out showing the data across the site. When that happens, the provider of that data should be in very good shape.

Brizzly, which is a product under Shellen’s Thing Labs, has been steadily rolling out improvements as it nears a public launch.

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Mental illness is a more common affliction in society than most people think. But, many people are embarrassed to admit and confront their mental illness. According to TechCrunch50 startup BreakThrough, one in four American adults have a mental illness but two-thirds of Americans don’t get proper treatment. BreakThrough hopes to provide an easy and private way to connect mental health providers with clients for therapy via video, phone or the web through their newly launched platform.

On BreakThrough’s site, clients can search for providers (including psychiatrists, psychologists and nurses) on a variety of criteria, including price, speciality (i.e. depression, schizophrenia, post traumatic stress disorder), and gender. On a provider’s page you can see his or her education, experience, pricing for services, the insurance the professional accepts, and even a video introduction of the provider explaining his or her specialities. BreakThrough certifies all providers are credentialed professionals.

If you find a provider that suits your needs, you can see available appointments and schedule an appointment to chat via video chat (via Skype), email or the phone. And you can remain anonymous throughout the process; all you need is an email address to participate in the site. The virtue of BreakThrough is in this anonymity—people may be embarrassed to publicly acknowledge their potential mental illnesses to the public and the site gives people a way to do this in the comfort of their own home.

Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased)

The experts: Satish Dharmaraj, Lior Zorea, Bradley Horowitz, Tim O’Reilly, Kevin Rose

KR: Is anyone else doing this?

A: There are advice platforms, but they don’t have licensed providers. Some platforms don’t have the technology.

TO: How do you get therapists to participate?

A: We have a log of providers who are interested.

TO: How do you qualify them?

A: We only get licenses medical therapists and make sure to authenticate all professionals.

LZ: On the trust side, I’m worried that these are personal issues. Why would you log on to the internet? Also there is a liability issue with fraud, malpractice.

A: We aren’t trying to replace in person treatment.

BH: Is there something sad about this?

A: It’s asking a lot for someone with depression to admit to this publicly. Ten years ago, this would have been a concern. But now we do so much online.

TO: Advice-you might consider working with employee assistance programs.

SD: Do shrinks learn from body language?

A: Yes, shrinks prefer video chat. But therapists can also tell a lot from phone.

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Other Coverage:

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Now more than ever, personal finance education and help is crucial to anyone’s financial health. Mint.com, a former TechCrunch 40 company who won the top prize at the conference, has grown incredibly since its launch and was recently acquired by Intuit for $170 million. TechCrunch50 startup LearnVest is serving a different purpose when it comes to online finances; the startup focuses on helping users, particularly women, organize their finances and learn how to become financially savvy. It’s kind of like the online version of financial planner Suze Orman.

When you first log in to LearnVest, the site will ask you a series of questions about your financial health (i.e. how much credit card debt do you have), you life stages (i.e. do you rent, are you planning a family soon, do you own a house) and your financial education level (i.e. have you checked your credit score lately). LearnVest will use all this information to diagnose your financial health and education level and will then give you a snapshot of what you need to learn and improve.

LearnVest will then give you a customized plan of things you need to do to do and read via a checklist. Sort of like a cheat sheet, the checklist will help you navigate a range of issues such as getting out of credit card debt, budgeting for a wedding, buying a house and much more. As you complete the tasks on the list, you check off each box and earn points for your improvements. Points will give you status in LearnVest’s community and you can eventually trade in points for rewards.

As you keep logging on to LearnVest, the site will be completely customized for your financial profile, providing you with news articles that relate to your specific financial goals. LearnVest also aims to be a social community of sorts, where users can ask questions on discussion forums to other users and to experts as well, although I’m not sure how many women will want to share their financial woes with others.

Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased)

The experts: Satish Dharmaraj, Lior Zorea, Bradley Horowitz, Tim O’Reilly, Kevin Rose

BH: This didn’t resonate with me. I don’t know any one who wants to do gaming on this site.

KR: I don’t think people will want to admit to debt with a profile.

A: we are going after targeted audience, there’s no resource online for financial advice. financial services online for women is a huge market and need.

LZ: I like the financial education part of this. I think it will be hard to get people to stay.

A: You can open accounts through us, you can execute as well. We are learning from uur user’s behavior. Currently, there is no one helping women forecast their financial future. LearnVest stops this problem.

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Other Coverage:
TC50: LearnVest walks users through life’s financial milestones VentureBeat.

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Online event planning and invitation platform Evite was on the forefront of innovation—ten years ago. TechCrunch50 startup Cocodot is hoping to be the Evite of this generation of web technology, serving a style-conscious, eco-friendly event platform that people and brands can use to create an online presence for celebrations.

Cocodot’s platform, which is targeted towards women, is a one-stop-shop for event planning and invitations. You can create a high resolution, chic, stylish invitation (that can be printed as well), a vertical event pages, guest management tools, seating charts, and a directory for event planning vendors. When you create event, you can build an event homepage that aims to be a social conversation hub. Once you create an invitation, you can import your contact lists from Yahoo, Gmail, AOL and other contact managers and email services. Cocodot also lets you send links to the event homepage and invitation to Facebook, directly from the platform.

Cocodot is also getting into the online greeting space, letting user create a simple “happy birthday” or “Thank you” online card. The graphics and styles are actually pretty impressive. Users can adjust color and text, move the graphics and text and even offers a “copy concierge” to help people think of thoughtful sayings.

Unsurprisingly, Cocodot is going after the wedding industry by providing high-end printable online invitations and a event management platform. Cocodot also lets you embed custom event widgets on other sites and features a variety of design-friendly templates. Cocodot plans to make money from subscriptions and per use fees and will sell virtual goods. The startup is also positioning itself to be eco-friendly, by saving paper from sending out invitations. Cocodot will make money via ad revenue, premium features, virtual gifts and through product lines and licensing designs.

Cocodot was launched by former MySpace CMO Shawn Gold and raised just under $1 million of seed funding earlier this summer from investors like Anthem Venture Partners and William Morris’ Mail Room Fund.

Cocodot is similar to Pinng, which we wrote about here.

Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased)

The experts: Satish Dharmaraj, Lior Zorea, Bradley Horowitz, Tim O’Reilly, Kevin Rose

BH: I don’t want to like this but I think the world needs this. The exisiting invitation tools are not sufficient and this could take off.

TO: You think about a company like Hallmark, its a huge business opportunity, and I think you are thinking like a business, will probably be successful.

SD: I think you should try to differentiate yourself a little more. What happens after the event is booked?

LZ: I like what you guys are doing. How do you get consumer mind share out ther for the product, particularly in teh case of weddings.

A: Every invitation is virally marketed because its branded with Cocodut. We are going to do partnerships with other sites like DailyCandy and pursue a revenue share. We are going after PR agencies and companies that don’t like Evite and are using PDF’s, not taking advantage of he efficiencies in the digital medium.

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Outside Coverage:
Cocodot – For Overdoing Invitations #tc50 techgeist.
Cocodot creates a slicker version of Evite VentureBeat.
TechCrunch50: A ‘Elegant’ Evite and More Subscription Services AppScout.

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