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Posts Tagged ‘yahoo-messenger’

RadiusIM, the New York-based startup behind the eponymous location-aware instant messaging service, is actively trying to find a buyer, we’ve confirmed with multiple sources. We first caught wind of the company back in August 2006, and dubbed it ‘another proximity-based IM service’.

The company is not too shy about e-mailing all the usual suspects to see if they’d be interested in acquiring them outright, so either they wanted this to become public knowledge and we’re helping them, or they’re so desperate to find someone to take the service off their hands that they really had no other option left but to contact anyone who could be potentially interested by e-mail. Or both, of course.

RadiusIM bills itself as a social IM service. It’s a web-based application that enables people to communicate with their contacts on instant messaging networks such as Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, AIM, Google Talk and Facebook Chat.

The startup saw early on that there would be demand for location-awareness features in communication services and made it possible for users to see where their friends were hanging out and meet new people based on their own geographical location.

Alas, apparently there wasn’t enough traction or enough interested advertisers to make the venture viable, so the company is resorting to e-mailing potential buyers to take over the service and its existing user base (they claim to have over 1 million registered users who have, according to their website, sent almost 2 billion messages to each other since its inception).

We’ve contacted the company for confirmation and/or more information, and will update when we hear back. But radiusIM is now officially on deadpool watch.

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I’m tired. Very tired. It’s a little after 4am San Francisco time – noon GMT – and I’m sitting in the arrivals lounge Heathrow airport, thanking the lord for Boingo hotspots and trying to commit these few hundred words to cyberspace before the daylight finally penetrates my brain and my whole body goes into jet-lag meltdown.

And to think I was so organised 24 hours ago. My column was written – 1000 words on a big subject of the week; a big subject that I now can’t talk about, for reasons I also can’t talk about. Don’t ask.

Still, I’m a professional and there’s no use crying over spilt milk – I’ve spent five pounds on a coffee, opened a fresh Google Document and am all set to write am alternative column on  how happy I am to be back in London, and how excited I am for the opportunity to catch up with all the amazing and inspiring start-ups my erstwhile home has to offer.

But therein lies the problem. While I’m certainly happy to be here – it’s my 30th birthday tomorrow, and there is a party planned – the truth is, I’m just not all that excited about London’s current crop of dot com hopefuls.

When I moved to San Francisco at the start of the year, I promised myself I’d head back to the old country twice a year – mainly to keep my cynicism topped up and to make sure I didn’t lose the accent that your American women find so endearing. But also for a third, more serious reason: I don’t want to forget my roots. The London technology scene is where I cut my columnising teeth, and it’s Brit entrepreneurs that first inspired me to try – and fail – my hand at building a start-up. Whereas Valley entrepreneurs point to Facebook and Google as their inspirations, mine came in the form of Moo, Last.fm and Bebo. Smaller fish perhaps, but each with a uniquely British vibe that somehow made them more fun; more human. Also – say what you like about San Francisco as a technology hub, but the London scene’s parties shit all over the rest of the world.

But recently something has changed. I noticed it when I last visited back in June and, in what turned out to be my penultimate column for the Guardian, I  called time of death on London’s start-up scene. Everyone was running out of money, I said, people were getting laid off in their droves, and all the real action is – as ever – in San Francisco. Two days later, Guardian Tech’s freelance budget ran out of money, my column was laid off and I was hired by TechCrunch in San Francisco. QED.

And since then London has only become less relevant as a home for dynamic exciting start-ups. Take ‘Silicon Roundabout’. Last year, Dopplr co-founder Matt Biddulph noticed that a number of high profile start-ups – including Moo, Last.fm, and of course Dopplr – were all based within walking distance of the old street roundabout in East London. He jokingly suggested that the region be renamed ‘Silicon Roundabout’. Today the Old Street roundabout remains but Dopplr – and Biddulph – have left for Berlin, Last.fm is owned by CBS in New York and Moo has just opened a US base of operations in Providence, Rhode Island. A similar story is true right across the Capital, with Bebo laying off almost all of its local staff and countless other London 2.0 poster children looking to the US for money or a new base of operations. The idea that a company can thrive – or even survive – in London alone seems entirely implausible; ridiculous even.  Off the top of my head I can’t think of a single exciting web business that has come out of the UK in the past six months. Spotify is the nearest candidate and that was created by Swedes.

Moreover, in the few short months since my last trip back home I’ve gone utterly native in my attitude towards my homeland. I see plenty of my Brit friends when they visit San Francisco, but rather than asking for news from the old country, I’m more likely to ask them when they’re going to come to their senses and move to the Valley. I still visit TechCrunch Europe several times a week – Mike Butcher always does a solid job at covering what’s going on over here – but even there I’ve noticed a curious change in my attitude to what I read. Where once I read TCEU through the eyes of a local – noting new companies and inwardly congratulating the latest Belgian company to secure funding – I now look at European technology news in the way American news channels cover foreign stories about escaped bears. Not to learn anything useful, but rather to amuse myself on how parochial foreigners can be. Oh, bless, the French have launched their own rival to Facebook. Ho ho ho.

Things have got so bad that I’ve even started to mentally turn on my friends who are still toiling away near Old Street. A couple of days ago, one such friend – who I won’t name, sufficed to say he’s CEO of a hot London start-up – emailed me an amazing screed in response to a post by one of my TC colleagues hyping a Valley-based rival. The thrust of my friend’s complaint was that his company has been virtually ignored by TechCrunch.com even though TechCrunch Europe had hailed it as one of the continent’s rising stars. This disparity he blamed on the fact that TechCrunch (US) is only interested in local companies, created by people who happen to be friends of our writers. Six months ago, I’d have agreed with him – I mean, there really no need for ten thousand Pandora stories for every Last.fm post, or four hundred Foursquare plugs for every mention of Rummble. But on reading my friend’s email this week, my first response wasn’t sympathy, but apathy. Mate – I thought – that’s just the way it is. TechCrunch is based in San Francisco and so are most of the companies TechCrunch covers. Those are the rules of the game. If you don’t like it, stop whining and get on a fucking plane.

But the fact is, my friend is right; and I’m wrong. There are hundreds of amazing technology companies outside of the Valley, many of which haven’t taken a penny of American money and are making money hand over fist without a single San Francisco-based user. Just read a couple of Lacy’s recent dispatches from India of China; or week’s worth of TechCrunch Europe posts and you’ll see that’s true. The problem – my problem – is that living in the Valley has it easy to forget, or care, about them. The skin of the bubble is just too thick and the voices from Europe (and beyond) just too faint and distant.

And so I’ve taken my own advice and got on a fucking plane. In the three weeks I’m in town, I’m planning to meet as many UK-based start-ups as possible, to keep half an eye on what comes out of LeWeb next week, to catch up with friends who are still doing cool things near Silicon Roundabout, to re-avail myself of the kick-ass social scene here – and above all to remind myself that the old country is still home to plenty of new thinking. And then at the end of the month, I’ll return to the bubble – re-energised with cynicism and hopefully slightly less convinced that Foursquare represents the most important thing in the future of the world. I mean, everyone here knows that’s Spotify.

But all that will have to wait until next week. I’ve got a birthday to have first – and right now I just need to get some sleep.

Hello London. And goodnight.

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Video Professor is trying to raise $10 million in convertible debt, according to an investor pitch document that was forwarded to us. The company “incurred substantial losses which depleted its cash reserves” in 2008, says the document, and is looking to use the new money to “retire its line of credit, purchase media, build strategic alliances, finalize the technical development and launch of the e-commerce platform and accelerate growth.”

The company’s product offering was one of the scams we called on in our ScamVille posts. The company lures in potential customers by offering free learning CDs. But they are then billed up to $290 for products they never intended to buy. We outlined how the scam works here, and also point to a number of other sites with thousands of consumer complaints.

According to a revenue chart, revenues for the company peaked in 2006 at around $135 million, but dropped to under $80 million in 2007 and were just $40 million in 2008. Projected 2009 revenues are nearly $100 million.

“VPI’s competitive advantage is the superior quality of its learning programs, its use of subject matter experts, and the trusted relationship that the brand has earned with consumers,” says the document. It fails to point out the hugely negative reviews and complaints in this article as well as Amazon and epinions.

The document also boasts:

STRONG BRAND EQUITY

Having maintained the longest running direct response marketing campaign in the history of television, the VIDEO PROFESSOR™ brand is highly recognized in both consumer and commercial markets with millions of satisfied customers. VPI has supplied computer learning to over 20 million unique customers, many of whom have
purchased multiple learning titles.

And to all those 20 million “customers” who’ve already been scammed one time by Video Professor: look out, they’re coming back for another dip at the well:

VALUABLE CONSUMER DATA

VPI has contact information for tens of millions of consumers who have responded to VPI’s offer to, as the commercials say, “Try My Product.” VPI has judiciously protected consumer information and has not allowed other marketers access to this valuable database. This consumer data, combined with the data mining technologies embedded in the new VideoProfessor.com, provide a valuable source of new revenue.

The complete document is below:

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There appears to be a good old bidding war going on for another VoIP startup, Jajah, following yesterday’s news about the acquisition of Gizmo5 by Google, a source in Silicon Valley with knowledge of the talks informs us.

Details are scarce at the moment, but Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Telefónica Europe (O2) are said to be looking to buy the venture capital-backed company for a price ranging from $200M to $400M. We’re digging for more information.

Jajah was founded back in 2005 and in March 2006 introduced the world to a pretty decent consumer service that allowed cellphone users access Jajah’s low-cost calling system through their mobile devices, over the Web. Jajah went on to raise $28 million in VC funding from investors like Sequoia Capital, Globespan Capital Partners, Deutsche Telekom and Intel.

The Skype rival amassed about 10 million users when in April 2008 they announced a deal that would bring its premium voice services to nearly 100 million Yahoo Messenger users more. The deal proved crucial for Jajah, which connected its 1 billionth call last Summer. And that was before it turned to Twitter to spread the voice service even more.

Jajah says it currently serves over 25 million consumers and business callers in more than 122 countries, and provides calling access to more than 200 destinations globally. It’s unclear how much revenue it is generating from these users, but it’s apparently enough – or has enough potential to scale and grow – to make for an interesting strategical acquisition target for companies with deep enough pockets to engage in a bidding war.

It’s odd to see O2 mentioned as one of the companies who’s sitting at the negotiation tables, and I consider Microsoft and Cisco to be more likely buyers. Both of them sit on heaps of cash and are undeniably acquisition-hungry, and Redmond has the added benefit of having entered into a partnership with Jajah on enterprise IP communication solutions.

The price range seems to be on the high end, but that’s what happens when a bidding war goes the way the company that’s on the table (and its financial backers) would want it to go.

We’re cataloging this as a solid, plausible rumor for now and will update with more information / confirmation as soon as it comes in.

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When I first covered imo.im back in February, I wrote it was one of the best Web apps for instant messaging you’d likely never heard of, and chances are you’ve forgotten all about it since then. To be honest, so had I, but the team got in touch last week to let us know it had added some useful new features to the service over the past few months and that we should give it another look. We aim to please, so here goes.

Imo.im is a multi-network IM tool, which means you can use it to log on to multiple messaging services like Windows Live Messenger / MSN, AIM / ICQ, MySpace, Yahoo Messenger, Jabber, Gtalk and even Skype and get a single, complete contact list from inside your browser and chat with people on your list using text, voice or video. It also boasts a basic desktop client, which is unfortunately still Windows-only.

Recently, imo.im added Facebook Chat to its list of supported IM services, which was about the only one it sorely lacked when I first wrote about the app. Now that its supports chat sessions with your Facebook friends as well, it’s more than ever a close competitor to better-known startups who offer web-based IM clients like Meebo and eBuddy Webmessenger. And it supports Skype chat in addition to the classic ones, which – correct me if I’m wrong – I have yet to see integrated in any other web-based application (note that apps for mobile devices like fring and Nimbuzz support Skype chat).

Also new in imo.im is a ‘broadcast’ feature that allows users to send free messages out to other imo.im users (e.g. job openings, chat invitations, etc.) and a complementary photo sharing service that allows people to share images with other users across all networks. Finally, the startup is experimenting with a ‘whiteboard’ feature that enables users to work on diagrams, drawings and more with each other. Next up: perfecting the service’s search and chat history functionality.

Also on the roadmap is an iPhone application, which the startup aims to put up on the App Store in the coming weeks (we’ll be watching).

The company, which was co-founded by Georges Harik – one of the first 10 employees at Google and manager of several of its early products – claims it has so far attracted half a million users to try out its service even though it’s still in alpha mode looking at the logo.

Give it a whirl – no registration or download required – and tell us what you think.

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AOL has been seriously testing lifestreaming in various betas for AIM and AIM Connect for a few months now. At TechCrunch50, AOL just announced that lifestreaming will come out of beta on September 22 and will be part of the AIM product portfolio across Windows, Macs, the Web, iPhones and Windows Mobile.

Last week, the paid version of AIM for the iPhone was updated with lifestreaming capabilities. Today, lifestreaming is coming out of beta across AIM 7 for Windows, AIM for Mac, AIM for the Web, and AIM for Windows Mobile.

The lifestream is AOL’s way of melding instant messaging with social streams from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube Digg, and Flickr. Initially it was just one-way, but recently AOL turned on two-way communications for Twitter and Facebook in the AIM beta so that you can update your status on those two services from within AIM. The beta is being used by about 150,000 people. On September 22, those features will be rolled out across the entire AIM user base.

David Liu, the senior vice-president who’s been leading the lifestreaming charge within AOL, notes that on average users in the AIM 7 beta send 20 percent more IMs than other users. The increased engagement is partly because the lifestream draws them in and gives them another reason to open the app. But the new AIM is also far zippier. “It is faster and lighter than all the major competitors via lab testing,” claims Liu (the competitors being Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, and Skype).

As part of the launch, AIM Connect will also be integrated with AddThis across all AOL Media sites to hook back into their lifestreams on AIM, so that they can share content and web pages with their AIM buddies.

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Myriad Group, one of the largest mobile technology software companies, with over 2 billion devices, has announced today that it has acquired Xumii, a company that provides mobile social networks. Financial information was not disclosed, but Myriad Group stated that the acquisition was asset based.

Using a cloud computing architecture, Xumii integrates a mobile user’s phone contacts, social networks and instant messaging services into a single “social phonebook”. Mobile users can then simultaneously access Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, AIM, Windows Live and other popular Internet services, sending messages, updating status and sharing photos and videos.

Xumii released an iPhone application back in February, that lets users have a mobile social address book that connects to AIM, Flickr, and other networks. This seems like a great fit for both companies, considering Myriad Group already provides software to all of the major phone manufacturers, as well as more than 30 mobile operators across the globe. Having Xumii’s technology with Myriad Group’s also established relationships with mobile operators makes this a perfect opportunity. Xumii’s 17 employees will be moving to Myriad Group as part of the acquisition.

Xumii is based in San Mateo, Calif. and Sydney, Australia, and has raised $5.5 million from CM Capital and Southern Cross Venture Partners in September 2008.

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When you are late to the game, trying to rename it doesn’t win you any points. Today, Yahoo announced that it is finally adding basic status updates to its Mail and Messenger products, which it is calling “status-casting.” In both Yahoo Mail and Messenger 10, you can update your status and all of your contacts who also use either of those two products can see your updates. You can also choose to see your friends’ updates from a variety of social media sites across the Web—such as Yelp, YouTube, and Twitter— right in your Mail homepage or IM stream.

Yahoo is making its communications products more social by combining private and public message streams in much the same way that AOL added lifestreaming to AIM last month. (That’s right, AOL beat Yahoo to this feature set by more than a month).

On the one hand, Yahoo wants to use the popularity of Yahoo Mail (which is the No. 1 Web mail service with 300 million people using it worldwide) to get into the micro-messaging game. Just like it did with Yahoo profiles at the beginning of the year, you can now add 140-character updates via Yahoo Mail to other people on Yahoo. It also lets you and keep track of what your contacts are doing across other social sites. These appear under a new updates section on the Yahoo Mail landing page.

Yahoo Messenger lets you do the same things—create updates across your Yahoo network and see updates from your IM buddies happening elsewhere. But it doesn’t appear to be a two-way connection. You can read your friends’ updates on Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, and elsewhere, but you can’t always reply from within Yahoo Messenger or Mail so that your reply appears back in the original service. If you want to respond to a friend’s Tweet, you can IM them back with a copy of their Tweet attached, but you can’t simply generate a new Tweet in response like any Twitter client could.

It’s not really status-casting, or whatever you want to call it, unless you can broadcast your status back across non-Yahoo services.

(Photo credit: Flickr/Andrew Sea)

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In the two months since Microsoft launched Bing, its new search engine has taken nearly a full point in market share in the U.S. But overseas, the Bing effect is not really being felt yet. The latest global search market share numbers (as opposed to U.S.) from comScore show Microsoft’s share of search queries actually declining by 0.1 percent in between June and July to 2.9 percent. (See chart below).

Maybe this is because most of Bing’s $100 million marketing budget is being spent in the U.S., and that is driving much of the initial market share movement we are seeing here. Microsoft’s global market share is also so much smaller than its 8.9 percent share in the U.S., so making serious inroads overseas will take much longer.

Meanwhile, Google gained 0.4 percent to end July with 67.5 percent global share, compared to Yahoo’s 7.8 percent (which was also down 0.1 percent month over month). Yahoo and Microsoft combined have 10.7 percent share of searches worldwide.

(Table courtesy of Christa Quarles at Thomas Weisel Partners)

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In a move that will appeal to many of its Apple-loving users, Nimbuzz has simultaneously launched an updated iPhone / iPod Touch application and a shiny new desktop client for Macs. The company offers a social messenger service that lets people access IM and social networks with one set of credentials from a single location and thus competes with a slew of other companies on both the mobile and desktop front.

Nimbuzz has released a new version of its iPhone application (iTunes link), which has already proven to be quite a hit on the platform: the app has consistently done well on App Store ranking charts in a wide variety of countries worldwide. In the startup’s home turf The Netherlands as well as in France, Nimbuzz claims 1 out of 5 iPhone or iPod Touch owners have installed and use the tool on a regular basis.

The new version of the app brings file-sharing in the cloud capabilities, VoIP calling on a range of IM networks (both over Wi-Fi and 3G) and push notification with home screen alerts of both incoming calls or chats through Nimbuzz or third-party networks like Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk. Finally, the iPhone app now boasts location-awareness, which allows Nimbuzz contacts to share and retrieve their physical locations on a Google map.

The Mac desktop client is nothing spectacular but it doesn’t hurt to have another decent, good-looking IM and social network aggregator application for Apple computers. The unified app supports connections via Facebook, AIM, MySpace, Google Talk (Orkut), Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger (MSN), ICQ and more. Nimbuzz says its product for Mac is the only IM product to provide high-quality VoIP calling direct from the desktop among IM buddies on Nimbuzz and the more popular IM networks.

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