Square: Twitter Co-Founder Launches New Mobile Payment System. Square, a new mobile phone payment system founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, just launched its private beta today. Square will give anybody the ability to accept payment cards without having to go through a costly credit card processing service. Instead, Square will give its users the ability to use their mobile phones, laptops or desktop computers to accept payment cards and swipe them with the help of a small dongle that will plug into the computer's or phone's audio jack. Square is backed by Khosla Ventures and a team of angel investors. Square's team of advisors includes actress Alyssa Milano, Susan Wu, Ryan Gilbert, Ted Wang and Gregg Kid (who was also an angel investor in Twitter). According to the information on Square's website, users won't have to sign any contracts and there won't be any monthly fees or hidden costs.
Square is currently only working with a select group of companies but plans to expand widely in 2010. Disrupting the Credit Card Processing Business. Plancast Is Foursquare… For The Future. If you’re going to leave your job at TechCrunch, you better have a good reason. I think Mark Hendrickson actually may have had one. Hendrickson left TechCrunch in March. After about two years of writing and doing development for TC, he got the startup itch.
He formed a company, Worldly Developments, and along with co-founder Jay Marcyes is now ready to unveil their project: Plancast. As you can derive from the name, Plancast is a way to easily broadcast your plans to your online social circle. Here’s a perfect example: On my main Plancast page right now, I see that Hendrickson, another former TC writer Nick Gonzalez, and current TCer Jason Kincaid are all going to spend the night in the woods together in early December. But it’s not just about events that you need to plan for. He goes on to note that there’s a real void in that particular area, and I agree. The social graph of Plancast is also very simple. And the event creation process is extremely simple. The biggest things last week: Foursquare and Salesforce. One is a huge company that’s well known inside huge enterprises.
The other is a startup with five employees that hardly anyone knows. But they both shifted the world last week in big ways. Note I didn’t put Google’s Chrome OS on this list. Why not? First, lots of people, including most of the Enterprise Irregulars who usually do a bang-up seemed to have missed the real news that Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, announced this week at the TechCrunch Real-Time Crunchup: that Salesforce is going after the whole company, not just the sales people. 1.
How are is Salesforce going to do that? Here’s the quote, I asked him: “Salesforce is only used by a small # of people inside corporations. Now what is Salesforce Chatter? This will be crack for employees. Microsoft’s Sharepoint now has real competition. That brings me to Foursquare (and its VP of business development, Tristan Walker, pictured here). Most people don’t know what Foursquare is yet, so let’s recap. 1. Tumblr Lands $85 Million in Funding.
Over the past few years, Tumblr, a microblogging service, has steadily built a community of fans and users who like the site’s combination of social networking features and simple blogging tools that lets them quickly post photographs, videos, songs, links and bits of text. Now, the company has attracted a slew of venture capitalists who are hoping to capitalize on that popularity. On Monday, the company will announce it raised $85 million in fresh financing. The round was led by Greylock Partners and Insight Venture Partners, and the Chernin Group, Richard Branson, Spark Capital, Union Square Ventures and Sequoia Capital also contributed. To date, the company has raised roughly $40 million in funding. David Karp, who founded the company in 2007, said in a news release that the extra money “allows us to continue to scale our business and give real focus to the further development of Tumblr.” Mr. “Tumblr has come far since we began our journey,” said Mr.
45. Why Reed Hastings Should be Applauded for Netflix Split. By now you probably know that Netflix is splitting its business into two parts: its digital streaming business (retains the name Netflix) and its DVD mailing business, which was its original business (to be called Qwikster). If you haven’t read Reed’s explanation of this split make sure you read it (of course, after you’re done with this post ;-)) —> here. It’s simply brilliant. 1. He acknowledged mistakes in his past communications and apologized 2. He offers a transparent explanation of his business and; 3. [most importantly] – It’s a great strategic decision. With nearly 25 million customers using Netflix it’s clear that everyone will have an opinion on this. If you haven’t read my post on the Future of Television and the Digital Living Room you might enjoy that as a primer.
Frankly, I’m surprised Netflix doesn’t buy Hulu. So why on Earth should Netflix split into two businesses? 1. If you haven’t read his book please do yourself a favor and buy it. 2. 3. 4. And what about streaming?