Techcrunch

Yahoo Search Assist Gets More Local, But Google Gets It Right

As you type into a search box on Yahoo or Google, a list of suggested keywords pops down below to help you complete your search faster. Today, Yahoo turned on a local component to its keyword autocomplete feature. The search assist now serves up different keywords based on your location.

So if you type in “Santa” in northern California, “santa clara county” might be the first suggestion, but if you type it in southern California, “santa barbara” might be first.

Location is often a very relevant way to filter search, so this makes Yahoo’s search assist smarter. But, as with many things Yahoo, it is lagging behind Google with this feature. Google’s search assist also factors in your location. And, from what I can tell, it does it better.

I’ve been trying a few sample local searches, and in every case, it takes Google fewer characters to come up with the right answer. For example, I am in New York, and all I need to do is type the first four letters of Grand Central Station (“gran”) to get that as the top suggestion. With Yahoo, I need to type seven letters, “grand ce,” and complete the first word to get it to be the top suggestion. If I type “gran,” grand central doesn’t even appear as an option. Instead, the top options are “grand ole opry” and “grand canyon,” both thousands of miles away from me. (Not that those are horrible suggestions, they are just not good local suggestions).

I tried the same test with various other keywords. Google beat Yahoo every time. My experience, of course, is merely anecdotal. How does it work for you.

Hey Palm: Take A Deep Breath. Leaks Happen. Be Proud.

Just days ago, Palm revealed a bunch of details surrounding webOS 2.0, which, as the name implies, is an upcoming major update to their webOS platform. Shortly thereafter, they released a big chunk of webOS 2.0 to a small section of their development community as part of a Beta program.

Almost immediately, one of these developers unearthed one little bit that Palm didn’t intend anyone to find: a lingering mention of a virtual keyboard — something which webOS doesn’t have, and that Palm has yet to confirm as a feature.

So, what do you think Palm did? Did they pull the stone-face routine, and say they don’t comment on rumors and speculation? Did they send out an e-mail saying “Hey guys, we gotta be more careful!” and move on? Nope. They freaked the hell out.

Plancast Schedules A New iPhone App, Eventbrite Integration, And Local Events

Back in March, on the eve of SXSW, Plancast got an iPhone app out just in time. Now, with more time to work, they’ve perfected it with the launch of version 2. And that’s not all they’ve been working on.

Over the past couple of weeks, Plancast has rolled out a new site design, a new plan social invitation system, and Eventbrite integration. On top of that, they’re also testing out two other new features: local plans and a recent activity feed. Each of these features make a great service even better.

First off, as I alluded to, the iPhone app is now much improved. Included in this refresh (also made by Leah Culver, who made the first one) is a completely reworked design that cleans up and simplifies the user experience. Also now baked-in is Twitter and Facebook integration to make sharing (and/or signing up) easy. The app is also now iOS 4-ready with Retina display and fast app switching support.

The second new aspect of Plancast is the revamped website. Quietly rolled out at the end of last month, sharing plans from the site is now easier than ever thanks to a more Ajax approach. Co-founder Mark Hendrickson (also a TechCrunch alum) notes that the new share plan prompt was inspired by Quora in that it doubles as both a search box and an input box. The hope is that this will cut down on the amount of duplicate plan entries in the system — arguably Plancast’s biggest weak-spot.

Plancast has also added Eventbrite integration — a very nice addition for the users of that event registration service. Just as with their Facebook Event integration, Plancast will now automatically pull-in any Eventbrite plans you have and populate them on your Plancast profile. Hendrickson notes that we should probably expect Meetup integration next.

A new feature that’s sort of tucked away but may be the slickest one on the site is the cross-site invitations. Now, when you’re setting up a new plan (or inviting people to an existing one) if you simply start typing in the Invite box it will bring up a list of your contacts from not only Plancast, but Twitter and Facebook as well (assuming you’ve hooked up those accounts to your Plancast account). This way, if a friend of yours isn’t using Plancast yet, you can invite them to your event by way of one of those other networks. If you choose their Twitter account, Plancast will tweet at them for you. Or if you choose their Facebook account, Plancast will post on their Wall.

“I haven’t seen anyone do anything like this before, probably because it requires quite a bit of overhead,” Hendrickson says. What he means by this is that Plancast has to continually cache your friend lists from those service and index them so that they can show results as quickly as they do.

Finally, two new features that Plancast is only testing out for now is a new Local tab, and a recent activity feed. The activity feed should be self-explanatory — it will show activity on the site beyond friends simply adding plans. So if a friend comments on a plan or subscribes to a new person, this will show up.

The bigger new feature are the local plans. As I said, this is a new tab on the website that allows you to see the events happening around you. This is a great addition for event discovery as it puts public events out there that people in your social graph may not be attending, but still may be of interest to you. “We’ll be evolving this functionality considerably by letting users filter by popularity and other factors,” Hendrickson says.

You can find the new Plancast iPhone app here. It’s a free download.

Ping: ping ping ping-ping ping?

Ping – ping ping ping ping – ping ping, ping? Ping! Ping, ping ping ping ping; ping-ping ping! Ping.

Ping ping ping, *ping* ping ping #ping ping. Ping, ping:

“Ping ping ping ping ping — ping ping ping (ping ping ping)”.

Ping ping ping ping. Ping. And yet and yet…

Ping?

Ping.
CrunchBase InformationPingInformation provided by CrunchBase

Felicis Ventures’ Aydin Senkut: The Next Great Mobile Company Is Not Here Yet

Aydin Senkut, founder of Felicis Ventures, has an enviable track record. Founded in late 2005, Felicis has made roughly 60 investments, with 16 successful exits, including Mint, Tapulous and Aardvark. As anyone in the investment community will tell you, that’s not a shabby hit rate.

Senkut, a former senior manager at Google, is getting ready to deploy even more capital, with the recent birth of Felicis’ first institutional fund. The $40 million war chest was 33% oversubscribed and includes institutional investors like Flag Capital and Weathergage Capital and other notable names, like Peter Thiel and Joshua Schachter. So what is Senkut buying? The super angel investor recently dropped by TechCrunch TV to share his playbook. Video above.

Broadly speaking, Felicis is still looking for seed and early stage consumer internet and mobile companies, but within that category there are a handful of theories driving Senkut’s investment strategy.

“Right now we are thinking in terms of three different groups, the first group is horizontally, we’re trying to make more investments in mobile, e-commerce and enterprise areas, we do think that these areas are kind of having an interesting comeback and are likely to produce great companies. We are also investing in internet and mobile companies in four verticals that are huge markets, education, health care, personalized medicine and energy conservation, again we’re not looking for capital intensive companies in these sectors but we’re looking for internet and mobile applications that target particularly these huge markets where we fell really large companies can be built. We also think of data as an important play. So there was an interesting quote this year in the Economist that said businesses are no longer about capital labor, its about capital labor and data. We’re seeing a new generation of companies that turn data into intelligence and make that actionable.”

Senkut is hungry to hunt down the next great mobile company, which, he claims, does not exist yet: “What we do think though is that the large mobile company of the future is not created yet, we think it’s more likely that they will be using a subscription revenue model. It also will be in an area that people might not expect today but we think will be really interesting tomorrow.” That area may be personal health care. During our off and on camera interviews, Senkut seemed particularly fascinated by the idea of a mobile consumer health portal that will help users track their well being, diet and exercise habits on the go— a sort of one-stop customized shop to manage personal health.

Beyond health care, Senkut says he’s also looking hard at startups at the intersection of mobile and education (hence their recent investment in Inkling, a company that creates interactive textbooks for the tablets).

In part two of our interview, we discuss the potential of one of his other investments, Groupon, and the classic founder’s conundrum: when it’s appropriate to sell. His advice is based on his theory of the “three hills.” See video below.

Six Apart and Vox—How Promise Gets Squandered

Six Apart is shutting down its free blogging service, Vox, and as Mike points out this announcement is really about cleaning up for an upcoming merger with VideoEgg. With 250 million uniques worldwide spread across thousands of blogs and a growing ad business, Six Apart isn’t a failure. But, like Slide and like Digg, it hasn’t lived up to its promise either. And products like Vox are a big reason why: As blogging was getting more open and commenters more mean spirited, Vox was intended as a clean, well-lit place in the blogosphere. It had a great UI and some nice features like a “Question of the Day” to get reluctant new bloggers up-and-writing. But then it just sort of withered.

My takeaway from the shuttering wasn’t so much “Six Apart is cleaning up for a sale” (which they are and Six Apart Japan is next) but “Good God, Six Apart! What took you so long?”

Back in 2007 when Six Apart sold off LiveJournal and named Chris Alden CEO, the mantra was the company was finally going to focus. There’s a fine line between healthy diversification and doing too much to do anything well. Six Apart has always had an Intuit problem—they had several valuable properties but they didn’t necessarily add up to one big consumer Internet brand in the golden age of huge consumer Internet brands. They were essentially a software-as-a-service company for media with MovableType, a Web publishing tool with TypePad and a consumer Web 2.0 play for teens with LiveJournal and for adults with Vox. Six Apart had essentially made itself a company no one could acquire outright because it was doing so many different things.

Here’s a hint: If no one wants to buy you as is, maybe you shouldn’t have so many disparate, under-developed products as a stand alone company. Every senior manager at Six Apart I’ve talked to for the last three years has said this was the company’s biggest problem. And yet, we’re only now seeing a move to shut down flailing properties. It’s hard to say from the outside who is to blame, but Six Apart has clearly suffered from a lack of leadership and decisiveness.

I like Alden. He knows media, he’s a nice guy and he came into that job with a lot of goodwill and fanfare. But perhaps that’s too much of the problem—he focused more on publishers than readers and was too nice to make hard decisions faster. From what I hear things are turning ugly inside the company, with Alden blaming some of his senior team and much of that team turning on Alden. When (and I should say “if,” but it’s likely “when”) this deal with Video Egg is announced, they’ll be all smiles, there will be a great narrative about why the two make sense together and maybe they do. But none of that is what I hear is going on at Six Apart HQ right now.

It didn’t have to be this way. Six Apart was one of the earliest blogging tools and one of the first to have the cojones to charge for simplicity and ease of use. A lot of the look and feel of blogs was shaped by Six Apart founders Ben and Mena Trott. And Six Apart had one of the more powerful and intriguing boards with the uber angel Reid Hoffman, superstar and Creative Commons founder Joi Ito and August Capital’s scrappy David Hornik. Some of the smartest people around the Web clearly saw something great in Six Apart. And it had plenty of money—it raised more than $20 million from investors and millions more when it unloaded LiveJournal.

Welcome to the sadly wistful phase of Web 2.0. The big winners – Facebook, Twitter, Zynga and LinkedIn—have already been separated from the obvious losers—Friendster, Plurk, Friendfeed and a host of names we’ve already forgotten. Only now are we starting to get judgments on the companies in the middle. Ventures that succeeded in building real companies with sizable reach and significant revenues and outlasted a raft of competitors, but that nevertheless didn’t live up to their promise. The best will go the way of Slide, a nice exit that no one loses money on, and some make money on. Then there’s the situation Six Apart is in now– poised on an uncomfortable merger with another private company that’s not an “exit” for anybody and just means another four years of slogging to build something big.
CrunchBase InformationSix ApartInformation provided by CrunchBase

The Problem With Ping

With the launch of Ping this week in the latest update for iTunes, Apple is finally adding social elements to its software. Ping is essentially a social music discovery feature in iTunes. You can friend, follow, or lurk to see what music other people on iTunes—people you know, people you don’t—like, review, or buy.

Ping is very promising if only because of Apple’s reach through iTunes to 160 million music consumers. And it will no doubt get better over time. But at launch, it is riddled with problems which stem from the fact that Apple does not know how to create social software. It is completely out of its element, and it shows.

The biggest problem I have with Ping is that it lives in iTunes. Not only does it live in iTunes, it is isolated there. iTunes is not social. It is not even on the Web. And Ping doesn’t communicate with any other social networks. I can’t see people’s iTunes Pings in Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere else. While Ping does make iTunes itself more social, the problem is that I don’t live in iTunes. It is a store. I go in to buy stuff and get out as fast as I can. I am not sure Ping is going to make me want to hang out there more.

Let’s start with when you sign up. There is no easy way to find people you already know on Ping. Facebook Connect was supposed to solve that, but that feature is disabled until Apple and Facebook work out their differences. So what you are left with now is having to type in people’s names and hope they’ve signed up for Ping, or invite them one at a time through email. Hopefully nobody else has claimed their name. (The fight with name squatters and spammers is already beginning. Earlier today I found a dozen “Steve Jobs” accounts, which have since been cleaned up). There is no mechanism for importing your contacts from Gmail or any other email, or bringing in the people you already follow on Twitter or other social networks.

That leaves you with the option of finding one or two early-adopter friends and clicking through their profiles to see who they follow and add the interesting people. The only people I can find right now are bloggers and tech folks I follow elsewhere for different reasons. I have no idea whether they have any taste in music, but I guess I’ll find out soon. Getting up and running should be easier than this But that is not the deal breaker.

Once you start following a few people, you can see all the songs they “like,” rate, review, or buy. It creates a realtime activity stream which gives you social entry points into the iTunes music store. It also works on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

But don’t be confused about Apple’s social ambitions. Ping is all about driving more sales in iTunes. It is completely separate from your existing iTunes library of songs. You can’t like a song while you are listening to your existing collection. If you’ve bought a song or album, Ping assumes you like it (bad assumption), but none of your actual listening activity appears in your stream.

You can only like songs in the iTunes store. And even doing that isn’t easy. There is a big like button for each album, but if you want to like a song, you need to click the drop-down arrow next to the buy button. Be careful not to hit buy, unless you really like the song.

Once you do like a song, that shows up in your stream with a nice big buy button for all your friends to follow suit. Of course, they can’t listen to the whole song before deciding to buy, only a sample. You can’t share playlists. You can’t really do much other than peddle music to your friends.

Ping is just too commercial. It is not fun. There isn’t even a leaderboard or any visible game mechanics. There is no way to see which of the people you follow are the best music recommenders as measured by subsequent purchases from people who follow them, likes or any other measure.

Ping is a promotional vehicle for iTunes and bands. If you follow a band like U2, it seems like they get a special account which allows them to upload videos (and who knows what else). Why can’t I upload photos or videos to my stream? I can’t even add a random comment or status update without first liking, rating, or buying a song or album.

While I am sure Ping will help drive more sales, and is probably something I will check out whenever I am in iTunes to do something else, it is not as compelling as it could be. The most interesting information in iTunes is what your friends are actually listening to and what they think about the songs they know by heart—the ones in their music library. Simply allowing people to like or promote the songs in their existing collections while they are listening to them in iTunes or on their iPods would make Ping a lot better. Sharing playlists is another no-brainer.

Ping could be so much more than it is: isolated, controlling, and a bit boring.

IFA 2010 Video: Plex Running On LG TV

Plex, taking over the world. Only a few days after releasing Plex/Nine and Plex for iOS, the media center announced a partnership with LG to include a version of the software on its Internet-enabled TVs and Blu-ray players. But you knew that already. Wouldn’t you know it, I have here a brief video demo. Who loves ya?

Motorola Pulls Out Another Full Page NYT Ad Aimed At Apple’s Head

Oh my, how I love some good ol’ fashion mudslinging.

“Flash Websites? There’s A Phone For That.”

To any ne’er-do-blog-read layman, the full page ad that Motorola just put in the New York Times might just seem oddly worded. To anyone who has even considered considering themselves a gadget geek — or has, at least, turned on their TV anytime in the past year and a half and seen Apple’s “There’s An App For That” campaign — there’s no question who this one’s aimed at.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

ESPN Thanks Sony For ESPN 3D Help, Says ‘People Who See 3D Can’t Get Enough Of It’

Without Sony‘s support ESPN “probably would not have launched” ESPN 3D. So said Bryan Burns, Vice-President of ESPN, at IFA earlier today. Burns, talking before a reasonably crowded auditorium, reiterated ESPN’s commitment to 3D sports broadcasting while fully recognizing what we’ve all been going on about for months now: nobody’s going to buy an expensive 3D TV—have you seen the unemployment numbers of late?—when there’s nearly zero 3D content to be found.

Google To Update, Shorten And De-Jargon Privacy Policies – Here’s What’s Changing

Mike Yang, Google’s Associate General Counsel, just published a post on the Google blog, informing users that the company is making its privacy policies shorter and easier to understand for non-lawyers. They are also making some other changes, but to be clear, the Mountain View company isn’t altering its privacy practices as such.

The updates will go into effect October 3, which is 30 days from now.

Until that time, all products and services will continue to be governed by the current version of the privacy policies and Google will update people on the changes via the Google Privacy Center and a notice the company will be putting up on the Google Account sign-in page, enabling people to learn about the changes when they sign into Gmail, Docs, Talk or Calendar.

There’s now also a dedicated page in the Privacy Center where users can find the most popular privacy tools, and some of Google’s product Help Centers will get more content over time.

So what else is changing?

Most Google products and services are governed by the main Google Privacy Policy, which was last updated in March 2009. However, Google writes, a number of its products also have individual privacy policies in addition.

The company will be getting rid of twelve of these product-specific policies to reduce unnecessary redundancies and/or to better reflect how the products work together. These twelve products will continue to be governed by the main Google Privacy Policy.

They are: 3D Warehouse, App Engine, Calendar, Docs, Firefox Extensions, G1, Gmail, Feedback, iGoogle, Maps, Talk and Tasks.

The main Google Privacy Policy will also be made more user-friendly.

Google says it is trimming redundancies and updating some of the legal language to make it more clear to users. For example, Google will be deleting a sentence that reads, “The affiliated sites through which our services are offered may have different privacy practices and we encourage you to read their privacy policies,” because they realized it’s kind of obvious that non-Google sites aren’t covered by Google’s privacy policies.

You can see a preview of the updated policy that will take effect on October 3, 2010. But even better is going to this page, where all the changes are indicated more clearly.

Shazam Launches Major Updates To iPhone app, Now On 20m Users

Music identification app Shazam has announced big feature updates to its iPhone and iPod touch music discovery apps. There are now customised settings for ‘tagging on start-up’ make the process of identifying a music track faster, a new UI, the ability to search for ringtones and videos on iTunes and better video. You can also share tunes you find via Facebook and Twitter. Shame it doesn't own its name on Twitter then.

comScore: Time Spent Watching Live Web Video Up 650 Percent

comScore has just released some telling stats about the massive growth of live streaming video over the web. According to the analytics company, over the past year, the amount of time American audiences spent watching video on the major live video publishers (Justin.tv, Ustream, Livestream, LiveVideo, and Stickam) has grown 648% to more than 1.4 billion minutes. Of course, video consumption on the web has grown generally—U.S. audiences watching YouTube and Hulu increased 68% and 75%, respectively, over the same time period. comScore says that even though live stream viewership still represents a fraction of the total time spent watching online video, it does indicate that viewers are increasingly looking for live streams on the web.

While live online video sites don’t have nearly as much of an audience as static video sites, the live video sites have been able to keep their audiences more engaged for a longer period of time. For example, the average live streamed video view is 7% longer than the average online video view.

Live video could also be good news for advertisers looking to target demographics via video advertising. Live video sites are 72% more likely to deliver the demographic, males age 18-34, than the average online video site. In fact, males age 18-34 comprise almost 30% of the total live video viewing audience on comScore’s sample sites.

In particular, comScore says that Justin.tv, Ustream, and Livestream have all grown significantly in terms of viewership over the past year. In July, Ustream reached more than 3.2 million unique viewers, with Justin.tv reaching 2.6 million and Livestream 2.4 million. Livestream, however, served more than 160 million videos, compared to roughly 130 million from Justin.tv and 20 million from Ustream. Vut those 20 million videos on Ustream were viewed eight minutes longer on average than videos on Justin.tv and 17 minutes more than those on Livestream. In terms of total minutes, viewers logged nearly 900 million minutes watching Justin.tv in July, outpacing the other two sites.

The growth in live streaming viewership isn’t particularly surprising. More and more viewers are looking to their computers and mobile devices for live video content as players like Ustream and Justin.tv provide a platform for these events. Justin.tv just released and Android app that allows you to broadcast video live, and an iPhone app is in the works. And Ustream has already released a similar Android app. Ustream has raised a whopping $90 million in venture funding, and CEO Jon Ham is confident that his company can remain a leader in the space when YouTube eventually starts its own live stream platform (YouTube has dabbled in the space but it is rumored that Google will be launching a live streaming feature).

Former UK PM Joins Web Foundation – But He Really Should Join Twitter

Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, ousted in this year's election, is forming the Gordon and Sarah Brown Foundation, and has accepted three pro-bono appointments all with some connection to the Web. He's joining Queen Rania of Jordan’s Global Campaign for Education. Queen Rania has 1,337,872 followers on Twitter and last year spoke at Le Web. Brown is also working on a new programme to bring the internet to Africa and joining the board of Tim Berners Lee's World Wide Web Foundation. If you recall, just prior to the election in May, Brown launched a policy initiative to put £30m into an "Institute of Web Science" which would have been headed up by Berners-Lee. That centre has been cut dead by the new government, so perhaps Brown joining BL's Web Foundation is a sort of thank you?

Android’s Mobile Web Consumption Share In The US Is Surging, iOS Share Dropping

Media measurement and Web analytics company Quantcast has some interesting numbers on mobile browsing in the United States, and it’s preparing to release some of those statistics, across vendors. Earlier today, the company put up a teaser blog post, showing two graphs, one of them representing the share of mobile Web consumption in the US per mobile OS.

As you can tell, Quantcast concludes Android is storming ahead, now taking up a 25 percent share of total mobile Web consumption in the US. Apple’s iOS, meanwhile, is seeing its share decline, from approximately 67 percent in May 2009 to 56 percent in August 2010.

Provided this trend continues at current rates, Android’s share should be equal to that of iOS in another twelve months, at least according to Quantcast. It’s important to note that both are still growing rapidly in absolute numbers – what we’re seeing is the relative shares shifting.

Research In Motion’s share is roughly 10 percent according to Quantcast, as much as all ‘other’ mobile operating systems combined, but showing no signs of growth whatsoever.

Clearly, the battle for dominance over the mobile Web is being fought by two companies only at this point, and their names are Google and Apple.

In a second graph, Quantcast reports that Android took share from every corner of the market last month. The company adds that it’s the operating system’s best month share gain since November 2009, when it surpassed the 10 percent share mark.

Now, we should point out that another Web measurement company, Net Applications, has just released statistics that suggest iOS dominates the mobile Web far more clearly on a global level.

According to Net Applications, devices that run the iOS operating system (the iPhone, iPod touch and the iPad) accounted for 1.1 percent of all hardware on the Internet last month, compared to a mere 0.2 percent share for Android. This suggests a 6:1 ratio in favor of iOS, looking at worldwide statistics.

It also tells us Android is making strides in the United States much faster than in the rest of the world when it comes to browsing the mobile Web, placing Quantcast’s and Net Applications’ numbers side by side.

Plex Inks A Deal With LG, Could Be The Start Of Something Huge For Both Companies

Plex is about to get big. The offshoot of the XBMC project just announced that LG will be using its media platform in upcoming Netcast HDTVs and Blu-ray players, in turn, making these devices about the best media streamers imaginable — even better than the upcoming Boxee Box or just-refreshed Apple TV.

After all, Plex already works with Netflix, Hulu, BBC’s iPlayer, and supports playback of just about every media format ever created via the best interface in the business. There’s even an iOS remote viewing app coming soon. Forget about having an extra box sitting on your TV stand just to stream random content, it’s going to be built into your HDTV. Welcome to the future, ladies and gentleman.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab Can Set Its Own Price, No Need To Directly Compete With The iPad’s $500 Price

The Samsung Galaxy Tab is going to sell well. It won’t be a blockbuster like the iPad, but it should still do alright mainly because it’s the first consumer-worthy Android tablet. Samsung can even price the tablet well north of the iPad’s $500 starting price. It will not matter. People will buy it even if it’s, I don’t know, $800. You might not, but there are enough Android fanboys that will.

Rumors have popped up over the last 24 hours about the Tab’s price. Some European retailer’s pricing has leaked out although Samsung is saying it’s all speculative because the official pricing hasn’t been announced just yet. But still, it makes you think. The pricing ranges from €699 ($890) to €799 ($1,020) for the 16GB and 32GB respectively. Remember, the Galaxy Tab comes with a 3G modem and there likely will not be a WiFi-only model because Google requires cellular capability for the Android Market. But for a quick minute, forget that the iPad offers a bigger screen and twice the storage for the same price. It doesn’t matter.

A Merger Made In High Heaven: US Cannabis To Buy WeedMaps

Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson fame may be too chicken to invest in WeedMaps (think Yelp for pot), but that isn’t stopping other companies from sniffing around the startup, looking to score.

In fact, a company called LC LUXURIES LIMITED, or rather its most recently established subsidiary, US Cannabis, is very close to buying WeedMaps. According to this press release, the Nevada corporation has entered into formal negotiations with the startup to acquire the domain name “weedmaps.com” as well as the current operating website.

Best part of the announcement is the statement from James Pakulis, President of US Cannabis:

“Having an equity interest in Weedmaps.com is only natural. We are truly looking forward to consummating a transaction.”

Instant classic.

WeedMaps.com is an online community where medical marijuana patients connect with other patients in their geographic region to discuss and review local cannabis co-operatives, dispensaries, medical doctors and delivery services.

At present, WeedMaps is home to over 43,000 medical marijuana patients and receives more than 25% of its revenue outside of California, mostly in emerging medical marijuana states like Colorado and Nevada. The company says it’s not just a Yelp clone anymore, having built a business model based on the concept charging dispensaries for the ability to post their menu of items for sale on the site.

Menu items are posted via an AJAX interface called the WeedMenu, which is specifically designed to categorize the products commonly found at cannabis dispensaries, eg edibles, concentrates, indica, etc.

Currently, WeedMaps is tracking 15,703 items across 630 dispensaries in real-time via the WeedMenu. The WeedMenu is searchable, filterable, and shows the products prices (if entered by the dispensary). Businesses pay anywhere between $195 – $395 per month to post their menus online with WeedMaps, depending on region population. WeedMaps says over 75% of the listings update their WeedMenus at least once per week.

LC Luxuries Limited, US Cannabis’ publicly listed parent company, was in the business of selling beauty products such as makeup and perfume on the Web through its website makeup.com. As a result of the sale of certain domain names, the company says it is currently developing a new website and seeking new business opportunities.

At this time, the terms and conditions of the acquisition of WeedMaps are still being negotiated and no terms or conditions of the acquisition have been agreed upon between the parties.

Maybe they should light one up in tandem and see if they can become closer buds.

Google Hopeful Of 2010 Launch For iTunes Rival Despite Lack Of Signed Label Deals

We all know Google Music is coming, it’s just a question of when – and what it’ll look like, of course. According to Reuters, Google hopes to launch the service as early as December 2010.

Citing unnamed ‘people familiar with the matter’, Reuters says Google’s VP of Engineering Andy Rubin (which we likened to a Steve Jobs-caliber product fanatic in the past) is spearheading talks with music labels on plans for a digital music download store and cloud-based song locker service, which he hopes will see the light of day before year’s end.

Only thing that could get in the way of a pre-Christmas debut: the company has yet to sign a single licensing deal with the music labels, those same sources told Reuters.

It’ll be interesting to see if Google can get some of those deals signed in time for the launch of Android 3.0, code-named Gingerbread, which is expected to come in the fourth quarter of this year. Perhaps writing Santa a letter will help?

We recently broke the news that Google had hired well known music attorney Elizabeth Moody to assist them with negotiations with music labels and other rights holders for their upcoming iTunes rival. Needless to say, such negotiations aren’t exactly a walk in the park.

Each major label has different goals and strategies for digital music, and people in the know we’ve spoken to in the past say it’s nearly impossible to get them to agree to terms that will make a streaming music service viable. In particular, they tend to disagree over how long a free trial period might last, and whether or not a credit card from the user needs to be on file before the trial starts.

That’s not to say the industry isn’t excited about Google’s imminent entry into the digital music arena. As good as Apple’s iTunes, which just got a new, social-network enhanced version with the launch of iTunes 10 earlier this week, has been for them, executives at the major music labels have long considered Apple’s immense stronghold in the field an issue.

Surely, they welcome competition from a rival the size and reach of Google, as the iTunes Music Store has cemented itself the king of the hill over the years, accounting for approximately 70 percent of all digital music sales in the United States. Dependence on a single player isn’t exactly the industry’s vision of a bright future.

One label executive, who asked not to be named, told Reuters as much:

“Finally here’s an entity with the reach, resources and wherewithal to take on iTunes as a formidable competitor by tying it into search and Android mobile platform. What you’ll have is a very powerful player in the market that’s good for the music business.”

Another unnamed label executive expressed more caution despite his or her optimism, stating that Google lacks a track record in “selling stuff” (which is true).

It’s also worth questioning if Google’s entry in the digital music space leaves much breathing room for smaller, innovative startups to compete and maintain viable relationships with the music industry.

With Apple, Google and Amazon fighting for every penny, it’ll become even harder for the likes of Spotify, Rdio and MOG than it has already been so far. Which, to be clear, isn’t to say none of them will thrive or attract sizeable audiences – I just wonder if they’ll be left battling for increasingly smaller pieces of the pie rather than grow into giants themselves.

Project Dance Party: Facebook’s Secret Twitter-Like Follow Feature

Yesterday, news broke about a new feature Facebook is testing out called “Subscribe.” For a second, I thought it might be the equivalent of Twitter’s “follow” ability — that is, a feature which would let you follow the updates of someone that you’re not technically “friends” with on Facebook. Sadly, that’s not the case. Instead, this is simply a way for you to more closely follow someone you are already friends with (or fan pages), by getting alerts when they update. But that doesn’t mean Facebook isn’t working on the follow idea. In fact, last year, they definitely were.

Facebook had a secret project last year that involved testing how best to implement a Twitter-like follow feature on Facebook, multiple sources have confirmed to us. The name of the project? Project Dance Party.

But at some point, the project was scrapped. It’s not entirely clear why, as at one point, it was being fairly widely tested within Facebook, we’re told.

In fact, apparently it looked similar to this new Subscribe feature that is currently being tested. It existed as the top link under a user’s profile picture that read: “Follow NAME”. Clicking on this allowed you to see all of that user’s public updates in your News Feed — without the user needing to accept a connection request from you. Yes, just like Twitter.

The thought amongst some familiar with the project was that it was a knee-jerk reaction to the failed acquisition of Twitter in late 2008. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has recently stated that he thinks he “paid too much attention” to Twitter following the failed bid. “I looked at their rate and thought if this continues for 12 months or 18 months, then in a year they’re going to be bigger than us,” he told Inside Facebook in June of this year.

His plan to catch them? Project Dance Party. An asymmetric follow feature could make Facebook grow even faster — like Twitter, may have been the thought.

But over time, Zuckerberg saw Twitter’s insane rate of growth slow down. And Project Dance Party likely became less interesting to him because it would mean fundamentally changing Facebook’s friend network and social graph.

But that doesn’t mean Facebook isn’t keeping it on the back-burner. Some of the same sources with knowledge of Project Dance Party now wonder if this Subscribe feature isn’t the first step towards a follow feature. This may be a way to break this ice, as it were. Maybe at first you “subscribe” to friends you want to follow, but later you’ll be able to subscribe to the public updates of anyone.

In fact, Facebook already has a follow feature in place right now — it’s just that most people have no idea it exists, because Facebook doesn’t talk about it. Currently, if you request to be someone’s friend, and they keep you in their queue (meaning they never accept or reject you), you will see all of their public updates in your News Feed.

It’s ridiculous for an actual feature to work this way — but it is essentially Facebook Follow. Clearly, Facebook is still open to the idea in some form.

Obviously, I’m all for a full-fledged version of this. And not just because at one point it had the name Project Dance Party. Facebook’s sharing dynamic has become too convoluted. They need to bring it back to a basic idea: either you share with your friends, or you share with your followers (which includes your friends). It’s an either/or proposition. Sure, lists could still exist to create sub categories of friends. But as Zuckerberg himself has said recently, “nobody wants to make lists.”

Instead, perhaps they’d like to dance. Facebook, just dance.