Checking Up On Monkey Inferno, The Tech Incubator Where Bebo Is Working On Its Rebirth

Everyone loves a “where are they now” story - whether it's about teen idols or once-hot tech apps. Bebo, the social networking startup that famously sold to AOL for a staggering $850 million in 2008 only to be offloaded for $10 million two years later (and ultimately bought back by its original founders Michael and Xochi Birch for just $1 million earlier this year), is no exception. Michael Birch said in July that his plan is to “reinvent” Bebo at the Monkey Inferno personal incubator the Birches founded and self-funded in San Francisco, and have “a lot of fun” in the process - but we haven't heard many updates about the plans since then. And people are clearly curious: A Reddit “Ask Me Anything” about Bebo held a couple of weeks back by Monkey Inferno's CEO Shaan Puri garnered hundreds of questions and made it to the website's front page. So TechCrunch TV headed over to Monkey Inferno to see first-hand how Bebo is coming along.

Path Loses Biz Head Amid Rumors Of Over $7M In Funding From Dustin Moskovitz

It's been a long, hard road for Dave Morin's Path, as it has seen lagging growth in a tough (“fruit fly experiments” anyone?) social market. These data points mean that it's had to trim down staff - and that it took awhile to raise its latest Series C funding round. We've heard that Path's Head of Business Matt Van Horn gave notice yesterday, in order to co-found his own company with Path iOS developer Nikhil Bhogal. We've also heard that Product Designer Danny Trinh left to raise funding for his own startup right before the company's 20% layoffs in October. Both had been at Path for three years and had been co-workers at Digg before that. But rumor has it that the bumpy road is about to get a little easier. According to one source the company is set to close an over $7 million raise (between $7m -$10m) from Morin-pal and former Facebooker Dustin Moskovitz, at a flat valuation around $250 million, the same as the last round reported. It has been said that “friends and family” would also join the funding, though the size of that portion is unclear. Path today confirmed to TechCrunch that Van Horn, Trinh, and Bhogal had recently left, outside of its layoffs. “I had been considering starting another company in 2010,” Van Horn said over the phone, “But Dave (Morin) told me to come join Path and I believed in his vision. I'll continue to be a loyal Path user and an evangelist for the company.” “Matt and Danny have been awesome team members at Path and I'm grateful to them both for being a part of our team and giving their all,” Morin wrote in an email,”I'm thrilled for them both as they follow their respective entrepreneurial pursuits.” Path declined to comment on the additional funding rumors.

Meet The 9-Year-Old Who Rang The Opening Bell For Twitter's IPO

Before Twitter stock started trading this morning, journalists assumed that we'd see the company's founders and/or executives ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. And indeed, there were excited whispers as we spotted folks like Dick Costolo and Biz Stone on the floor. But the figures who actually took the stage weren't immediately recognizable. Finally, someone asked, “Is … is that Patrick Stewart?” Yes, it was the captain of the Enterprise-D, along with Cheryl Fiandaca of the Boston Police Department and Vivienne Harr, the 9-year-old girl behind the anti-child slavery initiative Make A Stand. Twitter, apparently, was using the opportunity to highlight some of its high-profile users. After the bell rang, and as we waited for the opening price and first trades, I interviewed Harr and Fiandaca about their experience ringing the bell and with Twitter. “Today, we rang the bell for hope and freedom, and I just would like to tell everyone out there that you don't have to be big or powerful to change the world,” Harr said. “You can be just like me.” Later, I also spoke to Scott Cutler, executive vice president and head of global markets at NYSE Euronext, who admitted that it was a long wait for trading to begin. “The previous longest open was 10:17 and that was for the Visa IPO in 2007,” Cutler said. “But again, we're not focused on trying to rush to get this stock open quickly. This is a natural process where buyers and sellers come together and you want to open at the right price and a price that quite frankly is sustained in the aftermarket.”

Groupon Q3 Misses On Sales Of $595.1M; Announces Acquisition Of Ticket Monster For $260M To Boost Mobile Business In Asia

Fresh from celebrating its fifth anniversary last week, Groupon today reported its Q3 earnings: it's a mixed picture but shows that Groupon continues to make good on its commitment to take its business beyond daily deals and into a wider marketplace for location-based and mobile commerce. Groupon reported revenues of $595.1 million with EPS of $0.02, missing on sales but beating on EPS estimates, and it announced an acquisition: Korea's Ticket Monster, for $260 million, to build out its mobile commerce operations in Asia through event ticketing and other commerce services. Ticket Monster had been owned by Groupon competitor Living Social, a sign of how one daily deals site has not managed to make a go of the international business, and now another will try anew. As part of the purchase, Groupon says it will be acquiring Living Social Korea. (We're asking if it intends to keep that business fully operational; for now Groupon says that all management staff and brand is coming over to Groupon and there will be further transition plans revealed after the deal is closed.) The acquisition is being made for $100 million in cash, with the remaining $160 million in Groupon shares, the company says, with the deal closing some time in the first half of 2014. “We're also excited to announce today that we've signed an agreement to acquire Ticket Monster, one of the leading ecommerce companies in Korea,” said CEO Eric Lefkofsky in a statement. “Ticket Monster has been successful building a mobile commerce business in one of the largest markets in the world. It will serve as the cornerstone of our Asian business, bringing scale and e-commerce expertise to that region.” Seoul-based Ticket Monster is known locally as TMON, and it has been around since 2010, and sells event tickets but also other products and services. Groupon says it has 4 million active customers and annual billings of more than $800 million today, growing year-on-year by some 50%, with half of its sales are transacted on mobile devices. Announcing this acquisition seems to set a precedent of sorts for Groupon for laying on significant news during earnings days. One quarterly report for Q1 this year saw Andrew Mason get kicked out as CEO; Q2 saw Lefkofsky finally get appointed as the permanent replacement for that job; and now an acquisition is getting announced in Q3. In one regard, it seems that the acquisition news is there to offset the rest of the results, which are a mixed bag: analysts were expecting revenues of $615.7 million for the quarter with non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.01. However, they do fall within Groupon's own estimates for the quarter, which were between $585 million and $635 million. A year ago the company reported revenues of $568.6 million, with an EPS of $0. Groupon marked last week's five-year birthday with a redesign of its website and mobile apps, with the new look promoting the idea that while daily deals remain a mainstay of the company's business, other products and features are now getting equal footing. These include premium restaurant dining offers via Groupon Reserve (launched in July) through to travel and its Groupon Goods marketplace. The company is also making a stronger effort to encourage more personalised deals, encouraing users to fill out profiles of themselves with their street addresses to make offers as localized as possible. The focus on making an acquisition in Asia is also significant in that it shows that Groupon is trying to invest to build out business in that region. The company today noted that while North America and EMEA grew 20% and 12% in gross billings, the rest of the world (including Asia) declined by 13%. In total, gross billings were $1.34 billion, up 10% over a year ago. Other highlights in today's earnings: Deals. Even if Groupon is now doing more than daily deals, these still remain a significant part of its business. They continue to grow in terms of inventory but not necessarily conversion. Groupon says that in North America, its biggest market, it had 65,000 active deals at the end of Q3, up by some 11,000 in the quarter. Gross billings on deals between the two quarters, however, showed a decline of some $50 million. Overall customer spend was also slightly down to $137 from $138. Customers. These continue to grow overall, up by 10% on last year to 43.5 million. Mobile. Groupon says that mobile has seen its tipping point, with more than half of all transactions completed on mobile devices in September 2013 in North America, and over 40% on mobile globally. Its apps have now been downloaded by 60 million people worldwide, with 9 million in the last quarter. Marketplace. Groupon still has work to do in getting more critical mass on its site around the various offerings it places there. It says that some 6% of total traffic in North America was on its marketplace, with those who do go there to search for deals spending 25% more time there than those who do not. Here's how Groupon's earnings have progressed across the last few quarters. If you don't see Q3, refresh the page and they should populate soon.

Apple Rolls Out Patch To Fix Mavericks Gmail Issues

Apple's newest version of OS X debuted to generally positive feedback a few weeks back… unless you were an Apple Mail user trying to use the app to check your Gmail. Then you probably had to deal with syncing headaches, incorrect unread email counts, and plenty of other miscellaneous unpleasantness (Joe Kissell has a pretty comprehensive breakdown of the big issues on his site if you're feeling morbidly curious). Thankfully, after a handful reports indicating that Apple was testing a patch to fix those sticking points, the company has finally started pushing it out into the wild… also known as the Mac App Store. According to Apple's changelog, the patch addresses “an issue that prevents deleting, moving, and archiving messages for users with custom Gmail settings”, along with tackling the cause of those pesky errant email counts. Throw in a handful of minor (apparently so minor that Apple doesn't bother delineating them) stability tweaks meant to make the experience that much smoother and you've got yourself Apple's first Mavericks patch in a nutshell.

Meet Context, The New Photo Texting App All The Cool Kids Are Using

There are a number of apps out there seeking to displace SMS as the primary mode of communications between mobile users — there’s MessageMe, Line, WeChat, WhatsApp and others. And, of course, there’s Snapchat, which has built a big, booming following around photo messaging. Well, there’s another new messaging app out there called Context, which seeks to streamline the way users communicate what’s going on around them through that it calls “Simple, Fun Photo Texting.” Context isn’t exactly a photo-sharing app, per se… although photos are a big part of what draws users to it. Unlike other messaging services in which photos are a part — think Snapchat, for instance — you’re not taking or uploading the photo first. Instead, users first enter the text they’d like to share. Then, once that’s done, they take a photo which, uh, provides the ‘context’ to what they’re saying, doing, thinking. For those of you who use Snapchat as a sort of SMS replacement, shamelessly snapping selfies and accompanying them with news of the moment*, Context might provide a more seamless, and possibly more gratifying, way of communicating with others. It might not have the coolness factor of those self-destructing, ephemeral messaging apps — everything is on the record, with a photo-by-photo slideshow of your communication instantly available. For users who want the instant gratification of banging out a message and instantly sending a photo along with it, Context provides drop-dead simplicity. In an era where users are used to perfecting the moments that they share with other through filters (a la Instagram) or happily seeing those moments slip into the ether (via Snapchat), the idea of spontaneous, unvarnished moments that are with you forever seems a bit of a novel concept. That might be why it’s captured the interest of early users, many of which are using it every day, essentially as a replacement for SMS conversations, according to co-founder Ben Broca. And while it’s mostly flown under the radar, I’ve also seen a few top investors playing around with it over the past several weeks. Broca had previously built Now, an app that scanned Instagram to help people find cool things happening around them. But he shifted to building the messaging app just a few months later. That said, Context does borrow some of the same design philosophy of Now. Most notably, it uses the same font — which Broca points out conveys a sort of novelty and quirkiness to the app. You know, instead of just using Helvetica, which every other messaging app seemingly uses.

A New $1 Million Prize Competition Aims To Fight Gun Violence With Tech

Mass shootings have become unfortunately common in American life, so a few Silicon Valley investors are launching a $1 million competition to see if technology can reduce firearm violence. With the help of early Facebook investor Ron Conway, the Smart Tech Foundation is soliciting ideas on everything from biometric locks to crime-predicting algorithms. “We looked at this and said there’s been a systemic failure in the level of innovation and capitalization in this area,” Smart Tech director and serial entrepreneur Jim Pitkow told Fast Company. He announced the program at Fast Company’s Innovation Uncensored conference in San Francisco yesterday. This isn’t the first time Silicon Valley (and Conway) have incentivized their tech brethren to stop gun violence. Three months after Adam Lanza killed 20 children at Sandy Hook elementary, (the Conway supported) Sandy Hook Promise launched a program to expedite investment in violence-reducing technologies. For example, ShotSpotter outfits local law enforcement with an alert systems that can triangulate violence based on the audio-signal of a gunshot (the technology still has some bugs to get worked out). Smart Tech split from the Sandy Hook Promise initiative for logistical reasons. “The Smart Tech Foundation is an offshoot of the Sandy Hook Promise,” Pitkow writes to me in an email. “This enables the Foundation to focus exclusively on this particular flavor of innovation. There are also legal liability and donor aspects that make it easier to do under a separate focused entity.” I’m a big fan of these kinds of initiatives: Silicon Valley can make an impact on all sorts of issues, not just the typical tech issues. You can learn more about Smart Tech’s prize at SmartTechFoundation.org or email the org at info[at]stfdn[dot]com.