Google is aiming Chrome OS right at the bottom of the market. That is to say, cheap computers, netbooks. Apple, of course, takes the opposite approach, targeting the high end of the market which their high-quality and high-margin machines. If Google is successful with its Chrome OS netbooks (let’s call them ChromeBooks), what we could see is the squeezing of Microsoft, an idea I first laid out a month ago. With attacks from the top and bottom, Windows will be relegated to the middle. And ultimately, if Google has its way, marginalized.

There are a number of problems with being in the middle. First and foremost, the middle is average, boring, bland, etc. There’s nothing particularly wrong with that, unless you’re a company like Microsoft with an image problem. After years of taking hits, Microsoft is trying to revamp its image with expensive ads, new stores, and a new OS, among other things. But the middle is hard to sell. It’s neither the cheapest nor the best. It’s the thing people have to settle on.

Microsoft, of course, is also in the netbook space with Windows XP and now Windows 7. But after being a sector on fire for much of the year, signs point to a slowdown in sales. While you might think that would be bad news for both Microsoft and Google, Google’s ChromeBooks are really a new category altogether. As Google said during its event, they’re working with specific hardware manufacturers to make machines set to a certain standard. This means that they’ll have larger keyboards and trackpads than most netbooks, among other things. In other words, they’ll be better, from a hardware perspective, than most netbooks.

And they potentially serve a different purpose. A couple days ago, Daring Fireball wondered if the real key for Chrome OS (and netbooks) may be to serve as your secondary computer. But there’s really no need to wonder, Google’s VP of Product Management, Sundar Pichai, said as much during the Q&A session. “This will be a secondary device. It may be a primary device in terms of time spent on it, but we expect people to have other computers too,” he said when asked about more powerful editing software not being able to run on Chrome OS.

People aren’t buying $300 computers with the expectation of running Photoshop (which costs $700) on them. They are buying them mainly to get an extremely portable machine that can surf the web. Google’s promise with Chrome OS is the fastest way to do that.

And that’s what a lot of critics are missing (but we’ve been saying since July). Google isn’t trying to compete with a standard OS, they’re trying to help users realize that for the majority of computing they do, they don’t need one in the first place. Maybe you have a desktop computer at home for those few tasks that need dedicated native applications, and maybe that runs Windows or maybe that runs OS X. But maybe the machine that you use most of the time is your cheap, fast ChromeBook.

Though they get criticized a lot for not making a netbook, Apple also competes in this highly mobile space — their “netbook” is the iPhone. While unlike Chrome OS, the iPhone can run native applications, it speaks to a similar point: Increasingly, for most of your computing, you don’t need Windows.

The point is that computing is shifting to a place where speed and mobility are paramount. The reason people are so excited about products like the CrunchPad and Apple’s tablet isn’t because they can run Photoshop — they can’t — it’s because they offer an easy way to use the Internet. Same thing with the iPhone. Same thing with Android phones. And it will be the same thing with Chrome OS and the ChromeBooks.

The difference is that these ChromeBooks will be the first devices that actually look like the traditional computers we’re used to. They will look like they could be Windows machines, but they won’t be. That’s a powerful stereotype to break. And if Google breaks that at the bottom of the market, with Apple continuing to break it at the top of the market, Microsoft will begin to feel squeezed.

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ZURB, a well-regarded interaction design and strategy firm in the San Francisco Bay Area that has in the past done work for eBay, Facebook, Yahoo, Zazzle and many other familiar names, regularly publishes insightful design deconstruction posts for homepages of some of the most popular websites on the net, using its very own Notable app (also see our review of the website feedback tool).

After taking a critical look at CNN.com, MSN.com and Twitter.com, the ZURB team has recently shined its light on TechCrunch.com. And we took notice.

The best way to check out what ZURB had to say about our homepage design – which has been live since Summer 2008 when we did a major redesign for the second time – is to visit this full-page screenshot, where you can hover over their notes to see what feedback the team had to give.

Apart from the visual aspect, the Notable page also allows you to check out the code, content and SEO elements of a website, and you can download the whole critique as a PDF straight from the app without the need to register.

Just for the record, we agree with nearly everything the ZURB team had to say about our homepage design, both the good and the bad. No design is perfect, but we like to think we’ve struck a good balance between making it as easy as possible for readers to check out our content, while giving advertisers valuable real estate that doesn’t interfere with the editorial.

We’re committed to making the experience even better, so note that we are currently working on an entirely new template and design for TechCrunch.

Stay tuned, and in the meantime, do let us know what you think about the current design.

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Web-based productivity suite Zoho is launching a new product today, Zoho Recruit. A niche product, Zoho Recruit, is an application designed to help HR Departments and staffing agencies management recruitment.

Zoho Recruit, which is an offshoot of Zoho People’s recruitment technology, is an Applicant Tracking System that helps staffing agencies and recruiting departments track job openings, resumes, candidates and contacts. The application will source candidates by gathering resumes from multiple sources on the web and includes a technology that will weed out the candidates.

The application will include a database that manages resumes and track potential candidates throughout the interviewing process. You can also schedule interviews, send automatic e-mail notifications and log candidate activities and notes.

Zoho Recruit will also power a platform to create and publish job openings. The app includes an activity stream to let users stay on tops of new within Zoho Recruit and is fully customizable. Zoho Recruit is based on a freemium model, with the more feature-rich platform priced at $12/per user/per month.

Zoho continues to innovate and iterate by launching new products and add-ons to its existing offerings. Most recently, the startup launched Zoho Discussions, a online forum tool for businesses. Over the past two years, Zohos has added support for Sharepoint, mobile, Google and Yahoo IDs and group sharing. Zoho knows that it will have to fight an uphill battle to keep users from flocking to Google Apps and soon Microsoft’s Web-based version of Microsoft 2010. Although Zoho ’s the underdog, the startup’s strategy may be paying off—the startup has reached 2 million users in just 4 years. And the startup is on Microsoft’s radar, with a Microsoft exec calling of Zoho as a competitor that offered “fake Office capabilities.”

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It appears as if the new feature is currently being tested only with a very small subset of users; we haven’t seen it at the bottom of any Facebook notification e-mails yet and there are only about 4 tweets from the past couple of days mentioning the new feature.

We asked the company about the apparent bucket test, and they’ve acknowledged that they’ve started roling out the feature again for a small percentage of users after running similar brief tests a couple of weeks ago and making some improvements.

Facebook hasn’t provided more information (e.g. how they plan to prevent autoresponder messages from being posted to Walls all the time) but said it was hoping to release the new feature to all of its users in the coming weeks.

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This follows earlier clients for both iPhone and Android and means that the service will now be accessible on millions more handsets from Nokia, obviously, along with Sony Ericsson and Samsung which also support the platform.

Unfortunately, for once users in the U.S. will have to wait longer as Spotify has delayed the launch of it’s service there until the new year.

Phones powered by Symbian far outstrip the iPhone and Android (for now) in Europe where Spotify is currently available. Today’s release should see the company strike further carrier deals or at least extend their current offering with mobile network 3, leading to more ‘back door’ or ‘feels like free’ premium subscriptions.

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This time, Apple is having to battle the news of Facebook’s all-star developer Joe Hewitt quitting the platform, more high profile app rejections, and the rise of Android as an increasingly viable alternative to the iPhone. Schiller has granted BusinessWeek’s Arik Hesseldahl what the publication says is his first “wide-ranging interview on the matter”. Unfortunately, Schiller doesn’t really say anything to quell the growing unrest in the developer community — instead, he’s offered some finely-tuned PR-speak that will placate the vast majority of iPhone users, who are only vaguely aware of the App Store controversies and just need a reminder that Apple is still one of the good guys. But it may only make developers angrier.

The article kicks off with quotes from Hewitt’s recent denunciation of the App Store’s approval process, which he says sets a “horrible precedent for other software platforms” (an assertion I wholeheartedly agree with). The article then transitions into Schiller’s response to the complaints that are frequently levied against the App Store.

None of Schiller’s defenses for the approval process are surprising: he says that Apple has built a store that people can trust, and that between the downloading, billing, and transfering to the phone “it all just works.” Schiller also points out the App Store’s ability to offer parental controls because screeners can categorize apps into different age ratings. Of course, he doesn’t mention that Apple also likes keeping control over the platform because it lets them block anything that could potentially compete with its own products.

As he’s done before, Schiller did admit to some of the App Store’s faults. Hesseldahl asked about the recent Rogue Amoeba debacle, which saw the popular Mac developer’s app rejected because it used some icons that Apple objected to for clearly ridiculous reasons apparently having to do with copyright. Schiller didn’t comment on that case in particular, but addressed some of Apple’s issues with copyright: “We need to delineate something that might confuse the customer and be an inappropriate use of a trademark from something that’s just referring to a product for the sake of compatibility… We’re trying to learn and expand the rules to make it fair for everyone”. The article then notes that Rogue Amoeba will be resubmitting its application with its original icons, presumably with the understanding that it will be approved.

But to developers who have been dealing with the frustrations of Apple’s platform for many months, none of this is particularly novel or encouraging. Schiller has previously stepped in to fix highly publicized App Store blunders, but nothing changes for the vast majority of developers. Likewise, Schiller has previously said that Apple is working on improving the App Store’s submission process, and while I honestly do think they’re making some improvements, their lack of transparency makes it nearly impossible to tell how much progress has been made. And the steady stream of App Store horror stories isn’t showing any signs of letting up.

Even worse, Schiller implies in the interview that developers actually like the approval process:

Most are approved and some are sent back to the developer. In about 90% of those cases, Apple requests technical fixes—usually for bugs in the software or because something doesn’t work as expected, Schiller says. Developers are generally glad to have this safety net because usually Apple’s review process finds problems they actually want to fix, he says.

This is a laughable statement. Developers may like the concept of having an external QA safety net that helps catch bugs, but not one that’s incredibly inconsistent and penalizes them with extended delays and notoriously bad communication.

Schiller’s interview highlights how badly Apple is underestimating the negative impact the App Store is having on its reputation in the developer community, as Paul Graham recently detailed. Apple may not care about losing a handful of developers to Android, but their shortsighted strategy of answering developer complaints with PR spin rather than transparency and action may hurt them in the long run.

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Earlier this month college textbook rental company Chegg raised $112M as part of a combined Series D and debt round, bringing the total raised by the company to a massive $144M. Competitor BookRenter will tomorrow announce a Series A round of $6M, raised from Storm Ventures and Adams Capital Management. BookRenter has only raised a fraction of the capital of their competitor Chegg, but the company claims that it is growing at over 300 percent, year-over-year. The companies are loading their war-chests to fight over a fiercely competitive college textbook rental market.

Both Chegg and BookRenter work on a similar principal – students are able to save money by loaning textbooks for a fixed duration, usually a semester, and end up spending only the fraction of the cost of outright purchases. Textbooks are expensive, and often have a limited lifespan – these attributes, combined with a market of poor students looking to save a few dollars, have resulted in the textbook rental market exploding in recent years.

BookRenter claims a competitive advantage over Chegg and others by offering more flexible loan schedules and faster delivery (they offer next-day delivery on many titles, and use UPS). The system is simple: a student searches for a book on the website using a title or ISBN, and places an order by selecting a rental period and delivery option. The book(s) are delivered complete with return UPS labels for easy shipping.

BookRenter was founded in 2008, and is based in Campbell, California. The new round of funding to be announced tomorrow is the first significant round of financing that the company has raised. There are not many points in the market where BookRenter is able to squeeze out significant differentiation – for college students, it comes down to size of catalog, delivery speed and price. Chegg has raised enough capital to fund a large-scale, low-margin market grab. Despite being a recent entrant in the market and having a very significant and heavily-capitalized competitor in Chegg, BookRenter has managed to sprout up and see strong growth. One of these companies is likely to become the Netflix of textbook rentals.

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Rupert Murdoch is pointing a gun to Google’s head, and Microsoft is helping him pull back the trigger. For the past few weeks, Murdoch and his officers at News Corp. have been very vocal about their distaste for Google and their desire to lead other media companies in a boycott of sorts.

Murdoch keeps threatening to stop letting Google index the WSJ.com and his other media sites, and wants other news sites to join him in this self-imposed silence. The folks at Microsoft’s Bing think this is a great idea. Not only that, but the FT reports that Microsoft is in fact in discussions with News Corp. and other publishers about the possibility of paying them to remove their sites from Google’s search index. This report comes on the heels of a meeting in Europe where Bing dangled the prospect of premium spots in search results to publishers and outright money for search R&D.

Microsoft is not afraid to buy search market share, which is what it’s doing with the Yahoo search deal and even its Cashback program. But with these latest talks, it is literally trying to buy the news, or at least exclusive access to the news.

Bing can’t buy all the news, it can only buy certain brands. If Bing can somehow become the only place you can find news results and working links to the Wall Street Journal and other top papers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the LA Times, for instance, that would be a big reason to switch for a lot of folks. But it’s not clear how much Bing would have to pay the news companies of the world for them to give up all the traffic Google sends them in return for a fraction of that traffic and some cash.

Even Google couldn’t afford to strike such deals. Says Murdoch, of Google, “If they were to pay everybody for everything they took from every newspaper in the world, and every magazine, they wouldn’t have any profits left.”

In order to actually make a dent in Google’s market share, Bing would have to pay such exorbitant sums to so many different news companies that it would be difficult to recoup its investment. Bing certainly get some marketing buzz out of any such move, but that’s about it.

The big problem with a search engine trying to buy market share by buying parts of the news is that information spreads so quickly these days, exclusives last about 30 seconds. That information will end up on a site that is indexed by Google. Or the same news will be broken by someone else on the Web before the WSJ.com even gets to it.

Exclusive indexing goes against the Web’s inherent openness. Companies that try to curtail that openness don’t last long on the Web.

Image via PhotoXpress.

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We had a great interview with Twitter COO Dick Costolo at the Real-Time CrunchUp on Friday. Costolo always gives the audience a few good nuggets of news and handles the more difficult questions with ease. He’s a pro.

After the conference I reviewed some of the backstage footage we shot of Costolo before he went on stage for the formal interview. We ask lots of great questions – about Twitter’s revenue, business model, details of the search deals, chances of getting bought next year, and the lovely bathrooms they have at the office. He manages to entertain the entire TechCrunch editorial staff while revealing absolutely nothing. We even slip in a question about Feedburner (Costolo cofounded the company and sold it to Google in 2007) at the end, but sadly we ran out of tape before he answered.

One thing Costolo does clear up – even though I’ve known him for five years now, I apparently have been mispronouncing his name the whole time.

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The important thing is that Erick had asked me to help moderate his panel about marketing within ‘real-time streams’, which is a subject close to my heart. So close in fact, that had he asked me to help moderate a panel about child rape and its place in the public school system I couldn’t have been keener to weigh in.

I’ll get back to my own contribution in a moment, but first, as a courtesy to my paymasters, I should probably relate a few of my  ‘key learnings’ from the event.

1) There is such a thing as a ‘key learning’, a phrase which I heard at least three times during the day, and which I gather is what an ‘opinion’ becomes when spoken by an idiot.

2) Gabe Rivera from TechMeme loves bookmarks. How else to explain his glee when he discovered that each of the four million free copies of Marc Benioff’s ‘Salesforce.com Playbook‘ scattered about the conference contained a little strip of cardboard sponsored by Amazon. “Cool. I can use these for my other books,” he exclaimed, removing each bookmark and pocketing it before carefully placing the books back on the table.

3) Even with a back-cover quote from Neil Young, you apparently can’t give away Marc Benioff’s ‘Salesforce.com Playbook‘. At the start of the day, there were towering piles of the thing on every surface – one free for every attendee. By the end of the day: towering piles of the thing on every surface, ready to be returned to the publisher. Perhaps Benioff should have taken a leaf out of his own playbook: Play #42 reads “Don’t Dis Your Product With A Discount”, with Benioff explaining that “I wouldn’t even give my own grandmother a discount.”  Yet apparently he wouldn’t think twice about giving the whole book away to a room full of the only people who are likely to actually buy the thing. (My book didn’t win its Congressional Medal Of Honor by being given away free).

4) At TechCrunch conferences, even the food is patriotic. After the American flag next to the judges table debacle at TechCrunch50, I was worried that Arrington might shy away from overt displays of Americanness at future events. Not so – inside the meal box provided to each attendee was a disposable handwipe, packaged inside a little stars and stripes pouch. To reaffirm my love of this country, I stuck one of the pouches to the front of the podium on the stage.

5) Dogs frighten room service waiters, but love Gabe Rivera from Techmeme.

And so to my panel – and to be honest, I was a little anxious at the thought of it given that my fellow participants were Erick and five marketing experts – Sean Rad of Ad.ly, Ryan Amos of DailyBooth, Jesse Engle of CoTweet, Philip Nelson of NewTek and Robin Bechtel who acts as ‘digital agent’ to Britney Spears amongst others.

Erick was on my side, of course, but even he and I have a checkered history, due in large part to the fact that I keep finding excuses to bring up his Last.fm story. Keen to smooth things over beforehand, I went via CBS’s San Francisco HQ on my way to the conference and picked up a Last.fm tshirt for him. You know, as a peace offering. He didn’t wear it, but I know he appreciated the gesture. (”You fucker,” he said, which I gather is New York for “thank you.”)

Even with Erick placated, I was still terrified by the marketers. I’m an editorial person and so these are not My People – in fact I’m obliged to close my ears whenever the subject of monetizing my words is raised. What I do is Good and Pure; what they do is Bad and Dirty.

Worse still, these weren’t even the usual kind of marketers – people who sell banners and display ads and the like – but rather a new breed who made their living by trying to slip commercial messages into our every day interactions. Take Bechtel – her most recent professional triumph was convincing a gaggle of Perez’ Hilton’s celebrity friends – Lady Gaga, Katy Perry et al – to promote a new Warner recording artist by Tweeting the words “Who is Sliimy?” to their armies of followers. Sure enough, within a few hours, the question made it to the top of the trending topics list, presumably resulting in a whole load of record sales for Sliimy. To Bechtel this is a great result, whereas to my mind the idea of one Warner artist whoring and shilling for another that they hadn’t even heard of is just about the most hideous abuse of fandom since Jordy Chandler.

(Sliimy, by the way, is pronounced ‘Slimmy’ rather than the more appropriate ‘Slimy’. Also, he’s French, famous, and entirely irrelevant to the wider digital conversation. I expect he’ll be at Le Web.)

And then there was Ad.ly’s Sean Rad. If you’re not familiar with Ad.ly’s product, then put a pencil between your teeth and read this profile of them by the NYT’s Brad Stone. I quote… “Tuesday was another typical day for John Chow, blogger and Internet entrepreneur in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mr. Chow treated his 50,000 Twitter followers to a photograph of his lunch (barbecued chicken and French fries), discussed the weather in Vancouver and linked to a new post on his Internet business blog. Then he earned $200 by telling his fans where they could buy M&M’s with customized faces, messages and colors.”

Get thee behind me, Ad.ly.

During the panel, Rad explained more about his business and his view that Twitter streams should be seen as ‘real pieces of content’ that should therefore be ‘monetized’. In response to Erick’s suggestion that people might not welcome this ‘monetization’ of their conversations, he responded that many of the company’s advertitweets included an appeal for followers to ‘please retweet’ the ads posted in their friends’ streams. According to Rad, thousands of people did precisely that, proving that people were embracing the ads. I politely disagreed, pointing out that people – by and large – are fucking idiots who will retweet anything if you tell them to. A couple of weeks ago, as a comment against the ridiculousness of those who beg their followers to ‘please RT’ the most mundane of messages, I twittered the message “I’m going for lunch. Please RT!”

People did.

And yet, despite the jovial back-and-forth – at one point I accidentally called Rad a dick – we actually managed to end the session with something approaching a consensus. The trigger for this consensus was Erick inviting Robert Scoble to come on stage and explain his vision of the future of monetized twittering.

Scooby’s vision is the ‘Super Tweet‘, a taggable, more contextual tweet that would enable advertisers to serve commercial messages based on what people were already talking about. Critically, these messages would appear in a separate panel in the Twitter client, rather than invading the stream itself. It’s a vision that seemed at odds with that of Twitter’s COO Dick Costollo who, speaking earlier in the conference, hinted that the company’s upcoming ad strategy might blur the old church and state lines. “We want to do something that’s organic and in the flow of the way people already use Twitter” he said, “and not Here’s the tweets and here are the ads.’”

Scoble argued that “you can display ads in the Twitter client but you don’t fuck with editorial” – and as such his idea seemed totally fine to me – why shouldn’t Starbucks deliver ads to people who tweet about going for coffee, as long as those ads appear in a clearly demarked window? And, hell, why not go one stage further: perhaps some of that revenue could get kicked back to the people making the tweets – the “content creators”? That would certainly be better than sponsored tweets.

It’s a testament to Scoble’s vision, and the marketers’ passion that I left the stage agreeing that, even if we disagree on format – there was nothing inherently wrong with monetizing the Twitter stream through targeted advertising. To his credit, Rad even offered to share with me some of their raw numbers so I could see how people interacted with the various commercial messages generated through Ad.ly.

I’d say my feeling of agreement lasted about ten minutes before it was replaced with one of searing outrage.

What the hell was I thinking? Nothing wrong with monetizing the Twitter stream through targeted advertising? There’s everything wrong with it. And here’s why…

A tweet isn’t a “piece of content”. It isn’t editorial. No matter whether we’re talking about what we’re having for lunch or suggesting a new movie or sharing a piece of news, what we’re really doing is having a good old-fashioned conversation. Following people on Twitter is like organising the world’s largest cocktail party – we’ve decided who’s opinions we trust, and we’ve invited them to come into our homes and talk to us about things they are genuinely interested in. The moment people start screwing around with that principle, the whole system collapses.

Just look at the conceptual abortion that is the new retweet functionality: everyone in their right mind hates it, but few of us can quite explain why. Let me try. When someone retweeted under the old system, it was the equivalent of standing at the cocktail party and saying to our friends “oh, Dave said something interesting the other day…” and then going on to quote Dave, along with our own comments on what Dave had to say. The quoting of Dave was contextual and appropriate.

By contrast, the new retweet function is the equivalent of us snapping our fingers and making Dave himself suddenly appear in the middle of the party. And, then, without so much as an introduction, Dave starts talking. No context, no invitation – just some crazy dude called Dave talking at us, at our own party.

Adding sponsored tweets will have an even more poisonous effect on the party. There we are, listening to a friend talking about the weather or sports and suddenly – boom – he’s trying to sell us a personalised pack of M&Ms. It doesn’t matter if he explains that he’s been paid by the company to promote their products – the fact is, there’s some dickhead at a party trying to sell us M&Ms. He’s even more unwelcome than Dave.

One of the most popular ideas amongst social marketers is the idea that we will listen to commercial endorsements from our friends because we trust them. Thus, by putting brands into our friends’ mouths, we will somehow trust those brands more by extension. Not for the first time, the marketers have got it backwards. The reason we trust our friends so strongly is precisely because we know that their opinions are not commercially motivated. The moment that ceases to be the case – or we even suspect that it has ceased to be the case – the bond of trust between friends is destroyed. The cocktail party is ruined, society crumbles, the apes take over the world.

Separating the ads from the conversation might be a less egregious solution but it doesn’t alter the fact that our words are triggering the appearance of commercial messages on the walls of a party. Inevitably marketers will try to further affect these messages by paying commission to popular tweeters, and the less principled of our friends will sign up to whichever ad networks provide the best incentives for monetizing their updates. From then on they’ll be constantly wondering if there’s a way to wedge in a brand, or a product that could bring them a few cents into their tweets. Even if they think they’re just making pocket money from the things they’d talk about anyway, their conversations will become inevitably altered by the presence of commercial influences.

Meantime, the anti-commercial-minded amongst us will resist this new development by avoiding using certain brand names in our conversations, knowing that they are simply giving an excuse for those brands to make money from our friends. Instead of Starbucks and McDonalds, we’ll be sure to criticize S*arbucks and McD%nalds so as to deprive them of the click-throughs. And yet by the simple conscious act of avoiding commercial pressures, we’re forced to consider them – and so the spontaneity and purity of the conversation is destroyed. Either way, the cocktail party is ruined, society crumbles, the apes take over the world.

Our blogs are already affiliated-linked up to the eyeballs, our TV shows are product-placed to hell, radio has succumbed to payola, even our schools are brought to you by the letters COCA COL and A. Human conversation is the last area of communication to hold out against the relentless march of commercialisation and it’s our duty, as humans, to make sure it stays that way. So, screw consensus. And shame on me for starting to lean towards it yesterday. Give me ad-free conversation, or give me death.

(Please retweet.)

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We’ve seen in the past year that Hulu gets testy about their video content being used on other sites or platforms, with Boxee and TV.com both forced to remove Hulu content from their sites and applications. Now startup Rippol is facing the same fate.

Rippol just publicly launched their video discovery sites at yesterday’s Real-Time CrunchUp, which combines both complex algorithms with user suggestions to surface interesting video content.

Less than a few hours after Rippol launched, the startup’s co-founder Aaron Crayford received notice from Hulu that the video embeds on Rippol from Hulu were in violation of the terms of service which state that embeds are for personal, non-commercial use only. While Rippol says that they won’t place ads in the videos or around the videos, Hulu says that the simple fact that Rippol plans to make money from the entire content service violates the TOS. Instead, Hulu offered Rippol the ability to us its site map, which is a feed that links back to Hulu for video playback. Don’t embed, says Hulu. Link instead. Here’s the email notice:

We saw that you launched today. We want to notify you that you are using our embeds in violation of our terms of service which state specifically that embeds are for personal, non-commercial use only. As such we will plan to block embedding from your site by 12/4. Typically we disable embedding immediately but given that you just launched, we want to give you some time to transition.

In the place of the embeds, we can offer you is a site map feed that links back to Hulu for video playback and includes several useful pieces of metadata in a feed. It includes video titles, descriptions, thumbnails, video type, duration info, season number, episode number, air date, expiration date, in addition to the video link on Hulu.com.

It is updated every few hours: http://www.hulu.com/video_sitemap.index.xml

When Rippol responded that they will never put ads in or around Hulu content, Hulu responded:

Ad placement would be more relevant to the “non-commercial” part of the TOS vs. the “personal” part. While you may not plan to place ads near our content, Rippol is a commercial business in the sense that you plan to make money from the content service you create. Thus our content on your site is being used for commercial purposes, even if it is indirect (i.e. you attract users with Hulu content but only monetize other content).

Note we are not singling out Rippol as we have transitioned other premium video aggregators to our site map feed.

Rippol looks at your video watching activity on the site, as well as that of your friends and people in your demographic. It also looks at meta data from video content ingested from sites like YouTube and Hulu, and uses machine learning to identify videos it thinks you’ll like. Naturally, some of the TV shows and movies that surface on Rippol are from Hulu.

Boxee encountered a similar issue in February. Boxee’s software package converts computers, Apple TVs and other popular products into media centers, and integrated Hulu content. But this ended abruptly in February when Hulu’s studio content partners demanded that Boxee take down all videos pulled from from Hulu. TV.com suffered a similar fate when Hulu pulled the plug on content earlier this year, although CBS Interactive, which owns TV.com, vehemently argued that they were within their rights to stream Hulu content.

The thing is that Rippol, and perhaps other video sites like Boxee, may be willing to enter into a distribution agreement with Hulu with regard to embedding content. In Hulu’s note to Rippol, the representative stated that “the only way for a company to legitimately embed our videos the way you do is to enter into a structured distribution relationship with us. However, we are currently entering into these very selectively.”

When Hulu axed the Boxee integration, CEO Jason Kilar wrote in a blog post:

Our content providers requested that we turn off access to our content via the Boxee product, and we are respecting their wishes. While we stubbornly believe in this brave new world of media convergence — bumps and all — we are also steadfast in our belief that the best way to achieve our ambitious, never-ending mission of making media easier for users is to work hand in hand with content owners. Without their content, none of what Hulu does would be possible, including providing you content via Hulu.com and our many distribution partner websites.

Our mission to make media dramatically easier and more user-focused has not changed and will not change. We will not stop until we achieve it and we are sober in our assessment that we have such a long way to go.

The maddening part of writing this blog entry is that we realize that there is no immediate win here for users. Please know that we take very seriously our role of representing users such that we are able to provide more and more content in more and more ways over time. We embrace this activity in ways that respect content owners’ — and even the entire industry’s — challenges to create great content that users love. Yes, it’s a complex matter. A tough mission, and a never-ending one, but one we are passionately committed to.

Even before Hulu launched the site had announced partnerships to embed content with AOL, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo. The site also has a partnership with Comcast’s Fancast . And the site also recently launched the ability to watch some video content its video content on its Facebook page.

It’s clear the Hulu is at the mercy of of studio content owners who are calling the shots on partnerships and who should be allowed to embed Hulu content. Kilar is correct in saying that Hulu’s strategy of limited partnerships is not a win for users. But the other party left out here are the developers and startups, like Rippol and Boxee, which are crating innovative and useful products that provide a creative way to watch their videos and even drive traffic to Hulu.

When Hulu was announced in 2007, NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker said that Hulu would aim to have “ubiquitous distribution.” The press release issued at the time said that Hulu “will actively seek agreements with a variety of additional distribution partners.” The release also stated that each “distribution partner will feature the site’s content in an embedded player customized with a look and feel consistent with each site, making the offering organic to each destination.”

Clearly, when Hulu was announced, the ambitions were to have many more partnerships to distribute the site’s content. But all signs have pointed to the fact that Hulu and its content partners are simply not open to startups and smaller sites who have new innovations to video consumption. Frankly, it’s disappointing for the developer community as well as consumers.

In the meantime, Rippol’s Crayford says that most of Hulu’s content is available on the content owners sites, which means Rippol will point crawlers to a lot of different domains instead of Hulu, which is tedious (TV.com does this).

When we asked Hulu about the Rippol situation, they responded:

Thanks for the heads up. I’ve been told our folks are in communication with Rippol on how to possibly work together.

The basic policy on our embeds is that we do not allow sites to host the entire Hulu content library without a formal distribution agreement. These agreements are evaluated on a case by case basis with the involvement of content owners. Alternatively, we provide a video site map to allow publishers to link to our videos.

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Skype CEO Josh Silverman can’t stop smiling in this video interview we recorded in Menlo Park this morning. And no wonder – despite serious legal and spinoff drama, Silverman has managed to close his multi-billion dollar spinoff of Skype from eBay. His legal troubles have evaporated. Skype is growing like a weed. And he’s managed to keep his job running the business. Life is good.

All he has to do now is manage board meetings with two of the more forceful personalities on the planet – new investor Marc Andreessen and cofounder/new investor Niklas Zennstrom.

Well, that and keep this train on the tracks. Skype has exploded to over half a billion users, and is adding 300,000 new ones every day, Silverman says in the interview. 1/3 of usage is video, despite the fact that video calls can only be 1-1. Voice calls are multi-party. And revenue is cruising along at $185 million/quarter with 24.2% margins. Up to 20 million people are using Skype at any one time.

We talk a little about Skype’s business in the interview. But most of the focus in 2010. “You’ll see Skype become a lot more ubiquitous in a lot more places, both mobile devices as well as embedded devices,” he says, adding “expect to see us on a lot more platforms.”

We also spoke about Skype as a developer platform. Extras is now long gone, but Silverman reiterated that soon Skype will push far more powerful developer tools that can turn Skype into a service. That means Skype can run outside of the Skype client. That doesn’t necessarily mean Skype in the browser, they still say Flash isn’t powerful enough to run Skype in browser. But perhaps we’ll see Skype code being build directly into browsers.

We also spoke briefly about Chrome OS. Google’s new operating system doesn’t let users install software, meaning Skype is out. Flash is the only third party plugin Google will say will be included. Things like Silverlight and Skype are in limbo unless and until Google decides to include them. Silverman ends the interview with “If the Google folks are interested in building Skype into Chrome we’d certainly be interested in having that conversation.”

I hope they do have that conversation, soon.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Once you’ve activated Sneak Preview (assuming you have access to it), whenever you create a new event you’ll see a new viewing mode that displays a calendar alongside your event details. This calendar will show the schedules of each of the people you’ve invited to the event (provided you’re a friend or coworker with access to that information), and the proposed time for your event will appear as a semi-transparent blue box so you can quickly see where you might have conflicts. You can click each guest’s name to show/hide them on the calendar if some are more important than others.

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The company is self funded and has a number of customers who pay for the premium hosted version of the service. Today they’ve announced they’re selling the business to Bloosky, an affiliate ad network. Here’s the email sent out to users this morning:

From: noreply.newsletter@tracking202.com
Date: Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 3:54 PM
Subject: Tracking202 Has Been Acquired!
To:

We have some BIG news to announce today. As of a little over a week ago, Tracking202 has been acquired by Bloosky, another company within our space. We wanted to give you details about everything that has been going on that has lead up to this point as we’ve always been 100% transparent with our users and would want to remain so. We felt this acquisition was beneficial for everyone and there are a lot of things we wanted to disclose in this blog post to clarify why this deal makes a lot of sense for all of our users.

Tracking202 was founded a little over 2 years ago and have grown tremendously in the short time span we’ve been around. Many may not realize this but we’re still very much a bootstrapped startup operating out of our house! Literally we have desks in the living room, bedrooms, kitchen, etc… Its not what you would have probably have imagined for the growth we’ve seen and support shown from all of our users around the world. We appreciate everything and all the love you’ve given us. But as you may have realized, we were perhaps growing too fast.

As some of you may have noticed in recent months, its been getting harder and harder to answer support around the clock the way we use to in the early days. The number of users grow larger every day and unfortunately we didn’t have enough resources, staff, or funding to keep on doing support and everything else without infringing on time spent innovating on the technology everyone has grown to love. Above all else, we only have two full time programmers on board, one of them being Wes himself who’s pretty much coded 98% of everything we have today!

Having said that, we were limited on growth in several areas and with the launch of our new network, had a hard time keeping up with the sheer volume of affiliates that were getting on board with our software and network. Lately, its felt like we were in a catch-22 situation, working hard just to maintain things, even when we gave our best efforts its been difficult to continue to grow the company and help the community the way we have wanted to.

Several months back, we had the privledge of meeting with the founders of Bloosky. At the time, we were thinking of strategic ways the two companies could work together to help each other out. Wes and I were also debating about bringing outside funding to continue growing the company. Although we were affiliates early on and for the most part, have self funded Tracking202 with all the campaigns we’ve built in our early days, it got to a point very early on where we no longer had time to run any campaigns and went full steam into Tracking202. With that, the company grew based on what it was able to bring in itself for revenue in terms of software subscriptions, advertising, and of course now network revenues. However its difficult to scale when you have limited resources, time, staff, and funding to continue to grow.

After debating long and hard about bringing on venture capital (VC) to grow the company who probably wouldn’t understand our business, we decided we didn’t like that option. We felt it was in Tracking202’s best interest as well as the interest of our users and the community we created to keep VCs out of this. What started as just a discussion on a simple business partnership ended up becoming talks of a potential buyout. This made a lot of sense to us because Bloosky was already involved in the space and more than just funding, they had extensive knowledge and ideals that complemented Tracking202 VERY WELL. After long talks, the deal made a lot of sense.

Before I dive into why I think this partnership is great, I wanted to give you guys a background on what Bloosky does for those unfamiliar with the name. Many companies in the space know who they are but they don’t have such a strong presence among the affiliate community. The reason for this is because most affiliates don’t deal with Bloosky directly or run Bloosky’s offers. Over the last couple years they have focused on working with other types of publishers, emailers. The other thing they are known for is their advertising relationships and focus on providing advertiser services. They have call centers, creative services and a strong ad sales team. They pull in an average of 60-100 new offers per week!

Tracking202 on the other hand as many of you know, is a publisher focused company with a strong affiliate base and technology that control several traffic sources such as search, social, contextual, media buys, etc… basically other than email. Like two halves of the same coin, the combination of the two companies made perfect sense. So what does this mean to our users?

Wes and I are staying on board to continue our vision of what we believe Tracking202 should have been since day 1. This deal gives us an equity stake in Bloosky and allows us to gain valuable resources necessary to continue doing what we do best. Above all else, Bloosky shares the same passion, values, and vision we have, which is one of the key reasons we were excited to do this. We would never compromise our values or visions for anyone, hence why we didn’t want to go the VC route when we could of. With this deal moving forward, this allows us to put more emphasis on support where it is needed. We now have more resources and funding to accelerate on the growth of the technology side building faster and bringing more tools, and to help the community as a whole to help our affiliates better. We saw several positives in this and Bloosky have been very supportive of everything we’ve done and wants to see our goals achieved. We hope with this, you’re able to get a glimpse of things to come and see why this is so beneficial on so many levels. We hope to make Tracking202 an even greater company in the near future. Thanks for everything to every one of you guys out there! We couldn’t have done it without the support and love you guys have shown us. The ride had been wild and it’ll only get wilder from here on out =]

Kindly,

Steven and Wes

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Editor’s note: More and more mobile app developers are deciding to make apps for Android, even though it still doesn’t have the same reach as the iPhone. In this guest post Kevin Nakao, the VP of Mobile for Whitepages, makes the argument for taking the Android plunge now (as he is preparing to with a new Whitepages Android app launching next week). Follow him on Twitter @knakao

Mobile games publisher Gameloft might have thrown in the towel on Android, but that is a mistake. I certainly understand why they gave up on Android. Since launching in February of this year, our own Whitepages Caller ID app has become a top ten grossing Android application, and yet we’ve seen less than $54,000 in revenue. While our iPhone app download counts are in the millions, our Android app downloads are a mere 17 percent of this volume.

Despite our meager return on investment this year, I believe that the real potential for Android app developers lies in the New Year. Here’s why:

End-To-End Goodness

In addition to being an open platform that facilitates device innovation, Android offers choice and progress when it comes to the marketplace where consumers discover and download applications. While iTunes and The Official App Store are the only places consumers can download apps for their iPhone, Android’s open platform allows merchants like MobiHand and HanDango to set up storefronts, ultimately providing more purchasing options for consumers. Google’s focus on improving its the user experience in its own Android market will also continue to boost revenues for app developers. For example, when the recent 1.6 OS (Cupcake) upgrade provided a much needed facelift for the market, we saw an immediate 18 percent lift in sales for our paid Caller ID application.

Billing Options Get Greener

While Google still has a long way to go in terms of reaching as many consumers as iTunes does, with the power of “what’s hot” and capabilities like in-app purchases, they have begun to enlist an armada of players—including carriers with deep experience in integrated billing—to create better markets for the merchandising and sale of applications. In early November, T-Mobile announced that they will launch their own Android market with integrated carrier billing, giving consumers the ability to charge applications to their phone bill. Also on the Google market roadmap is the ability for publishers to offer subscription purchases.

The low friction of bill-to-phone capabilities for consumers and the recurring revenue benefits of subscription services have the potential to drive significant revenue into the hands of developers. For example, we recently launched a service that allows consumers to text any number to 566587 (LOOKUP) to identify unknown callers and the bill-to-phone conversion rates have been two times what we have seen with the application market conversion rates. Thirty-four percent of our customers selected the unlimited subscription option over a single-use fee.

“Always With Me” Needs to be “Always On”

With the influx of more applications that require persistence—streaming music, Facebook, Skype, IM, & Caller ID—Android’s ability to run more than one application at a time is becoming more important. The “always with you, always on” benefits of mobile will be a key advertising opportunity especially for location-based offerings. Publishers will be able to use Android to generate more revenue by staying in front of users to produce more ad impressions. Advertisers also will be able to reach consumers closer to the point of sale, and take advantage of geo-triggered offers. Higher frequency of usage should also reduce churn for subscription-based services.

T-Mobile Got It Started Right, Verizon Will Unleash the Beast

T-Mobile launched the first Android phone in the U.S., and embraced the open platform. Any other U.S. carrier might have been tempted to meddle, but T-Mobile proved that an open platform would not be riddled with malware and abuse. With Verizon now going big on Android, we will start to see significant uptake. Verizon has 89 million customers with an average Data Revenue Per User of $15.69 to T-Mobile’s 33.5 million customers and $10 in Data Revenue Per User. Sprint has the highest data revenue per user of $19 and 48.3 million customers. In short, Verizon and Sprint will attract many more customers willing to spend more money on Android applications.

Android Needs To Be A Player, Not An iPhone Killer

For the same reason developers support multiple game platforms, browsers, and operating systems, Android just needs to achieve enough consumer scale to justify the investment. As long as Google stays focused on providing freedom in an open and competitive ecosystem, app developers will be rewarded. In just six months, we handily recouped our investment from launching an Android application and expect a significant return next year as Google leverages the reach and power of players like Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Motorola, HTC, Dell, and Samsung to grow its platform.

Think Different

Future app developers should approach Android with more than a simple port of an existing iPhone application. Our initial interest in Android was motivated by innovation and new product features that required integration with core device functionality offered by Android but firewalled on the iPhone. Android’s absence of an approval process facilitates rapid product development and the open platform provides the opportunity to innovate, giving every developer the freedom to compete and earn a place in the consumer’s pocket.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

The Facebook iPhone app is broken [updates below, it appears to be an API problem], and has been for a while now. Every single user profile page contains zero updates or posts. Instead, each loads a stream that reads “USER has no recent posts.” Judging from Twitter searches, tips coming in, and a Facebook thread, this has been the case since at least yesterday, and possibly before that.

To be clear, Facebook’s main News Feed is still being populated with updated items, but if you want to see elements from any individual user, you’re out of luck. And that’s bad when one key feature of the iPhone app is the ability to pin friends’ profiles to your main screen in order to more easily access such information. And it’s really bad when, again, this is one of the most popular apps that there is.

After Hewitt’s decision to stop iPhone development, Facebook’s VP of Communications Elliot Schrage left us a comment reaffirming Facebook’s commitment to Apple and, in particular, their iPhone app. He wrote that Facebook “has a great team of engineers taking over iPhone related development.”

So a full team has replaced Hewitt, but they can’t seem to keep the app from breaking. And I’m not sure they even realize it is broken. But plenty of users do.

Update: In an email, a member of Facebook’s communication team confirmed the issue and says they’ve alerted the engineering team. But I’m still wondering how Facebook’s new iPhone “team” could have either missed this issue or have let it go unresolved for a day or so now?

How many Facebook developers does it take to fix an app? We’ll find out, I guess. The answer should be one: Hewitt. But sadly, that’s not the case anymore.

Update 2: Facebook has responded again that “this is the result of a backend Platform API issue, not the iPhone app. We are pushing a fix shortly.” So it’s a API problem that only affected the iPhone app. That sounds like an iPhone app problem to me — especially considering that Facebook controls both.

Update 3: Joe Hewitt has written to say that, “The FB API has glitches from time to time which break not just the iPhone app, but every app that builds on it, from Blackberry to Seesmic.” So I’ll guess we’ll just chalk up all the iPhone-only complaints to the fact that it’s so popular.

[thanks Andy]

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

But lots of changes are coming. Google Voice should roll out publicly shortly. Users may be able to port their existing phone numbers to Google if they choose. Google’s acquisition of Gizmo5 will give the service a client soft phone plus enhanced VoIP capabilities. And who knows what part Google Voice will play in in the upcoming Google Phone.

So a little housekeeping is in order. And the first item on the checklist is to shut down the GrandCentral website on December 31, 2009. Users were upgraded to Google Voice earlier this year, but old GrandCentral messages are still on the old site. So if you want to keep them, Google suggests you download them soon.

The email:

From: voice-noreply@grandcentral.com
Date: November 20, 2009 11:55:25 PM PST
To:
Subject: The GrandCentral website is shutting down – GrandCentral is now Google Voice.

Dear GrandCentral User:

We’re writing to let you know that we will be closing down the GrandCentral website as of December 31, 2009.

All GrandCentral accounts were upgraded to Google Voice earlier this year, but since that time, you’ve still been able to log-in to your GrandCentral account and listen to old messages there. You will no longer be able to log-in to your GrandCentral account after December 31. Because of this, we strongly suggest downloading any messages or contacts that you want to keep in the next 43 days.

We will send you another reminder before closing down the site, but we suggest you take action now to download any information you want to keep.

- The Google Voice Team

And since we love Google Voice so much, I think it’s ok if we say goodbye to GrandCentral by looking back at the many times over the years that we’ve poked fun at the service. A few of my favorite missteps made by the awesome service from the GrandCentral archives:

GrandCentral A Little Too “Beta” For Some

GrandCentral’s “One Number For Life” Not Really

GrandCentral Homeless Stunt Worked So Well It’s Time For An Encore

GrandCentral Offline: If You Wanna Be A Phone Company, You Can’t Go Dead

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

You didn’t think that successful entrepreneurs were this pious did you? Neither did I. After all, what did God have to do with Google aside from Jeff Jarvis stealing his book title from fans of Jesus and their much copied meme? Did God build the Internet? Did he build the microchip?  I’ve never been religious myself and have always believed that with hard work and determination, you can surmount just about any obstacles. But I also learned the hard way that you can do everything right and fail. Sometimes you do just about everything wrong and make it big. My belief: success is 51% luck and 49% execution. You need to execute with precision, but a little luck goes a long way. It is always good to have God on your side. So it was interesting and illuminating (pun intended) to see what other entrepreneurs thought about this.

To collect and collate precisely that type data, I and several colleagues (with the support of the Kauffman Foundation) researched the backgrounds, motivation and success factors of company founders in several high growth industries including aerospace and defense, computer and electronics, health care, and services. Our earlier paper titled Anatomy of an Entrepreneur revealed that these founders typically came from middle-class backgrounds, have parents who are less educated than they are, and tend to be married with children when they launch their first company. Most had always wanted to start their own companies. They were driven by a desire to build wealth, commercialize business idea they had and to stop working for others.

For a new paper, titled Making of a Successful Entrepreneur, we analyzed the factors which made these company founders successful. Nearly all (96%) said that prior work experience was an important factor in their success and 58% ranked this as extremely important. The vast majority (88%) said that previous success and failures were important. But lessons from failures were judged as extremely important by more respondents than lessons from success. That’s right, those that had experienced failure valued it more highly than their successes.

Management teams were ranked as important by 82%. The next highest ranked factor was good fortune, with 73% ranking this as important, and 22% ranking this as extremely important. When asked what other factors played a role in their success, many who responded stressed the extreme importance of faith and God. It wasn’t just those with names from one religion who said this. Rather, it seems that Christians, Jews, Hindus and Muslims alike share the same beliefs. Yes, these people were on a Mission from God – or, at the very least, they strongly felt that their faith fed the entrepreneurial drive and the intangibles required to succeed in the brutal endeavor of making something from nothing, of birthing a company.

Another surprising bit of wisdom we got from these entrepreneurs was this. The Lord may be their co-pilot but their most trusted banker was the same guy they saw in the mirror every morning. Anyone who follows TechCrunch probably assumes that the vast majority of successful technology startups receive some sort of outside capital and that, in fact, the outside capital plays a key role in allowing these startups to get off the ground. But our sample of entrepreneurs told us that personal savings was the primary source of funding.

And this was not by a small margin. Roughly 70% of our respondents used personal savings to fund their first businesses. Even the serial entrepreneurs who probably could have tapped venture capital preferred to keep control of their own funding sources by bootstrapping. In second, third or fourth startups, over half of all entrepreneurs relied on personal savings to underwrite their launch.

My academic colleagues don’t like to hear this, but company founders didn’t rank university education as highly as other factors. Yes, 70 percent said their university education was important and Ivy-League graduates valued this more, with 86 percent indicating this was important. But only 20 percent of all entrepreneurs and 18 percent of Ivy-League graduates ranked university education as extremely important, however.  And the alum networks which are supposed to be really valuable for business contacts, weren’t ranked that highly. Only 19% of the entrepreneurs believed that university or alumni networks were important for their business. Even the Ivy grads didn’t think that their legendary networks were so important: only 29% ranked their legendary networks ranked these as important, and of these only 10.5% said these were extremely or very important.

Hardly any of the company founders ranked state or local government assistance as important. But those from the Midwest and Southwest put a slightly higher premium on this assistance than others, with 19 percent and 15 percent, respectively, ranking it as important. Entrepreneurs from New England put the lowest premium on it, with only 1 percent ranking it as important, followed by the West and South, both with 4 percent.  That seems logical, since high-growth startup mechanisms are most developed and the communities to support them most mature in the West and Northeast.

All told, even a skeptic like me was extremely surprised at how much these entrepreneurs valued things that no amount of money could buy – thriftiness (personal savings), faith (belief in the supreme being and oneself), and self-selected networks (friends and weak social ties). The moral of all this, I guess, is luck may be critical but self is essential to the successful startup.

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

One caveat: it’s not built, authorized or in any way endorsed by Google.

Spotted by Stuart Dredge over at Mobile Entertainment, the unofficial Google Wave iPhone app seemingly slipped past Apple’s usually and notoriously rigorous quality assurance and trademark compliance team and made its way to the App Store (iTunes link – up to you to decide if this is something you want to pay for).

There, it is the top result for a search on ‘google wave’ right before Waveboard, another iPhone app for the company’s experimental collaboration and communication tool that wasn’t built by Google.

But at least the latter developer didn’t blatantly use its trademarked logo, company and product name.

The Google Wave iPhone app was in fact made by CLapps, a small developer of games for the iPhone and iPod Touch platform.

CLapps – or rather, its sole employee David Crampton – notes in the app’s description: “I have no connection with Google or Google Wave but just supply a means by which to use it on your iPhone”. Somehow, I think the search giant’s lawyers are still going to have some objections to the naming part.

Expect it to disappear from the Store and (maybe) come back under another name in 3, 2, …

PS: while Google hasn’t yet published an official Google Wave iPhone app, simply pointing your browser to wave.google.com works mighty fine.

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According to the reports, AOL was looking to offload the asset for $300 million and talking to a pair of non-US companies about an acquisition (likely in a part cash, part stock transaction).

Question is: who are those potential buyers?

We’ve pinned down one who, sources say, has already engaged in late-stage negotiations with AOL about a buy-out that would occur after its planned December 2009 IPO: meet Naspers, a massive multinational media conglomerate that you’ve possibly never heard of.

Naspers (aka MIH Group) is a nearly century-old media company headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa that is listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and also boasts an ADR listing on the London Stock Exchange. The group’s principal operations are in Internet platforms, pay-television and print media.

So what would make this a sensible move for Naspers?

Naspers’ principal Internet operations are currently in South Africa and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, China, Russia, Eastern Europe, India, Brazil and Thailand. To expand its global footprint, buying ICQ would make sense as it already has stakes in a good number of complementary companies that operate on an international level.

An acquisition of ICQ, which has somewhere in between 40 and 50 million active users around the world – mainly in Germany, Russia, Ukraine and Israel – and is ‘moderately profitable’, would be a good move for the publicly listed media company to make in order to increase its international user base and create synergies between some of its ventures.

As outlined by Quintura CEO Yakov Sadchikov in a blog post speculating about Naspers’ interest in ICQ:

- the group owns a 35% stake in Tencent Holdings Limited, the operator of the wildly popular Chinese instant messaging platform QQ
- it boasts a 43% stake in Mail.ru, leading provider of internet and communication services for Russian speakers all over the world
- it holds 38% of Nimbuzz, a Netherlands-based global provider of instant-messaging and VoIP solutions for mobiles
– it has a 25% stake in global mobile advertising network operator BuzzCity (based in Singapore)
- it fully owns 24.com, one of the largest Internet publishers (offering blogs, email, social network and many other services) in Africa
– it recently acquired a majority interest in Brazil’s mobile services provider Compera nTime
- Naspers owns 100% of Gadu-Gadu, the leading Internet communications provider in Poland with further operations in Romania, Bulgaria and the Ukraine
- it has a 30% stake in MXIT, a mobile instant messaging service for South-Africans
- it’s the owner of Sanook!, Thailand’s no. 1 Web portal

The MIH Group also operates or owns a stake in a number of e-commerce platforms and auction websites, including Ricardo (mostly targeting Western European countries), Poland’s Allegro and Brazilian price comparison service BuscaPé, as well as local social networking sites like India’s Ibibo.

In other words, the group has been consistently building up quite a portfolio of multinational Internet and mobile communication properties, and picking up ICQ would fit perfectly into that expansion strategy.

According to our sources, Naspers was approached by AOL about a potential sale proactively, but is not the only corporation who might end up as the new parent company of ICQ. We reached out for confirmation or more information, but AOL declined to comment saying it doesn’t respond to rumors or speculation as a policy, and the MIH Group has not gotten back to us at this point. AOL is said to also be eying a sale of other properties, including MapQuest and Bebo.

AOL acquired ICQ (well, its then parent company Mirabilis) for $287 million in cash back in June 1998, with another $120 million in earn-outs for its executive team. Most of its 100-or-so employees are still located in Israel, where the company was originally established.

Stay tuned for more.

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