To all those startups who made it to TechCrunch50 this year, whether it was on stage or in the DemoPit, congratulations and thank you. We wouldn’t be here if there weren’t so many creative entrepreneurs out there trying to build something worthwhile out of nothing but ideas, sweat, and a little risk capital. A little risk can go a long why. And while it is true that this year’s crop brought fewer wild ideas than in the past, it is also true that by and large there were a lot more solid ideas as well.

One of the best things about TechCrunch50 is not what happens on stage, but what happens before companies even get there. Startups that don’t even have a working demo or a product are forced to build one just to be considered. So many startup founders at TechCrunch50, even those who don’t make it to the final 50, have told me how valuable this selection process is. There is nothing like a deadline to focus your ideas. And once you are there, the dealmaking in the DemoPit was intense.

Over the course of the two-day conference, we covered all 50 finalist demos, put up more than a dozen video interviews, and reported announcements made at TC50 from Bing, Facebook, Google, AOL, and MySpace. Even the TC50 winner from two years ago, Mint, had its own little announcement. If you weren’t one of the nearly 2,000 people in attendance, perhaps you were one of the 97,855 unique viewers who caught some of the presentations streamed live on video.

The video was shot and uploaded by the team at Ustream, who also were able to cut and upload archived video clips for each presentation within an hour of each one. Those video clips are embedded at the bottom of each post and is probably the best way to relive the experience.

There was so much happening at the conference, even if you were there you missed half of it. Below is a handy list of links to all of our TC50 coverage, including every company demo, announcement, backstage interview, and commentary. There is also an extensive list of links to other coverage (if we are missing something, let us know) and, at the very bottom, to Crunchbase profiles of each of the 50 finalists.

TC50 Winner:
RedBeacon

TC50 Finalists:
Threadsy
AnyClip
CitySourced

Best Presentation:
iMo

Best International Company:
Trollim

Microsoft BizSpark Award Winner:
AnyClip

Perkins Coie Award WInner
Toybots

Demopit Winners:
oDesk
YourVersion
Socialwok
Chyngle

TC50 Videos:
The TC50 Video
Fox Business News Part I
Fox Business News Part II

Photos:
Flickr Stream

TC50 Companies in Order of Appearance:
Penn and Teller
StorySomething
Clasemovil
ToonsTunes
SealTale
iTwin
FluidHTML
ToyBots
Spawn Labs
Clicker
5:1
DataXu
SeatGeek
HealthyWage
Rackup
Udorse
iMo
RedBeacon
Yext
LocalBacon
Refmob
TheSwop
Mota Motors
oDesk
YourVersion
ClientShow
Metricly
Affective Interfaces
CitySourced
Trollim
CrowdFlower
Cocodot
LearnVest
BreakThrough
Glide Health
Sprowtt
Thoora
Insttant
Perpetually
AnyClip
CrowdFusion
Hark!
Threadsy
lissn
Radiusly
Stribe
Clixtr
The Whuffie Bank
Socialwok
Chyngle

Interviews:
Penn and Teller
Ron Conway
Jason Hirschhorn
Jim Lanzone
Ross Levinsohn
Marissa Mayer
Marc Andreessen
Paul Graham
Tony Hsieh
CitySourced
Kevin Rose
Bradley Horowitz
Tim O’Reilly
Dick Costolo
Dick Costolo (again)
Reid Hoffman

Panels:
Advertising

Commentary:
TechCrunch Drinking Game
American Flag
Is Toybots Dreaming Big Enough?
Memo To Start-ups: You’re Supposed To Be Changing the World, Remember?
Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Europa

Announcements:
Facebook Prototypes
Facebook
AIM
Google Fast Flip
Bing Visual Search
MySpace Has Built Its Own Recommendation Engine, And They’re Open-Sourcing It
Mint Acquired by Intuit

Other Coverage:
The TechCrunch50 List: the presenting startups VentureBeat.
Pitch Glut: 220 Web Startups Launch in Two Weeks ReadWriteStart.
A Sundance for Startups The Huffington Post.
Round Up of this Morning’s Startup Presentations at TC50: Session 1: Youth & Games (Updating) TheNextWeb.
Techcrunch 50 2009 Coverage Silicon Angle.
TechCrunch50 kicks off: Let the games begin CNET
TechCrunch50: The iPhone as a Game Controller? AppScout.
New hardware at TechCrunch50CNET.
Startups Aim to Bring Personalization Back in Style GigaOM.
TechCrunch 50: Our Favorites So Far Business Insider.
Favorite Startups from TechCrunch50 Conference PC World.

TC50: With Penn & Teller, your iPhone does card tricks too VentureBeat.
Penn and Teller Unveil New iPhone Application #tc50 Techgeist
TechCrunch50: Penn and Teller, the iPhone app LA Times.
TC50: Story Something creates personal stories for your children VentureBeat.
Story Something cria histórias de dormir para o seu filho TC50 Jornal tecnologia.
TC50: ClaseMovil launches a virtual world for learning VentureBeat.
Quick thoughts from TC 50: ToonsTunes Startup Marketing Blog.
TC50: ToonsTunes is like GarageBand for kids Venture Beat.
ToonsTunes Launches at TechCrunch50. SheBlogs.
ToonsTunes Launches World’s First Virtual Community Offering an Online Recording… Reuters.
ToonsTunes – Tunes For Tots #tc50Techgeist.
TC50: Sealtale offers a personalized way to declare brand loyalty Venture Beat.
SealTale – New Widgets For Your Blog (?) #tc50 techgeist.
Microsoft launches Bing ‘Visual Search’ CNET.
Microsoft’s next attack on Google: Bing gets visual search VentureBeat.
Bing Tries More Pictures, Less Text Silicon Alley Insider.
Microsoft’s Bing Introduces Visual Search Feature paidContent.
Making Search Prettier: Bing Launches Visual Search ReadWriteWeb.
Microsoft Updates Bing with ‘Visual Search’ FeaturePC World.
Microsoft Bing Adds Visual Search Option Bits NYTimes.
Bing: Now With Visual Search Digital Daily.
Meet an Awesome Search Engine for iPhone Apps – Bing Digital Inspiration.
Bing Search Gets Visual Technologizer.
Hands on: Bing gains Silverlight-only Visual Search feature Ars Technica.
Microsoft Bing Adds Picture Searches for Some Queries Bloomberg.
Microsoft Bing gets visual search; full 2.0 update later this fall All About Microsoft.
Microsoft Adds Visual Search to Bing PC Magazine.
Bing’s new visual search tools are both stupid and cool Daily Finance.
Bing 2.0 “Visual Search” Launches, Allows Search By Pictures Search Engine Land.
Is Bing Optimizing for the Short Snout? The Noisy Channel.
Microsoft announces Bing Visual Search MobileTechWorld.
Bing Goes the Visual Internet AppScout.
Visual Search – Why type when you can see it? Bing Blog.
Microsoft Bing Visual Search Option Helps Us Become Lazier Searchers Google Watch.
Bing encourages visual search Computer World.
Google Leads in Search Engine Quality Test, But Bing ImpresseseWeek.
Bing 2? Microsoft Debuts Visual Search Engine internetnews.com
TC50: iTwin allows encrypted, cableless file-sharing VentureBeat.
TC50: FluidHtml builds a more web-friendly version of Flash VentureBeat.
FluidHTML seeks to bridge Web programming divide CNET.
TC50: Toybots lets toys come to life with Internet connectivity VentureBeat.
ToyBots – Connected Toys Of Some Sort #TC50 Techgeist.
Quick Thoughts from TC50: ToyBots Startup Marketing Blog.
TC50: Clicker is a TV guide for the Internet age VentureBeat.
Clicker Guides You To Internet TV #TC50 Techgeist.
Clicker’s Guide to Online Video Technologizer.
Stealth Report: TV / Video search engine Clicker AltSearchEngines.
Former Ask.com CEO Lanzone Launches Video Search Engine paidContent.
TC50: 5to1 gives publishers more control over their ads VentureBeat.
TC50: DataXu optimizes ad campaigns in real-time VentureBeat.
TC50: SeatGeek tells you when to buy tickets VentureBeat.
TC50: HealthyWage lets companies incentivize employees to stay fit VentureBeat.
TC50: RackUp sells gift cards in fast online auctions VentureBeat.
TC50: Udorse lets you tag your photos with product endorsements VentureBeat.
TC50: iMo turns the iPhone into a joystick for your PC games VentureBeat.
TC50: Need someone to mow your lawn? Redbeacon creates a market for local services. VentureBeat.
TC50: Yext transcribes, searches phone calls for local businesses VentureBeat.
Google News 2.0: Fast Flip Screenwerk.
Google Tries to Enhance News Browsing With Fast Flip PC World.
Google launches Fast Flip news website Telegraph.
Google unveils Fast Flip for newspapers and magazines LA Times.
Google turns a new page in online news content Times Online.
Google Launches Fast Flip To Accelerate News Browsing Information Week.
Google’s Fast Flip Trick Reuters.
Google lets readers “flip” through the news USA Today.
Google’s Fast Flip Dips Publishers’ Toes in Google’s Own Ad Revenues Content Bridge.
Breaking: Google FastFlip Web Search Android Guys.
Google hopes readers will ‘flip’ over new format SeattlePI.
Google Releases News-Reading Service New York Times.
Google Fast Flip Goes Live; Experiment In News Reading And Revenue Sharing paidContent.
Google Fast Flip: Reading Online a Bit More Like Print Businessweek.
TC50: Mota wants to curb “lemons,” fix the used car market VentureBeat.
TC50: Startups can trade favors at TheSwop.com VentureBeat.
iMo Is Great For Games, IMO#tc50 techgeist.
TechCrunch50: Show me the money CNET.
TechCrunch50: Click on Me! Click on Me! Or: Better Ads AppScout.
The Top 3 personal finance startups from TechCrunch 50 WalletPop.
TechCrunch50: Businesses that match you up CNET.
TechCrunch50: Next-Gen Classified Ads PCMag.
Startups Aim to Bring Personalization Back in Style GigaOM.
Mota Motors Launches Services Socaltech.com
RefMob Launches at TC50 to Revolutionize Word-of-Mouth Referral Programs” eMediaWire.
TC50: Refmob gives customers a slice of the referral market VentureBeat.
Redbeacon Launches At TechCrunch50 Reuters.
TC50: Localbacon wants to fix job sites by making job-seekers pay VentureBeat.
Yext(TM) Launches First Ever Pay-Per-Action Phone Call Service at TechCrunch50 Reuters.
Yext launches Yext Calls service at TechCrunch50 TelecomPaper.
TC50: Metricly aggregates analytics for startups, small businesses VentureBeat.
TC50: ClientShow manages collaboration for graphic designers VentureBeat.
TC50: Affective Interfaces detects whether your ad makes people happy VentureBeat.
TechCrunch50: Business Apps on Parade (and Emotion Sensing!) AppScout.
TC50: CrowdFlower offers rich analytics for mechanical turks VentureBeat.
TC50: CitySourced Lets You Report Pot Holes And Graffiti On The Go Facternet.
Demos and Dreams at TechCrunch50 Day 2 Change.org
City Sourced Allows Mobile Complaint Reporting IntoMobile.
I’d Call CitySourced, but I’m Just a Pothole bub.blicio.us.
City Sourced – A New Way To Inform City Hall #tc50 techgeist.
Citizen complaint app finally fires up TechCrunch50 CNET.
TC50: CrowdFlower offers rich analytics for mechanical turks caem.la.
AOL embraces Twitter, Facebook with AIM Lifestream CNET.
AOL Integrates LifeStream into AIM AppScout.
TC50: AIM opens up; pegs its future on mobile apps VentureBeat.
Cocodot – For Overdoing Invitations #tc50 techgeist.
Cocodot creates a slicker version of Evite VentureBeat.
Trollim throws programming gauntlet SDTimes.
TC50: LearnVest walks users through life’s financial milestones VentureBeat.
AIM Debuts Lifestream Twitter Client ReadWriteWeb.
TechCrunch50: A ‘Elegant’ Evite and More Subscription Services AppScout.
CrowdFlower Bolsters a New Era of Work PR Web.
CitySourced Launches At TechCrunch50 YouVox Tech.
Techcrunch 50: Glide Health Geekfluence.
What Women Want: Startups Targeting Females
ReadWriteWeb.
TechCrunch50: How to pitch to women in a room full of dudes PHP Hosts.
Affective Interfaces’ Webcam Software Reads Emotions Gizmodo.
IPhones Take on Potholes With City Reporting Tool PCWorld.
TC50: Does the world need another news aggregator? Thoora thinks it does VentureBeat.
IPhones Take on Potholes with City Reporting Tool CIO.
TC50: AnyClip searches movies for quotes, famous moments VentureBeat.
TC50:Perpetually creates a personalized Internet archive VentureBeat.
TC50: Insttant provides a snapshot of real-time news VentureBeat.
TechCrunch50: Aggregating News, Even Way In the Past AppScout.
TC50: Crowd Fusion wants to be the ultimate tool for web publishing VentureBeat.
Insttant.com – Real Time People Generated News at TechCrunch50 YouVox.
TechCrunch50: Women get short shrift LA Times.
TechCrunch50: The Better Social Network AppScout.
TC50: Lissn is like Twitter for longer, public conversations VentureBeat.
Apps for business at TechCrunch50 CNET.
TeleMedicine, Mood-Measuring, Citizen Complaints Vie for Net Fame
Wired.
TechCrunch50: Business Apps on Parade PC Mag.
AIM Bets on Social Networks as Startups Reveal a New Spin on Metrics GigaOM.
O’Brien: Real-time Web is Silicon Valley’s new obsession SJ Mercury News.
TC50: Radiusly says companies should forget Twitter, microblog with us instead VentureBeat.
Threadsy: All Your Communications, All in One Place Technologizer.
Startups Attempt to Lasso the Real-time Web GigaOM.
Connected communities matter: Introducing Stribe Stribe.
TechCrunch50: Real-time stream is more like a flash flood CNET.
Story Something: iPhone Customized Bedtime Stories for Children InventorSpot.
Personalized e-stories for kids on the iPhone and Kindle Springwise.com
TechCrunch50: Story Something Brings Technology to Bedtime Stories Trends Updates.
Story Something to offer personalised kids’ stories for iPhone Mobile Entertainment.
Clasemovil.com Wants To Educate Kids Using Videos, Games, And Learning Activities On The Web Pulse2.
ClaseMovil Makes You Learn Online – Damn #tc50 Techgeist.
ClaseMovil Hopes to Educate Latin America via Virtual Worlds Pixels and Policy.
TechCrunch50: Clasemovil Aims to Bring Video Games to the Classroom Trends Updates.
SealTale.com – Icons That Express Who You Are Killer Startups.
TechCrunch50: SealTale Makes Using Widgets Easy and Profitable Trends Updates.
Korea Based SealTale Enables You To Design Your Own Widgets Pulse2.
iTwin allows for easy file-sharing CoolestGadgets.
iTwin lets you share files over the internet Engadget.
iTwin Wireless USB Networking Device TFTS.
The iTwin lets you transfer files over the internet with ease, if you don’t already know how to do so Geek.com
Use iTwin USB To Share Data Between PCs Wirelessly, Share Data Overseas! TechnologyNerd.
FluidHTML seeks to bridge web programming divide Builder.au
FluidHTML: A Markup Language That Generates Flash Content Flash Speaks ActionScript.
TechCrunch50: DataXu a Real Time Ad Optimization System Trends Updates.
DataXu Bringing Sophisticated Buying Strategies With Real-Time Bidding Says CEO Baker AdExchanger.com
DataXu Optimizes Ad Buying Across Multiple Platforms Pulse2.
SeatGeek: A Prediction Market for Concert and Sports Tickets FastCompany.
Ticket Buying Gets All Smart Like Gear Patrol.
SeatGeek.com Launches (Live from TC50) SheBlogs.
HealthyWage.com Pays You To Be Healthy (TechCrunch50) SheBlogs.
TechCrunch50: HealthyWage Pays You to Stay Healthy Trends Updates.
HealthyWage Startup Generation.
HealthyWage Rewards You For Being Fit Pulse2.
HealthyWage Wants To Pay You To Get Fit #tc50 Techgeist.
Udorse: Give Product Placement a Chance The Noisy Channel.
TechCrunch50: Udorse is a Visual Endorsement Engine Trends Updates.
uDorse – Earn Money From Your Favorite Brands (TC50) SheBlogs.
iMo’s iPhone App Turns your iPhone into a Joystick for PC Video Games iPhoneHacks.
iMo – the TC50 finalist from India StartupDunia.
TechCrunch50: Localbacon Charges Job Seekers for Quality Service Trends Updates.
LocalBacon – A Simpler Way to Find Jobs #tc50 Techgeist.
localbacon.com Flips Job Board Model JobsPortalWatch.
TechCrunch50: TheSwop provides Exchange Facilities for Food and Service for Startups Trends Updates.
TheSwop – It’s Socialism, Localized #tc50 Techgeist.
theswop.com Webdev2.0.
TechCrunch50: oDesk Launches oDesk Challenge to Provide Startups a New Way to Hire Their Online Workers Trends Updates.
TechCrunch50: YourVersion – StumbleUpon, But Better? AppScout.
YourVersion Sign-Up Process Works Instigator Blog.
YourVersion Wins People’s Choice Award at TechCrunch50 Conference Marketwire.
YourVersion Launches Real-Time Discovery Engine at TechCrunch50 Conference MarketWatch.
Metricly: Aggregating Your Data To One Place #tc50 Techgeist.
Metricly – I disagree with the panelists – definitely need for correlated view @metricly #TC50 Cloud Profile.
Metricly – Realtime Dashboards for Business Go2Web20.

Crunchbase Profiles:
5:1

Affective Interfaces

AnyClip

BreakThrough

CitySourced

Clasemovil

Clicker

ClientShow

Clixtr

Cocodot

Crowd Fusion

CrowdFlower

DataXu

FluidHtml

Glide Health

Hark

HealthyWage

Imo

Insttant

iTwin

LearnVest

Lissn

LocalBacon

Metricly

Mota

Penn & Teller

Perpetually

RackUp

Radiusly

RedBeacon

RefMob

Sealtale

SeatGeek

Spawn Labs

Sprowtt

StorySomething

Stribe

The Whuffie Bank

The Swop

Thoora

Threadsy

ToonsTunes

Toybots

Trollim

Udorse

Yext

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Web visionaries like Reid Hoffman and Sean Parker struggled to come up with positive feedback on stage. Robert “I-get-excited-by-nearly-any-start-up” Scoble was so bored he was playing Hangman via Twitter with Paul Carr. Marc Andreessen praised Udorse—a company that he joked would make the world a worse place if it succeeded—because at least it was a new idea. Tim O’Reilly said he didn’t care whether Cocodot, one of the companies he judged, succeeded or failed because it was so meaningless in the world. And Tony Hsieh just said it blatantly: “I didn’t see anything that was trying to change the world.”

One big exception was CitySourced—a company that excited Kevin Rose precisely because it was trying to build something that doesn’t really exist today and would make a huge difference in people’s lives. It was the most excited I saw an expert about anything over the two-day event.

I don’t say this to knock the conference or the selections we made. But the truth is I heard it too consistently backstage to ignore it. To be fair, we’re at that point in the start-up cycle where this is to be expected. Web 2.0 start-ups that are going to break out mostly have and others are running out of time and money. With fatigue setting in around the Valley, most new companies are looking to play it safe. We saw the exact same thing in 2001-2002. Then and now, press outlets compliment this type of thing as “sensibility” or being smart. Jeering ledes get written with told-you-so lines like “Remember profits, Silicon Valley?”

Those people just don’t understand the Valley and what makes great start-ups great. They’re the same people who write about Facebook and Twitter once the companies have raised loads of money and gotten huge audiences. The people who extol the virtues of “sensibility” are never the people at the core of the next great companies. Whether press or VCs, they’ll be late to the next wave, just like they were too late to this one. But the experts at our conference do get it and that’s why they left mostly un-wowed.

Here’s why this matters: Start-ups by definition don’t have the experience, market position, funding or resources to tackle obvious market opportunities. If what they’re trying to do makes clear business sense, a bigger, better-positioned company would do it. A start-up’s only edge is that it’s not built into legacy businesses and preconceived notions and can do something, well, crazy.

There are entrepreneurs somewhere building the next big companies. But it’s probably just a wonky side-project that no one—not even the entrepreneur himself—realizes is the next big thing. That’s who we need to drag on stage next year.

Ten years from now I don’t want to look back on TechCrunch50 and see that our winners had a string of $100 million exits. For a conference that seeks to ferret out the most exciting startups in the world, that’s failure. I want to see huge audacious failures and huge gaudy wins. I worry if we play it too safe as a conference we’ll lose the attention of the Andreessens, the Hsiehs, the Tim O’Reillys and the Reid Hoffmans and eventually, the audience that stayed glued to their uncomfortable seats even in the event’s final hours hoping to see something that could change their lives.

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TechCrunch50 has always been very welcoming towards companies from countries other than the US. Last year, for example, a total of five companies from Japan made a showing at the event (three startups presented onstage, two were in the DemoPit).

This year, Korea sent four promising companies to TechCrunch50 (finalist Sealtale, and DemoPit participants UniQube, touchring and FillThat), while Japan had two startups exhibiting in the DemoPit (LIFEmee and Spysee).

These are the four noteworthy Korean services that made it to TechCrunch50 this year:

Sealtale (TechCrunch50 finalist)
Launched by six college students, the Korean version of Sealtale, a social widget service, has attracted 200,000 users in six months (the English version launched Monday on TechCrunch50’s first day). Sealtale lets users express their interests, preferences or causes via so-called seals, which are interactive widgets. You can integrate these seals into your blog or profile page on a social network and interact with other people within the seal itself. The system works across various blog platforms and social networks. The seals can include content like text (RSS feeds, comments, posts), audio and video files.

Sealtale allows you to design and distribute your own seals, too. Companies can create branded seals and use them as viral marketing vehicles. A movie studio, for example, could create a seal for one of its movies and provide trailers and text-based information for users who choose to show that seal on their blog.

Read more about Sealtale in our previous post.

FillThat (DemoPit company)
Monetizing blogs is notoriously difficult. FillThat intends to solve this problem by creating a revenue stream for bloggers within a blog’s commenting space. The way it works is that you buy virtual currency (”Fill Dollars”) with real money and then pay for your comment to boost visibility (it’s also possible to achieve this by taking action, i.e. completing an offer). FillThat will go live next month.

Touchring (DemoPit company)
Touchring wants to bring voice communication into the social space. The Flash app makes it possible to call up friends over so-called Touchrings, cell phone-like icons that you can design yourself and integrate into your blog or profile on various social networks. Calls with other Touchring users are free, but you can also make phone calls to landlines and mobile phones (rates). Touchring launched yesterday.

UniQube (DemoPit company)
Seoul-based Solspectrum showcased UniQube in the DemoPit, an in-stream ad placement solution that’s supposed to help video portals monetize their content. The aim is to enhance brand awareness and customer engagement by integrating interactive ads into video clips or movies at the right moment in a non-intrusive way.

When an actor eats a pizza in a certain scene of a movie, for example, an overlay pizza ad could be displayed. Viewers choosing to click on it could then sign up for a competition or get discount coupons directly within the video without navigating away to another page. Snippets containing the interactive ads can be cut out and sent to friends via Twitter, Facebook and other media. UniQube users can track the distribution paths and effectiveness of their video ads in real-time. The solution is built upon Silverlight and still in development.

These are the two services from Japan that were in the TechCrunch 50 DemoPit:

LIFEmee
LIFEmee is a comprehensive life management service that allows you to store and share the significant aspects and events of your life online (from “the cradle to the crave”). Keep a diary, list up and control personal assets, upload a Last Will and Testament, lay out future plans and compare certain elements of your life, i.e. your annual income, with LIFEmee users around the world.

LIFEmee launched at TechCrunch50 (a Japanese version follows soon). Read more about this service in my previous post.

Spysee
The Japanese version of this people search engine went online last year and instantly gained impressive traction. Much like Spock, Spysee is focused on collecting information on individuals and shedding light on their relation with other people. Type in “Michael Arrington”, for example, and you’ll get a mini bio, a diagram displaying people (relatively) close to him, pictures (i.e. this one), relevant news, keywords, blog posts and video clips. Spysee went live Monday (in beta).

Photo credit: Fumi Yamazaki

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The conference is over, the winner has been announced (RedBeacon), and the drinking has begun. Thank you so much to all of the companies (both the finalists and in the Demopit), the sponsors, and the attendees who made this year’s TechCrunch50 possible.

We’ve put up more than a hundred posts in the past two days, covering every single launch, and then some. So there’s a lot to absorb. But for now here’s a video that captures some of the spirit of the event.

Video by Animoto. Song by Chamillionaire (who jumped in as a judge at the last minute).

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So you don’t need a bunch of words from me, just go to the jump and watch our final backstage interview of the conference where Hoffman talks about whether LinkedIn will buy Xing and whether it’ll file to go public this year.

Also, Hoffman names the three other tech companies he thinks can price pretty much whenever they want. (And lucky him, he’s an investor in two.)

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So lucky for us that some of the most influential and interesting judges were left for the final panel. I caught up with one of my favorites, Dick Costolo, who most people know as the new COO of Twitter, others know as the former co-founder of Feedburner and far fewers know as a former improv comedian.

Costolo and I talked about why he gave up a plush post-acquisition Chicago life to move to Silicon Valley and run the day-to-day Twitter operations, when it’s a good idea to hire your friends and when it isn’t, Twitter’s magic acquisition number, and why startup M&A is like teenage crushes.

Also, Twitter CEO Evan Williams has been outspoken about not enjoying his time at Google after the Blogger acquisition. Others have cited that as a reason Twitter may not sell to Google in the future. I asked Costolo whether he had the same experience.

Video is on the jump.

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Clixtr’s service is primarily designed for concerts, weddings, and other major events where lots of people are taking lots of photos, with no good way to aggregate them all together. The service revolves around an iPhone application that uses the smartphone’s integrated camera, data connection, and GPS to faciliate quick photo uploads to a shared album. Using it is simple: take a photo, and upload it to Clixtr. If the app detects that you’re near where a lot of other people are uploading media, it will group them into an album.

You can browse these albums directly from the iPhone app in a stream view. You can also use an ‘explore’ function, which uses the phone’s GPS to locate any events that are going on at any nearby events. To create an event, you simply enter a descriptive name, and then invite friends who are nearby to view and participate in the album.

Of course, photo sharing sites have been around for ages. But few of them are really based around location — instead, you usually have to create an album and manually invite each of your friends. If you don’t have someone’s contact information they’re out of luck, and the whole process can be time consuming and tedious.

Q&A with panelists Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Sean Parker, Mike Schroepfer, and Robert Scoble:
MS: I think that was awesome. I’m curious how you can do mapping to events. Do you have to be invited.

Michael Arrington: full disclosure for MS, at some point, you will have location. MS: It’s something we’d like to do…
A: When you launch the application, we show events that are nearby. Events are server side and sent back donw.

RS: My phone doesn’t let you do anything while it uploads the photo. But it’s a nice install. Don’t have to do signup.

Q: How does it make money
A: Costs less than a cup of coffee at 2.99. Possibly location based advertising.

RH: I think doing local photo could be good. I would up incentive for participation. One thing that could be distinctive for when Facebook app starts doing their own. If all my friends are already on graph A (Facebook), that’s hard. You’ll need to up level of incentive to participate.
DC: I would look at what Foursquare is doing, with the game element. People want to be mayor of a certain place.

Video:

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The service, opening to the public today at Techcrunch50, provides a free and easy way to place a social networking layer over any site. This layer exists on your site in the form of a bar at the bottom of the page. This is not unlike the Meebo chat bar that you may have seen on this site and others recently. But Meebo was really only about chat (and sharing), Stribe wants this bar to be a full-fledged social network on your site, including members, comments, and yes, chat.

Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect offer some of this functionality, but again, that’s not actually your social network, it’s Google or Facebook’s social layer laid on top of your site. As such, neither of those are very customizable, at all. Stribe is completely customizable if you know what you’re doing (or have a developer who does). Maybe you don’t want the bar at the bottom of the site — you can move it. Maybe you don’t want it to be the default black — you can change it. But if you just want the defaults, it’s as easy as installing one bit of JavaScript code onto your site to get it working.

People who register to be a member of your site by way of Stribe also become members of the larger Stribe community. This means that if you have a friend who is a member of another Stribe-powered network, you can still chat with them even when you’re on different sites.

Stribe will run on the “freemium” model, offering much of their service for free, but charging a fee to those customers who are of a certain size (according to site traffic). That will range from $10 to $50 a month to use Stribe to create a social network for your site.

CEO Kamel Zeroual and CTO Gael Delalleau presented at the conference today.

Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased)

The experts: Robert Scoble, Sean Parker, Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Mike Schroepfer, Chamillionaire

MS: No integration with any social network there now? Was that intentional?

KZ: The point is that you just need to control and see what is going on, on YOUR website.

DC: 37Signals says that sometimes products do too much, you should do less. With many product, you can do too many things, and it becomes difficult to figure out what to use it for.

KZ: The low-hanging fruit is the community, but we’re trying to reach out to different markets.

C: Are you saying, if I’m Walgreens, this will turn it into a social network? This is different from Twitter, you are just at a site and you want to interact.

KZ: That’s exactly the point, man.

RS: Enterprises already have tools like this thought. What makes this different?

KZ: There are a lot of sites that don’t want to use someone else to become a social network.

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Connected communities matter: Introducing Stribe Stribe.

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But unlike Facebook and LinkedIn which exist as two totally separate networks, Radiusly wants to integrate its service with Twitter. Users will be able to publish an update they leave on Radiusly to Twitter (and Facebook, as well). But the key selling-point is that in the Radiusly environment you can also do much more, such as have a professional profile, resume, sample works, and photos.

Ideally, a Radiusly users would be someone who loves the concept of Twitter, but wants to be able to maintain their work-related tweets in a separate environment, where they could also share other professional information. As more and more companies wake up to the idea of using Twitter as a means of communication, a service like this could be compelling to them.

Of course, there is a lot of competition out there for the business Twitter market. Aside from startups like CoTweet, (TechCrunch50-alum) Yammer, and Blellow, Radiusly could be looking at both LinkedIn and Twitter itself making more moves into this arena shortly. We already know that Twitter is gearing up some professional tools for businesses to use, but whether those will be things similar to what Radiusly offers, no one is sure yet. Meanwhile, if LinkedIn wanted to, it could easily make itself Twitter-centric. It doesn’t appear that they are going to do that, but you never know.

Radiusly plans to using a subscription/freemium model, offering some services for free, while charging a subscription fee for others. There will also be sponsored search listings, job listings, and banner ads to bring in revenue.

CEO Chris Sel and VP of Business Development Adarsh Pallian presented it today at the conference.

Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased)

The experts: Robert Scoble, Sean Parker, Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Mike Schroepfer, Chamillionaire

RS: I think you’re aiming at the right target, but you hit the wall. Brands tell me they won’t want to advertise on Twitter. You’re just not there yet, I’m not sure why.

Q: Reid your thoughts?

RH: In a rare position, I agree with much of what Robert was saying. The real key is how do you exchange information on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, not that they need a new way to search for some of this.

DC: I agree with Robert and Reid, I don’t really get why I would go there. I kept trying to figure it out, to be fair when Twitter first launched I didn’t get it either, now I work there.

C: I gotta be Simon Cowell too. I can’t see why someone would need this.

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TC50: Radiusly says companies should forget Twitter, microblog with us instead VentureBeat.

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If you’ve seen the video demos or had a chance to use Google Wave at all, Lissn may seem familiar — it has the same type of real-time conversation aspect. The difference, of course, is that this is the main function of Lissn, while Wave is trying to be a lot of different things wrapped into one. Lissn is all about having conversations with people, and allows others to watch, and join in as they’d like.

And because anyone can join in on these conversation threads, Lissn can tell what the most popular topics being talked about are. And it highlights those for other users to see, and lets them get involved in the conversations too. You also have friends on the service, and you can see what conversations your friends are engaged in, and can decide whether or not you want to join them too.

Lissn also automatically translates conversations in your native language, using Google Translate.

There is also a location-based element to the service. Using your IP address (or manually putting in a city) you can see the conversations happening around that area.

Another service that has similar conversation capabilities is FriendFeed. Of course, the future outlook for that service is murky since Facebook recently acquired them. And FriendFeed also had many more features such as aggregation of social data, Lissn is just about conversations, keeping it simple.

As for a business model, Lissn will show ads based on keywords within conversations, just like Google does in Gmail.

Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased)

The experts: Robert Scoble, Sean Parker, Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Mike Schroepfer, Chamillionaire

Q: Dick, you’re working for Twitter now, what do you think?

DC: I like it but on the business side, Google Ads isn’t going to work. Random conversations are hard to monetize. But I like the idea of sponsored conversations. This is kind of like Twitter meets Get Satisfaction.

RS: Conversations are interesting, but I’m not sure I see enough that pulls me in here. Why would I leave Twitter to come here.

MA: Twitter is all about short conversations, this takes that idea and extends it to longer conversations.

RS: So why is this different from FriendFeed and soon Facebook?

DC: I’ll answer this, and I want shares in the company (kidding). The answer there is the local conversation. People looking for a good pizza place in Noe Valley, etc. This is an interesting vehicle, for I want to ask questions in a local context.

MS: I think there is a big separation between big conversations and the local conversations. You need to think about how to separate those out. The local conversation has to be colored by your social network, I think. It’s about your friends.

RS: That was a huge problem with FriendFeed too. With too many people participating, there’s just too much.

C: Right, how many people can have a conversation? Like a trending conversation on Twitter, you can go back so far, to so many message.

MA: Yeah, it’s mostly about live conversations. But it’s also interesting to just listen, especially what celebrities have to say.

Myke Armstrong showed off the demo of listen today at the conference.

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TC50: Lissn is like Twitter for longer, public conversations VentureBeat.

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Launching its large beta today at TechCrunch50 as a free web app, Threadsy wants to take all of your online communication and shove it into a single service. All of the messages directed at you (email and Twitter @replies, for exmaple) will be put into a single stream of message, called the “inbound” column. Meanwhile, all of the activity streams that you simply follow (Twitter, Facebook, etc), will be put into a single activity stream, the “unbound” stream. The result is one service to rule them all.

The great thing about this is that you no longer have to sign into multiple accounts while remembering who is trying to communicate with you. Everyone also has a profile on Threadsy which shows all the social networks you reside on.

While the thought of putting all of your communication in one place is nice, quantity will obviously be an issue. But Threadsy is more than just communication aggregation, it also promises to provide deep context about the people you are communicating with, so you can filter and manage the stream. You can also filter by the type of service (for example, only seeing tweets or Facebook messages).

In terms of monetization, like a lot of other communication platforms, Threadsy will show contextual advertisements. But the service says that unlike something like Gmail, it won’t always show them, and instead will only do so when it could actually help the user.

Threadsy currently looks at over 40 social sites on the web to get this information. CEO Rob Goldman and VP of Engineering Udi Nir demoed the app today at the event.

Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased)

The experts: Robert Scoble, Sean Parker, Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Mike Schroepfer, Chamillionaire

RS: I think this is great for me. But are there enough people who will care about this? But I want it right now!

RG: That’s a great point, we followed FriendFeed closely, but we’re trying to pull all the information that’s required.

DC: This is the PIMP problem (personal information management). I like that this tackles that aspect of day to day problems.

RH: It’s a good communications platform but Google has tried this before. It’s a tough challenge.

SP: It’s beautifully built, but this is a huge challenge. But this looks very good and clean. I’m not a user of something like this, because this is more for power-users, and I don’t think all inboxes are created equal. A Facebook message is lighter than a regular email, and Twitter even less.

RS: How do you make money off the stream?

RG: We think current webmail misses the mark by focusing on low value ads across all message. We only want to focus on 2, 3, or 4 percent of your messages.

RS: What about hooking up with Tumblr or Posterous for curation?

RG: It’s exciting to see what people do with this.

MA: So FriendFeed is dead to your Robert, is this it?

RS: Maybe.

C: It definitely depends on how it feels when you try it out. I feel like I’m cheating on my MySpace, so I think this is brilliant. How safe is this though? Everyone could get everything if they got into your account.

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TechCrunch50: The Better Social Network AppScout.
Threadsy: All Your Communications, All in One Place Technologizer.

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The company says that there are plenty of link sharing apps, but when it comes to sharing a link from a webpage, there isn’t really a good way to do it — Emailing, Twitter, and other services can be a hassle. Hark’s plugin sits at the bottom of your screen, with a handful of buttons for sharing and a chat window that slides out of the bar. When you want to flag something as interesting, you can send out a ‘flare’, which immediately sends out a small notice to the rest of your friends that have the plugin installed.

The plugin allows you to see which of your friends are online, and (depending on their settings) display which pages they’re currently browsing, so you can strike up a conversation. You can also see which other users are browsing the same page as you, and can look at their history of Flares to see if you might have something in common.

Q&A with panelists Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Sean Parker, Mike Schroepfer, and Robert Scoble:
RH: Downloads are hard.
RS: I’m not interested in it. It’s not going to work on my iPhone or Android. I’ve seen this done before, and we had similar chat tech, I don’t see enough gain for me to go get it.
A: I would say on the plug-in piece it’s a really challenge to overcome. If you look at Firefox, there have been lots of plugins. If you can provide utility to the user.
MS: I would really think hard about virality. You need to have a network set up, there’s a multi-party problem. If I install and nobody else does, I don’t get anything out of it.
DC: Assuming you can get past plugin challenge, is that these have novelty and then you wish things on screen would stop. How do you make it more than a cool novelty.
SP: I think someone needs to do this with video..
RS: Meebo already did that, I’m not seeing this bring something new to the table.

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TC50: Hark! lets friends web browse, share links together VentureBeat.

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Whether you want to poke fun at something, embellish a love note, or just prove a point, there’s probably a movie scene out there that can help you do it. People reference scenes all the time in their daily lives, and on the web it’s not uncommon for a blogger to accentuate their post with a particularly relevant clip. But for their popularity, there still isn’t an established site that’s known as the place to find a movie clip — YouTube and Hulu are always worth a shot, but they can be very hit or miss. AnyClip, a new startup that’s launching today at TechCrunch 50, wants to be the solution, with a searchable database of movie scenes.

There are, of course, other places to look for movie clips on the web. But these all have their faults: YouTube is riddled with content that may be somehow related to the scene you’re looking for, but acted out by people who most definitely aren’t the original actors. All of Hulu’s content is licensed straight from content owners so you don’t have to worry about issues with user-generated clip, but their library is still quite limited.

To help make the search engine as accurate and thorough as possible, AnyClip draws its data from a number of sources: first, it has compiled publically available data on the web and associated it with each film. The site has also created a Mechanical Turk-style operation, with a team of humans inputting meta data for each film (workers are contributing from all over the world, with most of them coming from the US and Israel). On average, each film in the database has 500 tags.

The site is also launching a public API, which will allow developers to query its database of movie clips from their applications.

SP: The content deals are really hard.
A: Yes, they’re very challenging. We’re in discussions with everyone. Mickey Schulhof (former Sony of America CEO) is a principle investor.
SP: I’ve seen deals like this take a decade…

A: Everyone has an emphasis on long from, but nobody is paying attention to the short formats. As a result you can acquire content for less than you would elsewhere.
SP: I think fear is a big factor, and if you’re focusing on short form content you may be able to overcome some of that fear.
RH: I think you’ll be competing with tags on YouTube clips. Another question is I would elaborate some kind of discovery. One of the other things is that people will only type so much on a search, but they’ll keep clicking on things. And the more money you make the more the studios will try to renegotiate deals to take that..
A: We invigorate interest with these clips, so it helps them.

Jason Calacanis: If not all the studios sign up. What do you think you can do with fair use? Could you do 15 seconds of content?
A: I’m not that interested in having tons of content that they don’t want us to have. We can’t build a business on the backs of their content illegally and hope it works. Over time we will get it all. AnyClip is a dream, a vision. We can start with very comprehensive comedy, or horror coverage.
JC: Do you see this going into other verticals, like AnySportsClip?
A: There’s a reason we didn’t name it AnyMovieClip. But we’re on film now because they’re used to selling it.
SP: I totally believe your argument that this allows studios to better monetize back catalog. Lets people monetize stuff that there would be no other reason to talk about. This is the kind of thing that absolutely should happen. But it will take twice as you long to make those details.

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TC50: AnyClip searches movies for quotes, famous moments VentureBeat.

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O’Reilly is a consummate thought leader in the Valley so the interview is interesting for anyone. But if you’re planning on actually pitching O’Reilly on anything this is required viewing.

Oh, he also explains what he and the Cookie Monster have in common. Video is on the jump. (Sorry for the abrupt edits. Trying to keep these interviews on the short-side.)

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The company says that every year, 5-8% of ‘bookmarked’ content vanishes from the web as pages are modified and removed. Perpetually helps solve this problem by recording a history of every change on your site. And Perpetually doesn’t just keep a copy of this content in an ugly search engine archive — you can actually view the content in context, as it originally appeared on the site. You can even select a specific portion of a site that you’d like to focus on and scroll through its history in-line with the rest of the page. The interface is very slick, and is reminiscent of what you’ll find with Apple’s Time Machine backup software. You can also browse through a visual history of your website using an interface that’s similar to Apple’s Cover Flow feature.

To get started, companies just have to tell the Perpetually.com service to start monitoring their sites, and the service will do the rest. There’s no software or plugins to install. At this point the service doesn’t allow you to index content behind a password wall, though it sounds like this may be available in the future. Customers can elect to keep their records totally private, for peace of mind. However, users can also use the software to monitor changes on publicly available sites.

Of course, there are already some well-established efforts to create a historical record of the web, like the Internet Archive’s WayBack Machine. But these have their limitations: for one, it’s not really feasible for services like this to track every change on a site, as the processing and space costs would be extreme.

The company already has some impressive clients, including the design team over at The Wall Street Journal.

Q&A with panelists Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Sean Parker, Mike Schroepfer, and Robert Scoble:

RH: it would be valuable to create configured accounts. The freemium could be try it for two weeks then pay. It’s better to let users test something out before paying.

SP: you are going to need the benefits of the freemium model.

A: Freemium is not what we have today.

RS: The business challenge will be convincing the New York Times to use this.

RS: How does the customers ad dollars get protecting (the publisher).

Jason: HAve you considered making this a tool that the NYTimes can make public on their site that lets people see past homepages.

A; Its up to the publisher to do that. We are open to that.

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TC50:Perpetually creates a personalized Internet archive VentureBeat.

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The site features an analytics platform that can perform semantic analysis on Tweets as they come in — in other words, it can tell what a tweet is talking about, and if it has a positive or negative sentiment. The site can also identify links and media that are rapidly rising in popularity, and displays headlines in real-time as they come in. For Tweets with media, the site allows users to view photos and play videos inline.

The top of the site features a list of headlines, detailing some top trends being seen on Twitter (for example, it could say that 77% of the tweets about the movie Extract are positive). If you’re interested about a certain topic or person, you can run a search for them and the site will present a list of top headlines related to that query, along with quick stats about the keyword’s appearances. If you run a search on a user, you can see what other users they’re related to and how much influence they have. To help further refine searches Insttant can filter by location, so you can hone in on tweets that most relevant to you.

Q&A with panelists Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Sean Parker, Mike Schroepfer, and Robert Scoble:
DC: I think market for this for advertisers/marketers it’s great. But I think it would be hard to make this appealing to end users and advertisers at once.
MS: Do you track all topics, is there a limit to what topics? How real time is it?
A: It’s all topics. We’ll look at “Toyota is___”, “I don’t like ___”. To help determine what something is.
RH: I think that getting a lot of different versions of analysis of what’s happening on the real time web is interesting. I think it will be challenging to have a user experience where users are participating in the real time web, and also offering an analytic overlay. I think this would be good for marketers.

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TC50: Insttant provides a snapshot of real-time news VentureBeat.
Insttant.com – Real Time People Generated News at TechCrunch50 YouVox.

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We also talk about Affective Interfaces, a TC50 company that got mixed reviews from the judges this morning, but one of Horowitz’s favorites of the day.

Clip on the jump.

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This video is longer than most of our behind-the-scenes glimpses, but we covered a lot of territory. Rose tells us the single most important product move Digg has made in the last year, whether his company is worried about the Twitter threat, what’s coming next for Digg, his favorite company that launched today (HINT: CitySourced founders may have a potential angel investor), and whether or not starting Pownce was a mistake.

Video is on the jump.

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The online medical records space is growing fast; with Microsoft, Google and others trying their hand at products that could eventually become the go-to platform for accessing health records online. TechCrunch50 startup Glide Health, which was spun off from Transmedia, is hoping to give these tech giants a run for their money with its web, desktop and mobile apps that provide a centralized repository for patient records. Glide Health’s web and desktop apps hold patient profiles (which can be created by the patient or doctor) that contain pertinent medical information such as insurance information, family medical history, doctors, past test results, past surgeries and procedures, x-rays and more.

This browser app is based on the same synchronization engine that powers Glide’s previously launched collaboration OS software; however, this product has been specifically designed for the healthcare space. Today, Glide Health is launching an application for patients, doctors and healthcare professionals to access and manage healthcare from their desktops or mobile phones.  All the data syncs no matter where it is updated across legacy patient management systems and databases.

Via the mobile and desktop apps, doctors can manage patient records and health history as well as save any communication about patients between other doctors and professionals. Doctors can also schedule appointments from mobile phones, prescribe medications and write prescriptions directly to pharmacies from the mobile app. Doctors can submit dictations to the Glide Health platform via the mobile app, which will then be transcribed.

On the patient side, the mobile app lets users travel with their complete medical history and records wherever they go. The patients can also document and archive any communications with doctors and healthcare professionals as well as access WebMD-like information about personal health and fitness, health news, support groups, insurance policies and health facilities. The platform lets doctors and patients upload health records, transcripts, x-rays and other medical information and images.

Glide Health makes money by charging medical professional an annual fee; but the app will be available to patients for free (if their doctor uses the program). Synchronizing medical data across legacy systems is a huge challenge, especially when security is an issue but Glide Health’s Founder and CEO Donald Leka assures that the app is extremely secure and built with several security and privacy layers.

Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased)

The experts: Satish Dharmaraj, Don Dodge, Bradley Horowitz, Tim O’Reilly, Kevin Rose

LZ: barriers, regulatory privacy issues comment?

AA: privacy is important, we lost sight of that-we see tremendous benefits from products we see in the market today. We provide a rights spaced environment for sharing.

LZ: going to charge providers-how to make the case to switch from previous management systems.

A: Have doctors who are investing into these platform, The selling point is the abandonment of traditional models, with a revenue share of ad revenue with doctors.

TO: I like the vision of what you like to do except for the advertising.
I have a hard time believing you have solved these problems.

A: We’ve built the platform-the selling point is universal compatibility. Signed agreements, but launched today.

KR: Doctors have to be on the platform for thus to work?

A: We are starting with doctors groups to get leverage on the platforms.

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Techcrunch 50: Glide Health Geekfluence.

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Mental illness is a more common affliction in society than most people think. But, many people are embarrassed to admit and confront their mental illness. According to TechCrunch50 startup BreakThrough, one in four American adults have a mental illness but two-thirds of Americans don’t get proper treatment. BreakThrough hopes to provide an easy and private way to connect mental health providers with clients for therapy via video, phone or the web through their newly launched platform.

On BreakThrough’s site, clients can search for providers (including psychiatrists, psychologists and nurses) on a variety of criteria, including price, speciality (i.e. depression, schizophrenia, post traumatic stress disorder), and gender. On a provider’s page you can see his or her education, experience, pricing for services, the insurance the professional accepts, and even a video introduction of the provider explaining his or her specialities. BreakThrough certifies all providers are credentialed professionals.

If you find a provider that suits your needs, you can see available appointments and schedule an appointment to chat via video chat (via Skype), email or the phone. And you can remain anonymous throughout the process; all you need is an email address to participate in the site. The virtue of BreakThrough is in this anonymity—people may be embarrassed to publicly acknowledge their potential mental illnesses to the public and the site gives people a way to do this in the comfort of their own home.

Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased)

The experts: Satish Dharmaraj, Lior Zorea, Bradley Horowitz, Tim O’Reilly, Kevin Rose

KR: Is anyone else doing this?

A: There are advice platforms, but they don’t have licensed providers. Some platforms don’t have the technology.

TO: How do you get therapists to participate?

A: We have a log of providers who are interested.

TO: How do you qualify them?

A: We only get licenses medical therapists and make sure to authenticate all professionals.

LZ: On the trust side, I’m worried that these are personal issues. Why would you log on to the internet? Also there is a liability issue with fraud, malpractice.

A: We aren’t trying to replace in person treatment.

BH: Is there something sad about this?

A: It’s asking a lot for someone with depression to admit to this publicly. Ten years ago, this would have been a concern. But now we do so much online.

TO: Advice-you might consider working with employee assistance programs.

SD: Do shrinks learn from body language?

A: Yes, shrinks prefer video chat. But therapists can also tell a lot from phone.

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Now more than ever, personal finance education and help is crucial to anyone’s financial health. Mint.com, a former TechCrunch 40 company who won the top prize at the conference, has grown incredibly since its launch and was recently acquired by Intuit for $170 million. TechCrunch50 startup LearnVest is serving a different purpose when it comes to online finances; the startup focuses on helping users, particularly women, organize their finances and learn how to become financially savvy. It’s kind of like the online version of financial planner Suze Orman.

When you first log in to LearnVest, the site will ask you a series of questions about your financial health (i.e. how much credit card debt do you have), you life stages (i.e. do you rent, are you planning a family soon, do you own a house) and your financial education level (i.e. have you checked your credit score lately). LearnVest will use all this information to diagnose your financial health and education level and will then give you a snapshot of what you need to learn and improve.

LearnVest will then give you a customized plan of things you need to do to do and read via a checklist. Sort of like a cheat sheet, the checklist will help you navigate a range of issues such as getting out of credit card debt, budgeting for a wedding, buying a house and much more. As you complete the tasks on the list, you check off each box and earn points for your improvements. Points will give you status in LearnVest’s community and you can eventually trade in points for rewards.

As you keep logging on to LearnVest, the site will be completely customized for your financial profile, providing you with news articles that relate to your specific financial goals. LearnVest also aims to be a social community of sorts, where users can ask questions on discussion forums to other users and to experts as well, although I’m not sure how many women will want to share their financial woes with others.

Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased)

The experts: Satish Dharmaraj, Lior Zorea, Bradley Horowitz, Tim O’Reilly, Kevin Rose

BH: This didn’t resonate with me. I don’t know any one who wants to do gaming on this site.

KR: I don’t think people will want to admit to debt with a profile.

A: we are going after targeted audience, there’s no resource online for financial advice. financial services online for women is a huge market and need.

LZ: I like the financial education part of this. I think it will be hard to get people to stay.

A: You can open accounts through us, you can execute as well. We are learning from uur user’s behavior. Currently, there is no one helping women forecast their financial future. LearnVest stops this problem.

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TC50: LearnVest walks users through life’s financial milestones VentureBeat.
TechCrunch50: Women get short shrift LA Times.

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Online event planning and invitation platform Evite was on the forefront of innovation—ten years ago. TechCrunch50 startup Cocodot is hoping to be the Evite of this generation of web technology, serving a style-conscious, eco-friendly event platform that people and brands can use to create an online presence for celebrations.

Cocodot’s platform, which is targeted towards women, is a one-stop-shop for event planning and invitations. You can create a high resolution, chic, stylish invitation (that can be printed as well), a vertical event pages, guest management tools, seating charts, and a directory for event planning vendors. When you create event, you can build an event homepage that aims to be a social conversation hub. Once you create an invitation, you can import your contact lists from Yahoo, Gmail, AOL and other contact managers and email services. Cocodot also lets you send links to the event homepage and invitation to Facebook, directly from the platform.

Cocodot is also getting into the online greeting space, letting user create a simple “happy birthday” or “Thank you” online card. The graphics and styles are actually pretty impressive. Users can adjust color and text, move the graphics and text and even offers a “copy concierge” to help people think of thoughtful sayings.

Unsurprisingly, Cocodot is going after the wedding industry by providing high-end printable online invitations and a event management platform. Cocodot also lets you embed custom event widgets on other sites and features a variety of design-friendly templates. Cocodot plans to make money from subscriptions and per use fees and will sell virtual goods. The startup is also positioning itself to be eco-friendly, by saving paper from sending out invitations. Cocodot will make money via ad revenue, premium features, virtual gifts and through product lines and licensing designs.

Cocodot was launched by former MySpace CMO Shawn Gold and raised just under $1 million of seed funding earlier this summer from investors like Anthem Venture Partners and William Morris’ Mail Room Fund.

Cocodot is similar to Pinng, which we wrote about here.

Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased)

The experts: Satish Dharmaraj, Lior Zorea, Bradley Horowitz, Tim O’Reilly, Kevin Rose

BH: I don’t want to like this but I think the world needs this. The exisiting invitation tools are not sufficient and this could take off.

TO: You think about a company like Hallmark, its a huge business opportunity, and I think you are thinking like a business, will probably be successful.

SD: I think you should try to differentiate yourself a little more. What happens after the event is booked?

LZ: I like what you guys are doing. How do you get consumer mind share out ther for the product, particularly in teh case of weddings.

A: Every invitation is virally marketed because its branded with Cocodut. We are going to do partnerships with other sites like DailyCandy and pursue a revenue share. We are going after PR agencies and companies that don’t like Evite and are using PDF’s, not taking advantage of he efficiencies in the digital medium.

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Outside Coverage:
Cocodot – For Overdoing Invitations #tc50 techgeist.
Cocodot creates a slicker version of Evite VentureBeat.
TechCrunch50: A ‘Elegant’ Evite and More Subscription Services AppScout.

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

Question one: Palm is really paying companies to write apps for the Pre? Yes. How much? All I got despite truly obnoxious questioning was “under $500,000.” (If you’re a developer and you have a better answer, leave it in the comments or send to tips@techcrunch.com.)

We also talked about the biggest execution risk: Whether or not cities will actually use this data to make citizen’s lives better? Gavin Newsom: I hope you’re paying attention to this.

Video is on the jump. (Sorry for the jumpy camera work. It’s still early here.)

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

For any business, from a startup to a large company, mundane, yet time-intensive tasks like transcribing video or removing spam comments from blogs, can be a waste of employee time. TechCrunch50 startup CrowdFlower CrowdFlower provides Labor as a Service (LaaS) by letting clients access an always-on, scalable workforce.

Unlike traditional methods of outsourcing and hiring, CrowdFlower’s web offering lets businesses instantly access thousands of workers without picking up the phone. Here’s how it works. If a company has a transcribing task, the administrator can fill out a task form on CrowdFlower. Once all the fields are filled out, CrowdFlower will price the task based on the amount of time it takes to perform the assignment per unit (the user does the sample task). The startup will break the task into units that can be performed by a single person and price the task accordingly.

CloudFlower then lets you choose the channels of work. You can pick Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, their labor force or even a Facebook application where people perform task to earn virtual currencies. The system trusts a worker less based on the mistakes a worker makes. Once the task is finished, CloudFlower will perform a quality control check and show the user the results of the task. The startup will indicate which workers were most productive and accurate. CrowdFlower will continue to employ workers who have high ratings.

CrowdFlower monetizes its platform by taking a commission on every task created by customers.

Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased)

The experts: Satish Dharmaraj, Lior Zorea, Bradley Horowitz, Tim O’Reilly, Kevin Rose

SD: I think it’s interesting-will you do transcribing of voicemails to text etc. Probably want to think about a vertical?

A: I think there a lot of tasks that are boring that people don’t outsource.

LZ: I think this a big idea. How do you keep a competitive advantage?

A: We already have a huge history of workers and we know who can do which tasks well. We have people who can do 99% accuracy on mundane tasks.

BH: A lot of stuff you are doing is possible on Mechanical Turk. Is this where they will go?

A: Here’s the tough thing for mechanical turk-they don’t want to know what the results are. We have a higher level of semantics when we do a task, we have higher level of quality control. Amazon may see this as a application on top of a platform.

TO: How big is the niche here? There’s still a lot of ignorance about this?

A: There are a lot of interesting enterprise tasks that can be done. For example, MySpace. There are challenges like security and integration. But the biggest challenge is quality.

We don’t know how we are going to reach small customers.

KR: Service is awesome but need to figure out how you are going to get the message out there.

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Other Coverage:
TC50: CrowdFlower offers rich analytics for mechanical turks VentureBeat.
TC50: CrowdFlower offers rich analytics for mechanical turks caem.la.
CrowdFlower Bolsters a New Era of Work PR Web.

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

Coding is a highly competitive industry where programmers are often pitted against each other based on level of skill and ability. TechCrunch50 startup Trollim has created a competition platform and social network for programmers that assesses their coding skills through coding battles.

Users are identified as “trolls” on the platform and once a user signs up, he or she fills out a profile that includes their age, location and coding language skills (C++, Ruby, PHP etc.). Trollim then gives the user 3 to 6 pieces of code, or a “test,” to fix to asses their baseline level of skill and based on the results of this test, the user is given a skill level of 1 though 5. Once a user has been assigned a skill level, he can then start challenging other programmers on the site to one on one battles, where trolls have to fix different pieces of code, or “rumbles,” where multiple programmers participate in a battle. As you win battles, Trollim’s proprietary algorithms will evaluate your skills and increase your coding skill level. Trollim says that you can search for users by country, skill level or age, letting users battle a variety of other programmers. Users can also see statistics and metrics on their skill level and improvement. You can also publish your ratings as a widget to a blog or web site.

Trollim is hoping to engage businesses by letting them access the site to find skilled programmers. For example, TechCrunch could sponsor a Ruby battle or rumble between coders if we needed a skilled Ruby programmer. Companies can give out prizes to the winners (or employment opportunities) and also receive detailed statistics from Trollim on participating programmers (if the programmers authorize this).

Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased)

The experts: Satish Dharmaraj, Lior Zorea, Bradley Horowitz, Tim O’Reilly, Kevin Rose

TO: I’m curious about a couple of things. Love the idea. Assessment is the key to learning. How do you develop the assessments in terms of code?

A: We test the users with code, bugs. In the end, there is a diffenece between coders andwe try to map these areas.

BH: Everything is about debugging?

A: Yes

BH: But those are the developers I want to hire, the ones who can code for hours. There’s more to programming than just debugging.

SD: I like the idea a lot. Maybe it should be more of a gaming platform, rather than a assessment?

A: There are two different versions. There is a gaming platform. But we want to get the enterprises in.

KR: I like the gaming aspect. This could be something to put on your elance profile.

A: One of the features is a rating widget. We will have a Troll village, we’ll also have a rating for companies.

LZ: Sounds like you are focused on smaller businesses.

A: Have five different levels and we are matching people around the globe.

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Other Coverage:
TC50: Battle other coders to to prove yourself at Trollim VentureBeat.
Trollim throws programming gauntlet SDTimes.

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