Today Stratasys announced that it has acquired MakerBot, as we reported, in a stock deal worth $403 million based on the current share value of Stratasys. The combination of the companies brings together a leader in 3D industrial printing and manufacturing, with the emerging leader in desktop 3D printing, which the companies said in a press release should help drive “faster adoption of 3D printing” across all categories.

MakerBot will continue to operate as a separate company from Stratasys as part of the deal, which is reportedly stock-for-stock transaction. It’ll be a subsidiary of Stratasys, but will serve the consumer and desktop market segment while Stratasys continues to focus on its existing industry placement.

MakerBot was founded in 2009, and has since sold over 22,000 3D printers, with its most recent model making up 11,000 of those sales coming from the Replicator 2, which it launched back in September 2012. That means traction is on the upswing in a big way, something which no doubt helped pave the way for the deal.

As for Stratasys, its name might be less familiar for regular TechCrunch readers, though it may ring a bell from when we accurately reported that acquisition talks between the two companies were ongoing earlier this month. But in terms of the history of 3D printing it’s operating in much more established space. It facilitates the printing of prototypes, concepts, components, parts and more on an industrial scale and for commercial applications. The publicly traded company merged with Object Ltd in 2012 to form one large entity, and is headquartered in both Minneapolis and Rehovot, Israel.

Stratasys has demonstrated it’s going to be aggressive about owning the 3D printing space, and the MakerBot buy is the consumer-focused piece in that puzzle. For MakerBot, it gives the startup access to Stratasys’ wealth of industry experience, as well as probably better access to new tech coming down the pipeline, a greater pool of engineering talent and more resources to put behind marketing and distribution.

MakerBot has been pretty consistent in terms of updating its hardware and software since the startup got off the ground four years ago, and released updated firmware and design software just last week to improve the quality of its printed products. The company has some competition from other, newer startups like Form Labs, whose Form 1 3D printer John recently tested out, but MakerBot already had a head start on the younger company, and Stratasys should be able to juice its growth even further.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Tesla just issued a “partial recall” for its Model S sedan. Per the company blog, some Model S vehicles made between May 10, 2013 and June 8, 2013 might have a defect in the mounting bracket for the left hand latch of the second row. Thus a recall is in place to strengthen this part.

It’s a small recall. It’s just a rear seat belt. The news is hardly a blip on most car websites. But this is the first recall for the Model S. And with this news, Tesla is showing the rest of the car industry the proper way to talk to customers.

Recalls are huge to-dos for car makers. Ask Jeep. The Chrysler division is currently under fire for millions of Jeeps that have a high risk of, well, catching fire. After months of consumer outrage and pressure from safety groups, Jeep issued a voluntary recall to install a trailer hitch to better protect the vehicle. This recall will no doubt cost the company a fortune, but exploding gas tanks is bad for business.

It’s highly likely that Jeep was aware of the issue before the NHTSA started investigating claims in 2010. That’s how the car establishment works. Recalls are dictated by a spreadsheet weighing the cost of a recall verse that of lives lost.

Capitalism for the win!

If you see something, say something. And that’s what Tesla is doing. Elon Musk’s car startup is a master of public relations, but it’s also doing a lot of things that’s right for the consumer.

Like the 2010 Roadster recall, Tesla will contact affected Model S owners to arrange for service. This time around, though, the service needs to be conducted in a service center, so Tesla will pick up the Model S, fix the issue and return it to the owner.

Try that with your Jeep.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Android home gaming consoles are nearly arriving for the consumer market, but one at least needs a little more time in the oven to bake. It’s the GameStick, the super portable USB-stick style device that plugs into an open HDMI port on your TV to turn it into an Android-powered gaming machine, and its release schedule is being pushed back another month until August, with a retail launch to follow after that, because of a need to gather more feedback related to the GameStick UI so that it can be refined prior to wide release.

GameStick wanted to nail the user experience strikes me as a familiar refrain; another company, Leap Motion, which also achieved lots of support from the community for a novel idea, said something very similar when it delayed its own product recently. In both cases, the apprehension about getting things right the first time around is understandable, since these are products that have few if any antecedents with demonstrated success in the wider consumer market.

The GameStick delay, though another one on top of its first ship date slip, isn’t yet one that should really raise any eyebrows – projects typically underestimate how long it will take to go to market on Kickstarter. The Ouya was also delayed from its original planned launch by three weeks, owing to “demand” on the retail side. BlueStacks’ GamePop hasn’t been delayed as of yet, but it’s targeting a more open-ended end of year launch, and that gives it some flexibility to make sure the experience is just right before putting too fine a point on things.

All of these companies are venturing into relatively uncharted territory, so delays are fine; you can’t hold them to the same standards as an Apple or a Samsung, and even those giants sometimes encounter problems shipping exactly on time. One, two, or even three small delays isn’t surprising; but once the months start to fall away and you don’t hear much, that’s when it’s time to worry.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

WPP, the advertising giant, is taking another step into the world of startup investments, this time specifically in mobile and social media. It is taking a stake in Muzy, a Pinterest-style social media platform that lets users incorporate links to images, games, text and more, which they then share with their friends, or with the world at large. The site has some 20 million users and is adding 1 million each month. Terms of the investment were not disclosed but we are trying to find out.

That growth, however, and the facts that Muzy is social and mobile, are three indications of why WPP took an interest in the site.

Muzy, founded in 2011 and based in San Francisco, was founded by Andrew Chen (CEO) and Matt Rubens (CTO). Chen had also held positions at Mohr Davidow Ventures and Revenue Science, while Rubens, an engineer, has worked at Amazon.com, among other places. According to a release, the company will be using the funding to staff up — it currently employs less than 10 people — and “build out the suite of creative publishing tools for the Muzy platform.” At the moment, when you go to the site, you can choose from some 50 widgets to publish content into your page. It’s this app-within-app facility that sets Muzy apart from other platforms focused on content creation and self-expression, and could be one way for the company to differentiate longer term.

It could also be a way for WPP to potentially look at ways of monetizing. You can imagine, for example, widgets or channels getting sponsored by brands, not to mention pages themselves. In an age where users are getting increasingly desensitized to display advertising online, you can see how new formats like these will continue to be tested out as ways of getting users to engage with marketing (as a way, also, of financing sites like these).

WPP has developed something of a track record in making strategic investments into digital, specifically mobile and other emerging areas, as a way of shoring up against larger trends in the industry away from more traditional forms of media like print.

Following where the consumer masses (and their eyeballs) are going, WPP has taken stakes in e-commerce sites like MySupermarket ($10 million in April 2012); and more straight media plays, such as yesterday’s news, a stake in Fullscreen (undisclosed amount). Perhaps the biggest of these for a long time will be the company’s acquisition of digital agency AKQA (June 2012, reportedly at a $550 million valuation).

It’s the AKQA deal that has provided the engine to today’s news around Muzy. The investment is being led by WPP Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based operation for WPP’s bigger investment efforts. WPP Ventures is being led by president Tom Bedecarré, who is also chairman of AKQA.

WPP, one of the world’s very biggest ad agencies, says that in 2012 its digital revenues were over $5 billion, some 33% of its total revenues of $16.5 billion. It’s long been pursuing a target of getting 40% of its revenues coming from digital by 2018.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Thumbtack, a marketplace for local service providers, has raised a $12.5 million Series B led by Sequoia Capital.

When co-founder and CEO Marco Zappacosta told me about the funding, he said he’s excited because Sequoia is “focused on building enduring, meaningful brands,” and it’s “making us their bet” in the local services market. Sequoia’s Bryan Schreier is joining Thumbtack’s board of directors, so I asked him via email why he picked Thumbtack.

“Meeting the Thumbtack team opened our eyes to the fact that the elusive reinvention of local is about a software service – not a list,” Schreier said. “We are blown away by the technology, operations, and business model Marco, Jonathan [Swanson] and Dan [Birken] have developed.”

Zappacosta similarly suggested that the Thumbtack model is distinctive and uniquely appealing to both consumers and service providers. Consumers describe what they’re looking for, then Thumbtack allows service providers to bid on the job. So the consumer gets multiple quotes within 24 hours without having to do a bunch of searching, browsing, and calling. And Zappacosta said the service providers are only paying Thumbtack that they’re actually interested in bidding for a job — “We’re delivering them a lead and giving them total discretion over whether they want to pay for that.”

There are now more than 250,000 service providers in all 50 US states on Thumbtack, and 20,000 of them are paying the company each month. The site is connecting those providers with $300 million worth of annualized service requests, Zappacosta said — and that’s without a sales and marketing team. (He admitted that Thumbtack “hasn’t built our brand as well as some of the other players,” something that could start changing thanks to the funding, but he doesn’t want things to change too dramatically: “We don’t want to have a Groupon-style salesforce.”) Some of the more popular requests involve cleaning, event services, and home improvement and maintenance.

Zappacosta said he doesn’t currently have any plans for international expansion. He argued that “the upside is basically unbounded” just by growing in the United States.

Thumbtack has now raised a total of $18.2 million in funding. Previous investors Javelin Venture Partners and MHS Capital also participated in the round.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Imagine walking into a new room and, like Harry Potter, being able to control all the devices in there with a few gestures. But (because you are a Muggle) instead of a wand, you use your smartphone. Developed by Qualcomm, AllJoyn is an open source peer-to-peer software designed to give manufacturers and developers the framework to seamlessly connect a wide range of devices, appliances and mobile apps.

In an interview during last week’s Computex in Taipei, Rob Chandhok, the president of Qualcomm Innovation Center, told me that AllJoyn’s goal is to break through the current limits of the Internet of Things. For one thing, connectivity currently relies on specific wireless standards such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Although many manufacturers are keen to build their own software platforms, most people don’t rely solely on one brand to supply all the appliances in their home. Furthermore, as the Internet of Things scales up to potentially include trillions of devices, security is a key concern for consumers. Chandhok talked about how AllJoyn will address those issues as it seeks to give consumers wireless control over their environments.

Why make AllJoyn open source?

The open sourcing of AllJoyn is because it’s the only way that an ecosystem can develop on the Internet of things. We’ve tried to take lessons from other systems and one of the ways the Web moved really fast was when WebKit came along. Here you had an open source project that really drove a tremendous amount of innovation because people knew that if it made it into WebKit, then it would come out in both Apple and Google products. So we decided to take a similar approach with AllJoyn as a path to creating a standard.

Another way to ask that question is why is Qualcomm giving away something and putting it in open source when that’s typically not how we monetize our products. The way we’re monetizing this product is if it’s useful for things to be connected in the Internet of things, that grows the market for the whole communication industry. We will compete in that market and should be able to sell more connectivity parts.

What about OEM support?

That’s not really required. The model right now is that AllJoyn would be embodied in an application that you would download on your phone. You can have AllJoyn on Android, iOS and Windows. When I think about OEMs related to AllJoyn, I broaden it to include the consumer electronics industry and the white goods industry also. I can’t specifically announce partners, but we are working with manufacturers, very strong global brands with large volume shipments are actively working with us to use AllJoyn to deliver experiences that we hope to be able to announce in the near future.

You’ve talked about AllJoyn powering the “Internet of Things near you.” How is that different from the Internet of Things? 

Some people think of the Internet of Things as a model where you just give everything IP connectivity and you send all data into the cloud. It’s just a bunch of sensors and then the cloud does something because the cloud is smart, and it sort of spits it back out at you.

We take a different approach in that we think that there should be local clouds of devices talking to each other because, first of all, it’s going to scale up very quickly. I worry about the security risk of that. I don’t want my refrigerator on the Internet or my fireplace, or my garage door on the Internet.

So these approaches are quite different in how you think about it. I want a personal cloud that follows me as I walk down the road. If I go into a room that I have never gone into before, I want to inspect it. If I come into this room, I want to figure out there is a TV over there and that I can display slides on it and change the channel or increase the volume. With AllJoyn I can do all that stuff because it is at its core a way for software to expose interfaces securely to things around you.

I know you can’t give specific details about projects now, but can you describe some of the things that you are excited about that use AllJoyn?

We are really working with commercial partners, we’re not just talking about demos. One partner, for example, has devices that already have Wi-Fi on them and can software update these devices, so AllJoyn will be pushed out in a software update. That’s exciting because it’s a lot of units and it gives us instant penetration into the market.

In particular I’m excited about audio streaming notifications and the control panel. The idea with the control panel is that you can come up to a device you have never interacted with before and it can tell you this is how you control me. I’m doing it by looking it up in a database and by asking the object. You can see what the object looks by using augmented reality tools. If you walk up to a coffee maker, you’ll recognize it [on your mobile device] and an interface will pop up. That stuff to me, my gut tells me that some developer will do something really cool with those facilities.

The audio streaming stuff will be really cool. Not only will I be able to get things like album art, but I can change bass, treble and volume from my phone. I can use the control panel protocol with audio streaming to build an experience even on a box with no LCD or even no buttons at all because I can build a virtual interface. I’m very excited about getting customers to see what AllJoyn can do using audio streaming and laying it all on top of a common protocol.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The European Commission today outlined its concerns regarding the widely reported Prism surveillance programme run by the NSA. The Commission plans to raise the Prism matter with US authorities “at the earliest possible opportunity” and will “request clarifications as to whether access to personal data within the framework of the Prism program is limited to individual cases and based on concrete suspicions, or if it allows bulk transfer of data.” The next opportunity will be this Friday at a meeting Dublin.

And in a shot across the bows of US tech companies that do not adhere to EU law it said: “Non EU companies when offering goods and services to EU consumers will have to apply the EU data protection law in full.”

The Commission’s position is that it’s asking the US for “clear committments from the US as to the respect for the fundamental right of its citizens to data protection and as to access to judicial redress in the same way it is afforded to US residents.” In other words, treat our citizens in the way you treat yours.

The Commission also called for any access by “third country law enforcement authorities to the personal data of EU citizens held on servers of US companies should be done by established legal channels such as the EU US mutual legal assitance agreements.”

The statement to the EU Parliament, made by Tonio Borg, European Commissioner for Consumer Policy, was on behalf of Viviane Reding, currently serving as European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship. Reding is in the driving seat over proposals to protect EU citizen data online.

Here’s the skinny (if that’s possible) of what the Commission’s position is.

It is “concerned about recent media reports” that US authorities are accessing and processing on a large scale the data of EU citizens using major US online service providers.

“Programmes such as the so called prism… potentially endanger the fundamental right of privacy and the data protection of EU citizens. The Prism case as reported in the media is also likely to reinforce the concerns of EU citizens regarding the use of their personal data online and in the Cloud.”

To back this up Reding points out that in 2012, some 70% of EU citizens expressed concern that the personal data held by companies about them could be used “for a purpose other than the one for which is was collected.”

The Commission is also throwing in to sharp relief the way the EU views data protection and the Unites States, and it’s pretty fundamental.

Under the US legal system only US citizens and residents benefit from constitutional safeguards, but in the European Union, everyone’s personal data is protected as a fundamental right irrespective of their nationality. You could be an American in the EU and they would still have laws governing how your personal data is used.

That said, the EU has tackled this issue in the past. It’s already raised the matter of law enforcement access to the personal data of EU citizens in the ongoing negotiations with the US for a general data protection agreement in the field of police and judicial cooperation.

Under the current EU legislation, the 1995 Data Protection Directive, where the rights of an EU citizen of a member state are concerned, it is for the judiciary in member states to determine how personal data is lawfully transmitted.

That said, the Commission has a a set of proposed data protection regulations designed to maintain the current high level of data protection in the EU. It also wants EU citizens to be able to “know when their privacy has been violated.”

It also want to be in a position to “tackle situations such as the Prism programme through it’s data protection rules with a clear provision of its territorial scope.”

So what we have here is a clear statement by the Commission that Prism accessing the data of EU citizens is basically out of order.

How that translates into action remains to be seen.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Editor’s note: Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research and blogs at Techspressive. Follow him on Twitter @rossrubin.

It’s been six months since PlayJam’s GameStick started its off-again, on-again Kickstarter campaign that netted it nearly $650,000 — well beyond its $100,000 goal. While it attracted less than a tenth of the funds that its predecessor OUYA nabbed for its Android-based home game console, things have moved apace with the two-piece, controller-hosted console that plugs directly into the HDMI connector of a TV that should be shipping to backers next month.

“Thirty days felt like thirty months. We were so unprepared for it,” said PlayJam CMO Anthony Johnson, who notes that stretch goals such as a charging dock were conceived out of thin air in a matter of hours before they even knew if they were feasible.

The GameStick straddles worlds with different rules. Traditional consoles fix a platform essentially in stone typically for five or more years. The stability of the platform itself is a response to PC gaming where configurations are all over the map. This has been the inspiration for NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience addressing the issue from the PC side and Valve’s Steam Box(es) on the console side. On the other hand, its ARM processor and Android operating system hail from the world of smartphones where updates are an annual occurrence in a state of constant leapfrogging.

PlayJam plans to take advantage of the rapid progress in chip architectures. The company wryly notes that one of the few advantages of being based in the UK helps enable it to have a close working relationship with ARM. In this respect, the GameStick is kind of a no-frills vanilla equivalent to NVIDIA’s pricey Shield handheld, which costs $349 and which PlayJam characterizes as “a reference platform for Tegra 4,” a laudable but niche attempt by a chip company to get into the consumer device business.

GameStick, on the other hand, will be profitable at $79 while yielding a palatable retailer margin. And since the primary electronics are in the stick and not the controller, the former can be updated independently, and the company plans to keep offering new sticks to enable richer game experiences.

Which, in some cases, it could use. PlayJam’s 12-year history is in super-casual TV-based games distributed through cable operators and moving into smart TVs. That understanding of the power of distribution has helped lead to an agreement with GameStop, although GameStick, of course, lacks any way for physical distribution. The scaling up of smartphone-quality games to the bigger-than-tablet screen results in games that may be fun to play but don’t necessarily impress graphically. And like so many Android apps, the quality varies widely.

That said, GameStick, OUYA and another similarly inexpensive entrant from BlueStacks have some opportunity to capitalize on the pick-up-and-play home gaming market that the Wii resurrected only to stray from with the more complex and disorienting Wii U. In fact, the company is hoping to stand on OUYA’s shoulders; unsurprisingly, developers have found it a relatively easy port from that Android-based game console to PlayJam’s CMO Anthony Johnson. “It’s a new category. You need to validate the market.” Compared to the platform variation in designing for smart TVs and pay TV operators, Android’s level of fragmentation is pure bliss to PlayJam.

GameStick may be cheap. But its success will depend on if they are willing to come back to the TV for gaming experiences that may not be significantly more engrossing than what they can already get on their mobile phones or tablets. This will be particularly true if TV manufacturers and handset companies can better communicate the ability to project phone displays onto televisions via standards such as Miracast (which GameStick supports) in order to play the games that they’ve already downloaded or purchased. In that case, PlayJam will be happy to move its store to other platforms.

GameStick will launch with 100 titles and the company promises it will ramp quickly from there. For consumers who value the tactile controls or may not want to drain down their phone battery as they play on the big screen as well as for the company’s equally embryonic competitors, it’s game on.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Editor’s note: Aaron Levie is CEO and co-founder of Box. Follow him on Twitter @levie.

Next week, thousands of developers will converge on WWDC, the vast majority representing companies and products that didn’t exist before the creation of Apple’s iPhone and App Store.

They’ll talk about the future of mobile gaming, photo sharing and, of course, Snapchat. But what likely won’t be center stage is how transformative Apple’s devices and ecosystem have been in the enterprise.

The enterprise world was once solidly dominated by PCs. Today, nearly all of the Fortune 500 are testing iPads. Combined, Apple and Android (and Android’s partners) represent nearly 91 percent of smartphones and tablets used today. And it’s not just that people are buying a new category of device; they’re actually buying fewer PCs in aggregate, as well. In the last holiday season, PC shipments sunk 6 percent, the first decrease in an entire decade.

Responding to this influx of new hardware and the unpredictable – yet frequent – revolutions in the market, the vast majority of enterprises now support a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) model. But despite the ubiquity of these new devices, the enterprise app ecosystem is nascent compared to its consumer counterpart. There are success stories, sure, but the potential for enterprise app distribution and monetization has barely been tapped.

Why don’t we have any enterprise Angry Birds?

From The PC Era To The Post-PC Enterprise

From the late 70s, the start of the PC revolution, to 2007, the beginning of the post-PC era, the way enterprises bought and used technology remained largely unchanged. The proliferation of PCs created a long-standing oligopoly led by Microsoft and its OEMs, enabling the rise of only a handful of giants – like Oracle, Siebel, PeopleSoft and Lotus. Smaller players were left out of a complex ecosystem that was designed to build up software empires, help IT buyers avoid too much chaos, and solve the rudimentary technology challenges emerging in corporate America.

Like all other important shifts in technology and society, the move from a PC-driven enterprise to a post-PC one isn’t linear; it will be a giant step-function change. The entire premise of post-PC computing is driven by a new set of capabilities and use cases that are only just being realized by the earliest adopters.

Unlike the back office, where most work gets done in a typical workspace, the front office is no longer about the office at all: It’s mobile, it’s on the road, it’s at customer sites, directly at retail stores, on airplanes, and in subways. And all-new technologies from all-new vendors are emerging to power these business use cases.

Doctors are pulling up medical images on their iPads with VueMe; field workers are submitting forms from their mobile devices; airline pilots are going paperless; sales people are Webexing on the go; federal judges are pulling up court documents on iPads; and distributed teams are getting connected on Lua.

Even though emerging enterprise apps are eating our iPads, they’re not yet eating the legacy vendors’ lunch.

And instead of applications being simple ports of their PC analog, an entirely new breed of tools and apps will be created for tablets and mobile devices in the enterprise. Chris Dixon suggests, “If the historical pattern repeats, productivity apps that are ‘native’ to the tablet will be invented.”

For the most part, traditional players like Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, IBM and others are nowhere to be seen. When apps are just a quick search and tap away, vendor lock-in becomes a relic of a different computing paradigm. End users can web conference, grab CAD software, access blue prints, invoice customers, and pull up a new CRM app in minutes. Apps stand out based on their design, usability, simplicity and value – not simply because of their attachment to an enterprise license agreement.

In a previous era, such change might have taken years to make its way through an enterprise – slowed down by infrastructure deployments, software and maintenance contracts and compatibility issues. Today, things are quite different. “Any new product introduced follows a different adoption curve in the enterprise… And enterprises today are looking at a whole different world,” Steven Sinofsky recounted recently at the recent D11 conference.

Welcome To The Enterprise App Economy

For as much money as is poured into enterprise software every year – $297 billion to be exact – mobile apps have barely made a dent in spend today. While BYOD brought a new set of devices into corporate America, it so far hasn’t dramatically changed software purchasing behavior. You know those tens of billions of dollars generated by mobile apps? They’re going to the consumer space, not the enterprise.

In gaming, we’ve seen small upstarts like Angry Birds or Supercell generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year, producing overnight disruptors to traditional gaming companies. In the communications space, services like WhatsApp, Line and others have built disruptive business models to traditional communications services, cutting billions of dollars out of the traditional carriers and making large sums in the process.

Even though emerging enterprise apps are eating our iPads, they’re not yet eating the legacy vendors’ lunch. Why?

We’re benefiting from dramatically reduced barriers for building and distributing mobile apps, but the way enterprise software is procured and sold (and thus monetized) remains mostly unchanged. While consumer apps can thrive on $9.99 (or even $.99) one-time downloads, in-app purchases, display ads and e-commerce, enterprise apps haven’t flourished under the same economic models.

In the enterprise, a different set of dynamics are in play. While mobile apps ultimately serve – and are acquired by – the end-user, individuals outside of IT often don’t have the budget or responsibility to bring in or standardize on (paid) applications easily. The whole point of post-PC is speed, efficiency and simplification, yet the way enterprise software is bought today is anything but.

Responding to this, we’ll need more scalable approaches for developers to sell their wares broadly in an organization and get paid for their services without friction – methods with far lower barriers than how most enterprise software is typically procured. We’ll also need better ways to create annuity revenue streams for mobile app developers, better aligning long-term customer value with the apps themselves.

Unlike in the consumer market, where you care what apps your friends are using, we’ll need to make it easier for apps to be discovered and shared across a company. And we’ll need new capabilities and offerings from the operation system players to support this new economy. In return, apps will need new levels of guarantees, SLAs and security models to gain the trust of enterprises.

When these new models are unlocked, we’ll begin to see far more innovation, and adoption, in the post-PC app world.

Fortunately, given the rapid growth of post-PC devices and apps, we can rest assured that economics for developers will eventually match the kind of scale and potential of these markets. Tablets have only been around for three years, and are already reaching 200 million units sold a year – a feat that took the PC 27 years to accomplish.

And the addressable market for software vendors is rapidly expanding: by 2015, the number of mobile workers will surpass 1.3 billion. For app developers, this brings unprecedented and previously unreachable scale to building technology for businesses. The potential of the enterprise app economy is massive, and we’re just getting started.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook has added 49 positions to its careers page including a number of positions on Parse, which it acquired late last April. Parse is a cloud-based platform providing tools for app developers.

When Facebook purchased it, the social network bought the company outright, meaning that it would continue operating its service. It looks primed to build upon the company’s offerings and building at a larger capacity.

New listings added to Facebook’s careers page:

• Developer Advocate, Parse (Menlo Park)
• Site Reliability Engineer, Parse (Menlo Park)
• Software Engineer (Platform), Parse (Menlo Park)
• Software Engineer (Web), Parse (Menlo Park)
• Global Head, Developer Support Engineering (Menlo Park)
• Manager, Consumer Communications (Los Angeles – Menlo Park – New York)
• Manager, Internal Communications (Menlo Park)
• Finance Manager – Data Center Infrastructure (Menlo Park)
• Payroll Lead (Menlo Park)
• Procurement Operations Buyer (Menlo Park)
• Sales Operations Analyst (Contractor) (Singapore)
• Tax Manager (Menlo Park)
• Partner Manager Japan, Preferred Marketing Developer Program (Tokyo)
• Project Manager, Product Support (Menlo Park)
• Data Steward (Menlo Park)
• Trust and Safety Manager, Security – Latin America (Miami)
• Product Designer, Parse (Menlo Park)
• Associate, Partnerships Operations (Menlo Park)
• Content Manager, User Operations (Menlo Park)
• Project Manager, Product Support (Menlo Park)
• Video Producer, Creative Solutions (New York)
• Director, Business Development (Menlo Park)
• Integration Manager, Corporate Development (Menlo Park)
• Strategic Partner Development – TV (Los Angeles)
• Strategic Partner Development, Influencers (MPK) (Menlo Park)
• Strategic Partner Development, Public Partnerships (Los Angeles – Menlo Park)
• Global Accounts Measurement Lead – APAC (Singapore)
• Inside Sales Representative / Account Executive, Parse (Menlo Park)
• Strategic Partner Manager Games (Singapore)
• Small Business Specialist (Thai, Korean or Japanese speaking) (Singapore)
• SMB Analyst, Italian (Dublin)
• Team Lead ,SMB (Dublin)
• Client Partner, Finland (Stockholm)
• Account Manager – Retail (São Paulo)
• Client Partner – Travel (São Paulo)
• Client Partner – Technology & Entertainment, Global Marketing Solutions (Sydney)
• Client Partner, SEA (Singapore)
• Client Partner, Agency (New York)
• Client Partner, Atlas (Menlo Park)
• Performance (Direct Response) Sales Consultant (Menlo Park)
• Head of Technical Account Management (Seattle)
• Sales Operations Analyst (Contractor) (Singapore)
• Data Steward (Menlo Park)
• Advertising Technical Support Engineer (Seattle)
• Audience Researcher, Vertical Measurement – CPG (London)
• Global Accounts Measurement Lead – APAC (Singapore)
• Data Analyst, Latin America (São Paulo)

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook