Roku just landed in the great white north. The tiny little streaming box launched in the UK a few weeks back and now it’s hitting Canada along with over 100 channels of streaming goodness. The Roku 2 XD and Roku 2 XS should hit retailers in the coming days for $89 and $109 CAD, respectively but are available for pre-ordering now. This launch is the last part of Roku’s announced international expansion. The company is no doubt looking for other potential markets but Roku is notoriously methodical in its launch schedule.

Roku is a mainstay in the US set-top box streaming market. With all the models costing under $100, they’re a great bet for those that want an easy way to put Netflix on their HDTV. However, along with Netflix, Roku has a very large selection of additional streaming stations including Amazon Video On Demand, Hulu Plus, HBO Go and a bunch of other smaller, more niche stations. There are over 450 stations in the US market although likely due to regional restrictions, only around 100 available in Canada at launch. This includes Netflix, Crackle, NHL, MLB.TV, Flickr, and Rdio and 94 more, which is still a very good selection.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Some consolidation afoot in the evolving world of mobile messaging: one messaging provider, Switzerland’s Myriad Group, is buying a UK-based rival, Synchronica, for £23.9 million (around $38 million), in what looks like an all-share deal.

Myriad says the deal will make it one of the biggest providers of messaging services in the world. Together they provide messaging services to a huge range of tier-one carriers including ATT, Verizon, Vodafone, Telefónica, Orange, T-Mobile, América Móvil, NTT Docomo, MTS, Softbank, Megafon, Telcel, TIM, Airtel and Claro — altogether covering some 2.5 billion subscribers and 100 carriers and 25 OEMs worldwide.

The two companies have been in negotiations since last November, and in February 2012, Myriad argued to Synchronica shareholders that they needed to sell in part because Synchronica could not meet its repayment obligations to Nokia. Synchronica last year picked up Nokia’s messaging business for $25 million as the struggling handset maker was offloading less profitable assets.

Today’s offer is increased from Myriad’s original terms, and comes at 15 pence per share, compared to an original offer of 12 pence per share.

As part of the deal, Myriad CEO Simon Wilkinson becomes Synchronica executive chairman. Myriad’s CFO James Bodha is now an executive director at Synchronica. David Mason and Michael Jackson, who had respectively held those roles at Synchronica, have resigned with immediate effect.

Messaging services are in a state of evolution at the moment. On the one hand, traditional SMS revenues have been in decline for a while now, as increasing competition carriers has been met with added pressure from other services like BBM on BlackBerry devices, or iMessage on the iPhone, and WhatsApp. Ovum estimates that carriers’ SMS revenues were down by $14 million in 2011, and that will rise to $23 billion this year.

On the other hand, companies like Myriad (and there are others, too) are working on some very interesting messaging products that are bridging the next generation of mobile services based around smartphones/social media with the fact that there are still a vast amount of people who are still using basic devices, and are living in places without the network connectivity to take advantage of smarter handsets anyway.

Myriad provides, for example, a way of accessing Facebook and other social media services using USSD technology, something built into even the most basic of GSM devices. It doesn’t require data network to be used, but does need the carrier to “turn on” the capability to use it. Myriad in February announced a deal with Orange to offer the service to access Facebook in Africa. It has already picked up at least 400,000 users of the service as it rolls it out across its footprint.

(Orange told me there were already 350,000 signed up in Egypt when the service formally launched, and a Myriad spokesperson tells me that since it went live another 50,000 have signed up.) Last week, Myriad announced that it is extending the service across Asia — which, taken as a whole, only has smartphone penetration of 20 percent — and already is working with Vodafone India to offer it.

Release below:

Myriad Completes Synchronica Acquisition to Create the World’s Biggest Mobile Social Messaging Business

ZURICH, Switzerland – 16th April 2012: Myriad Group AG (MYRN: SIX), the company powering billions of rich mobile social and web experiences on any connected device, today announces it has reached the required shareholder approvals to acquire UK-based Synchronica plc.

“This deal will create a powerhouse in the rapidly growing sector of mobile-social convergence,” said Simon Wilkinson, CEO of Myriad. “It will establish a global service organisation serving over 100 Carriers and 25 OEMs around the world. At a stroke, it increases the addressable base for our award-winning product portfolios to over 1.8 billion subscribers with pre-installation of our products in over 100 million new devices each year.”

Myriad has been in discussions with Synchronica plc since early November – and announced the terms of its offer on January 31st 2012. The two businesses currently serve customers including: ATT, Verizon, Vodafone, Telefónica, Orange, T-Mobile, América Móvil, NTT Docomo, MTS, Softbank, Megafon, Telcel, TIM, Airtel and Claro.

Wilkinson concluded, “I would like to thank our shareholders for their support and collective efforts of Myriad’s staff and its advisors during this process. We look forward to working closely with the Synchronica team as they become part of the Myriad Group.”

[Image: EronsPics, Flickr]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Editor’s note: Guest author Keith Teare is General Partner at his incubator Archimedes Labs and CEO of just.me. He was a co-founder of TechCrunch. Follow him on Twitter @kteare.

Google’s stock declined by over 4% yesterday. Many have put this down to the company’s decision to create a non-voting class of stock as part of a control-retention exercise as the founders sell shares. But more is going on here.

In the same week as Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion as part of its efforts to be more relevant on the growing mobile Platform, Google, for the second quarter in succession, suffered a decline in “Cost Per Click” rates that is in large part attributable to the shift in traffic from the desktop/laptop to the mobile platform.

I wrote about this last quarter. I also posted on my personal blog in between quarters.

I believe what we are seeing here is the start of a secular trend that represents nothing less than the end of the web 2.0 era where we all consumed services through a browser on a computer. Replacing that era is a new, app-based, message-centric mobile Internet. In this new era the essential unit of advertising (a page based ad, whether text, display or anything else) is simply the wrong monetization vehicle. Something new has to emerge.

It is worth examining the earnings call in detail because these points were clearly articulated on the call by all Google executives.

Patrick Pichette, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Google, speaking on the company’s quarterly conference call this week, said the following:

“Aggregate cost-per-click growth was down 12% and down 6% quarter-over-quarter.”

The statement represented the only negative on the call which had generally reported a very strong financial quarter.

Pichette was compelled to explain:

“So given the recent trends in CPCs and clicks, allow me to spend a bit of time today addressing this. The most important thing for you to understand is that our business is healthy. We believe that shifts in CPC and paid clicks taken independently really do not reflect the fundamental health of our business.”

What? This was a huge quarter and the CFO is almost pleading with the listening analysts to believe that Google has a healthy business. A cynic would quickly draw the conclusion that there is smoke here, and so – most likely a fire.

So Pichette explained more:

“Now allow me some details on this. In general, we attribute these trends to a combination of really 5 core factors. Those include FX, and then there’s 3 mix effects. For example, the mobile versus tablet versus desktop shifts, emerging markets versus developed markets shifts and even the basics of google.com versus our network. And then finally, ads quality changes which is also a huge factor.”

“Many in the financial community have tried to isolate or often I hear pick one of these among these factors as the primary driver for CPC or click trends. Some even say it’s about — all about mobile. Others suggest that it indicates weakness in demand for Google advertising. Well, on the latter point, I want to be very clear that that’s not the case.”

On the latter point indeed. What about the former point? Let’s repeat it: “. Some even say it’s about — all about mobile.” 

Count me in the camp of the “some”. I don’t say this in any negative or gloating spirit. But isn’t it obvious? As Android, iPhone and other mobile platforms grow we are moving away from the page based Internet. The new Internet is app centric and often message-centric. The number of users engaged in this app-centric and message-centric Internet is both huge and their use is growing. People used Instagram for images, not Flickr or Picasa. They use Foursquare for checkins not Facebook. And they do so in large numbers and they do it a lot.

In this world, page-based ads, interstitials, pop-ups; pop-under; pop-over; and most of the other web era advertising units make absolutely no sense. And this is irrespective of whether they are text ads or display ads. Sure some will attract clicks, but for the most part they are ignored or worse still hated. And advertises will not see the ROI in being in the mobile world using those methods.

Being a web-era company, heavily invested in a web-centric content and application ecosystem is becoming a liability. Facebook is challenged by this shift – hence Instagram; Google is also challenged by it. Yahoo has effectively been killed by it.

Listening analysts on the call didn’t miss the opportunity to focus on this point. At about the 35 minute mark on the call Mark Mahaney from CitiGroup asked:

“And then just real quickly on the mobile CPC issue. Can you just comment again on over time, over what period of time you would expect mobile and desktop CPCs to merge or do you think that’s a realistic expectation? What would cause that to happen or not?”

Pichette answered:

“Think of it as so much upside for us because essentially mobile is exploding in query growth and the formats themselves are just adapting already a lot and from a relatively crude base to so much more in the future. So that you’re absolutely right that right now, they don’t monetize as well because we’re kind of in what search used to be in 2002, 2003, 2004. So as these formats kind of continue to get better and better, we’d expect much better performance on them.”

Larry Page, possibly perturbed by that answer, intervened:

“This is Larry. I’ll add something, Mark. I think the mobile CPCs — I mean, people always spend their most effort on the major — whatever the major source of traffic or revenue is, and those are growing really quickly, albeit currently, obviously, there’s more on desktop. … The fact that you spend most of your money locally, I think that over time that may actually reverse and the CPCs action may get better. But I think we’re very bullish about that. We’re making a lot of investments in that area, in things like Offers and so on and Wallet. And we’re very, very excited about the potential there, and also Click-to-Call and other things that we do.”

The final question on the call at about 58 minutes was asked by Anthony Di Clemente from Barclay’s:

“Just one question for Nikesh or whomever wants to answer it. It seems like even though as you’re shifting to mobile, you have this presumably double-digit pricing step down for CPCs. But in the Display world, certainly, that pricing difference could be even more dramatic. In some cases, by half or 2/3. Prices getting cut on that shift to mobile. And so you guys at Google have the unique ability to compare and contrast the difference in price between like Search and Display and how the two are monetizing relative to desktop. And so any color on that comparison would be appreciated because I think there are folks out there that have a view that actually Search, core Search, monetizes better on that shift to mobile than Display does, and I would love to just understand that better.”

Nikesh Arora, Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer responded:

“Yes, I mean, I guess — let me try to just explain to it from the advertiser perspective. So what we’re striving towards is advertisers are interested in ROI. Advertisers actually are not interested in whether they’re on the mobile product, the Display product, the Search product on the Web or the Search product on mobile. So what we are fast converging towards is we’re basically sitting down and understanding ROI targets of our advertisers. And then we have immense amounts of inventory at our behest, whether it’s mobile inventory, on Display or Search or desktop inventory or even inventory to our network. And what we are trying to work towards is being able to dynamically allocate across these various products, what allows them to get the maximum ROI.  … In the long-term, we think mobile will monetize better. And we usually don’t see the difference happening on Display and Search as you alluded to. Larry, you want to add something?”

I will leave it to the reader to draw your own conclusions here. But one thing is for sure. Something big and dramatic is happening. Expect a lot more movement in the mobile space as the desktop giants get a better sense of the issues. And as for that Facebook acquisition of Instagram, it may not impact the real threat that mobile represents to Facebook – the threat of falling monetization due to the impracticality of delivering ads derived from the web era to a mobile audience.

[image via 3 Gazet]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

500px, the photo sharing website that has become the new darling of the photo buff set, today rolled out a new $19.95/year ‘Plus’ membership plan, putting it more squarely in competition with Flickr.

Up until now, 500px’s premium offering has catered mostly to the “power user” and professional photographer set, with a $49.95/year “Awesome” plan offering unlimited uploads along with a personalized online portfolio. The new “Plus” offering is meant to address more middle market users — it offers the same unlimited uploads and detailed user analytics provided by the “Awesome” plan, but without the personal portfolio feature. The site also has a free membership that allows for 10 photo uploads per week.

Flickr, of course, has long been the freemium photo sharing service of choice for the kinds of people who want better image resolution and more granular sharing options than what’s provided by the likes of Facebook. Flickr charges $24.95/year for its Pro account. Lately some users have lamented a lack of product updates from Flickr, which has been owned by Yahoo since 2005 — and 500px has stepped up to the plate to give this power user set a new destination for online photo sharing.

That being said, 500px certainly has a big challenge ahead of it. Yahoo may be wounded, but it’s still a major company and has years of momentum behind it — many people will continue to use services like Flickr based on habit if nothing else. And Google+ has emerged as a huge photography destination buoyed by enthusiastic high profile users such as Trey Ratcliff. 500px, which is based in Toronto and has raised some half a million dollars in funding, is certainly an underdog when you think of the competitive landscape. But so far, it has amassed a growing and dedicated following by bringing some soul and style back into the online photo sharing game — and that kind of community is something that all the money and corporate power still can’t buy.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The Big Apple is looking into upgrading its existing pay phones, and a pilot study is underway that replaces everyone’s favorite anachronism with something a little more 21st-century: giant touchscreens. According the NY Post, the city will unveil 250 revamped phone booths next month that have been revamped with 32-inch touchable displays. These access points would be set up for Skype and other video services, email, wi-fi access, and *11 numbers.

It’s ambitious, and depending on the execution could be a big step forward for public communication points. On the other hand, city dwellers are likely to be skeptical of the devices; smartphone owners will find no use for them, and pay phone users won’t know what to make of them. Are they really going to Skype their dealer?

I kid, but it really is kind of a strange proposition. These enormous screens (32 inches is quite large for a phone booth) will of course make whatever one is doing very public, though they helpfully double as ad screens when not in use. And part of the draw of payphones is the simplicity of their operation. You put in your money, you dial your number, and that’s that. Replacing a system that has the familiarity of decades is no simple task, and this huge screen might be overshooting the mark.

On the other hand, it could also be a great method to provide public wi-fi and information about local businesses — like London’s Smart Bins.” Tourists will almost certainly find them useful. And the smaller 22-inch subway ones will be helpful for navigating the city and announcing trains. But who is the average user of pay phones, and will they find this new system useful? Details are scarce now and only seeing and trying the new booths will tell.

The booths are being installed at no cost to the city, and after the pilot program, 36 percent of ad revenue will be handed over to them. And don’t worry, the screens are waterproof and dustproof, and will be cleaned regularly. No word on whether they’re hack-proof, however, though I can guess.

[image: ishane on Flickr]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Aviary, the company that makes it easy for mobile developers to integrate image editing into their apps, is debuting a huge partnership today. The New York-based startup will be powering photo editing for Flickr’s 75 million users.

Picnik was the default photo editor for Flickr for some time now, even after Google bought the startup. But Google decided to shut down Picnik, and and editor will be removed from Flickr as of April 19, 2012.

For years, Aviary has been offering one of the more advanced suite of web-based, yet easy to use image editing apps. Last year, the startup shifted toward distributing a developer-facing mobile SDK, which allows third-party developers to quickly integrate photo editing, filters, virtual stickers, and other related features into their applications.

Now within Flickr, you’ll see a new Aviary-powered photo editor in your Actions menu on the site. The feature will be rolled out to users over the next few weeks. As Flickr writes it its announcement of the news, tens of thousands of members edit their photos on Flickr each day, and the most important features user wanted in a web-based editing tool was speed and simplicity.

Flickr says it has worked with Aviary to deliver a fast editing experience. Basically, one your photo loads, it will be ready to be edited. And similar to Aviary’s UI, the Flickr editor is extremely simple. User will be able to add filters, stickers, text, and save it back to their photo streams.

Here’s how it works. One ce you’ve uploaded a photo, you click on the Actions tab, then select Edit. Aviary’s editor will pop up, giving you access to fourteen simple tools, including brightness, orientation, filters, cropping and more. Once you choose the edit to the photo, you click Apply and you are done.

And since Aviary’s photo editor is built using HTML5, the Flickr editor is available on mobile and iPad apps as well.

“We built Aviary’s web editor with Flickr users in mind. All editing happens directly on Flickr itself using HTML5, allowing for quick load times, fast photo processing and a great overall user experience. You can’t ask for a better community than Flickr to help give you feedback in crafting the perfect photo- editing experience,” said Aviary’s CEO Avi Muchnick.

Considering the size and scale of Flickr, this is a huge win for Aviary. The startup also has its own loyal userbase, and currently has 3.5 million users that have edited over 40 million photos over
the past 30 days. Existing partners include Box, Constant Contact, MailChimp, Ning, Imgur, PicCollage, FriendCaster, PicPlz, and others. And the company’s SDK is growing 50% a month (measured based on how many users are accessing the editor and editing images).

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

In 2006, former Yahoo employee Thyagarajapuram S. Ramakrishnan was working for Facebook when he filed a patent for the news feed. Today in a sweet piece of irony, Facebook is using that same patent to sue Yahoo. Facebook claims that Yahoo’s Flickr Photostream and Activity Feeds infringe on “Generating a Feed of Stories Personalized for Members of a Social Network”.

This U.S. Patent 7,827,208 for “generating dynamic relationship-based content personalized for members of a web-based social network [with] weighting by affinity” and nine others could help Facebook escape a costly settlement over the original patent lawsuit Yahoo’s filed against it last month. See kids, trolling doesn’t always pay.

Ramakrishnan, then working for Facebook, teamed up with Andrew Bosworth (Director of Engineering), Chris Cox (VP of Product), Ruchi Sanghvi (news feed product manager, now at Dropbox), Adam D’Angelo (Former CTO, now at Quora) to file the news feed patent on August 11th, 2006. A month later, the feature launched causing mass protest by the Facebook user base. Soon, though, the highly relevant content feed sorted via the ’208 patent technology became a popular and defining feature of the social network.

It wasn’t until over two years after the Facebook news feed launch that both Yahoo’s Flickr and Profiles added similar feeds of the recent activity of one’s contacts. The copying was so obvious that Facebook made its news feed patent the first of the 10 patents exhibited in its infringement counter-claim against Yahoo.

So, either Yahoo didn’t do its homework, or it must have expected Ramakrishnan’s ’208 patent to come back and bite it in the ass. The patent could help Facebook negotiate its way out paying huge amounts of cash or stock to license the 10 patents Yahoo is suing it with.

A legal stalemate would actually turn out to be a huge fail for Yahoo. It’s received a ton of hate from entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and the public for trolling Facebook with vague patents rather than actually innovating. Other former employees have chastised it for “weaponizing” their inventions.

The whole debacle could make recruiting tough, and retaining employees tougher for Yahoo. So by going on the offensive while vulnerable itself, Yahoo may have ensured that when its employees have brilliant ideas, they’ll already be working for somebody else.

[Image Credit: 20th Century Fox]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Editor’s note: Barry Silbert is founder and CEO of SecondMarket. Follow him on Twitter @BarrySilbert.

The SEC recently concluded its investigation of the emerging market for pre-IPO shares of private companies, resulting in charges being brought against three market participants. I am proud to say that SecondMarket was not among those investigated or charged with wrongdoing.

While the press focused on the SEC “cracking down” on the private company market, the investigation actually focused on wrongdoing that has existed in the securities markets for decades: broker-dealers using improper sales practices and charging inappropriate fees, and unregistered middlemen improperly acting as broker-dealers.

Nonetheless, the investigation should result in a better private company marketplace.  Because of market structure changes and regulatory hurdles, companies are remaining private longer than ever before. The public markets work well for the largest companies, but many observers believe a company has to have a market capitalization of more than $1 billion before it receives the sales and research coverage to successfully navigate the public markets.

That is an extraordinarily high barrier to entry and supports the notion that a robust private company market is critical to the startup ecosystem. An efficient private market can help a company provide its shareholders with interim liquidity, so that a company is not prematurely forced to go public or pursue an M&A transaction. At SecondMarket, we continue to develop practices and procedures that we believe all participants should adopt as we move forward.

Regulatory oversight: Quite simply, anyone facilitating trades of private company stock should be registered as a broker-dealer. Trust is an essential element of an efficient market. The ability to conduct trades in a regulated environment confers accountability on the part of the broker-dealer and provides assurance to participants that there is regulatory oversight of a transaction. SecondMarket was fully regulated as a broker-dealer before we ever conducted a private company stock transaction.

Robust Accreditation: Private company stock is not for everyone. Investing in a private company is inherently risky, and investors must have the financial means and risk tolerance to participate in the market. While we require companies that exclusively sell secondary shares with us to provide financial disclosures, the information is less detailed than public company disclosures.

Only “accredited” investors are eligible to buy private company stock on SecondMarket, and we have established a process to ensure that only accredited investors buy stock. We conduct online accredited investor questionnaires, background checks and reviews prior to a transaction, and contact each potential buyer to understand his or her investment intent.

Company Engagement: Every private company is different. Each company has unique goals, circumstances and objectives. SecondMarket works with each company to design a customized liquidity program to meet that company’s needs. The companies control who can buy and sell, how much each shareholder can sell, frequency of transactions, and share price.  Most importantly, as noted above, we require companies that allow secondary transactions on SecondMarket to provide financial disclosures to the company-approved buyers and sellers.  Providing financial information to participants ensures transparency and information symmetry, but it is important to private companies that only the eligible buyers and sellers (and not the entire world) have access to that information.

We will not permit a transaction if the company is not willing to work with us, and we encourage other marketplaces to follow suit. It is critically important that companies support secondary trading of their shares. A managed secondary trading process can provide a company with numerous benefits, including retaining existing employees and attracting new talent.

Mitigate Conflicts of Interest:  It is important that buyers and sellers understand that a marketplace is an impartial intermediary that is not on either side of a transaction.  We actively seek to minimize conflicts of interest in a variety of ways. We do not produce or pay for research. We do not buy private company stock for our own account or make investment decisions on behalf of our platform participants. And we do not offload our regulatory responsibility to third-party broker-dealers.

As we look ahead, I firmly believe that the continued success of this overall market is predicated on honesty, integrity and reliability. By following these guidelines, we can ensure that bad actors are forced out of the market and a healthy, prosperous secondary market for private company stock can continue to flourish.

[image via Flickr/Katrina. Tuliao]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

ThinkUp App, the open source web application born out of the non-profit Expert Labs that lets you capture, store and analyze your activity across various social networking sites, has rebooted as a commercial entity.

ThinkUp the company will be headed up by Lifehacker founding editor Gina Trapani and famed early blogger and entrepreneur Anil Dash, who have been working together on Expert Labs since 2009. Expert Labs, meanwhile, will be shutting down, according to blog posts by Trapani and Dash.

To help fund its early operations, ThinkUp is seeking to secure some $1 million in a grant through the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge (ThinkUp estimates it will need a total of $2.4 million in outside funding.) And this is where it gets really cool: According to its application there, ThinkUp aims to utilize the content it collects on existing corporate social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Foursquare to essentially subvert the closed ecosystem they’ve come to embody — “using those connections to enable the creation of a new decentralized network behind the scenes.” In effect, ThinkUp wants to use the weight of the existing social web against it — a Judo move to ultimately make the Internet a more open place.

So why is ThinkUp going to the journalism-focused Knight Foundation for help with this? Because it also plans to build a sexy, newsy website to convince people that decentralized social networking matters. From ThinkUp’s Knight application:

“We will draw people in through a compelling media site that encourages participation via our decentralized platform. We have unique experience in creating some of the most important tools and most influential sites on the social web. And we’re using that experience to build a decentralized, peer-to-peer network that powers a great media property with broad appeal — imagine if Digg or Reddit were open, decentralized and powered by a network instead of votes.”

It all sounds very ambitious, but also very worthwhile. Open web advocates believe that decentralization is essential for maintaining the competition and diversity necessary to keep technology moving forward. But as more and more people spend the majority of time interacting with the Internet through a handful of websites controlled by increasingly powerful companies, in many ways we’re farther away from an open web now than ever before. ThinkUp wants to shake up this status quo. Dash explained ThinkUp’s mission in his blog post thusly:

“…What ThinkUp represents is a lot of important concepts: Owning your actions and words on the web. Encouraging more positive and fruitful conversations on social networks. Gaining insights into ourselves and our friends based on what we say and share. And the possibility of discovering important information or different perspectives if we can return the web back to its natural state of not being beholden to any one company or proprietary network.”

ThinkUp acknowledges that it is not the first to try to make the open social web a reality, and that Diaspora and Singly’s Locker Project have similar aims. But ThinkUp’s Knight application says these projects have limited traction because they “focus on the tech first rather than a compelling user experience.” ThinkUp, on the other hand, is building a super slick app from the start. It also is apparently looking to work alongside the Facebooks and Googles of the world, not totally against them — and to me, that is what could ultimately make ThinkUp a winner.

To be sure, ThinkUp has a long road ahead of it, as it is facing off against some of the most powerful forces on the web today. It’s great to see big names such as Trapani and Dash committing to such an endeavor, and it will certainly be interesting to watch ThinkUp’s evolution in the weeks and months ahead.

Photo of Gina Trapani courtesy of Flickr user ginatrapani; photo of Anil Dash via dashes.com.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

As TechCrunch Disrupt New York fast approaches, Startup Battlefield applications are open and running. For the past few weeks, hopeful entrepreneurs have been submitting their new, unseen startup companies for the opportunity to launch on technology’s biggest stage in front of an all-star panel. The Startup Battlefield judging panels consist of the biggest innovators, angels, VCs and influencers in the tech community. Up for grabs is the opportunity to gain exposure on a worldwide platform and to some of the best investors in the business, a $50,000 prize and the coveted Disrupt Cup.

Past winners include: Mint, Yammer and RedBeacon from our TechCrunch 40 & 50 days. Soluto, Qwiki, GetAround have each hoisted the Disrupt Cup. Most recent winners, Shaker and OrderWithMe, our first international conference winner, will both be on hand in New York to share their seasoned Battlefield knowledge with this year’s contenders.

Disrupt NYC kicks off on May 19th with our 24-hour Hackathon, and the main event starting May 21st and going through the 23rd. Stay tuned as we’ll reveal more of what’s in store for Manhattan in May. Get your tickets now.

Applications are due by 11:59PM PDT on Sunday, April 1, 2012. We review applications on a rolling basis, so feel free to submit sooner rather than later. While we have many more exciting speakers to announce, I’m holding off this week in favor of giving you a peek at a few of our judges for New York’s Disrupt in May. Scroll down to get a glimpse of a portion of our distinguished judging group.

If you’d like to become a part of the Disrupt experience and learn about sponsorship opportunities, please contact Leslie Hitchcock and Jeanne Logozzo for more information.

Judges:

Bijan Sabet
Partner, Spark Capital

Bijan Sabet has been a General Partner at Spark Capital since its inception in 2005. Bijan led Spark’s investments at Twitter, Tumblr, Boxee, Foursquare , Stack Exchange, ExFM, OMGPOP, and Bug Labs. He also led the investment in thePlatform (acquired by Comcast) and was on the board at Next New Networks (acquired by Google).

David Samuel
Co-founder, Freestyle Capital

David Samuel is serial entrepreneur, Internet pioneer, and an experienced executive with a proven ability to identify market trends and build companies from the ground up. He has repeated success providing significant investor ROI. Dave has specialized in software & media since 1994. His success comes as a result of his strong technical background, ability to manage large teams, and adept leadership to adjust company direction while navigating through volatile or uncharted markets.

David Lee

David Lee is the Managing Member at SV Angel, where Ron Conway is a Special Partner. SV Angel focuses its investments on early-stage consumer media companies. He focuses on investments within the consumer Internet, mobile, video and other IT industries. Prior to SV Angel, he was at Google, where he led new business development efforts in video, media and content/data partnerships. After Google, he led all business development-related efforts for StumbleUpon.

Fred Wilson
Partner, Union Square Ventures

Fred Wilson began his career in venture capital in 1987. In 1996, Fred co-founded Flatiron Partners. While at Flatiron, Fred was responsible for 14 investments including, ITXC, Patagon, Starmedia, TheStreet.com and Yoyodyne. Fred currently serves on the boards of Alacra, Comscore, iBiquity, Return Path, Instant Information and Tacoda Systems. (Source: Union Square Ventures)

John Frankel

John Frankel is an early stage venture capitalist and founder of ff Venture Capital because he saw a market that was not being served well by established venture funds. John Frankel has been an early-stage venture investor for over 10 years, with a broad portfolio of investments. He has worked closely with entrepreneurs in a variety of fields and has experience advising start-ups. He started his business career with Arthur Anderson & Co. in the audit and insolvency divisions. He spent the following 21 years at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in a variety of roles that involved technology development, reengineering, and capital markets. His primary focus is helping early-stage companies deploy lightweight disruptive business models to become the low-cost player in their respective markets.

Josh Kopelman

Josh Kopelman is a venture capitalist and Managing Partner at First Round Capital. Previously, Kopelman founded Half.com, which was acquired by eBay in 2000. He remained with eBay for three years, running the Half.com business unit and growing eBay’s Media marketplace to almost half a billion dollars in annual sales. In late 2003 Kopelman helped to found TurnTide, an anti-spam company that created the world’s first anti-spam router. TurnTide was acquired by Symantec just six months later. In 2001 Kopelman co-founded the Kopelman Foundation, a non-profit grant fund for social entrepreneurs. He also serves as a member of the advisory boards for Wharton Entrepreneurial Center and the Weiss Tech House at the University of Pennsylvania.

Marissa Mayer
VP, Google

As a VP at Google, Marissa Mayer leads the product management and engineering efforts of Google’s local, mobile, and contextual discovery products including Google Maps, Google Maps for Mobile, Local Search, Google Earth, Street View, Latitude and more. At 35 years old, she is also the youngest member of Google’s executive operating committee. During her 11 years at Google, Marissa has led product management and design efforts for Google web search, images, news, books, products, toolbar, and iGoogle. She started at Google in 1999 as Google’s 20th employee and first woman engineer.

Michael Abbott
Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Michael is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Michael was previously Twitter’s Vice President of Engineering. Before that he led the application platform and services development for Palm’s next-generation Palm webOS platform. He has extensive experience in building technically challenging web-based applications and services. Before joining Palm, Michael was the general manager of .NET Online Services at Microsoft, where he led efforts to deliver a services platform that enabled the development of large-scale Internet-based services. Prior to Microsoft, he co-founded Passenger Inc., where he served as chairman and led the development of the company’s consumer marketing SAAS platform. Michael also founded Composite Software, creator of industry-leading enterprise information integration software, where he served as the CEO/CTO.

Roelof Botha
Partner, Sequoia Capital

Roelof Botha is a partner at Sequoia Capital focusing on financial services, cloud computing, bioinformatics, consumer Internet and mobile companies. Roelof sits on the boards of Aliph, Eventbrite, Mahalo, Meebo, Nimbula, Square, TokBox, Tumblr, Unity and Xoom. Roelof is a champion of consumer web plays and considers himself “just another consumer.” Roelof’s previous investments at Sequoia include Insider Pages and YouTube. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 2003, Roelof served as the Chief Financial Officer of PayPal during its sale to eBay. Earlier, he worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company. Roelof is a certified actuary (Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries). Roelof was listed as #23 on Forbes’ 2007 Midas List, which identifies venture capital’s most successful professionals.

Shana Fisher
Managing Partner, High Line Venture Partners

Shana Fisher is the Managing Partner of High Line Venture Partners, a NY Based venture fund focused on early stage investments. From December 2003 to June 2010, Ms. Fisher served as IAC’s Senior Vice President, Strategic Planning & Mergers and Acquisitions, and prior to that as the Senior Vice President of Business Operations for IAC. Previously, Ms. Fisher served as Vice President and Director, Media and Technology Mergers and Acquisitions and Corporate Finance for Allen & Company, LLC. In this capacity she led principle investments and advised publicly traded technology firms, private telecommunications firms and media companies. Prior to Allen & Company, LLC., Ms. Fisher was a program manager for the Microsoft Corporation. Ms. Fisher received her B.A. from Hampshire College with a triple major in Sculpture, Philosophy and Linguistics and attended the Master of Arts program at New York University’s ITP.

Shervin Pishevar
Founder and Executive Chairman, SGN

Shervin Pishevar is a technology entrepreneur, published researcher, and technology incubation expert and who has raised nearly $40M in venture funding for his startups. He is the founder and executive chairman of SGN, one of the leading social and mobile gaming companies. Currently, Shervin is an active angel investor or advisor in such companies as Aardvark, Thread.com, Gowalla, and Kissmetrics. Previously, Shervin was the founding president and COO of Webs (formerly Freewebs), one of the largest social publishing communities in the world with over 30 million members and growing, with one million members added every 60 days. He also co-founded such companies as Hotprints to revolutionize the personal printing and direct marketing world and Hyperoffice, a leading SaaS provider for small businesses.

Sarah Tavel
VP, Bessemer

Sarah Tavel, a vice president in the Menlo Park office, joined Bessemer in 2006. She focuses on the software and Internet sectors and has been closely involved in investments with consumer Internet company Pinterest; Microsoft SharePoint migration solutions provider Metalogix; leads-generator Yodle; learning-and-talent-management company Cornerstone OnDemand (IPO); e-commerce site Onestop; energy-management company CPower (acquired by Constellation Energy); SaaS online-marketing company Convertro; business-software company MindBody Solutions; and leading Russian e-commerce company KupiVIP. Sarah also works with Bessemer company eEye Digital Security and worked with Quidsi (operator of Diapers.com and Soap.com), acquired by Amazon.com, security software company Intego, and classifieds-provider OLX, acquired by Naspers.

Tracy Chou
Backend/ Infrastructure Software Engineer, Pinterest

Tracy is currently a backend/infrastructure software engineer at Pinterest. She was previously at Quora, where she joined as the second engineer. She holds an MS in Computer Science and a BS in Electrical Engineering, both from Stanford University.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch