Another day, another acquisition by Yahoo.

Yahoo said this morning it’s acquired PlayerScale, a California-based startup that makes software infrastructure for cross-platform gaming. Financial details haven’t been disclosed.

PlayerScale, which was self-funded and cash-flow positive as of this past January, was founded in 2011. According to a VentureBeat article also from January, the company had a staff of 14. It’s not clear yet how many staff are involved and will be joining Yahoo — we’ve reached out for details and will update this with any information we receive.

The four-year-old PlayerScale says its platform now has more than 150 million players, which marks significant growth from just this past January when our own Anthony Ha reported the platform had crossed the 100 million user line. For now this does not look like a straight acqui-hire situation, as both Yahoo and PlayScale say the gaming platform will remain active post-acquisition and continue to be developed.

Here is a statement provided by Yahoo PR:

“The team has built an incredible gaming platform that is used by over 150 million players worldwide. We intend to continue to support and grow PlayerScale’s technology, and we look forward to building great new experiences on Yahoo! using the PlayerScale platform.”

And here is PlayerScale CEO Jesper Jensen‘s blog post on the deal:

“Today is a great day — both in our journey with PlayerScale and for users of our Player.IO product. We are happy to announce the next big step toward our goal of building the best possible gaming infrastructure platform: we have been acquired by Yahoo!. And don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere. Our platform will continue to support the same great games that you love playing today … and in fact, it will only get better from here!

Our goal has always been to help developers build the best possible games, without having to worry about building and scaling the infrastructure required to operate today’s biggest successes. In working with the folks at Yahoo!, it has become clear that we share this passion.

We have spent the past four years growing a three-person startup into a product that powers games played by over 150 million people worldwide and we are adding over 400,000 new users every day. In the last four months alone, we have increased our daily user growth rate by almost sixty percent. With Yahoo!’s backing, we can crank out awesome products and improvements to our platform faster than ever before. We will continue to support our existing product and deliver new services to help you grow and manage your success in cross-platform gaming — whether it’s casual, social or mobile.

Today marks a milestone for PlayerScale and I want to sincerely thank the team, our developers and millions of users for the adventure so far and can promise there will be more to come.

- Jesper Jensen”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

A brain drain at a big tech company is never a good thing, and when a lot of that departing talent consists of high-level execs moving on in rapid succession it’s bound to look like curtains to outside observers. That appears to be the case at HTC, which is losing a lot of senior execs according to multiple reports today from The Verge, CNET and Engadget, and a source has pointed us to yet another recent high profile departure.

We’ve learned at TechCrunch that HTC Senior Vice President of Global Marketing Greg Fisher departed the company just a few short months ago to Amazon. Fisher is among a growing list of known execs leaving HTC, including people on both the product and marketing sides of the equation. What we’re hearing suggests that the company is facing a lot of internal turmoil and politics, which is frustrating employees across the board.

The Verge reported earlier today that HTC’s Chief Product Office Kouji Kodera has departed as of last week, which is a considerable staff shift given that Kodera probably spearheaded HTC’s recent line of critically well-received devices, including the HTC One X and this year’s HTC One. The company has also seen the departure of Global Communications VP Jason Gordon, Global Retail Marketing Manager Rebecca Rowland, digital marketing chief John Starkweather and Eric Lin, manager of product strategy with the past three months.

And when it rains it pours, as HTC Asia CEO Lennard Hoornik confirmed to have left today, and Elizabeth Griffin, the Head of Global Digital Service for the Taiwan-based smartphone maker also reportedly hopping into the lifeboat in favor of a position at Nintendo (out of the frying pan and into the fire?).

This sizeable outpouring of talent comes at a crucial juncture for HTC, as it has just launched the HTC One, a flagship that CEO Peter Chou has literally staked his job upon. Chou so far seems to be secure in his position at the company, but if this trend of executive departures, he could soon wind up on his own at the top. Chou is apparently not the man people would like to have in charge, however, as The Verge reports that he and his tendency to make snap decisions are what’s behind this outbound tide of senior staff.

The HTC One is reportedly selling at a decent pace after a slow start, but HTC’s other sizeable bet, the First which comes pre-loaded with Facebook Home, looks to be on life support at best, if not entirely discontinued already.

If HTC is bleeding from the head, it’s possible it’s bleeding from the body, too. We’ve seen evidence to suggest that could be the case in the past, and we’ve also heard that it’s not just senior people who are looking towards greener pastures. It’s unlikely that we’ve seen the end of these leavings, either, so in the meantime we’ll be watching to see who’s next into the lifeboats.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Last year, Twitter announced something it called the Innovator’s Patent Agreement (IPA), which would keep patents in the hands of the designers and engineers that came up with the technology behind them. What this agreement serves as is a promise to only act on a patent for “defensive purposes.” Anything outside of that scope would need to be signed off on the creator of the patent itself.

Here’s how Twitter defines “defensive purposes”: “Defensive purposes means that you can defend yourself should another party try to initiate patent litigation against you or your customers or users. Under the IPA, it also means that you can use these patents against anyone who has sued others offensively in the past (up to ten years).”

The first patent to get the IPA treatment is Loren Brichter’s pull to refresh user interface interaction, which was built into Tweetie, the Twitter app that was acquired by the company and adopted as the official client.

Basically, Twitter is saying it’s not going to go after companies that are using pull to refresh, or other parts of Brichter’s patent, within their app. If someone were to claim to have created the functionality first, only then would Twitter defend itself.

Twitter has also announced that two other companies, Biz Stone’s Jelly and the Lift task tracking app, will also be adopting the Innovator’s Patent Agreement. With so many ideas running around, there should be no reason why the first person to successfully file a patent should hold the power to make everyone’s lives miserable. At the end of the day, all companies benefitted from Brichter’s work, and it’s been nice to see Twitter not going after anyone else for replicating parts of it.

When the IPA was announced last year, Twitter VP of Engineering Adam Messinger had this to say:

This is a significant departure from the current state of affairs in the industry. Typically, engineers and designers sign an agreement with their company that irrevocably gives that company any patents filed related to the employee’s work. The company then has control over the patents and can use them however they want, which may include selling them to others who can also use them however they want. With the IPA, employees can be assured that their patents will be used only as a shield rather than as a weapon.

Using patents as a shield will hopefully slow down the rampant patent trolling that has plagued the technology space for the past ten years. Twitter, Jelly and Lift promise not to be trolls, and that’s a good thing.

You can read the full IPA draft here to see if it’s something your company would want to adopt.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

It’s that time of the week for CrunchWeek, the show where a few of us writers chat up the most interesting stories from the past seven days.

Ryan Lawler, Drew Olanoff (clad in his Google Glass), and I discussed all things Google I/O, including Larry Page’s keynote, Google+’s new photo features, and the latest Google Glass apps and more. We also chatted about Square’s new hardware, Stand, which is a $299 card swiper and stand for iPad registers.

Tune in above for more!

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

If you’re a graphics professional, you know Wacom. The company consistently puts out the best in digital art tablets, and over the past year has announced and released a variety of improvements to its top-end Cintiq gear. The Wacom Cintiq 13HD is the most portable of the line, which features displays built-in to a highly accurate pressure-sensitive tablet, and I’ve been using one to doodle, edit photos and paint digitally for the past few weeks.

• 13.3-inch, 1080p display
• 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity
• 2.65lbs
• $999 MSRP
• Product info page

The Cintiq 13HD replaces the 12WX and improves on it in every way. Design-wise, there are big changes here that dramatically increase the tablet’s portability and overall usability. The 12WX was the closest Wacom came to making a Cintiq you could carry with you, but the 13HD weighs only 2.65 lbs, or 2.78 lbs with the stand. That’s 66 percent lighter, and it’s also smaller in terms of width, depth and height.

Even with all that space and weight savings, the display is larger at 13.3-inches diagonal vs. 12.1 on the 12WX. With the smaller bezel, you sacrifice some ExpressKeys, and the stand isn’t built-in on the 13HD like it was on the 12WX. But those are extremely minor trade-offs compared to all the portability you gain with the 13HD, which can be easily used in the lap like a large paper sketchpad, as well as packed in a laptop bag for travel.

The Cintiq 13HD has 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity, which is double that of the 12WX. It’s a difference you notice instantly in terms of how well the tablet responds to touch. The screen also has 1920 by 1080 full HD resolution, which is a lot better than the 1280 x 800 on the 12WX. It’s enough that interface elements sometimes feel small on the 13HD, but there’s no question that it succeeds in giving you a more workable drawing surface. It also seems to render colors better than the 12WX, and has better viewing angles all around.

Maybe the biggest improvement, however, is in how the 13HD connects to your computer. This time Wacom has folded HDMI, USB 2.0, and the power adapter into an all-in-one cable that terminates in a single, dock connector-like input on the tablet end. It simplifies things immensely, especially now that most MacBooks sport a built-in HDMI port. Once again, this has tremendous advantages for travel, which is where the 13HD really excels overall.

The pen that ships with the 13HD is slightly different from what you’d get with a 22HD or 24HD, but it has mostly the same ergonomics — that is, it’s comfortable to use and to hold. Again in keeping with the whole portability theme, you get a carrying case that holds your nibs in the box, and that’s a very useful accessory if, like me, you’re always forgetting where you stowed those things.

I was a huge fan of the 22HD, and if you’re working at home consistently with a lot of desk space, that still provides the better drawing experience. But the 13HD doesn’t require many sacrifices in exchange for the big benefits in terms of space savings and portability it brings, and the laptop use scenario is much more feasible with this unit.

The screen has a definite texturized feel reminiscent of paper, and the stand has three drawing positions and can also fold flat into the back of the tablet itself. the single cable means it’s easier to avoid unplugging something or knocking something over when you’re grabbing it from your desk to use on your lap or knees, and the pen is extremely responsive – lag is imperceptible.

If there’s a flaw, it’s the lack of touch-sensitive control strips found on other Cintiq devices. These make it much easier to zoom, pan and scroll when working with large-scale graphics and drawings. And while there are workaround possible using the Cintiq 13HD’s ExpressKeys and rocker ring, they aren’t quite as elegant a solution.

If you’re an existing Cintiq user, the 13HD is a no-brainer. It’s got everything you’ve come to know and love, and it either complements a larger device extremely well as a more-or-less mobile solution, or replaces older hardware with big improvements over the last generation. Likewise, if you’re new to Cintiq, this is a great starting place, since it’s the cheapest option (at $999), and yet more drawing tablet than most will ever need. The 12WX was a well-respected work horse for years, but it can rest easy passing the torch to the 13HD.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Are You Interested has been in the online dating game since 2007, predominantly focused on the Facebook platform as a way to connect people through the internet. The company has been relatively quiet in the past year, but is now speaking up after launching a new feature in the past few weeks that connects you with friends of friends.

Other online dating startups have added similar features — Coffee Meets Bagel in particular comes to mind — but AYI is the first company with any true scale to implement the feature. And according to founder and CEO Cliff Learner, “the results have been nothing short of tremendous.”

AYI currently boasts 6,800,000 active users on Facebook, making it one of the largest and most relevant dating sites in admittedly, a sea of matchmaking wannabees. And since they implemented their friends of friends feature in March, AYI boasts that over 2 million connections have been made through the new feature. Over 72,000 users have been directly messaging their friends to ask about a potential date. Of course, we don’t really know how many connections AYI makes on a monthly basis, so can’t conclusively say if this friends of friends feature is as popular amongst AYI’s users as the company makes it seem. Still, 2 million is a pretty big number.

AYI is simply capitalizing on a trend that been permeating through dating sites as of late. Matching friends of friends is the “next big thing” of online dating, and there have been a number of startups that have been clamoring for attention with this as their headline feature. At the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator’s NYC Demo Day this year, one of the startups in the ERA’s graduating class was Acquaintable, a dating startup that links to Facebook and matches friends of friends together. It’s a shame that AYI seems to have stolen its thunder with its already well established user base.

Another little startup that’s been around since last year is Coffee Meets Bagel, and it could be said that they were the first ones to match friends of friends together, albeit at a much smaller scale. Like clockwork, every day at noon Coffee Meets Bagel introduces you to one of your mutual friends. It’s kind of like a “daily deals” for dating.

The appeal of matching mutual friends together, and the reason why it’s taken off to such a degree, can be summarily condensed to one word: honesty. When AYI polled its users last year, the results displayed widespread dissatisfaction. “People were disenchanted with current dating experience,” says Learner. “Especially women.” 56 percent of their polled users didn’t enjoy online dating, including 77 percent of women. A majority of users said people lied on their profiles.

It’s true. When you’re hiding behind a computer, anyone can make themselves to be some kind of dreamy, Jon Hamm-clone. What AYI found when they introduced their friends of friends feature was that honesty was suddenly a problem their users didn’t have to worry about anymore. People were less liable to lie on their profiles when they were connected to potential mates through their friends. “People prefer to meet through their friends,” says Learner. “It’s logical and it just makes sense.” AYI claims that 41 percent of their female user base are more likely to message a man when they have mutual friends.

If anything, AYI’s self-proclaimed success with friends of friends tells us that this new method of matchmaking is here to stay. Expect to see a friends of friends feature making its way to your own personal dating network very, very soon.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The rise of the company builders is right. As Leena wrote in her spot-on post, “Operators are foregoing the traditional path of joining a traditional VC to instead create a studio-like holding operation.” The latest in a series of accomplished entrepreneurs wanting to lend their expertise to a new generation of companies? Serial entrepreneur Garrett Camp, who has set up the holding company Expa to nurture his ideas for products.

Camp tells me Expa will be very close in model to the holding companies started by entrepreneurs Max Levchin (HVF), Evan Williams (Obvious) or Michael Birch (Monkey Inferno), and be more focused than organizations like Science or Betaworks. “I’ve come up with 10 ideas over the past year that I’m interested in,” he revealed, confirming that Expa will stay small. “But realistically only three or four will really come to fruiton.”

Camp became an entrepreneur in 2002 when he founded and bootstrapped discovery startup StumbleUpon, taking it all the way to a $75 million acquisition by eBay, and then a spin-out, eventually leaving the CEO role and handing over the company to Mark Bartels. He came up with the idea for transportation app Uber in 2009 and handed that company off to its hyper-focused CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick.

Nowadays, he’s spending time coaching the “Uber for private planes,” Blackjet, through the growth process from his home.

Derived from the words “experience apps,” Camp holds that the words “incubator” and/or “accelerator” aren’t a good fit to describe Expa, which he hopes will be primarily composed of companies that Camp himself built from scratch. “I’ve asked a lot of people what should we call it, and we don’t have an answer.” After a decade-long career, he believes he’s come up with an efficiency system to help startups reach their full potential. “Instead of doing angel investing, he says, “I’m trying to take that same amount of capital and put it into something where I can be involved in the branding and design.”

“I’d really like to be involved in the early stage formation of new ideas and new products,” he says, “And use all my lessons learned in the past 10 years. Every time I make a mistake with a company, I write it out and try to figure out why it happened,” he emphasized, revealing that he also does this for things he gets right. “I’ve come up with a good set of guidelines, and if I apply these guidelines through Expa, I can hopefully end up with a couple of cool companies.”

Right now Expa is self-funded, but Camp tells me that if it gets to the point where he needs to raise money for an individual company or an entire entity, then he’ll raise money. The company is currently focused on a stealth project in the realm of mobile data and analytics, though Camp says it’s too early to reveal specifics. He insists it’s not in the transportation space or “Uber for X” like Blackjet.

Though he’s not going to keep milking that cow, Camp says that Uber is a great structural model for what he’d like an Expa company to be. “When I think of all the things you can do right or wrong, Uber definitely got most of them right. There’s a few that they got wrong, but none of them are fatal. And I definitely see a correlation between how many things a company gets right and how fast a company grows.”

What’s the most important thing a company can get right? “Having the right amount of equity held by the right people,” Camp says. “Your goal should be fairness.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

People are still getting used to the idea of services like Airbnb, which connect guests who wish to stay in new places with hosts who have accommodations to share. But as a peer-to-peer marketplace for people’s homes, Airbnb’s success still relies on ensuring that its users trust one another. Today, it took another step toward that goal, with the introduction of Verified Identification, which will connect users’ online and offline identities.

Airbnb has undertaken a number of initiatives over the past few years to build its users’ trust and ensure their safety. The marketplace has a ratings system which is designed to allow both guests and hosts to provide feedback on their stay. It also allows them to act as references for one another, especially helpful for first-time users. And Airbnb has implemented a $1 million guarantee for hosts, as well as a secure payment structure and 24/7 customer service.

The company is now seeking to take all that a step further, with a new feature that will link users’ online identities to their real offline identities. Previously, users could authenticate with the system by connecting their Facebook or LinkedIn identity with their Airbnb accounts. But the new Verified Identity system will tie a user’s account to his or her offline identity.

To do so, users simply go to www.airbnb.com/verify and login. The system will prompt users then to verify their offline identity in one of two ways: either by scanning a photo ID or passport with their webcam or mobile phone, or by answering the same sort of historical information you’d be prompted with when doing a credit check. For the system to work, both the online and offline accounts need to match.

The Verified Identity feature will first launch in the U.S., and users here can begin to opt-in and verify themselves today. Hosts will also be able to require users to be verified before they book a room. But if hosts set that requirement, they themselves also must go through the new verification system. That’s one way Airbnb is trying to drive adoption.

Another way that Airbnb will get people to sign up is by requiring that 25 percent of all users will need to get verified before they’re able to book a reservation. That 25 percent will be chosen randomly, and once a user is verified, he or she will never have to go through the process again.

In the short term, requiring a percentage of users to verify their offline identity will add a small bit of friction to the booking process, and could result in users dropping off before completing a booking. If a user is asked to verify his or her account, either because a host has required it or they’re part of the lucky 25 percent, then they’ll have 12 hours to do so without losing the reservation.

It’s important to note that, at least for now, that 25 percent is only required for U.S. users. Airbnb has said in the past that about 75 percent of all bookings have some international component — that is, either the place being booked is outside the U.S. or the guest is not a U.S. resident. Over time, Airbnb plans to increase the percentage of bookings which will require a identity verification. And it also plans to make it required outside the U.S. at some point.

Airbnb believes that the Verified Identity system will not only help provide more trust between guests and hosts, but that it can also help build more community. “The more info you can provide to each other, the better the Airnb experience,” Airbnb communications manager Jakob Kerr told me. “Someday we might get to point where you’re not staying with a stranger.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Soleil Moon Frye (a.k.a. the actress that played Punky Brewster in the hit TV show from the Eighties) and former IAC exec Kara Nortman have raised new funding for Moonfrye, a startup aimed at bringing creative, DIY and interactive experiences to families and parents. The startup is announcing $2.5 million in funding led by GRP Partners with participation from Greycroft, Daher Capital, and Google Ventures.

While many know her for her past TV role, Moon Frye has spent the past few years building an impressive online and social community at Moonfrye.com for parents and mothers. Moon Frye also started an eco friendly baby store in LA, designed a product line for Target, and authored two books oriented towards parents, “Happy Chaos,” and “Let’s Get This Party Started.”

Nortman most recently ran IAC-owned Citygrid Media’s Consumer Businesses (Citysearch, and Urbanspoon) and also served as IAC’s Vice President of Mergers and Acquisitions.

Moon Frye and Nortman wanted to take the power of her content further. Both are mothers of young children who shared anxiety points over keeping their children actively entertained while stimulating their creativity. While details are still sparse on the actual product, the startup will be launching a mobile app dedicated to inspiring creativity in families in a do-it-yourself esperience.

“As my most important role in life is being a mom, it was clear to me that parents around the world were looking for cost effective activities where their families could come together and create meaningful experiences both online and off,” said Moon Frye. Nortman adds that the idea started from a personal pain point, and that the power of the mobile app will rest in engaging parents and children in creativity, and not pushing children towards passive entertainment.

Both explain that the startup sits at the intersection of commerce, commerce and online crafting. And startup already has a built in audience that Moon Frye attracted with her initial blog.

As the parent of an 11-month-old, I find it challenging to keep her occupied in areas where I am not surrounded by her toys. It’s unclear yet how Moon Frye is going to solve this problem, but whatever she has up her sleeve is sure to be anything but boring.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Apple has just released the official announcement for its 2013 Worldwide Developers Conference. Every year, it releases tickets for the developer-focused event at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, and every year, they sell out faster than the year before. Last year, on April 25, they sold out in just two hours, so if you want some, doen’t hesitate when they come out tomorrow, because they’ll be gone fast.

The tickets go on sale at 10 AM PT (1 PM ET) on Thursday, April 25 according to Apple’s official release. Sessions at the annual event include in-person presentations by and access to over 1,000 Apple engineers, including both iOS and Mac OS X developers. The event takes pace at San Francisco’s Moscone West convention center.

This year, Apple has announced dates and a ticket sale start time ahead of when they actually become available. That hasn’t been the case in the past, and it’s possible that they’re trying to make sure developers don’t feel caught off guard when sales open, given how fast access to the event is likely to sell out. Tickets normally go on sale early in the morning, making it difficult for those in some time zones to be in a position to react fast once the tickets are actually released.

We’ll likely see previews of upcoming versions of OS X (possibly 10.9) and iOS (maybe iOS 7) at these events at the very least, as Apple states in its press release that developers “will learn about the future of iOS and OS X.” In the past, Apple has also debuted new hardware at previous WWDC events, though Apple CEO Tim Cook’s statements yesterday might temper any expectations in that regard.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch