Oh, Kim Dotcom. You just never stop surprising us.

Just hours after Twitter finally rolled out its long-awaited Two-Factor authentication feature to protect accounts, the Megaupload founder is claiming to have invented the entire mechanism… and he’s got a patent to prove it.

“But they won’t even verify my Twitter account?!”, he says.

The patent in question can be viewed here. Filed for in 1998 and published two years later, it lists a Kim Schmitz — Dotcom’s name before he changed it in 2005 — as the sole assignee.

For the unfamiliar, two-factor authentication is a mechanism intended to make it more difficult for hackers to access accounts that aren’t their own. When a user attempts to log in to a service from an unrecognized computer, the service sends a one-time password to an alternative device (like, say, a cell phone) known to belong to that user. At least theoretically, hacking a user’s account would thus require access to that device in addition to their password.

Google, Facebook, Twitter, and countless other monstrous sites all use two-factor authentication to protect user accounts, and Kim Dotcom’s tweets suggest that he hasn’t seen a cent from any of’em for the alleged “massive IP infringement”.

Google, Facebook, Twitter, Citibank, etc. offer Two-Step-Authentication.
Massive IP infringement by U.S. companies. My innovation. My patent—
Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) May 22, 2013

So, will he sue?

It seems he has at least considered it:

I never sued them. I believe in sharing knowledge & ideas for the good of society. But I might sue them now cause of what the U.S. did to me—
Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) May 22, 2013

But he quickly switched to a different approach; instead of getting into a legal battle with a bunch of giants, Dotcom would prefer that Google, et al. continue to use “[his] patent for free”, in exchange for financial assistance in his ongoing legal battle:

Google, Facebook, Twitter, I ask you for help. We are all in the same DMCA boat. Use my patent for free. But please help funding my defense.—
Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) May 22, 2013

All of our assets are still frozen without trial. Defending our case will cost USD 50M+. I want to fight to the end because we are innocent.—
Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) May 22, 2013

Given the rather broken state of software patents, it’s not impossible to imagine that there’s at least one other person or company out there that can claim to have invented it, with patent in hand. This patent held by Dynapass Inc, for example, was approved in 2006 for “Use of personal communication devices for user authentication”. We’re searching for other instances of similar patents.

As strange as it may seem for those who only know him as the founder of a file uploading site that was raided by the FBI last year, it would actually make quite a bit of sense for Dotcom to have security-related patents. His first brush with notoriety came in 1994, when he was arrested in Germany at the tender age of 20 for hacking calling cards. Those who spend their lives looking for security holes are often the same who come up with the solutions.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

By now, you have probably heard about the Liberator, a 3D printed plastic gun designed, assembled, and test-fired by Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed. Is it legal?

Last week, the State Department’s arms export office demanded that Defense Distributed remove CAD files for the Liberator from its website. Defense Distributed complied with the takedown letter right away, despite strong language on its website promising it would be “a home for fugitive information” and “No object file will be censored unless it is malicious software.” Predictably, it didn’t take long for the CAD files to make their way to BitTorrent, where they’ll be available forever.

Angle 1: Arms Control

It’s worth reading the letter from the State Department, which is only two and a half pages long. In a nutshell, the letter demands the takedown while it decides whether publishing firearms-related CAD files online violates ITAR. ITAR, which stands for the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, are rules that the State Department promulgated under the Arms Export Control Act. One part of ITAR is the United States Munitions List, which is a master list of products and technologies that can’t be exported without prior government approval under a licensing system. Because Defense Distributed didn’t seek an export license, there’s a problem.

Are CAD files munitions? The State Department believes the Liberator files fall under the Category I of the US Munitions List, which covers firearms and related “technical data.” Section 120.10 of ITAR says “technical data” includes “blueprints, drawings, photographs, plans, instructions or documentation” about “the design, development, production, manufacture, assembly, operation, repair, testing, maintenance or modification of defense articles” — so that appears to cover CAD files for guns.

Unsurprisingly, Defense Distributed is already saying (melodramatically) that it will fight the takedown demand: “It seems we may have to have our rights declared in court to simply keep developing gun files to put into the public domain. DD’s right to exist is being challenged.”

What will probably happen next is that Defense Distributed will apply for an export license, which the State Department will deny, and Defense Distributed will sue to get a judge to issue an order that the State Department can’t block it — and that is where things will get interesting.

Angle 2: Gun Control Laws

Because the Liberator is made mostly of plastic, Defense Distributed also has to contend with the Undetectable Firearms Act. This law, first passed in 1988 and renewed in 2003, makes it illegal to “manufacture, import, sell, ship, deliver, possess, transfer, or receive” any firearm that can’t be detected by x-ray machines. Gunsmiths with a federal firearms license (Wilson has one) can build guns to test them for compliance, but other than that, undetectable guns are completely contraband. Wilson packaged the CAD files with detailed instructions, including an admonition to DIYers to include a block of metal in a hole specifically included in the design for that purpose. It’s up to the person doing the printing to comply, though. If you don’t put the metal block in, you could be in big trouble. It is probably just a matter of days until the ATF or FBI start knocking on the doors of people who’ve already started posting pictures of their 3D printed guns online.

Notably, the Undetectable Firearms Act bans the atoms, but not the bits: you can possess CAD files for an undetectable firearm without violating it. That’s an easy legislative patch, but it will  run into free speech problems.

Angle 3: First Amendment Meets Second Amendment

I predict the Constitutional wrangling will focus on the First Amendment, not the Second. (For foreign readers, the First Amendment to the US Constitution provides extremely strong protections for citizens’ freedom of speech, and the Second Amendment provides a right “to keep and bear arms” — although the language is a mess and reasonable people disagree on how to interpret it.) This is going to spawn some strange bedfellows: I would not be surprised to see the NRA and ACLU on the same side in this fight.

Why is this a First Amendment case? One of the issues is whether the government can prevent citizens from publishing gun blueprints. A big gateway question, though, is how to characterize Defense Distributed’s CAD files in the first place. Is a CAD file expressive speech that should be protected, or a functional thing that should be regulated? This distinction is important because the government has tremendous power to regulate things, but far less power to regulate speech. When courts first started to come to grips with software, they came out on the side of protecting it as speech despite its functional aspects, but they might view 3D printing files differently because when you “run” them, you get things.

President Clinton’s Executive Order No. 13026 relaxing the crypto ban (more on that below) recognized the speech–functionality distinction:

Because the export of encryption software, like the export of other encryption products described in this section, must be controlled because of such software’s functional capacity, rather than because of any possible informational value of such software…

In addition to the CAD files themselves, there is also Wilson’s act of publishing them. Is the act of publishing a functional gun blueprint speech? Two Supreme Court free speech cases give a partial roadmap.

The first is United States v. O’Brien, in which the Supreme Court upheld a criminal conviction for burning a draft card. The Court found the defendant’s conduct was expressive, but still upheld his conviction because the law under which he was prosecuted — a prohibition on destroying draft cards — had justifiable military purposes that outweighed his free speech right. One could see courts today taking a similar path by finding that the government’s interest in controlling the flow of firearms and military information outweighs Defense Distributed’s right to publish gun design files.

The other is the Pentagon Papers case, New York Times v. United States. There, the New York Times sought to publish damning internal Pentagon documents about the Vietnam War. Even though the material was directly related to national security, the Court allowed the New York Times to go forward, finding the newspaper’s speech interest was greater than the government’s interest in preserving the confidentiality of classified information. The case helps Defense Distributed to the extent it struck down a prior restraint on speech, but publishing proof-of-concept plastic pistol blueprints is not in the same league as exposing government misconduct.

The Crypto Cases

This isn’t the first time courts have had to sort out the mess when innovation hurtled into arms control law and the First Amendment. The US Munitions List used to cover a wide range of cryptography software, a restriction only relaxed in 1996 by an Executive Order by President Clinton — who, even then, perhaps, realized the futility of censoring the spread of code. Before that, though, PGP creator Phil Zimmerman was criminally investigated, but never charged, for violating ITAR. The issue made its way to the courts in 1997 in Bernstein v. US Department of State, where Daniel Bernstein, a UC Berkeley computer science researcher, sued to be allowed to publish his cryptography research, which included working code. Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California found that it was unconstitutional for the government to prevent Bernstein from publishing his crypto software. Judge Patel held that blocking Bernstein’s publication amounted to a prior restraint on his speech that violated the First Amendment.

Defense Distributed will likely follow Bernstein’s path. The State Department’s takedown demand probably qualifies as a prior restraint, to which courts are incredibly hostile. But the ability to download a file, press “Print,” and have gun parts come out could also tip some judges toward calling gun CAD files functional things and allowing the government to regulate them.

Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should

There’s more to this than law, however. There is also ethics and common sense. Even if you can publish 3D-printable gun blueprints, should you? What are the consequences of doing it?

Nobody in the 3D printing industry is going to thank Wilson for bringing heat from the State Department and Congress. Wilson’s stunt could well lead to new restrictions and regulations on the nascent digital manufacturing industry, even before it has had a chance to figure things out for itself. (Scaremongers like these clowns won’t help either.) And for what? The Liberator isn’t about to liberate anybody — it will probably melt or explode after one or two shots. Given the Bernstein case, even if he wins, Wilson may not even be breaking any new legal ground.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Phew. Google just spent three hours or so showing off new developer tools, APIs, service overhauls, and the occasional gadget, but not everything the search giant rolled out today got a turn under the spotlights at the Moscone Center. Case in point: according to a post on the official Google Commerce blog, Google Wallet support has been baked into Gmail, so users will soon be able to send each other money by simply shooting each other emails.

In the coming weeks and months, a dollar sign will start popping in Gmail accounts of people who already use Google Wallet, and a quick click lets users define the recipient and the amount they’d like to send along as an attachment. Since all of these transactions run through Google Wallet, the usual caveats are in place — sending funds from a connected bank account is totally gratis, but those who prefer to pay with credit or debit cards are subject to an additional 2.9 percent fee tacked on. You also need to be over 18 to take part in the funding fun, though.

Google is far from the first company to tackle the concept of sending money via email — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo rolled out a method of transferring funds to people if you had their cell phone number or email address two years ago, but the setup process involved could be more than a little tedious if the recipient wasn’t a member of the same bank. At this point, it’s too early to pass judgment on Google’s approach, but the company seems intent on making the process much easier on all the parties involved, even if the person receiving the money isn’t a Gmail user.

More importantly, it’s possible that folding a level of Wallet support into Gmail could see adoption of the payment platform tick upward. After all, Google said around this time last year that Gmail played home to 425 million users, and a considerable chunk of them will eventually find themselves able to transfer money without many headaches involved. Google’s announcement of its Instant Buy APIto streamline the process of buying things from within an Android app could certainly play a role in expanding Wallet’s prominence. These developments may not seem as downright prominent a push as, say, a Google-branded Wallet card that would solidify the service’s presence in meatspace, but former Wallet chief Osama Bedler is out, and that ship has sailed.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The following is an excerpt from my new book Don’t Go Back to School: a handbook for learning anything.

To someone who has never tried, it’s not obvious how to learn the things you want to learn outside of school. I’m on a mission to show you how. To do that, I became obsessed with how other people learn best, and how they do it without going to school.

My research based on interviews with 100 independent learners revealed four facts shared by almost every successful form of learning outside of school:

• It isn’t done alone.
• For many professions, credentials aren’t necessary, and the processes for getting credentials are changing.
• The most effective, satisfying learning is learning that which is more likely to happen outside of school.
• People who are happiest with their learning process and most effective at learning new things — in any educational environment — are people who are learning for the right reasons and who reflect on their own way of learning to figure out which processes and methods work best for them.

This interview with Harper Reed is a great example of how independent learning works. Reed served as the Chief Technology Officer for Obama for America during the 2012 election; before that, he was CTO at Threadless. He is an engineer who builds paradigm-shifting technology and leads others to do the same.

I love computers and I’ve always been around computers. I can’t really talk about education without talking about computers. I went to high school and I actually really loved it. I took all the classes I could, I was prom king, student council president. I did everything I could to be more involved in high school and that is obviously not the normal path you’d expect for a computer geek.

But, along with that, I was constantly getting into trouble with computers. Never with the cops, but I was always getting banned from all the computers in the school district. Then, they would let me back in, and I would mess up again for whatever reason. It happened over and over. I was caught in this dichotomy of trying to be involved, but whenever I was trying to get involved with computers, I messed it up because I was curious and experimenting outside what was allowed. After that, I went to a small liberal arts college. I studied history along with computer science, because I knew ultimately I was going to work with computers and I wanted to learn something else, too. I studied Catholic history and the history of science, which overlap a lot. I’m not Catholic. I’m not a religious person at all, but it was really fascinating to learn all of the idiosyncrasies of Galileo and Bruno and all these different weird scientists who got burned at the stake for their discoveries.

I realized about probably three-quarters of the way through my education that in terms of computers, I actually wasn’t learning anything I needed to learn to get a job later on. I did learn some coding concepts in college, but more importantly I figured out that I’m an experiential learner. I need to put my hands on things and really see them, and really chew on them. It was better to do it in a real context, where it mattered if I did it right. Like where there was money at stake. So, I did an internship in Iowa City, IA. I worked for a real company that was trying to make a profit. The company built ecommerce apps. As an intern I started learning web apps to build web pages. Given my way of learning, it was fascinating to see how the management dealt with me. I was a child. I asked questions like a child does. “Why is the sky blue?” They just said, “It’s just blue. Go with that.” I said, “No! Tell me why we’re doing it this way. What is this?” It was client services, so we were just doing it because the client wanted it done, with no thought behind it. But all the questions I asked gave me this opportunity to see how things worked and the value of asking things that seemed obvious to everyone else. It gave me a lot of hope. It really kicked off the career that I have now.

The methods I used to learn technology don’t work for everything. I’m struggling with learning Japanese. My wife is Japanese and I want to learn the language, but I don’t know how. I take classes, I fail, it doesn’t work out. I have to figure that out. With technology, I immediately find a problem I want to solve. It’s usually about learning a new programming language or learning a new technology. If it’s a real problem, I want to get to where I can actually picture the solution and be able to see it through from the beginning to the end. For me, I can’t learn from videos. That just doesn’t do it for me, although there’s a lot of video learning right now. I find it very frustrating. So usually what I do is I just go through a tutorial of some sort and then really start iterating, doing it over and over. I start trying to be creative on top of that, and say okay, now that I can figure out how to do this, how would I use it? So I set a new goal pretty close in difficulty, and when I achieve that, I do that again, until suddenly I’ve learned something. When you’re in that process, it can also be the best time to teach someone else. A tech writer named Mark Pilgrim, who writes manuals for learning coding languages including Dive into Python, and Dive into HTML5 said, “The best time to write a book about something is while you’re learning it yourself.” So you know what’s hard to learn and can talk in an excited, confident, honest way about how you got to the place where it’s not hard anymore.

For me this whole process is really collaborative. I treat everything like I’m the CEO of my life. CEOs have boards of directors and boards of advisors and these are groups of people who they’re using to really rely on for help and advice to be successful. I think every person should treat their life like that. So, if I’m stuck, I know I can reach out to a buddy, or I can reach out to my brother. I know I can reach out to these people who are experts in whatever I’m trying to do. I try to surround myself with incredibly smart people who are often, if not always, smarter than me. Because other people are so important to learning, I also think one of the most significant things about the internet is democratization of access. Anyone can email you about self-learning and you’re probably going to respond. Probably. I think it’s about how you phrase it. We are all very busy, but we’re probably going to respond if you approach it efficiently.

You can learn a lot about this from a really good book called Team Geek by Brian W. Fitzpatrick. It’s actually about project managing software development geeks, but it applies to most things with communication. It should really be called “Interacting with People,” because all it is, is just little tricks on how to interact with people, how to make those interactions better. There’s a section called “Interacting with an Executive,” and that part should be called “Interacting with Busy People.” It says if you want to connect with someone who is very busy, tell them three bullets and then a call to action.

So if someone wanted help from me, it might go like this: “Harper, I’m interested in what you’re doing with the campaign. I’m going to be doing technology for a campaign in the coming election. Do you have a hint for product management or project management software that you guys use?” I can answer that quickly. It’s very simple. Then all of a sudden there’s this person who probably wouldn’t have had an opportunity to talk with me, and I can help them out. I love what that kind of efficient communication does for you.

Kio Stark is a writer, researcher, teacher, and passionate activist for independent learning. She teaches at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. She is also the author of the novel Follow Me Down. You can find out more about her work at KioStark.com.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

It’s nice to see people in a power position in the valley give up their time for charitable causes. Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, recently offered up his time for probably the most expensive cup of coffee ever, to benefit The RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights. The current top bid is a whopping $605K, and the auction ends in two days if you’ve got the cash to donate.

If the “Cook Experience” is a bit too rich for your blood, then you might be interested in hanging out with Twitter co-founder and Square CEO, Jack Dorsey. His recent auction, benefitting BUILD.org, gets you a full-on lunch with the man at Square’s office in San Francisco.

Whereas Cook’s auction took off with huge bids immediately, Dorsey’s hasn’t quite gotten off to the same start. There’s only one bid right now, and it’s for $5K. Sure, Apple is a company with more mainstream appeal, and a visit to the offices in Cupertino does sound fun, but Dorsey came up with Twitter. That’s worth at least $100K, right?

All kidding aside, the BUILD organization is doing great things for entrepreneurs, stating their mission as: “…to use entrepreneurship to excite and propel disadvantaged and disengaged students through high school to college and career success.” Here’s the pitch for Dorsey, whose auction ends in four days:

Learn from one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time, Jack Dorsey, as you and seven of your closest friends sit down to lunch with him at his newest business, Square, headquartered in San Francisco.

At the end of the day, this is a great way to raise money for charities, but the winning bidders probably have a plan as to what they’d like to get out of the meetings. It would be interesting to get to talk to the person who meets either Cook or Dorsey, so if you’re that person, definitely reach out to us. Even if it’s under strict NDA…which would be nice to know, too.

If you score the Dorsey lunch, you can even bring seven of your friends. Maybe you’ll even get invited to cameo in one of his infamous Vine selfies:

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook App User IDs are a new feature available to iOS developers who can use them to target their users by actions they took within their app. This is already available in the Facebook SDK for iOS, but will come to the Android SDK soon.

App User IDs are a component of Custom Audiences. Previously, advertisers could create targeting groups by hashed email addresses, phone numbers or user IDs. Now, developers have a way to target ads to their app users who haven’t logged in with Facebook or registered with an email address or phone number.

For example, a shopping app can target people who made a purchase and then show them ads with other items they may be interested in. A game developer can target engaged users of one of their games with ads for another game that they make.

To do this, developers make a request to Facebook’s servers to request an ID to be generated, whether it’s for users who installed an app or made a purchase. Facebook will return encrypted IDs that can then be compiled into a list for Custom Audience targeting through Power Editor or the Ads API. Then a developer can reach the audience with any type of Facebook ad, either on desktop or mobile.

Each call to Facebook’s server to generate an app user ID will generate a different ID so that a developer can’t use the ID across apps or app instances, making it more privacy friendly. Also, in some cases where users have turned off ad tracking in iOS 6, the call will not return an app user ID. The same would happen if the person does not have the Facebook app installed or isn’t logged in.

Nanigans VP of Product Per Sandell says App User IDs could help developers improve app re-engagement.

“Facebook’s mobile channels are already delivering significantly higher ROI than other mobile channels,” he says. “Coupling that with the 5X or more ROI increase provided by Custom Audience targeting over standard interest targeting, and Facebook’s mobile advertising solution just became that much more powerful for marketers across the globe.”

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Tesco has launched a new social commerce site for wine, Tesco Wine Co-buys.

Using Buyapowa social commerce software, consumers can club together to buy wine in bulk at discounted prices. What we particularly like is that it appears to be demand led; customers are able to choose wines they want to buy together in bulk – and set a maximum price they’d be willing to pay.  The more people that sign up, the heavier the discount – with the person who recruits the most co-buyers – via social sharing – getting a case of wine for free.  Sweet.

In the PR blurb, Tesco director of digital and social Tom Daniell says: “This channel really puts customers in control – from determining the final price they pay, to telling us the products they’d like to see featured.” Now you know. But the point is well made.  This is social commerce for the empowered customer.

We think Buyapowa is one of the few social commerce software companies that really ‘gets’ social commerce. First, it’s about commerce – i.e. shopping, not conversations, And second, it’s social, and that does not mean social spam from retailers or their customers, but shopping together as a social activity. Buyapowa gets this, and its software delivers by helping people shop together to get value.   And that is what the Tesco brand is about – value.

But if the new site is to be a success, Tesco is going to have to brand Tesco Wine Co-buys better – it really should look more like this or this, and it needs to offer value in more ways than just savings – access, appreciation and advice – will be key.

Right now – the ‘site’ straddles two sites – with users having to flip between Tesco.com and Buyapowa.com site to participate.  Apart from burgundies turning blue and tahomas turning to helvetica, it’s unclear what’s happening where. If we were involved, we’d be recommending Tesco consider using their wine club, currently hidden on the site, with a fresh new feel (again – look at NakedWines – they get it) as a vehicle for this initiative.  The idea is good enough to warrant this.

Whatever Tesco decides, they’ll need to avoid making this initiative look like a temporary promotion – and steer well clear of Groupon-style promotional cues – we’ve been there before and it didn’t work. Instead it should be looking at the new generation of e-commerce wine site like NakedWines 0r ClubW, which just raised $3.1M. But if Tesco decides to develop social commerce for wine, it has the muscle to trail blaze, and grow the site into a major e-commerce wine destination.

Article courtesy of Social Commerce Today

New York City-based startup Cover wants to make paying for your meal at a restaurant ultra-easy — like so easy that you don’t even have to look at the check. So the company has raised $1.5 million from O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures to make that happen.

Here’s the idea: Ever been out to a restaurant with a large group of, say, 10 or so? You’ve just had a nice meal, great conversation, lots of wine and then the check comes and panic ensues. You could do that thing where 10 people all throw their credit cards in to split the check 10 ways. But then there’s always that one guy who has cash, or the person who just ordered an appetizer or doesn’t drink, and probably shouldn’t pay the same amount as everyone else.

Settling up is a pain in the ass, but it doesn’t have to be. That’s the premise behind Cover, which seeks to simplify the process through the magic of mobile payments.

Cover founders Mark Egerman and Andrew Cove decided that a solution was needed to make the experience of paying a check as seamless as paying for a ride on Uber. Egerman, who describes himself as a “recovering attorney” who had previously worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told me that, despite the growing number of mobile wallet solutions out there, few consumers were taking advantage of them. Mostly, the two believe, that’s because the user experience just wasn’t that good.

“We wanted a service that lets you dine out and pay without waiting for the check,” Cove said. “Dining out should be about the people at the table around you. We wanted to make it about that experience.”

What they set out to build, then, was a payments platform and mobile application that would reduce all the fuss and calculations that happen when the check comes. It was important to them that the platform would be able to gracefully handle large groups, and also that it would work with restaurants’ existing point-of-sale systems so that they wouldn’t have to install a whole new order, ticket, or payments system.

For users, Cover is designed to allow one-click, instant payments without them even having to get the check. Users simply check in to a restaurant at the start of their meal, and when it’s time for them to pay the final bill, it’s immediately charged to their credit card. They modelled the experience on Uber, which Egerman called “one of the best payment methods” out there.

For groups, the app allows users to check in and choose which members of the party they’ll be paying for. If all diners have the Cover app, it’ll be taken care of with no fuss. For those who don’t have it, they’ll still be able to pay for their share with cash or credit card.

Cover isn’t the only startup trying to tackle mobile payments at restaurants — there’s also TabbedOut, and, of course, Square. But those have some limitations. For TabbedOut, the check-out flow isn’t as simplified as what Cover is aiming for. And Square requires businesses to use its own POS system.

The app is still in private beta, but the startup has raised $1.5 million in seed funding to get it off the ground. The round was led by OATV, with participation from Lerer Ventures and angels, such as Josh Spear, Dave Eisenberg, Ben Leventhal, Naval Ravikant, Andrew Kortina, James Altucher, Mike Greenfield, John McDonald, Chris Muscarella, Ed Zimmerman and Scott Belsky.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Startups of a feather flock together. Wefollow, a company that was spun out of Digg, has been acquired by about.me, a company that was spun out of Aol.

And get this, there’s more: Lead about.me investor Kevin Rose was also a co-founder of Wefollow (though hasn’t been involved in the project since 2010), and about.me co-founder Tony Conrad was the lead investor in Rose’s Milk — which sold to Google and eventually staffed up Google Ventures. No conflict, no interest.

Right now Wefollow is a discovery tool which allows people to search for Twitter users based on interests. And about.me is a profile creation platform about to double down on its own user search, which is also based on interests. So a merger makes sense, vision-wise. “As more and more people use the search tool to find and get to know other about.me users,” Conrad tells me,”It’s super important to serve up the right results algorithmically.”

Wefollow’s technology will be used to refine the order in which users will show up in search and its prominence scores will eventually be incorporated into the about.me product.

“Wefollow’s goal is to be on the receiving end of any search for a person known for something,” Wefollow co-founder Jeff Hodsdon says, on why the two products are strategically sympatico, “about.me’s primary goal is to provide context of a person describing who they are with a single page. Which they do beautifully.”

“One great thing Wefollow does is expose lesser known people in niche interests that are starting to come online,” he continues, “People known in their respective interests that are much smaller than whats in our tech world. e.g. Florists, Falconry, Cabinetry, Metal Working, Timelapse Photography, etc. Wefollow is a good directory but doesn’t do people justice like an about.me page does when you land on the person you’re looking for.”

Wefollow had been generating revenue at the time of its acquisition, through a “cost per follow” and featured placement functions. “People are willing to pay to promote themselves in their respective interests. And that is an obvious fit with about.me,” Conrad asserted.

Neither company would disclose the terms of the deal, but about.me has raised $5.7 million from True Ventures, SoftTech VC, Google Ventures, CrunchFund* and others to take the road less traveled by and go it alone sans Aol. Conrad eventually views the platform as a place where people will define themselves with an eye towards “calls to action,” competing with Facebook Graph Search, Google and a slew of other products to define your identity or as Conrad puts it, “provide the best set of tools to present yourself on the web.”

“We designed about.me with a movement around identity in mind – to reach a broad audience – to do so, we knew it needed to be nimble, flexible, easy to understand, easy to use and beautiful,” Conrad explains, “The fundamental power of about.me is its simplicity – you know, the person with no tech experience as well as the uber coder, both can have an equally profound, pertinent experience.”

*Disclosure: Crunchfund, you know the drill.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

As millions of 20-somethings defy the age-old tradition of young marriage for another decade of baby-less romance, one study suggests that the Internet is responsible for boosting holy matrimony 14% among 21-30-year-olds. In a deliciously dry economic assessment of romantic partnering, University of Montreal Professor Andriana Bellou finds a surprisingly strong relationship between broadband Internet penetration, dating website use, and youngins gettin’ hitched. “Exploring sharp temporal and geographic variation in the pattern of consumer broadband adoption, I find that the latter has significantly contributed to increased marriages rates among 21-30 year olds,” she writes [PDF].

Two graphs, in particular, help explain the boost in digitally facilitated permanent hookups (the first figure is a poll of spouses the second figure the linear trend between broadband and marriage)

Econometrics For Novices

How do we know these marriages wouldn’t have happened anyways, regardless of whether residents had Internet access? Internet service providers roll broadband around the U.S. for mostly business purposes, provided that local bureaucrats don’t make deploying it a regulatory nightmare. Unless regulators were snuggling with young lovers as they teased their marriage intentions with each other, there’s no reason to believe broadband deployment was following regions ripe for lots of marriage.

So, if we see a see a spike in marriage rates in only states with ubiquitous broadband penetration, the Internet is probably playing some role (econometricians call this an Instrumental Variable). Of regions with similar composition in race, socioeconomic status, population density, unemployment, and age, the author finds the Internet is associated with a sizable 13-30% boost in first-time marriages.

The Hottest Marriage Talk You Can Handle

Readers can imagine how an available pool of hot-and-heavy eager singles facilitates marriage, but the way in which an economist describes romance may just be the hottest thing ever. Nestle an ice-pack between your legs, because this is NSFW.

1. Dating sites increase the chance you’ll find your one true love.

“In a basic infinite horizon search model, individuals search for suitable marriage partners and receive offers drawn from some known distribution. Search continues until a partner is found whose “quality” equals or exceeds an endogenously determined reservation value…Standard search theory predicts that, all else equal, higher search costs lower the reservation value and increase the probability of marriage”

2. It’s hard to meet people in a new city.

“In an offline, decentralized environment searching for a suitable partner can be a lengthy process accompanied by uncertainty regarding match quality and psychological costs associated with personal encounters and potential rejections. An online centralized marriage market instead has the potential to resolve a number of these issues. This is because it allows for targeted search along certain desirable characteristics while the users retain a degree of anonymity”

3. Sometimes, a girl just needs to be asked.

“greater exposure to potential mates will increase the frequency of offers and therefore the likelihood of marriage”

4. Yo, it’s a sausage fest out there.

“The potential of the Internet to affect matching is probably the greatest for those perceived as facing thinner markets or those who experience difficulties in meeting potential mates”

A Word of Caution

A few cautionary notes before we all hail Match.com as the savior of the institution of marriage.

First, these are a percentage of a percentage. Marriage rates increased about 5% for 21-30 year olds, but it went from 0.36 to .412, or a 14% relative increase. This jibes with a 2005 Pew Poll which found that 5% of all marriages began online.

Second, this study says nothing of the quality of the marriage. As I personally investigated, hyper-focused romantic searchers are a mixed blessing. Sometimes we find that the person we thought we wanted is actually the worst possible match.

The truth is, the Internet is probably playing some role in boosting marriage. Speaking as a guy who is part of the new 20-something trend of moving away from home and delaying domestic life to focus on career, online dating helps me sort through the sea of strangers. Now, if it could only make those first dates a little less awkward. Get on it, Internet!

Article courtesy of TechCrunch