CouchSurfing raises reaches USD7.6 m; Will users cry, "Sell"?

Sarah Lacy is currently working on TechCrunch senior editor. She is also an award winning journalist and author of two books, critically acclaimed in "once you're lucky, twice you're good: the rebirth of Silicon Valley and the rise of Web 2.0" (Gotham books, April 2008) and "a brilliant, Crazy, cheeky: how the top 1% of entrepreneurs profit from global chaos ... ? Read More

CouchSurfing International is one of those rare Web companies – like Mozilla or Craigslist – that avoid the normal value of Silicon Valley growth, greed and venture capital. Started in 2004, and less than some commercial iterations, which it inspired, the company turned investment offers, happy to focus on making the right to community surfers three million or so. The user profile contains questions like "what is your personal mission in life?"

This is one of those startups, which uses the word "community" means people who have a strong, real-world connections to each other, not only new industry jargon for "eye."

And its Director Daniel Hoffer a little further talks like a man running a combination of Ashram or online dating service: "We specialize in creating meaningful connections".

But today, CouchSurfing is all corporate on us. Corporate (b) to be specific. Company Announces reaches USD7.6 million round of financing and the transition from a not-for-profit corporation, b. B corporations are a relatively new classification to socially responsible companies operate as commercial companies, but they you regularly audited certifying body, which decides whether they live up to their do-gooding promised at the same time.

Single-bottom approach is in keeping with their investors: Omidyar socially responsible company and more classic VC benchmark capital.

The big question I had for Hoffer: don't you just take the worst of both worlds? Now you have investors to answer, and no matter how warm and fuzzy they are, they are the investors who want big profits. Investors are going to want to see in hell a lot more users growth than three million users in more than six years and may encourage firms to business models that can do this community to balk. Time CouchSurfing still holds itself as a company is trying to do something good, not just provide a service or utility. He can never brushed aside users problems with "we must do what is best for business".

He brushed aside such concerns, saying "I think that the best possible structure is what we have. One problem with nonprofits hard to adapt quickly and easily from the standpoint of business model, because you need permission from the IRS. Now we get that flexibility and we still have to make a statement.

The message, he hoped that comes through loud and clear in his community: "we are the same organization, we have always been; We just change our legal structure. "for example, he insists, CouchSurfing will continue on free space, and that the company will find other ways to make money. To date, are charged only to perform validation checks on the guests and hosts.

Of course will change some things. The company which was duly virtual and nomadic still moves to the appropriate headquarters in San Francisco and actively hiring engineers. Indeed one of the big reasons why they decided to adopt the financing and transfer of the company in the classification easier to recruit engineers looking for stock options.

And you can only hope that some of that money will go towards emergency plans for any similar episodes Meth head Airbnb. Airbnb as a few months ago, CouchSurfing has a stellar reputation million visits without nefarious incidents. However, scales, as the company grows is – as anything in social media – outdoor nature. Matt Cohler Benchmark Capital, which joins the CouchSurfing board said that the people of the same fears about meeting people on online dating and social networking in the day. I replied that these people are not necessarily immediately to sleep on the couch.

Cohler and Hoffer indicate existing systems reputation already in place on the site. In addition part of the outrage surrounding episodes Airbnb was, unlike Craigslist or CouchSurfing people pay for the service, so expected more control. In any case, I believe that this is an issue to which users will ask how CouchSurfing seeks to expand its audience.

Founded in August 2008, in San Francisco, California, Airbnb is a community playground for people to list, locate and order the unique spaces in the online world or ...

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Company:
COUCHSURFING INTERNATIONAL

CouchSurfing project is a free service, Internet, international hospitality, and is currently the largest hospitality exchange network. The project was officially launched January 1, 2004 year. As. ..

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Financial organizations:
BENCHMARK CAPITAL

Benchmark capital is a venture capital firm specializing in early stage investments. Initial investment firms usually sit in the range of $ 3 to $ 5 million and more ...

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Financial organizations:
OMIDYAR NETWORK

Pierre Omidyar, eBay founder and his wife, Pam, established Omidyar Network based on the belief that everyone has the opportunity to make a difference. Since 2004, ...

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Codecademy spikes up to 200 000 users, the lessons of 2.1 million completed within 72 hours

Jason Kincaid currently works as a writer at TechCrunch. He grew up in Danville, California and later moved to Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California, where he studied biology with a minor in "society and genetics". You can contact him at jkincaidtc@gmail.com (it has other addresses too, so don't worry if you have another). ? Read More

Three days ago I wrote about Codecademy, slick, fun way to teach yourself how to program. The application did an excellent job of minimizing frustration, often associated with writing your first line of code, and it sports a beautiful and intuitive interface. Another plus: the original registration flow does not appear til you have completed your first few lessons, so that you are writing code within a few seconds before landing at the Codecademy.com.

I'm not the only one who liked it: co-founder of Sims, Zach tells us that during the three days since the start of the application, it takes 200 000 unique users. This is the users who actually interacted with the application, not those people who have Web pages and bounced off a second later. Perhaps even more impressive: users have completed the total number of exercises 2.1 mln.

Sims also said that the company is actually part of the latest batch of Y Combinator (not disclosed). Given that the team just started work on a project about two weeks ago, it sounds like they changed their ideas at the end of the program (they are not the first to see success with last-minute switch was the founder of Greplin Daniel Gross made the company the day before demo day and later landed $ 4 million from Sequoia).

Sims said that the pace of growth remained strong, largely attributable not to the press, but personal users share on Twitter and Facebook (you are the icons as you complete the lessons).

For more information about this site see our initial launch coverage right here.

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Apple, it's time for a block of iOS 5 Beta users from the revision of the annexes

Greg Kumparak — editor of MobileCrunch.com, the mobile industry blog TechCrunch network. Greg writing for TechCrunch network since May 2008. Greg was born in the vicinity of San Jose, California and currently lives in East Bay. ? Read More

Yes, each new ad iOS – very ... bittersweet. We love it, because it means new APIs for us to develop fixes for the things we were around, and, ideally, more people buy the platform we are building for. But then we months get spend slammed bad reviews, all written by people who just don't understand: before the release goes gold, beta specific errors are is not our fault. "— the developer, who asked not to be named.

Last night, our sister site TUAW (this is still a kind of strange to write that) posted by PSA. The message was simple: If you're not a developer, but you ignored warning signs and ' its way into provisional iOS 5 Beta, you need to stop. Why? Because people crushing developers with horribly unfair feedback, sinking their oh so important rankings of errors they couldn't possibly have prepared for.

The overall message was fair enough, but their proposed solution is to tell developers not Disabling download iOS 5 — can never work. But there is a solution (quite simple, actually), which would be: just don't let the people running things review of beta versions of iOS.

You see, not to tell people to download IOS 5 Beta, as the world's most delicious cookies in a jar labeled "AWESOME people only, and then tell your child they can have one if they promise that they indeed are an awesome person. Everyone wanted to put on their awesome shirts and their awesome hat, walking to the Bank handles with the hand extended. And why not? Nobody really checks just how awesome the self-proclaimed awesome people — plus, the definition of "awesome" (read: the definition of "Developer") it is somewhat loose.

It's just the way it works: we as a population, rather self-entitled. When something new becomes available for a small group and other outside this group are aware of it, they will try to find a way to get it (in this case, it usually means buying a developer from someone selling their extra space for profit that.) Apple could theoretically kill this gray market fully open access a beta version of iOS for those who are willing to jump through some hoops and cancel some rights — but this is a post for another day.

It seems there are at least two ways to fix this, one is a bit easier than others:

1) Block people running iOS 5 from consideration any applications they've downloaded on iOS 5 (difficult route): Apple knows what applications you have downloaded — if they didn't, they could not show you the history of all purchases (like they do in later builds of the App Store). Why not discover what users version working, when booting, the store is a bit of information in the database, and then block them to consider the application to the new OS has officially launched for all?

They account for applications that were installed with sync has backups — but while it is not trivial, it seems that this is possible. Apple already detects installed applications for other reasons (for example, replace the "Download" button is grayed out and read "installed")

2) Simply block any iOS 5 from the revision of the annex (easier): just as above, but after the discovery of an iTunes account be running iOS Beta 5 this account temporarily blocked all together, review the application whether the applications were loaded to iOS 5 or not.

This route is a bit clunkier, but it's also a bit simpler to implement and easier on the servers of apples, as it does not require additional call a database for each user for each application. It is also slightly less complicated in terms of privacy, because there are fewer message back to the mothership.

Sound harsh? This is possible. But it comes with the territory: the pre beta not intended for daily use (even for developers, Apple recommends that only the beta version on devices dedicated to testing.) If you are not a developer and would like to tinker, hell, I wouldn't try to stop you: you just have to hold your rants, until it would be wise to do otherwise.

Probably there will be some libel open outcry that Apple somehow blocking freedom of expression — which, of course, is not really here. These reviewers beta hungry jumping on their soap box without any understanding of why things don't work and maliciously affect survival of developers — many of which, like most of us are just some dudes looking to ditch the cubicle and do something cool for life.

Started by Steve jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the past 30 years, officially change their name from Apple Computer.

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ITunes App Store allows iPhone users to download applications that take advantage of all the iPhone/iPod touch. Users can either download the app via iTunes or ...

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doubleTwist now has 1 million active users — every day

Jason Kincaid currently works as a writer at TechCrunch. He grew up in Danville, California and later moved to Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California, where he studied biology with a minor in "society and genetics". You can contact him at jkincaidtc@gmail.com (it has other addresses too, so don't worry if you have another). ? Read More

doubleTwist, slick Media Player for Android is growing. A lot.

In February, we reported that the application has passed an important milestone, drawing one million users per month between mobile and desktop applications.

Today, the company uses much more: they get 1 million users per day between doubleTwist on Android phones and tablets.

Now, it is clear that this does not mean the user base increased by a factor 30 (some people are going to use several times a month). But it is a sign that the company receives significant traction, and that its users keep coming back for more. This is especially important for mobile, where users are notorious for being fickle and giving up on the application in a day or two.

doubleTwist President Monique Farantzos said that the increase stemmed from increased brand, the company received the start of construction for Android. The first version of their Android app was released in June 2010, and since they introduced numerous updates as excellent AirSync, which allows wireless sync photos, music and movies between Android device and the computer without the need for wires (you don't even have to sync it automatically initiates when you connect to a wireless network). Farantzos said that companies, in partnership with T-Mobile also provided an early boost.

Some other key stats: 84% of the users application from English speaking countries, and today the company is rolling out internationalized versions with support for Chinese, Korean, German, French and other languages to help boost international growth.

And it also has some great news to share: while doubleTwist has focused exclusively on Android for awhile, he's going to start expanding to other platforms. Intel said it has licensed its wireless synchronization technology for AirSync MeeGo platform, and it sounds like the application can come to Windows phone and possibly Web OS down the line (it is not confirmed, but pointed out that Android alternatives can see increased traction after the transaction, Motorola/Google).

doubleTwist's mission is to organize and feed content to any device.

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