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Max Levchin To Facebook: Developers Need More Certainty (And A Payment System Would be Nice Too)
Slide was not too happy when Facebook temporarily pulled one of its most popular applications, Top Friends, from the social networking site for exposing too much profile information to people who were not friends.
Ahead of today’s F8 developer conference, I asked Slide CEO Max Levchin what Facebook could do to make developers’ lives easier. Not surprisingly, he’d like to see clearer rules about what is and is not allowed, as well as more formal, contractual partnerships between Facebook and app developers. (Facebook is expected to announce a tiered partner system today, and Slide may not qualify as one of the “preferred” partners because of the issues that led to Facebook’s police action).
Slide’s VP of Strategy, Keith Rabois, goes even further. He warns that if Facebook keeps shifting the foundation on top of which app companies are built it will threaten their viability. This might all sound like sour grapes, but coming from the biggest provider of apps on Facebook it does carry some weight.
Levchin, who was one the co-foudners of PayPal, also thinks that Facebook needs a universal payment system so that developers can start charging for apps like they can on the iPhone. The question is whether anyone would ever want to pay for a Facebook app.
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Episodic Makes Flash Videos iPhone-Friendly
One of the most frustrating things about the iPhone is that it can’t handle Flash, which has become the standard for streaming video on the web. YouTube managed to work around this by transcoding all of its videos into the H.264 format, but other video serving sites have failed to follow suit. Today Episodic, a video web publishing company, has launched a new web app that looks to solve this problem by converting Flash-based videos into a format that the iPhone can play in its native Safari browser. The service works with content uploaded to a number of different video sites, including Blip, YouTube, and Metacafe.
The site takes standard RSS feeds and scans posts for any video content, which it then converts to an iPhone-friendly format. Each blog’s converted feed can be accessed from a static URL (for example, you can check out a feed of WebbAlert at http://iphone.episodic.com/WebbAlert from your iPhone). Hypothetically, a video blogger could redirect to this static Episodic URL whenever an iPhone user visited their site.
While the video conversion seems to work well, Episodic’s app is still very limited. There’s currently no way to take a standard URL and convert that page’s content to video - you need to generate a playlist using an RSS feed. Some bloggers may also take issue with the fact that videos are now being hosted outside of their site (anyone can submit your site’s RSS feed for conversion). CEO Noam Lovinsky says that this shouldn’t be an issue, as the site is merely serving as a syndication platform, and will do everything it can to respect bloggers’ wishes.
Episodic is also hoping to help bloggers monetize their video content by offering an advertising and analytics service for streamed videos. Unfortunately there’s currently no way to authenticate who owns the videos - you could easily input an RSS feed and then start monetizing someone else’s content. Lovinsky says that the site is working on this issue, and that the company’s ultimate goal is “to help people get paid for the content they create”. In the future, the site intends to roll out a full-fledged video platform designed to help serial video creators generate professional content quickly.
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Forget Crowd-Sourced T-shirts: Print Objects In 3D
So first there was the online creation of pretty simple items like business cards and T-shirts - businesses which cut out the old middle-man way of doings things. Soon there will be a way to create and “print” objects in 3D on a mass scale, and the first of these is starting to arrive. Netherlands-based Shapeways is launching a private beta of a community for consumers wanting to create real objects. Eventually you’ll be able to share and co-create online as well.
Imagine you wanted to create a 3D dummy of a new type of Web tablet. You just upload the design from some CAD software onto the site. Shapeways checks whether the object can be made and provides a real-time cost estimate. Within 10 working days, a tangible 3D product is produced and shipped globally. At the moment they only print to four kinds of plastics but other materials, like metal, are planned.
To reproduce something that already exists you’d need a 3D scanner, which costs thousands. So Shapeways is actually aimed at people with 3D CAD software used by small businesses and will eventually offer its own online CAD tools. The site uses 3D industry standard file formats (STL, Collada, X3D) and the average cost of objects is $50 - $150. At the moment it looks like they are limited to desktop-sized pieces, but perhaps we’ll one day see Star-Trek-style printing of bigger objects.
Shapeways is a spin-out startup from an incubator programme at Philips Electronics, in Eindhoven. The CEO is Peter Weijmarshausen, formerly of 3Dsoftware package Blender, and he has a team of 10 people. They plan to be out of private beta in a couple of months.
Update: Notionally they compete with US-based Ponoko, which allows people to mass customise and make bracelets, brooches, earrings etc and items like wooden coasters. But Shapeways looks capabale of more complex modelling.
TechCrunch readers can sign up for 500 beta invites here using the Beta Code: “TechCrunch100″.
(Photo Credit: “Petunia” 3D object designed by Dolf J. Veenvliet, Shapeways Community Member)
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Minted Launches Competitive Stationery Store
Mariam Naficy, co-founder of failed beauty startup Eve.com (which went belly up when the bubble burst in 2000), has launched her latest venture: Minted, an online stationery store with a competitive marketplace reminiscent of the one found on custom t-shirt store Threadless.
The site offers graphic designers a community to showcase and (hopefully) sell their designs, which are voted on by customers. The best designs are printed and sold, with about 5% of the retail price going to the designer (this may sound small, but Naficy says it is near double what a designer might get from a traditional card company like Hallmark). On top of the revenue sharing, the site will also hold regular competitions, with winning entries winning on the order of $1000. To further sweeten the deal for the designers, all cards have the artists’ name emblazoned in fine print on the back (another thing you won’t see on typical greeting cads).
The store will sell a mix of designer-submitted cards and cards from established independent card companies. While Minted is starting with stationery, it will likely expand to other products in the future. Minted will initially only sell its cards through its online storefront, but Naficy says that there ample opportunities for partnerships and alternative distribution channels down the line. If the site is going to succeed, it will need to establish these ties quickly - few people are going to buy from a stationery store they’ve never heard of, giving designers little reason to submit their designs in the first place.
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Start Streaming: Qik Opens To The Public
Qik, the video service that streams live feeds from your mobile phone, has finally launched its public beta. The site has also introduced a number of new features to the service, including support for restricted group access to videos, self-service event streams, and a new embeddable player.
The beta will support a wide variety of phones on AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint, including support for software on the Windows Mobile platform that began testing in June. Qik says that it will be continually adding new phones to the supported list, which you can view here.
The site has also implemented support for Groups, which allow users to select who can upload and view selected clips. Among the included privacy options are allowance for public groups, which anyone can post to, restricted groups, which allow anyone to view (but only select users to post), and a private view, which restricts viewing and uploading to a specified group of users.
Qik has also introduced support for special Event sites, which are essentially temporary groups that are focused on a single event or conference. In the past users who wanted to create specific event pages would have to go through the company itself. Now, users will be able to create self-serve pages with custom logos where they can aggregate all of the content from a single event.
We’ve been using Qik for the last few months, and for the most part we’ve been pleased with the video quality and the convenience that comes from having a portable video camera that can stream directly to the web (although there have been some troubles with upload speeds that are largely the fault of network carriers). There are a number of very similar services in the space, including Kyte and Flixwagon. You can see a general comparison of some of the services here.
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iLike Launches Full Song Playback and Ad Platform
iLike, the music service with a massive following on Facebook and increasing popularity elsewhere, has introduced full-song playback on its flagship site, iLike.com. Through its partnership with music subscription service Rhapsody, the site will be offering over 5 million songs from all of the major labels and a variety of indie artists, too. In conjunction with the launch of full song playback, the site is also launching a new self-serve ad platform for concert promoters.
Unfortunately, the full-song playback will be partially restricted for users that aren’t Rhapsody subscribers. Non-subscribers will only be able to listen to a maximum of 25 songs per month, while Rhapsody users under the service’s $12.99 monthly plan will be able to listen to an unlimited number of songs. iLike competitor Last.fm began offering less restrictive playback options in January, but has had issues with keeping its content-providers satisfied (Warner Music Group pulled out of the deal in June).
The new ad-platform, which also launches today, is designed to give concert promoters a way to create feature-rich ads without much effort or technical know-how. Ads will be distributed across iLike’s network (namely their website and social network applications), and will display content depending on a user’s geographical location. On social networks, the ads will also include elements like “invite your friends” and “see who’s going”.
iLike has also announced plans for a new developer platform that will be launching in the near future (likely in the next few weeks). While iLike has offered widgets for syndication in the past, the new platform will allow developers to customize their own web applications.
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