Report: Navigational keywords dominate consumer searches

Flurry: Amazon’s Kindle...

Wuh oh, Samsung — better watch your tail. While Apple might not be seeing any impact (be it positive or negative) on iPad sales from the launch of the Kindle Fire, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab ought to be feeling the heat. Tapping into the data provided by their app analytics platform (which they estimate has found its way onto around 90% of the Android devices out there), Flurry highlights a few surprising numbers . App Sessions: This one’s pretty interesting, as it measures how many people are actually using their respective Android tablets (as opposed to how many bought them and let them sit on a shelf somewhere). It measures “User Application Sessions”, which is defined as a user opening an application and using it for at least 10 seconds before closing it. After launching in November, the Kindle Fire accounted for just 3% of application sessions. Just three months later, it’s at 35.7% — pretty much neck and neck with Samsung’s 35.6%. Think about that. The Kindle Fire, which has been out for 3 months, is seeing as much cumulative usage as a series of devices that have been out for an entire year longer. Even if the number of Galaxy Tabs sold well outweighs the number of Kindle Fires sold (and it likely does — again, the Tab series has been out for much longer. It’s also available around the world, whereas the Fire is US only for now), Fire owners appear to actually use their devices more often. Downloads: Next up, Flurry looked at the download numbers for 5 applications that were in the Top 10 on both the Android Market and Amazon’s App Store. To boil it all down: for every sale of one of these top apps to a Galaxy Tab owner, there were 2.53 sales to a Kindle Fire owner. Again, consider how much bigger the Galaxy Tab audience is (Flurry estimates that it’s at least double) — and yet, the Kindle Fire owners are buying more. If you’re an Android developer wondering whether or not you should target the Kindle Fire and Amazon’s App Store, the answer seems to be an incredibly clear “Yes.”

Google’s new priv...

Google's new overarching privacy policy will allow the company to share user data gathered from services including YouTube, Gmail, Picasa and the Google search engine, the company said in a new privacy statement.

Android Smartphone Roun...

We took a break from the Android round-up in December because, well, to be honest I was on vacation. But January gave us a few extra smartphones and the holidays are over, so we’re back. What we’ve got for you today leans into more expensive turf, and unfortunately, our favorite Android devices for the past two months are also exclusively at Verizon, so Big Red subscribers should pay attention. Without further ado, these are our favorite December/January releases of the Android persuasion: The Samsung Galaxy Nexus , the LG Spectrum , and the Motorola Droid RAZR Maxx . Enjoy! Samsung Galaxy Nexus Features: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Verizon 4G LTE support 4.65-inch 1280

Davos: BraveNewTalent A...

BraveNewTalent is a social recruitment platform operating in the UK and moving into the US. I caught up with CEO and founder Lucia Tarnowski at Davos. The startup is built around the idea that people want to follow companies they might want to work for in the future, and companies in turn want to educate potential hires about how they work. They recently introduced a few new features, which Tarnowski outlines, notably the new feature enabling a user to follow the key employees of a company.

Davos: Ushahidi Grows I...

At Davos I managed to catch Juliana Rotich , Co-Founder of Ushahidi , the incredible crowd sourcing platform which came out of Kenya. Starting with just a handful of countries in 2009, it’s main product, Crowdmap , is now used in hundreds of countries for crisis mapping and even crowd sourcing information about nuclear weapons in Iran. I got an update from her about their latest moves. These include news that the Omidyar Network, which put $1.4m towards Ushahidi, and which late last year put in another $1.9m . It’s worth noting also that Ushahidi has come out against a new partnership between the World Bank with Google that is supposed to empower citizen cartographers in 150 countries, but which threatens the open source map making community. Google’s licensing agreement for Google Map Maker says users can only access Google Map Maker data unless it is via platform designated by Google. In addition, her opinions about the move by Twitter to introduce a censorship platform. This of course is of huge significance to activists in Africa, and she doesn’t hold back. Lastly, iHub Nairobi – a tech startup community – needs a 3D printer, so it would be great to see someone make that happen for them. (Apologies for the break at the beginning due to a technical problem on the camera).

WSJ: Facebook Filing Fo...

The Wall Street Journal has just reported that Facebook may file for its long-awaited IPO as soon as this Wednesday, but notes that the “timing is still being discussed”, according to an anonymous source. The article says that Facebook is eyeing a valuation between $75 and $100 billion as it raises up to $10 billion, which is in line with a previous WSJ report last November. The article also reports that Morgan Stanley is currently the frontrunner to secure the top, “lead left” position in the filing, with Goldman Sachs playing a “significant role” as well. The news comes shortly after Facebook temporarily froze secondary trades on its shares, sparking speculation that the IPO filing may be imminent. Facebook’s IPO has been the subject of constant debate and anticipation in the tech world for years now — though CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg have long avoided committing to any kind of time-table for the company to go public. The long wait for the IPO has led many employees to turn to the secondary markets to sell some of their valuable shares and secure some liquidity. Here’s an excerpt from an interview this past November between Charlie Rose, Zuckerberg, and Sandberg, where they discuss the timing of Facebook’s public offering (you can full the full transcript here ): Charlie Rose: What’s the valuation today of Facebook? Sheryl Sandberg: So we’re a private company so we don’t really have a valuation. Charlie Rose: So then why do you want to be a public company? Why do you even think about an IPO? Mark Zuckerberg: I actually think the biggest thing for us is that a big part of being a technology company is getting the best engineers and designers and talented people around the world. And one of the ways that you can do that is you compensate people with equity or options, right, so you get people who want to join the company, both for the mission, right, because they believe that Facebook is doing this awesome thing and they want to be a part of connecting everyone in the world, but also, if the company does well, then they get financially rewarded and can be set. And, you know, we’ve made this implicit promise to our investors and to our employees that by compensating them with equity and by giving them equity, that at some point we’re going to make that equity worth something publicly and liquidly, in a liquid way. Now, the promise isn’t that we’re going to do it on any kind of short-term time horizon. The promise is that we’re going to build this company so that it’s great over the long term, right. And that we’re always making these decisions for the long term, but at some point we’ll do that. … Charlie Rose: You’ll go when what? When will you decide? Sheryl Sandberg: When we’re ready. Mark Zuckerberg: Yeah.

#Humblebrag: Jack Dorse...

After writing for NBC’s Parks and Recreation for the past couple years (he’s about to start a writing gig for HBO’s Eastbound and Down ), and authoring the sarcastic but brilliant and hilarious @HumbleBrag , Harris Wittels has decided to bring his talents to TechCrunch. This year, he will be hosting the Crunchies Awards, and bringing his chiding humor. If you’re not familiar with Humblebrag, he scours Twitter in search of  braggadocio wrapped in humility. I’m willing to bet at least one of you has been retweeted. If so, post them in the comments below. We want to see. Not only is Wittels hosting, but Jack Dorsey , Kevin Rose , Marissa Mayer , Kevin Systrom , Reid Hoffman , Ron Conway and many more will also be joining us, many of them presenting awards themselves. This is going to be one night you won’t want to miss. We have just released our last batch of tickets . If you would like to come to the Crunchies Awards, make sure to go here to get them, and get them quickly since they tend to sell very fast. And there’s still time to vote for the best startups, apps, investors, and founders of the year. Voting ends at midnight on Sunday. Like always, an after party will follow the ceremony, where we will be joined by all of our guests and winners. There will be a fully hosted bar, hors d’oeuvres, a casino game room, and other fun entertainment and surprises. The award show is taking place next Tuesday, January 31st, at 7:30pm. Lastly, in all fun, would you like to get mentioned by Wittels on stage? If so, make sure you tweet out your best humblebrags between now and the start of the show using the #crunchies and #humblebrag hashtags, and you may be chosen. Below are some examples to get you started. See you all at the Crunchies! Meeting w/ Dutch prime minister, pizza at table next to Eric Schmidt, then Sean Parker's party. "Surreal" is only way to describe #Davos .— Matthew Prince (@eastdakota) January 26, 2012 Its kind of insane though, the world is at the brink of depression, military conflict and ecological collapse and me in a bra is global news— Andrej Pejic (@Andrej_Pejic) December 16, 2011 Akward moment: boarding a sold-out flight & hearing flight attendant announce the in-flight movie is one of mine: #Dolphin Tale.— ashley judd (@AshleyJudd) January 12, 2012 why am i so good at flirting when im not trying to flirt— Joshua Decker (@JoshPointO_) December 13, 2011

Gillmor Gang 01.24.12 (...

The Gillmor Gang — Dennis Crowley, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — visit with the ghosts of Foursquare Past, Present, and Future. @dens is semi-bicoastal these days, trying to stay ahead of his growing business. He just moved in to a new office in NY, and the one in SF is expanding as rapidly as he can hire. We try to get him to say bad things about Google +, but he demurs. But he never escapes the Gang without leaving a bit more of his roadmap than he anticipates. Of course, you’ll need gamification chops to uncover it. @stevegillmor, @dens, @jtaschek, @kevinmarks Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

Keen On… Payvment: Maki...

Earlier this week, Facebook announced changes to its Open Graph which have huge implications to the social ecommerce platform Payvment . The two year-old Palo Alto based start-up, which already manages 80% of the ecommerce transactions on Facebook, will now be able to be integrated into the Open Graph. What this means, according to Payvment’s Founder and CEO Christian Taylor, is  that we can now broadcast what we want on our Facebook pages. Such social one-click purchasing power is “big trouble” for Amazon and eBay, Taylor predicts. And even bigger trouble, I suspect, for parents who will now be inundated with gift ideas by their Facebook loving kids.

Playfish Product Leader...

At this point in his career, it’s safe to put John Earner in the “names as destiny” category. Following a hugely successful run with Playfish , he’s leaving the social game developer today to start as an entrepreneur in residence at one of its investors,  Accel , according to sources. A former naval officer, he joined as the company in 2008 as its first game producer, where he shepherded the development of its first big simulation game, Pet Society. Having figured out how to monetize virtual goods with it, he went on to launch the company’s next big hit, Restaurant City. These two games inspired competing ones from Zynga and many other developers, and provided the revenue and traffic numbers that got Electronic Arts to acquire Playfish in the fall of 2009 in a deal worth up to $400 million . He also built out its product team as he moved up within the company. And after the acquisition, he helped EA to develop a variety of other titles using existing sports intellectual property, including soccer management game FIFA Superstars. His biggest win, though, has been Sims Social. The life simulator, based off of the long-running EA series, is now the single largest title in EA’s Facebook portfolio. It’s also one of the largest games overall on the platform today, with 3.9 million daily active users and 22 million monthly actives, according to AppData . He will no doubt be missed, especially considering the general traffic decline of EA’s Facebook titles. The gaming conglomerate is still one of the largest developers on Facebook, but its social game leadership has also continued to get whittled down. Of the Playfish founding team, only Kristian Segerstrale remains — albeit he’s moved up to be the executive vice president of EA Digital. Meanwhile, former division head Barry Cottle was recently poached by Zynga .