How Many Mulligans Does...

WARNING: mixed sports metaphors ahead. How many do-overs does a startup get before users give up on it for good? As far as I can remember, the answer is zero. I can’t think of an example where a startup launched into the wild, flailed badly, and recovered (without completely abandoning the first product). There are lots of examples of flailing and relaunching (see Cuil, see Joost), but I can’t think of anyone that managed to pull out a win. By my count Color , the $41 million startup that promises to “transform the way people communicate with each other,” has already struck out. The first strike was a launch that left users confused, sharing photos with themselves and trying to figure out a user interface that seemed purposely designed to frustrate. We gave them another chance . Strike two: pulling the Android version of the app from the market. And strike three: engaging in a big PR partnership with The Telegraph in the UK to get people all over the UK to post pictures during the royal wedding. Just 500 photos were posted , which isn’t much more than MG Siegler and friends managed to post during a bachelor party/iPhone fest in Mexico a few weeks ago. And The Telegraph promised that the best photos would be published. Here are those “best” photos. This third strike was particularly egregious. The color team knows that people are confused about what the app is supposed to do. It’s not supposed to be just another photo sharing app. It’s about the future of social networks. I’m fully on board with the social network stuff, and have been waiting for it since 2008 . So why in the world would Color, with a hamstrung app and a confused marketplace, pull a major PR stunt that’s all about showing off Color as exactly what the company doesn’t want Color to be thought of (another photo sharing app)? You got me. If anyone gets it, let me know. I want Color to succeed. I don’t hold their funding against them in any way. I love that they’re trying to solve a really big problem. And I like that the team is successful but still hungry. But Color shouldn’t have launched when they did. They knew the app was seriously flawed, and they should have known that they probably wouldn’t get another chance at a first impression. And with all the negativity, the last thing they should have done was push the app as is to tens of millions of people in the UK. Those masses have far less patience for the quirks of unfinished software than people like us do. The team here at TechCrunch will give Color all the mulligans it wants to get things right. They can swing and miss all day and we’ll still be here in the stands, rooting them on. But eventually the crowds, tired of boo’ing, will go home. And the stadium lights will go out. And then, even if Color hits one out of the park, we’re not sure there’ll be anyone around to see it. CrunchBase Information Color Labs Information provided by CrunchBase

The Pitfall Of Twitter’...

Twitter recently upped its rates on Twitter Promoted Trends from $60K-$70K to between $100K-$120K which means the demand for the unique form of advertising is certainly there. But what are brands getting in return? As we’ve seen before with Skittles, Charlie Sheen , and even the #Dickbar, attempting to float a brand message over user generated Twitter content isn’t always a success. Case in point … For the past few days the chatter around the #RoyalWedding has been plentiful, but not necessarily all positive. Diet shake Slim Fast bought the #RoyalWedding Promoted Trends slot yesterday, and at some point had its brand message (and its inexplicable link to its Facebook page) associated with sundry undesirable content. While granted it is sort of funny, the relevancy of tweets like “#RoyalWedding of the ass is my c*ck” to Slim Fast’s admittedly inane message should be a serious issue for a company trying to monetize UGC. Companies who spend money on advertising tend to avoid the above sorts of associations, with good reason. What makes this specific instance of ad relevancy failure worse is that the #RoyalWedding hashtag is currently being highlighted on Twitter’s revamped homepage along with #STS134 and #NFLDraft — As things that presumably add value to new Twitter users. Right now all three are riddled with hashtag spam. Twitter, which just hit 200 million users , is currently averaging about 500K new accounts a day. While this growth isn’t too shabby, it’s hard to picture the middle aged, middle American curious about Twitter landing on the above results and wanting to stick around for very long. #RoyalWedding side note: Twitter did not have a whole server dedicated to Will & Kate today. That was a joke. CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase

Nancy Conrad On Educati...

Last week President Obama spoke at Facebook , emphasizing during the townhall that the US needs to be bullish on Science and Math education if we are to pull out of the recession, “We want to start making Science cool. I want people to feel about the next big energy breakthrough and the next big Internet breakthrough the same way they felt about the moonwalk,” he said. Taking off on that idea, Nancy Conrad, the wife of late astronaut Peter Conrad , has founded the Conrad Foundation in the memory of her husband. Peter was expelled from one school in the 11th grade because he had dyslexia and then went on to graduate from Princeton and walk on the moon because he was taken under the wing of another educator who saw promise in the young man. Nancy Conrad wants to give other kids with a penchant for entrepreneurship their “moon shots,” or the opportunity to get funding and actualize their ideas; Because of this the Conrad Foundation puts on the Spirit of Innovation Awards and Innovation Summit annually, attempting to foster a love of innovation in kids between the ages of 13 and 18. To attend the Innovation Summit , high schoolers across the country are invited to enter the three year old competition, which ends up flying in 27 finalists to NASA Ames to pitch their startups to judges in one of three categories: Aerospace Exploration, Clean Energy and Cyber Security. The winning team in each category receives a 5K grant to fund their project. While building the “innovative workforce of the 21st century” is an ambitious goal, after attending the extremely professional finalist presentations today it’s obvious that spotlighting kids who have a passion for innovation and technology is a fundamental step in turning our education system around. “There’s so many problems, we’re not running out of problems,” Conrad said emphasizing that you need to get kids excited about Science, Math and Technology in order build a viable workforce. “When you’ve got juiced kids who really want to do something, they don’t know there’s a box. And then all they do is think outside the box. This is where geeks turn into rockstars, and that’s the game changer. That’s where you can change the culture of students.” Hmm … So maybe Intel was right ?

Cup of Joe: I Do It All...

So this week I am going to toot my own horn a tiny bit, but please bear with me because it’s a bit rusty. A few weeks ago I created a post on one of my old blogs. Soon after, I submitted it to one of my favorite social sharing sites StumbleUpon . The next day something strange happened. Traffic on the site shot up to over 1,500. The next day traffic hovered at around 1,000 and then the following day shot back up to around 1,500. I was happy at this point for what seemed like a modest increase in traffic for a blog that generally gets around 75 to a 100 visitors a day. And then the floodgates opened. The next day traffic rose to over 15,000 visitors and each day after it kept climbing until for three days straight, traffic was over 55,000 unique visitors, at one point reaching over 57,000 visitors. Since then traffic has gradually started to decrease bringing the total to over 425,000 unique visitors during the course of just 2 1/2 weeks . Along with the traffic increases my AdSense earnings rose as well. I wish I could tell you that all of this new traffic and revenue generation was all part of a carefully designed and perfectly executed marketing plan. But the truth is that I was completely thrown off guard when (what appears to be) a seemingly meaningless post when viral. The truth is the only thing I was even thinking about was having a good time. In fact that whole blog is completely focused around my own entertainment. I rarely even update it. I program for a living. But, you know what? Most of the time programming isn’t fun. Building things is fun. And if you want to build things online then you need to program. Unfortunately, the more I build things for a living the less I build things for fun. We have all heard the saying, “to be successful do something that you enjoy” and how many times have we heard bloggers and “gurus” tell us to monetize our hobbies? But, trying to monetize what you are passionate about forces you to lose focus on what you enjoy in the first place. I mean come on admit it, if you monetized one of your hobbies you would be doing your best to continually optimize every element. Then it becomes less of what makes you happy and more about what makes you rich. I am not going to try and build a business by posting stupid pictures on the internet. I am just going to do it because it makes me happy and if I make a few dollars along the way, then so be it! Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

Can I Get Some Sustaina...

This week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued Energy Star ratings for large vat commercial fryers . These appliances are used by high-volume dining establishments — like fast food chains, institutional cafeterias and full-service restaurants—