Startups.com Is Shuttin...

Daily deal community for website owners Startups.com is shutting down. In an email sent out to its mailing list subscribers, founder Gonzo Arzuaga admits that the company just “couldn’t make a go of it.” “We didn’t achieve the ambitious goals we set for ourselves when we launched only 1 year ago. So, with regret, this news of our departure from the realm of Daily Deals,” writes Arzuaga. “This may be a shocker to some of you and we want you to know that we’re really sorry we failed to achieve your expectations.” In October 2008, KillerStartups purchased the domain name Startups.com for some $500,000 in cash . A year later, the domain was relaunched as a Q&A site for business questions. Then, in April 2011, Startups.com shifted its focus to the business model it operates today: daily deals. The Q&A section was moved to answers.startups.com (now disabled), but the homepage began featuring discounts on things website owners, online businesses, and startup entrepreneurs would appreciate, like discounted software, gadgets, e-books, services, and other types of resources they may need to grow their company. Those same type of deals are still live on the site now, as the company hasn’t quite pulled the plug just yet. According to Arzuaga’s email, Startups.com is not the only property that’s being terminated. BlinkList , a service that lets you save local copies of websites (which no longer seems that relevant, we admit), is also shutting down. We reached out to Arzuaga for more info on the situation, and, as expected, he’s not too happy about how things worked out. “Actually, I never expected to be in the spot of going on the record about shutting down a venture. I guess this is the other side of the coin in any entrepreneurial venture,” he says. “I’m really happily surprised by the 100 emails I’ve received with words of support and encouragement from our subscribers (we sent them yesterday an email notifying them of our termination). I am truly amazed, and thankful,” he adds. But those feelings are tempered with a touch of grief, too. “I begin to feel very frustrated, when it comes to looking back and thinking about Startups.com,” Arzuaga says. “Today is a really blue day.” He also tells us that he put $250,000 into the service and believes the domain name Startups.com is “an awesome asset” to have.  But bad news, folks: the domain name, for now, is not up for grabs…well, not exactly. Arzuage says he doesn’t want to sell the domain, even though he has already had offers in the high six figures should he change his mind. “We’re looking for an amazing partner to take it to the next level and make it shine,” says Arzuaga of how he wants to now move forward. But given how recent a change this is, he admits he hasn’t had time to really think about things in depth. As to why he couldn’t make a go of the business, it could have something to do with the “daily deal” model simply not appealing enough to those who would feature their software or services on the site. One company tells us that after the huge discount offered and Startups.com’s 50% commission, their listing, while generating a decent number of orders, was essentially a loss leader for them. Below, the full text of the goodbye email: Startups.com Is Closing Up Shop… Yeah, unfortunately we couldn’t make a go of it. We didn’t achieve the ambitious goals we set for ourselves when we launched only 1 year ago. So, with regret, this news of our departure from the realm of Daily Deals. This may be a shocker to some of you and we want you to know that we’re really sorry we failed to achieve your expectations. It’s Spring and it feels like the right time for us to do some Spring cleaning. We’re evaluating all of the projects we’re working on, (and we’ve got tons, believe me), and unfortunately we had to make the painful decision of shutting down Startups.com as a Daily Deal service. We’re selling Blinklist.com, and shutting down other sites as well. There’s no point in going on with something just because you’ve been doing it for a certain amount of time. In a startup, as you well know, everything takes up your precious resources. And people’s time and effort is something we can’t afford to waste. We believe this is the right time to pull the plug. New and fresh ideas need room to grow and for us that means clearing out some of the old ideas which never took off. We wanna thank you, one of our 20,000 loyal subscribers for sticking with us for all this time. We’re really sorry we couldn’t make it work for you. But hey, life goes on. Best of luck in your endeavors, we shut our doors knowing that we did all we could to help you grow your online business, which was our main goal for launching Startups.com as a Daily Deal site. To Your Continued Success! P.S. Reach out to me at gonzo@startups.com with comments, concerns, just to say “Sorry, it was good while it lasted,” or to share your stories about the awesome Deals you got on Startups.com. Gonzo

Yahoo Launches Online M...

You may not know this but Yahoo still operates a product called Yahoo Small Business , which provides SMBs and sites with web hosting, domain name registration, web site design templates, e-commerce solutions and more. In fact, Yahoo says that it has helped millions of businesses get online and grow their presence on the web. Today, the company is debuting a new marketing dashboard to give users additional insight into online reputation, web metrics and more. As the company explains, the new tool allows small businesses to analyze website metrics and maintain accurate and comprehensive business listings across the Web. For example, the dashboard enables social media monitoring and provides recommendations on new listing opportunities, including on Yelp, Yahoo and others. The dashboard also includes online reputation management, pulling information and reviews from up to 8,000 sources such as Facebook and Twitter. Users can access website performance metrics from various sources including Google Analytics. And the dashboard provides email marketing, SEO, and SEM campaign tracking. The marketing dashboard also has a number of paid features, including a suped up version of its reputation management functionality, email campaign tracking, and more. It should be interesting to see if Yahoo Small Business will survive new CEO Scott Thompson’s plans to cut 50 Yahoo properties .

Experience The Wonder O...

This is so illegal that we can probably expect to see it fold in a matter of hours, but if you’re really hankering for some Russian or German TV right now – or some hott sexxxy Penthouse action – iOSLiveTV has you covered. The site is formatted for iOS and Android and features a number of live TV channels including some adult selections. The whois record for the site is fairly useless: Domain Name: IOSLIVETV.COM Registrar: DYNADOT, LLC Whois Server: whois.dynadot.com Referral URL: http://www.dynadot.com Name Server: NS1.GEEKISP.COM Name Server: NS2.GEEKISP.COM Name Server: NS3.GEEKISP.COM Status: clientTransferProhibited Updated Date: 18-apr-2012 Creation Date: 17-apr-2012 Expiration Date: 17-apr-2013 And the feeds are clearly coming from somewhere other than GeekISP. Delightfully, even if this particular domain goes down, similar functionality can probably be brought back up almost instantly. Services like this are obviously not that new. This is just the first one I’ve seen with such a delightful URL and hook. via Gizmodo

Need A New Name For You...

You’ve dropped out of college, met a dude who is totally into PHP, and you’re ready to build a startup. Where do you begin? With a name, silly! That’s where NameStation.com comes in. It’s basically a naming tool for creators and creatives who need to build a bunch of odd names on the fly. In the short time I spent with the app, I found a few great website names including a name for my new gaming start-up, fragron.com, and my artisinal pig delivery service, porkst.com. Ok. Maybe they need a little work, but you get the idea. The service can offer potential names in multiple languages and even “reads” the name out loud for you in case you weren’t sure how to pronounce it. If you’re not into picking random names, you can hold a name contest and publish it publicly or privately amongst your friends and co-workers. These contests let you describe the project and then solicit names. NameStation will assess availability. The founder, Tauno Novek, created the system when he was looking for a name for his own business. First launched in 2004, the site puttered along until it gained a bit of popularity. “In 2011, the site was relaunched at NameStation.com with significant improvements – new UI, name contests, new search tools, creativity enablers, keyword suggestions, social features. It became a SaaS app with paid subscription plans, allowing me to dedicate more time to developing it,” he said. Novek’s goal is to help find cool new names, a feat that isn’t always easy. “Most startups don’t have the resources to have a name developed by an agency or to purchase a domain name from the aftermarket. There are still good available domain names out there, it’s just a matter of finding them.” “There are many aspects of name development that can be sped up – with NameStation it is easier to do reference checks online, find translations, etymologies, check trademark availability, etc.” Users have access to free naming tools as well as advanced name generators that come with a paid subscription. A social tool allows for contest entrants to gain “Talent Points” and become valuable branding consultants – at least in theory. Novek differentiates his service by focusing on performance and depth. “There are currently 16 different ways to combine and permutate words and wordlists, add affixes or generate random words,” he said. The social features also add a layer of assistance unavailable elsewhere. The basic plan is free and the Pro plan costs $10 a month. The site is active now and waiting for you and your LAMP admin to create the next Facebook (which you’ll probably have to call zulisi.com because all the other good names are taken.) Click to view slideshow.

Netflix Sharpens Focus ...

Netflix has been making a few moves to separate its DVD business more from its streaming operation, and today brings news of the latest move in that direction: the company has bought the domain name DVD.com, the company has confirmed to us. The news raises questions of Netflix possibly getting ready to pull a Qwikster on us after all and separate its streaming and DVD businesses — something others have suggested it might do — but TechCrunch understands that there are no plans to spin off its DVD business into a separate company, à la the Qwikster strategy of last year that so qwikly spiraled into a PR disaster for the company, and was then abandoned. News of the DVD.com domain purchase was first reported by Domain Name Wire earlier today. We reached out to Netflix, which told us that this was part of its bigger strategy to improve user experience around its DVD rentals business, a service it offers only in the U.S. “In the U.S. we look to provide a great experience for our members, those who have DVD only, streaming only and those who have both,” a spokesperson told us. Indeed, on Netflix some reviewers pinpoint specific features in DVDs that do not appear on the streamed editions of certain pieces of content — for example extra features, commentary, and so on. Similarly, the streaming comments often related to the actual quality of the streams — again, not so relevant for DVD users. Ratings, we understand, will continue to remain centralized and go across both streaming and DVD versions of the same piece of content. Last time around, Netflix qwikly saw the err of its ways in trying to separate those two parts of its business, so this time around it’s very unlikely to try to repeat the same thing again. At this point the DVD business is actually proving more lucrative in terms of revenues for Netflix than the streaming business. In Q4, Netflix had 11.1 million DVD subscribers, which represented revenues of $370 million. U.S. streaming subscribers for that quarter were nearly double, at 21.6 million, but only had revenues of $476 million. Of course, there is likely to be significantly more overhead in running that DVD business longer term. But for now it seems that streaming isn’t big enough to really stand on its own for the company. Also, there are very likely more promotional costs in building out that streaming business — that includes the increasing costs associated with getting exclusive rights to content in the face of a number of competing services from Amazon, Google and others also going for same users, and the same catalog of films and TV shows. What this will mean, effectively, is that DVD users will eventually have their own web site to visit to order their DVDs and otherwise manage their subscriptions, rather than have to navigate through a Netflix site that will most likely be more completely given over to streaming promotions. By separating DVD and streaming customers more, there seems to be a bit of a question mark over how successful Netflix has been in upselling those DVD customers to streaming. Perhaps that was the original idea, but by separating them even more, it seems to imply that those customers are being found elsewhere more readily. So why not make the experience for the DVD users a little nicer in the process?