This week’s TechCrunch Europe Job of the Week is for a Lead Architect with ChannelFlip Media.

Remember, it costs only £20 to post *any* kind of advert on the CrunchBoard related to your startup/business, whether it be jobs, searches for office space or requests for new projects.

Every week we publish the Job of the Week here (14,000+ on RSS) and Twitter it to about 16,000+ more people. To apply to have Job of the Week featured, put up a job on the CrunchBoard and contact editorial.

Help European startups by carrying our CrunchBoard widget on your site.

According to an article in today’s Zeit Online (poor Google translation here), multiple federal and state government officials charged with guarding over national data protection are convinced that Google Analytics is against the law in Germany and are mulling imposing fines on companies who use the service to gather detailed stats based on their website visitors’ usage patterns without the explicit consent of those visitors.

Still according to the Zeit Online article, an approximate 13% of German website publishers (meaning those with sites that have .de as their TLD) currently use Google Analytics, including several websites of leading media organizations, political parties and pharmaceutical companies. The government officials are particularly wary about the information Google is able to collect on websites of health insurance companies and the like, saying Google could conceivably create profiles of people that would include information about their interests, lifestyles, consumption patterns, political and sexual preferences.

This isn’t the first time German privacy protection officials have voiced their concerns about the Google Analytics service, as it had earlier criticized the search giant over keeping everyone ‘in the dark’ about which information they’re collecting exactly and how much identifiable data is sent to and stored on servers located on U.S. soil. German laws prohibit such data to leave the country, they claim.

Google Germany’s Per Meyerdierks, however, says the company is well within its rights to process user data in the United States because it respects the Safe Harbour treaty between the EU and the USA. He argues that an opt-out would be entirely unnecessary, and that users always have the option to refuse cookies anyway.

One German lawyer that gets cited in the article says the penalties could amount up to €50,000 (about $75,000) per website that uses Google Analytics to keep track of its visitors’ usage patterns.

Today the WITsend blog on ComputerWeekly, a blog called ‘A place for women in IT’, asks “Will tech companies ever learn?” Apparently Microsoft, in making girl band The Sugababes the new face of Windows 7 (at least in the UK), has made a mistake. WiTsend says that The Sugababes are aimed at tweeny-bopper eight-year-old girls who are “not exactly the biggest consumers of computer operating systems”. Thus the campaign will not appeal to grown up women who do actually buy PCs.

Admittedly the blog admits that in using a pop band (it quite easily have been a boy band I guess) who are not known for their intellectual capacity so much as their ability to kick out a pop track while looking good, Microsoft is cleverly showing that just about anyone, wow even bubble-gum pop bands, can use Windows 7.

However, it adds:

“But why we are hearing this from a girl band whose main audience must be pre-teen is a bit baffling. It’s a perfect example of how tech companies feel the need to make something glossy and pretty before women will even glance at it. If I want something pretty, I’ll buy a bloody necklace. Everyone likes nice-looking technology (see the universal appeal of Apple) but you do not need to make tech “glamourous” to make women want to buy it. In fact, it puts a lot of them off.”

WITsend is not the only tech blog aimed at women that’s annoyed. So is BitchBuzz.

Now, here’s the thing – I’m confused. I’m not so much confused by the point that tech companies continually do slightly odd things to market at women. The amount of pink laptops and netbooks I see suggests a pretty ham-fisted approach to marketing tech to women. But they seem to elicit two different responses from the women in tech I know. On the one hand some go “Ugh, not another pink laptop” and others I know go “Hey, cool laptop – and it comes in pink!”. I’m going to leave that whole debate aside.

What I’m confused about is more the WITsend post itself.

Most of the actual research seems to suggest that there has been a decline in the number of women in the technology sector due to various things: pay not keeping pace with men, ‘casual’ sexist attitudes and comments in the workplace, not enough other women there already – things like that.

The research I’ve read generally says that to alleviate this problem there needs to be more activity done to engage with young girls at an early age to suggest to them that technology is NOT just for the boys.

So, guess what? Wouldn’t it make sense to hire a girl band. e.g. The SugarBabes, who are generally known to appeal to young, aspirational girls. This a) addresses a market rarely addressed by tech companies (obviously that’s to Microsoft’s benefit in marketing terms in this specific instance) and b) there may be a wider knock-on, long term effect of encouraging more young women to eventually enter into the tech industry. I even remember Atomic Kitten (remember them?) being used to promote some mobile service many years ago.

So, I ask: is this a “good thing” or a “bad thing”?

A lot of the time when this debate comes up I see women bloggers saying there should be more done with girls in schools to encourage them to get into tech.

Then I see a post like this attacking a tech company for aiming at young girls.

Please help me understand, I’m just a simple guy. And I’ve probably missed something.

Organised by Chinwag and the UKTI, the Digital Mission (a kind of punk trade mission) to SXSWi is back for it’s second year after a successful trip to Austin in 2009. There are 35 slots available on the 2010 mission (12-16th March, 2010) and applications are now open – but the dealine is Friday, 27th November so you better hurry. TechCrunch Europe is a media partner because to get on the mission all you have to have as a company is a UK headquarter, so in other words any European company with a UK HQ counts. Thus, this year, Zemanta, which is really built in Slovenia but has a UK HQ, came along. The rest of the selection criteria is below.

Here is the the application info page.

SXSWi features five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology, scores of exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders and an unbeatable line up of special programs showcasing the best new websites, video games and startup ideas the community has to offer.

Digital Mission to SXSWi 2010 is a fantastic opportunity to take advantage of the publicity and profile from a group of British companies attending SXSWi. Plus, there’s a plethora of features to help develop relationships/partnerships with US companies, look into opening an office stateside and make valuable contacts for the future – not to mention brushing up on your industry knowledge.

Entries are welcome from a broad range of digital companies ranging from start-ups, marketing agencies, through to ecommerce operators, mobile service providers and any qualifying company that operates in the digital space.

To qualify your company has to:

• Be “innovative”
• Be UK headquartered (so in other words a European company with a UK HQ counts)
• Be classified as an EU SME (small to medium enterprise, less than 250 employees)
• Have two years trading history, or failing that, compelling early-stage fast-track potential
• Provide references from key sponsors/industry players
• Be ready to do business in the US or potentially attractive to US investor
• Able to cover travel and accommodation costs
• Able to cover contribution towards event expenses

Successful applicants will be chosen by the Digital Mission Advisory Board which is traditionally made up of top UK digital entrepeuners, VC’s, journalists, UKTI and regional representatives.

Enquiries to mission@chinwag.com

[Russia] Russian online game developer Nival Network has closed a $5 million round from an undisclosed investor but will use the funds to develop Prime World, its online strategy game with social networking features aimed at the Russia and former Soviet countries.

Nival Network is currently majority owned by founder and CEO Sergey Orlovskiy. Software vendor 1C Group owns a 30% stake in Nival Network, reports Quintura.

Formed in September 2008, Nival’s game portfolio includes MMORPG titles like as Dragonica; Shaiya: Light and Darkness; Cabal Online; multiplayer racer Level-R; browser-based strategy game Khan Wars 2.0 and music game RockFree. It also runs the online gaming and social networking portal ZZima. The company has game development studios in Moscow and Minsk.

The Russian online game market is reportedly valued at $238 million this year 2009, and MMOGs account for around $210 million, while casual games make up $28 million of that.

The financing consisted of an equity investment of €400,000 and a loan of €125,000.

This brings the total of capital raised by the company to about €3 million, according to co-founder and CCO Simon McDermott, although this is the startup’s first round of institutional funding since its inception in 2004.

Attentio offers a number of online market intelligence products that are designed to give marketers, PR people and business owners a way to track what’s being said about their company, brand, product or competitors across blogs, social networks and web-based message boards. This is a great way for these people to measure marketing campaign effectiveness, enhance existing competitive research initiatives and guard over the online reputation of the companies they work for or the brands they represent.

To showcase some of the technology behind these solutions, Attentio launched Trendpedia, a tool that enables users to discover trends in social media.

Brand monitoring and realtime online market intelligence is a field that’s quickly becoming saturated with companies battling for a piece of the pie (to name just a few: Radian6, Collective Intellect, BuzzLogic, Techrigy, Visible Technologies), although it’s worth noting that most of those making waves in this space are based in and focused on the U.S., while Attentio is going to use the extra capital primarily to strengthen its foothold in Europe.

McDermott tells me things are moving fast for Attentio, and that its 20 employees had brought Attentio close to profitability prior to the funding. He says the additional financing was needed to accelerate its current growth, and that he sees a big consolidation wave coming in the next few years when it comes to the social media monitoring space.

Attentio’s focus on Europe should then come in handy because virtually none of the other players in the field have crossed the Atlantic properly, McDermott hopes.

Time will tell.

Joining (PRODUCT) RED is an especially good fit for London-based Shazam’s music-oriented iPhone app, the (RED) brand will be familiar to many iPhone users since Apple is one of the high profile companies to already sell products that support the program – currently the iPod nano  – along with other big names including American Express, Bugaboo, Converse, Dell, Emporio Armani, Gap, Hallmark and Starbucks.

A new special edition of the company’s recently revamped iPhone app branded (SHAZAM)RED is now available from Apple’s App Store and costs £2.99/€3.99/$4.99, with 20% of proceeds going to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Although (RED) funds are specifically directed to HIV and AIDS programs in Africa.

iPhone (and iPod touch) users who purchase the (SHAZAM)RED app, or existing users who upgrade, are promised the same music discovery features of the recently launched Shazam Encore app, along with updated content related to the (RED) campaign.

Sounds a lot like Songkick? Yup. Very much so, although nvivo launched first but with less noise. Nowadays, competition is abundant. While Songkick focuses on the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (the English speaking countries), nvivo.es has been busy rolling out local European versions, branding itself as 5gig internationally. It’s currently available in the US, UK, France, Italy, The Netherlands and Germany under the 5gig brand and is aggregating 35 different concert providers across all 7 countries.

5gig currently has around 100,000 registered users, with the majority of content coming from concert goers, artists and the venues themselves. Entering France was big news for the company as part of their attempt to be the dominant force in non-English speaking Europe, conscious of course of how difficult it is for a Spanish startup to get to English speakers. Songkick, with it’s renown partners and investors including Y Combinator, Dan Porter, co-founder of Ticketweb, Stefan Glaenzer, ex-chairman at Last.fm and Index Ventures, without a doubt gets a lot more press too.

Although 5gig is promising, particularly based of their small but relentless team, composed of Carlos Sanchez Valle and Alvaro Ortiz, a pretty well known personality in our back of the woods, along with a tight team of collaborators and board members, the challenge of entering into foreign and unfamiliar markets can’t be underestimated. The strategy so far has been to expand quickly into numerous markets by adapting to each country, localizing content, reaching agreements with local providers and signing on Country Managers based out of Spain. This is in contrast to most startups who choose to grow and mature in one market at a time. 5gig has plans to enter additional European markets in 2010.

With 200.000 euros from their first round (2008), an award of 125.000 euros in credit funding from ENISA, a Spanish public initiative to help technology startups, and an injection of another 125.000 euros from the current shareholders, nvivo has new energy and money to propel them forward, although they’re not as well funded as, perhaps, they would be if they were located in a different part of the world. Generally, this is how startup funding tends to work (or not) here in Spain.

When asked about the advantages and disadvantages of launching a startup in Spain, Valle responds, “If you add to the difficulties of entrepreneurship here in Spain, the little access to funding, we are fighting in this war with the worst weapons. A company like ours could have received 5 times more funding in the UK or US.”  Something I personally wonder about and hope to question in the months to come.

-Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan will speak at noon on Dec 10th

-The Real Time Web theme will be present in the form of Jack Dorsey (inventor of Twitter) opening the event, followed by announcements from Microsoft, Facebook, MySpace, Ning, LinkedIn and Ustream.

-Mobile applications will be quite high on the agenda with a panel including Shazam, Tapulous, SGN and others.

- Google’s Marissa Mayer returns to keynote again as is Skype founder and partner at Atomico Niklas Zennstrom and YouTube’s founder and visionary Chad Hurley

- European startup notables will be present, such as Brent Hoberman, Marten Mickos, Marc Simoncini, Martin Varskavsky, all of whom have founded leading European startups.

- The Middle East Panel has been curated by Joi Ito and the Russia Panel has been prepared by Jennifer Schenker

- Chris Brogan and Chris Pirillo will talk on community best practice and the brands panel features Dell and the World Economic Forum

- The Twitter ecosystem gets airtime with with the Twitter Apps and RealTime Search panels

- Other speakers include Timothy Ferriss, Violet Blue, Gary Vaynerchuk and Tony Hsieh… who just sold his company, Zappos, to Amazon for… about a billion dollars.

- Europe versus Silicon Valley was a heated conversation last year. In addition to the traditional Gillmor Gang closing the conference, this year they will hold a European Gang just before Gillmor.

- Google, Nokia, Facebook, PaypalX, Twitter, Six Apart will feature in Workshops & Garage sessions scheduled during the 2 days.

- 1,400 participants are already signed up

A French company called Unowhy, (which raised 2.9 million euros in April 09) is approaching the issue from another angle. They see the tablet not as a finality but as a way to offer new experiences. And that’s how QooQ was born: a cooking coach built into a tablet. It’s not about hardware, it’s not about software, it’s about content. Qooq will replace your cooking books, and bring you hundreds of recipes, tips and tools to help you become a master chef.

The tablet Qooq has a 10.2-inch touchscreen display and onscreen keyboard, with a glass screen to protect the device from food and other mess (it is designed to be at the heart of the kitchen), and has an internet connection over Ethernet or WiFi (to receive recipe updates). The operating system is perfectly adapted for the device and for the content, bringing some interesting applications such as a cooking planner, a shopping list maker etc. It can act as a radio, offers other Internet widgets and can be used as a digital photo frame.

QooQ is not a device for geeks, it’s for people who enjoy cooking, and that would like a coach, for new and interactive recipes. It’s sold online and offline, and to fit with their positioning the device isn’t to be found in the technology section (with other tablet PCs) but amongst the other cooking books.

Qooq costs 349 euros, which includes the device and 500 recipes and 10 videos from various French chefs. For 12.95 euros per month, you can add a pass to have access to more than 500 videos with chefs and 2000 recipes. Why no English version for the UK and the US? Because, as already noted, the device is content-driven and will require the QooQ team to source local recipes, with local chefs etc.

After playing with the Android app for a short while, I’m also struggling to see Taptu’s appeal, although admittedly I’m probably not the target user.

Aside from being touch-friendly, Taptu touts the ‘real-time’ nature of its search, functionality that it provides through utilising OneRiot’s API, which in turn tracks links posted on social media sites such such Twitter (obviously) and Digg, although the latter’s real-time credentials these days are questionable. Many of OneRiot’s results also come from blogs and established news sites. What Taptu have essentially done is wrap a nice mobile-friendly UI around some of OneRiot’s existing functionality and presented it under a section in the app’s search results called ‘Latest Buzz’.

The rest of Taptu’s search results seem much less timely, perhaps by design. A quick search for ‘Murdoch’ (as in Rupert), for example – a topic currently doing the rounds – and many of the results outside of the ‘Latest Buzz’ section, although news-based, were days not hours or minutes-old. This could be a reflection of the infancy of the touch-friendly mobile web, of which Taptu’s engine indexes, or a limitation of the service itself.

I’m also not convinced that Taptu provides enough original functionality to really catch on, at least based on the Android version. For my dose of real-time, almost any search-capable Twitter app will do (of which there are many) and Google and the other major search engines provide pretty good mobile-optimized search.

That said, Taptu does provide an additional trick of its own: the ability to easily share links via Twitter and Facebook. A feature that’s present on the iPhone but is sadly missing from the Android app, for now at least. In fact, reading the full list of features of the iPhone version and Taptu on Android seems only half baked.

The second annual TechCrunch Europe ChristmasCrunch combines our annual TechCrunch Europe meetup and Festive Christmas party, in one handy package. This year we’re basing it the hot theme of realtime streams and the event in London will also feature some of the hottest realtime startups in the world today.

The event will start with registration from 14.00 on December 15 for the seminar programme consisting of keynote presentation, panel discussions and startup pitches followed by TechCrunchPitch! Once the seminar programme has come to an end, it will turn into your very own startup Christmas party, with DJs and entertainment until late.

Do you want to pitch your realtime startup at ChristmasCrunch?

To be considered for the pitch competition you need to email TechCrunch Europe Editor Mike Butcher, with a one side of A4 text-only pitch, and also include the URL of your company/project/startup etc on CrunchBase (you can add your company onto it if it is not already there). Use the subject line “TechCrunchPitch”. Note: You MUST be on CrunchBase. In your A4 pitch include: The market “problem” you are solving with your startup, your solution, your business model, your competitors, your team and what you’re looking for (Seed funding, Angel funding, Series A round, etc). There is no fee for one person from the startup to pitch, as is our policy. Deadline for entry is this Friday.

Also: On 30th November 2009, TechCrunch Europe will be hosting another free Pitch! Workshop sponsorsed by UKTI. It is only open to qualified startups to attend and if you are interested in finding out more information, please email petra(at)twistedtree.co.uk.

Meanwhile, get your tickets here.

SCHEDULE

14.30 – Keynote
“Where the biggest realtime desktop application goes next”

Iain Dodsworth (TweetDeck)

Iain Dodsworth is the CEO of TweetDeck, a Twitter desktop client. Prior to founding TweetDeck, Iain was a senior flex developer for Prudential Financial, which he joined in June 2007. Before joining Prudential, Iain was a developer at Dashbrook (2006-2007), PriceWaterhouse Cooper (2003-2006), and a Digital Text consultant and developer for BSkyB (200-2002). In 1999, He co-founded and served as CTO for Sirens Communications corp., an internet industry startup based in Palo Alto. Iain holds a BSc. from Sheffield Hollam University in Systems Modeling.

James Whittaker (TweeDeck)

James is UX & UI Architect at TweetDeck. He is an experienced professional web developer who has worked in the defense, banking and consumer sectors over the last 10 years. James specialises in web standards development, usability and interaction design, along with the creation of Rich Internet Applications using Adobe Flex, Flash and AIR technologies. He is currently an Adobe Community Expert and an international speaker on the Flash Platform and desktop applications with AIR.

14.50 – Presentation
“The future of realtime sentiment tracking”

Jenni Lees (Festbuzz)

[Bio coming shortly]

15.10 – Presentation
“Blending cloud with desktop realtime”

Marco Kaiser (Seesmic)

Marco is Director, Engineering at Seesmic. He has worked in the industry for 12+ years as a web and software developer. Marco is the creator of the Adobe AIR application, Twhirl, which began development in the summer 2007 and was subsequently acquired by Seesmic. He’s based near Hamburg, Germany.

15.30 – Panel – Realtime Services

Mario Menti (Twitterfeed)

Mario is founder, TwitterFeed, a service to send blog and RSS updates to a Twitter account automatically. He’s an online market research expert with 20 years experience in the market research software space, having worked as Solutions Architect for GMI (Global Market Insite, Inc.) and SPSS.

Mark Rock (AudioBoo)

[Bio coming shortly]

Eileen Burbidge (Investment Director at Ambient Sound Investments)

Based in London, Eileen leads ASI’s business development and sources new investment projects. Prior to joining ASI, Eileen held senior leadership roles in business, product, and market development at Yahoo!, Skype, PalmSource, Openwave, Sun Microsystems, Apple and Verizon Wireless. She holds a BS in Engineering Computer Science degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Roberto Bonanzinga (Balderton)

Roberto is a Partner at Balderton Capital (formerly Benchmark Europe). Prior to joining Balderton, Roberto spent 15 years working with entrepreneurs in the US and in Europe. Most recently, Roberto acted as an interim CEO for Jambaz and non-executive director/adviser to numerous companies including Jaiku (acquired by Google NASDAQ:GOOG), Mobango, Piczo, Woome and our own portfolio company Pageflakes. He has a B.A. in Business Administration from Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, and a European Commission-sponsored MSC in Electronic Information Management from Sheffield University in the UK.

16.10 – Coffee break

16.30 – Keynote
“The future of Realtime Content and News”

Nick Halstead (CEO Tweetmeme)

Nick is the CEO and Founder of fav.or.it, the company behind Twitter meme tracker Tweetmeme. Nick has been in development for 20 years, 15 of which were in the highly competitive games industry. He has a passion for all things technical and is still responsible for development at the 10 person team at fav.or.it.

16.50 – Presentation
“The realtime effect on entertainment content”

David Maher Roberts (The Filter)

David is CEO of The Filter. At the age of 24, he successfully raised the funds to launch Unique, the first student lifestyle magazine, and The Game, a European football magazine. David went on to become the publishing director at Future Games in 2001 where he served as the board director responsible for the entire portfolio of 10 magazines, 2 websites, and 80 employees. After 2 years, he completed the Advanced Management Program (at Ashridge Business School), and then founded Future Plus, a creative agency. From June 2004-December 2006, he also served as the New Media Director for Future’s entire European web operations and lead the European launch of GamesRadar.com. After leaving Future, David served as the New Media director at iSporty.com and he was the founder and senior partner of Digital-dna LLP.

17.10 – Presentation
“How Google Wave affects the future of realtime collaboration”

Daniel Tenner (Woobius)

Daniel is CTO and co-founder at Woobius, a web-based document sharing collaboration tool for architects, engineers and designers.

17.30 – Panel 2
Panel – Content

Ian Hogarth (Songkick)

Ian got a master’s in machine learning at Cambridge and loves dystopian robot takeover narratives. Seven years ago, Ian realized being a choirboy came with no street cred, so he started DJing hip-hop, funk, drum & bass, and grime. Ian quit his job at Bain & Company, Singapore to start Songkick.

Alberto Nardelli (Tweetminster)

Alberto is the Co-founder & CEO of Tweetminster, which tracks and measures the pulse of UK politics. He is also the CEO of UnLtdWorld.com an online platform for social entrepreneurs. Previously, he acted as Special Projects Manager at TakingITGlobal, leading the overhaul of creative programmes, which included an online art gallery, a publication and a series of initiatives implemented in a range of cities and aimed at fostering cultural understanding amongst young people.

William Fischer (Twitter Jobsearch)

William is Director of WorkHound, the company behind Twitter Jobsearch. He’s also co-founder of DVD Station, Inc., a world-class media/entertainment retail systems company, that introduced the first direct download of movies at retail, built systems deployed by Sony, Barnes & Noble, and Hollywood Video, and launched a multi-state retail chain named 2005 Retailer of the Year. Founder/CEO of Form & Figure Media Inc. and Chase Thompson Publishing. Previous marketing and GM experience at threerings.com, more.com, and Ebates.com. Acknowledged in Chris Anderson’s, The Long Tail, as an expert on digital entertainment/search.

Venue:
Gilgamesh Restaurant Bar & Lounge
The Stables Market
Chalk Farm Road, London
NW1 8AH
Map

Tickets

To attend the event, tickets will be £45 – this will give you access to the afternoon seminar and the party. Party only tickets will be released closer to the event and is subject to availability. Attendee identification will be checked at the door. Due to strong demand for tickets, we regret tickets are not transferable and not refundable. If you use your name to purchase multiple tickets, your guests must arrive with you to check in at the door. If you show up at the event without a valid ticket, TechCrunch Europe reserves the right to charge the full ticket prive £45 plus £15 administration fee to allow access to the event subject to availability.

Sponsorship opportunities

Please contact Petra Johansson petra(at)twistedtree.co.uk for further details on sponsorship and ticket enquiries.

Press

If you are a member of the press wanting to cover the event, please contact Rassami Hok Ljungberg on rassami(at)rassami.com

Editorial / Event Content

Editorial queries related to the event, the agenda and the pitch competition should be directed to Mike Butcher. DO NOT ASK HIM ABOUT TICKETS.

TechCrunch Europe/UKTI Pitch workshop

On 30th November 2009, TechCrunch Europe will be hosting another Pitch! Workshop. It is only open to qualified startups to attend and if you are interested in finding out more information, please contact petra (at) twistedtree.co.uk.

SPONSORS

TECHCRUNCH PITCH! SPONSOR

UKTI

UK Trade & Investment is the government organisation that helps UK-based companies succeed in the global economy. We also help overseas companies bring their high quality investment to the UK’s dynamic economy – acknowledged as Europe’s best place from which to succeed in global business. UK Trade & Investment offers expertise and contacts through its extensive network of specialists in the UK, and in British embassies and other diplomatic offices around the world. We provide companies with the tools they require to be competitive on the world stage. For further information please visit www.uktradeinvest.gov.uk or telephone +44 (0)20 7215 8000.

CO-SPONSORS

Press Association

The Press Association is the UK’s trusted source of compelling multimedia content, placed at the hear of the media. Press Association delivers everything from breaking news and showbiz interviews to real-time sports results, TV listings and weather forecasts. Increasingly, content is delivered to clients digitally, and we are actively developing new digital products and services for media and online clients. For more information visit www.pressassociation.com

Sun Startup Essentials Programme

In a nut shell.. Sun’s fee-free, no obligation, Startup Essentials programme helps startups get off the ground running by listening to what they need, to innovate and get their business growing quickly. With help around Marketing, PR, Events, Discounted Scaling, Networking and Introductions to the right people, we can help you to grow your business quicker and smarter.
Sign up to our FREE Sun Startup Essentials newsletter at uk.sun.com/startups , which delivers a veritable buffet of information, training and support each month..

For example..
• Technical & Marketing Resources for Members Only
• Access to MySQL University sessions – Online education webinars – Plus many more free web- based training course
• FREE/Discounted Tickets for all the major and not so well known Seminars/Workshops & Technical Briefings
• Technical support and advice directly from a Sun engineer (no need to buy anything!)
• Co-marketing opportunities (i.e. web and blog posts, joint PR, events, contests, etc.) Email stewart.townsend@sun.com
• Webinars and white papers.

Follow Stewart at Sun on Twitter

DRINKS SPONSOR

Bootlaw

Bootlaw is a free boot camp for emerging technology, internet and digital businesses and the professionals working in them who want to learn more about the legal issues they face. It is brought to you by Barry Vitou and Danvers Baillieu, the friendly lawyers at Winston & Strawn in London. For more information go to www.bootlaw.com

DJ SPONSOR

Mixcloud

Mixcloud aims to be the YouTube of Radio. The company’s vision is to be the definitive platform online for on-demand radio shows – from music to talk and everything in between. Mixcloud describe themselves as re-thinking radio, building a platform that connects radio shows (or what they describe as Cloudcasts) to listeners much more effectively. The unit of value for Mixcloud is the show rather than the song or the station. Mixcloud provides radio content creators with a toolkit to host, promote and distribute their content across the web, solving the frustrations associated with file sharing services or the complications of Podcasts. For listeners, Mixcloud helps them filter the content easily to find what’s relevant to them – e.g. what’s popular or what their friends are listening to.

WRI was picked up by private equity firm Hellman and Friedman, to the surprise of many who assumed a travel giant such as Expedia or Priceline would make the acquisition.

“We were trying to push it out to a $600-700 million market cap. That’s a big IPO. It was so big that the market only had to cough, and we knew the IPO was off.” Obviously, the market didn’t just cough; it tanked, and the IPO was abandoned.

A three-time serial entrepreneur — he set up his first company, Raven Computing, in Dublin at age 22 — Nolan stepped down as WRI chief executive in advance of the planned IPO and was a non-executive director by the time of last week’s sale. However, with 25% of the company’s shares, he did well out of the transaction.

He confirms he was able to bank about $100 million from Hostelworld, a very successful online hostel booking site, and from other WRI properties in the decade since he and Dublin hostel owner Tom Kennedy first set up Hostelworld. “We were pretty good to ourselves all the way up [at WRI]“, he acknowledges. “We took cash out when we could.”

Hostelworld was the cash cow for WRI, bringing in €18.3 million profit on revenue of €38 million from €350 million worth of transactions last year. Hostelworld’s model was “beautifully simple”, Nolan says: hostels could sign up to make themselves available over the booking service and then paid Hostelworld 10% of every booking — only a euro or two per booking, but millions of transactions paid out millions in profit annually.

Nolan says WRI “very nearly crossed the line” and came a hair’s breadth from being sold to either Priceline or Expedia — he won’t say which — but the final offer never appeared. Price too high in the current economic climate? “All I can say is there are more things than price. There’s the culture of the company. We all did travel and are online, yes. But many other elements of their business aren’t like ours.”

He’s disappointed the IPO never happened however, as he says WRI “would have been a great candidate. It has great demographics, 20 and 30 something travellers, and there’s a lot of possibility upselling to that demographic.”

He adds: “When I left (as CEO), we had a 65 per cent EBITDA margin.” He thinks it likely that WRI’s new owners will hang on to it until the market improves, and then take it public.

Hostelworld’s early promise drew in investors to WRI such as NewBay founder Paddy Holahan (who became WRI chairman up until the planned IPO) and U2 manager Paul McGuinness, who will each exit with a nice nest egg.

WRI picked up the infamous Boo.com url in 2007 when Holahan saw that it was available “for under seven figures” on Fashionmall.com. Though in its first incarnation, one time fashion site Boo.com burned through £100 million in 18 months before becoming one of the highest profile British dotcom wrecks, Nolan said the url was short, snappy and easy to remember for a travel advice site.

Plus, the former notoriety of the web address drew in plenty of publicity for WRI from the media, without the negative associations for users. “The thing is, people over 30, journalists and Boo’s unpaid creditors remember Boo, but no one else does,” he said in 2007.

If WRI was doing so well, then, why sell? “It was time. It had been 10 years,” Nolan says. Plus, he has his eye on some new prospects, and feels ready to go again as an entrepreneur.

Though he is involved in some way with about 10 tech start-ups, Nolan currently has four major interests: CloudSplit, Asavie.com, Worky.com, and RevaHealth.com. “I fully believe I’m riding four horses, and one of those is the next Hostelworld.”

In other words, the economics of ad-supported music don’t yet make sense, forcing We7 to focus on ’sustainable growth’ or acquiring users at a rate somewhere inline with any increase in ad-revenue. Where this leaves competitor Spotify’s land grab approach to user numbers is clearly open to debate and Purdham is more than happy to chime in (hint: he thinks they’re heading for a fall).

On that note, TechCrunch Europe has learned that We7’s mobile offering will in fact be launched in Q1 2010 and, perhaps unsurprisingly, will be part of a new premium subscription offering. We’ve also managed to source some, admittedly, blurry photos of We7 running on the iPhone. The app that you can’t have – yet. But first, let’s dive into the thinking behind We7’s decision to postpone their mobile plans.

As already mentioned, sustainable growth is the key phrase here. The cost per-stream can be prohibitively high for ad-supported music services – competitor Pandora was ‘forced’ to pull out of the UK for this very reason – while the ad market is burgeoning and extremely volatile. This would explain why mobile, which is an essential component to any cloud-based music offering (or any music offering per-se), is going to be a premium offering. It’s likely to be far too popular and, therefore, too costly for advertising to fund alone.

Purdham is also determined to make ad-supported music pay its own way, not just as a marketing tool to drive users to the premium offering. This appears to be in complete contrast to Spotify on which he comments: “If you apply the reported ad funded stream sizes and just apply the standard PRS cost and allocate a similar ratio for the Labels then the monthly stream cost is very large and will be way ahead of advertising revenue.”

This would explain why Spotify has gone back to being invite-only in the UK, limiting new membership. It’s also, suggests Purdham, why Spotify’s US plans appear to have been delayed, “going into the US on the same model as UK and Sweden will be impossible given current knowledge.”

Purdham (rightfully) doesn’t think streaming services fit the classic ‘fremium’ model. Freemium, he points out, “describes the phenomenon of delivery tending to zero on scale.” Costs come down per-user, the more users you acquire, eventually becoming negligible (bandwidth and a few other costs aside). Therefore, a service that fits the fremium model can support a high ratio of free vs paying customers.

In contrast, “due to music royalties, ad-supported music tends to a large number with scale and hence is not freemium and the % of converted subscriptions cannot be big enough to cover the ad funded component.”

It can be made to work, he says, but the focus “has to be on the economics generating sustainable scale from the get-go and then apply scale.”

In We7’s case, sustainable growth doesn’t mean no growth at all. With very little advertising, the UK-only service claims 2.5m monthly users. About 1.2m of them visit we7.com directly, spending an average of 30 minutes per visit, with the rest coming from syndication via various partner sites including NME, The Guardian, Glamour.com and GQ.com. Purdham says this makes We7 the number one most accessed UK music site above CBS-owned Last.fm.

We7’s catalogue has also seen significant growth. The service now offers 4m tracks from all of the major labels and a number of indies. Advertisers include Orange, COI, The Sun and Sony PlayStation.

In January last year We7 took a $7m/€5m series A round from Eden Ventures, Spark Ventures and musician turned entrepreneur Peter Gabriel.

The interesting thing about this story is that it is typical old media. It says talks are at “an early stage” but doesn’t even mention the fact that we had cast iron information that the actual meeting took place on November 10.

Also: The FT also doesn’t link to our story – plus ca change. Why? because it’s an “article” not a blog post. As is usual with traditional media, articles very rarely link, while their blog posts (increasingly, but it’s a taken a while) do.

Apparently “the Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers”. Yes, we know. We listed them in our story: Associated Newspapers, Germany’s Axel Springer and publishers from Poland and Italy, among others. We even know the name of the man at Microsoft heading up the discussion: Microsoft’s Peter Bale, Executive Producer of MSN UK.

The FT has no other new information that hasn’t been previously reported.

I’m sure I’ll get accused of trying to score points, but that’s not my aim. And I have the utmost respect for my colleagues on the FT. But there is a serious point here.

We put our story out on our site, on RSS and on Twitter. It was also cross-posted to TechCrunch.com which has millions more readers. Currently TechCrunch appears in Google News and many other search engines and aggregators.

Now, I really don’t see TechCrunch ever bothering with the idea that it will choose to be listed on Bing because it is paid for its content. The whole point of its content is that it is there to serve it readers and the tech community FIRST, not a content publishing strategy based on the bottom line. If Mike Arrington has started a blog in 2005 and chosen to only go with some paid-for, closed off network, I ask you would he now have a global brand which spans several continents? No.

In addition, would TechCrunch be able to beat mainstream outlets time and time again to stories? No.

TechCrunch does not need a content publishing strategy based on a business model which funds the production of content on an old model. Why? Because TechCrunch does not have (deep breath) large offices in New York, London, Shanghai and the rest; parking places for the executives; board rooms; a tea trolley to shuffle around each floor of a vast office; a canteen; receptionists; limos on call; printing presses; I could go on but I’m sure you get the drift.

Today, a news story or some kind of breaking news opinion piece is exclusive for *seconds*. And because people generally want information they are interested in or approve of spread about, the service which gets to that information and distributes it fastest generally wins. That’s why Twitter has become such a crucial and interesting source of news, because it is the closest thing we have to realtime online. And that is why information which has to rely on the checks and balances of a content distribution contract – i.e. Bing’s developing relationship with newspapers – puts the cart before the horse.

The scenario we are looking at here is a future where Bing brings you a world of slow news, brought to you by big-name sources like the Financial Times, well over a week after every other blog and Twitter user on the planet has chewed up and split apart the fact from the fiction, or at least the parts that matter.

So, this will not be the “machine that goes Bing” (to adapt a phrase form Monty Python), but the machine the goes “B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b……ing”.

The important thing is that Erick had asked me to help moderate his panel about marketing within ‘real-time streams’, which is a subject close to my heart. So close in fact, that had he asked me to help moderate a panel about child rape and it’s place in the public school system I couldn’t have been keener to weigh in.

I’ll get back to my own contribution in a moment, but first, as a courtesy to my paymasters, I should probably relate a few of my ‘key learnings’ from the event.

1) There is such a thing as a ‘key learning’, a phrase which I heard at least three times during the day, and which I gather is what an ‘opinion’ becomes when spoken by an idiot.

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This follows earlier clients for both iPhone and Android and means that the service will now be accessible on millions more handsets from Nokia, obviously, along with Sony Ericsson and Samsung which also support the platform.

Phones powered by Symbian far outstrip the iPhone and Android (for now) in Europe where Spotify is currently available. Today’s release should see the company strike further carrier deals or at least extend their current offering with mobile network 3, leading to more ‘back door’ or ‘feels like free’ premium subscriptions.

Just as with the previous iPhone and Android versions, users must be Spotify premium subscribers to use the service on their mobile phones. In return they get to ditch the ads and can cache play-lists for off-line (out of signal) coverage and to conserve battery life.

On-demand music on-the-go is a compelling proposition and Spotify is betting that its mobile offerings will drive uptake for premium subscriptions. But there is also another play at hand. Deals with mobile carriers, such as the one reached with Hutchison’s 3UK in which customers get a Spotify subscription and compatible handset as part of their mobile (24 month) contract.

The reality is that the RSS-driven service isn’t nearly as customisable as its many competitors, such as start page Netvibes or more similar aggregators like Meehive. Instead, Fingertips only enables users to pick from around 300 sources (50,000 articles) from publications such as The Times or Heat magazine, divided into traditional sections based on subject – news, sport, travel etc.

However, if users don’t find what they’re looking for they can submit other sources for consideration, according to the site’s FAQs, but to be accepted there will need to be significant demand from other users and the content must meet Fingertips’ editorial criteria, whatever that might be. That doesn’t scale.

There’s a social element to Fingertips too. Users can share articles with others in their Fingertips social network which then show up in a designated area on their personalised page, a feature called News Buddies.

Unfortunately I can’t see anyone caring that much about this social network. It’s neither a real social network nor something obsessive, like HubDub which turns sharing news into a game.

One of the biggest challenges for any investor (regardless of the stage/type of investment they target) and founders alike is hiring great talent. In early stage investing the team may be the single criteria upon which an investment decision is based (considering how many times when that’s all there is to go by) and even in later/growth stages, while the founding team has been historically crucial, bringing someone new in to help “get the company to the next level” can be the difference between investing or not.

Something I’ve realised and have to admit is that while obviously the absolute pool of talent is smaller here in the UK/Europe than it is in the U.S. (and that cannot be disputed nor is it anything more than a function of population) another factor. It is one which I keep hoping will chang, because if it doesn’t it threatens to make a small pool even smaller. And that is a cultural and behavioural issue: work ethic.

As anyone who’s ever been there or visited will attest, in Silicon Valley everyone is working *all of the time*.

And while this might seem unhealthy, not scalable, obsessive, manic or simply ridiculous, from an ecoystem perspective it’s basically unbeatable. If you want to build companes and ride the wave of innovation, it’s a 24/7 preoccupation — not just a lifestyle business. By contrast, I am in London-based startups’ offices all the time and I am gobsmacked when they are nearly empty by 6:30 PM.

Where is the sense of urgency? Where is the need for speed? Where is the competitive and insanely obsessive drive to “kick ass” and kill the competition, status quo or the incumbent corporates?

I understand the need for work-life balance and keeping things in perspective but from an investor point of view, I’m happier and have more confidence in future success if I see entrepreneurs working their asses off.

And don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t have to be “in the office”, but I used the office hours as one measurement. I’m simply talking about working at all — and just being online, responsive and present (twitter, IM, email, updates on websites, releases, pushes etc).

This is just my [likely unpopular] view, but in silicon valley the thinking is usually along the lines of “why can’t we get that done now” or “let me just finish this off now, while I can, before I go,” etc.

You have to remember that the culture there is “launch and iterate”. By contrast, European startups (not the good ones I might add) too often depend on an old fashioned version/release model. That’s nice for a good lifestyle – but it doesn’t create fast moving companies. And fast moving companies require people to nurture them 24/7.

By contrast what I observe here is more along the lines of “it can wait” or “what’s the problem if we take care of that tomorrow” or “no harm done, no big deal, the world won’t end” and “yes it’s in the queue”. I’m afraid to say this is a huge difference in attitude.

And it’s not about when or at what hours people are in their offices (or even working out of office). In Silicon Valley, even when folks aren’t strictly working or at work, they are still working. Even when they’re out clubbing, partying, eating dinner or just hanging out … They are working because everyone they’re hanging out with is in the industry and related to their work.

Your best friends are co-founders, competitors, business development partners, your lawyers or your event co-sponsors. You date, hook up with or marry your co-workers, your business development managers, your PR reps. It’s all incestuous and a very small-world and quite possibly incredibly unhealthy (although it’s clearly worked for many otherwise the valley would have collapsed by now in an earthquake of divource and law-suits).

But from an investment and knowledge-enhancing-viral-feeding point of view it’s hugely valuable. It’s like one massive petri dish. An uber-mega-corporation of startups where people might circulate between Google, Yahoo! Apple and other companies in between startups. But it keeps everyone going, thinking and buzzing about their work all the bloody time.

Instead, not only do we have different petri dishes for London startups, northern [UK] startups, Irish startups, German startups, eastern european startups etc, but we also have petri dishes for bootstrapped startups, startups funded by “the big VCs”, startups in mobile, startups in media, startups who are using agencies (btw, no startups use agencies in the valley), and companies who say they are startups but where no one’s really working very hard.

This also manifests itself in basic attitudes and assumptions regarding holidays and time off.

In the US the legal holiday entitlement is 10 holiday/vacation days per year, but to be honest, no one really knows for sure because no one checks. No one tracks it — and no one really ever takes any — unless they’re getting married or it’s a really, really, really big deal.

In silicon valley if people started tracking vacation days, they’d also have to track “comp time” (meaning what days off they’d be entitled to because they worked “overtime” or above-and-beyond the reasonable requirement) and in that case, everyone would have more days off than they’d know what to do with! In most cases, people take 1 week holiday a year or maybe 2 if you count end of the year holidays before or around the New Year.

By contrast here in the UK I’m well aware that the legal requirement is 20 days (4 weeks’ worth!) and *everyone* is keeping track — and actually taking them! In silicon valley this would be viewed as absurd and taking 4 weeks off every year would brand someone as a slacker full stop. Even subjective labels aside, think about the fact that the legal requirement establishes twice as much free time here per annum.

I am bracing myself for your comments, but trust me — If you’re annoyed because you’re working like a dog on the next great global success then I want to hear from you, meet you and invest. On the other hand, if you’re ticked off and you’re not working your ass off, well there you go — and enjoy your annual leave.

Unlike RSS where you have to scan text headlines for information, you can scan images. Great for a lot of visual news like cars, fashion, design, photography, sports, funny pictures and gossip.

Thanks to Techfluff.tv’s Amsterdam correspondent Isabelle O’Kane for filming this.

Spectives ‘how it works’ video:

Spectives.com in one minute from Spectives on Vimeo.

The discussion was not very ‘tech’ or ’startup’ oriented, but it did touch very much on the cultural and social impact of social networks, and Twitter in particular. Stephen Fry in particular mounted a robust defence of social networks as culturally positive, not negative.

I asked a question toward the end about what Twitter does when Skype and, perhaps Facebook, enable status updates to be as public and open as Twitter, but Biz Stone simply said they ‘don’t look in the rear view mirror’. Which was not exactly a fullsome answer, but hey.

The event formed part of the Silicon Valley comes to the UK programme. The video comes from NESTA.