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I’m very pleased to announce that we have acquired TechCrunch. Details are in the press release below, and I’m sure founder Michael Arrington will have a few words to say as well. This is a great complement to our continued investment in world class content.

AOL TO ACQUIRE TECHCRUNCH NETWORK OF SITES

Leading Authority on Tech News Will Expand AOL's Growing Offering of World-Class, Audience-Relevant Content

San Francisco, CA, September 28, 2010 – AOL Inc. [NYSE: AOL] today announced that it has agreed to acquire TechCrunch, Inc., the company that owns and operates TechCrunch and its network of websites dedicated to technology news, information and analysis. TechCrunch and its associated properties and conferences will join the AOL Technology Network while retaining their editorial independence, further bolstering AOL's position as one of the world's leading providers of high-quality, tech-oriented content. The announcement will be made on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, CA.

Founded by Michael Arrington, TechCrunch operates a global network of dedicated properties from Europe to Japan, as well as vertically-oriented websites, including MobileCrunch, CrunchGear, TechCrunchIT, GreenTech, TechCrunchTV and CrunchBase. The TechMeme Leaderboard ranks TechCrunch as the No. 1 source of breaking tech news online, followed by AOL's Engadget.*

"Michael and his colleagues have made the TechCrunch network a byword for breaking tech news and insight into the innovative world of start-ups, and their reputation for top-class journalism precisely matches AOL's commitment to delivering the expert content critical to this audience," said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AOL. "TechCrunch and its team will be an outstanding addition to the high-quality content on the AOL Technology Network, which is now a must-buy for advertisers seeking to associate their brands with leading technology content and its audience."

Heather Harde, Chief Executive Officer of TechCrunch, said: "TechCrunch and AOL share a motivating passion for quality technology news and information, and we're delighted about becoming part of the AOL family. This represents a compelling opportunity to extend the TechCrunch brand while complementing the great work of sites like Engadget and Switched. Our contributors, and our audiences, can look to the future with excitement about what we can build when we have the significant resources of AOL behind us."

Michael Arrington, Founder and Co-Editor of TechCrunch, said: "Tim Armstrong and his team have an exciting vision for the future of AOL as a global leader in creating and delivering world-class content to consumers, be it through original content creation, partnerships or acquisitions. I look forward to working with everyone at AOL as we build on our reputation for independent tech journalism and continue to set the agenda for insight, reviews and collaborative discussion about the future of the technology industry."

TechCrunch also hosts industry-leading conferences and events, including The Disrupt series, The Crunchies Awards and various meet-ups worldwide. These conferences bring together industry innovators, entrepreneurs and financing sources to exchange ideas, forge new relationships and discuss the current and future industry trends.

"Engagement with thought leaders is as important to AOL as our engagement with our contributors, audiences, publishers and advertisers, and TechCrunch's conferences and websites will give us a promising, additional springboard to join and amplify these conversations. We're committed to quality in everything we do at AOL, and look forward to working with Heather, Michael and the TechCrunch team to extend the brand," said David Eun, President of AOL Media and Studios.

The AOL Technology Network consists of AOL's tech-oriented properties including Engadget, the Web magazine about everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics; Switched, which covers the intersection of the digital world with entertainment, sports, art, fashion and lifestyle; TUAW, the unofficial Apple weblog; and DownloadSquad, the weblog about downloadable software and other computer subjects. The AOL Technology Network ranks in the top five for tech news according to comScore Media Metrix, August 2010 data, and leads the top five in average time spent and average visits per user.

This acquisition will further AOL's strategy to become the global leader in sourcing, creating, producing and delivering high-quality, trusted, original content to consumers. TechCrunch will remain headquartered in San Francisco, CA, as a wholly owned AOL unit. Deal terms were not disclosed.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains “forward-looking” statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 regarding business strategies, market potential, future financial and operational performance and other matters. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the anticipated benefits of the transaction and other statements identified by words such as “may,” “will,” “intend,” “should,” “expect” or similar expressions. These statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, and are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances, including, but not limited to, the satisfaction of the closing conditions to the transaction and the parties' performance of their obligations under the agreements; changes in our plans, strategies and intentions; the competitiveness and quality of our products and services; our ability to retain, hire and develop key employees; and the intensity of competition. Any forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance and actual results may vary materially from those expressed or implied by the statements herein, due to changes in economic, business, competitive, technological, strategic and/or regulatory factors, as well as factors affecting AOL’s operations and businesses. More detailed information about these factors as they relate to AOL may be found in the section entitled “Risk Factors” in AOL’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. AOL is under no obligation to, and expressly disclaims any obligation to, update or alter the forward-looking statements contained in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About AOL
AOL Inc. (NYSE:AOL) is a leading global Web services company with an extensive suite of brands and offerings and a substantial worldwide audience. AOL’s business spans online content, products and services that the company offers to consumers, publishers and advertisers. AOL is focused on attracting and engaging consumers and providing valuable online advertising services on both AOL’s owned and operated properties and third-party websites. In addition, AOL operates one of the largest Internet subscription access services in the United States, which serves as a valuable distribution channel for AOL’s consumer offerings.

About TechCrunch
TechCrunch is a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. In addition to covering new companies, we profile existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the new web space. TechCrunch has now grown into a network of technology focused sites offering a wide range of content and new media.

*TechMeme Leaderboard, Sept. 28, 2010

Welcome back, startup fans. It’s time for another day packed full of tech illuminati, breaking news, and genuinely amazing companies making their debuts. Our agenda for today includes a great number of investors, entrepreneurs, mayors of major cities, and someone who calls himself Chamillionaire.

As always, we’ll be streaming live all day long, as well as taping behind-the-scenes footage and interviews. And as always, employ the #tcdisrupt hashtag for Twitter, Flickr, blog posts, and all the other usual methods of propagating information.

Those of you attending: don’t forget to spend some time in Startup Alley; pleasant surprises abound, like yesterday’s crowd-pleasing Miso Music. We’ll be updating this post with significant developments, interesting external coverage, and whatever else we think might improve your Disrupt experience, so refresh early and often.

According to a Tweet from All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka, this morning, Twitter COO Dick Costolo said that the company will be “setting aside” its EarlyBird program, which partnered with retailers and e-commerce companies to offer discounted deals to Twitter users. The announcement appears to have been made in New York at the IAB MIXX conference.

It’s, of course, unclear what “setting aside,” means but clearly Twitter is re-evaluating the promotion. The idea behind EarlyBird was fairly simple. Twitter partnered with advertisers to distribute offers via the @EarlyBird account, and they get to determine the terms of the offer, including availability, amount, and pricing. Deals are published via the @EarlyBird handle several times a week.

The initiative ended up being mixed bag in terms of quality deals. The first deal was two-for-one tickets to the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” an average movie. A 32″ Vizio HDTV from Target was offered for $349.99 but was available for the same price on other electronics sites. But EarlyBird caught the worm with a JetBlue offer; Twitter offered users a 20% discount which led to 1,000 ticket sales within the first 10 hours.

But Twitter seemed to be trying to think of innovative ways to market EarlyBird, including the possibility of serving deals based on real-time conversation. EarlyBird product manager Shiva Rajaraman told us in July that he envisioned a system that will track company and sector trends for advertising partners. The partners could then work with Twitter to quickly deploy deals based around trending conversations and emerging demand.

Of course, Twitter is probably going back to the drawing board and reevaluating what Twitter users want in a deals promotion like EarlyBird; it should be interesting to see what the company comes up with next.

Twitter has confirmed that it will be setting aside Earlybird: Here’s the statement they sent us:
We’ve always said we’d experiment and move quickly. Twitter's @earlybird account will no longer be tweeting offers. We're taking the learnings from @earlybird, including feedback from users and businesses, and investing that knowledge into our Promoted Products platform to help businesses grow their audience and provide great offers and information to users.

Roku is quickly turning into a major source within the streaming community and its just-announced deal with Ooyala will likely bring even more content to the massive install base. The deal allows publishers to utilize an Ooyala-made, turn-key operation to create a custom Roku channel.

This is a big move for the video distributor as it suddenly gives publishers a totally new demographic to target along by bringing their content to the livingroom. Content can be shot with a big screen in mind. It truly opens new doors for Ooyala users such as Alloy Digital, which is the first content partner to implement the Roku custom channel.

While we’ve been Disrupting all over the place, Twitter has been hitting the advertising beat full force, with COO Dick Costolo at the IAB Conference in New York about to launch “Promoted Accounts” which will insert the accounts of brands and other services next to normal users in Twitter’s “Who To Follow” feature, which recently replaced an old Twitter mainstay, the “Suggested Users” list.

“Promoted Accounts” will be joining “Promoted Tweets” (which serves up tweets against Twitter search) and “Promoted Trends” (which includes sponsored trends in “Trending Topics”) as part of Twitter’s triumvirate advertising initiative.

We’ve yet to receive word from Twitter on how much a promoted account costs or whether they will be charging advertisers a lump sum or on a per follower basis, but as a side note and a comparison on how much garnering eyeballs on Twitter is worth, the WSJ reports that “Promoted Tweets” are now moving at $100,000 and up.

After filing (renewed) applications for the words “tweet” and “twitter” recently, Twitter has now requested that its trademark “bird in flight” drawing becomes a genuine trademark as far as the United States goes, at least.

As you can see on Trademarkia, the U.S. federal trademark registration was filed for by Twitter early last week. The description given is fairly basic: “the mark consists of an outline of a bird in flight”. It will no doubt be a tough one to obtain.

What this means for third-party developers and other companies who use the Twitter bird in their own designs? Nothing, yet – Twitter has repeatedly said it files for trademarks under the guise of protection, not as a means to attack others under any circumstances.

Still probably best not to use it in too many obvious ways, in my opinion.

When I logged on to Brizzly this morning, a notification popped up announcing some brand new features for the web-based social networking client. As you can read on Brizzly maker Thing Labs‘ blog, there are also some design changes accompanying the new features.

Like rival Seesmic Web has done in the past, Brizzly has now added Foursquare support to the fray, which means you can now see your friends' Foursquare check-ins from within Brizzly. There’s also a new camera control feature and Brizzly has also finally decided to give people the choice on how to retweet, erm, tweets: the classic way or the – not so new anymore – new-style retweet functionality.

Thing Labs has also moved the posting form in Brizzly away from the top of the screen, into the top of the left-hand navigation, so it can be accessed from any Twitter screen. In addition, the startup added easy access to drafts and Brizzly photos while posting.

Finally, if you have a lot of saved searches or Picnics, your navigation menu and the Trends & news section don't stay in place when you scroll down the page (in the Twitter tab).

Henceforth, you can collapse or expand any of the navigation sections on the left side of the screen by clicking on the title.

While AOL and Thing Labs remain mum on the subject, we’ve heard from solid sources that the former is in the process of acquiring the fledgling company, mostly for its talented and experienced founding and management team.

Thing Labs received a little over $2 million in funding from Polaris Ventures, SoftTech VC, and angels including Michael Jones (now the President of MySpace), Ron Conway, and Greg Yaitanes (best known as a director of the hit Fox TV show House). The company initially sprung out of Polaris’ Dog Patch Labs in San Francisco.

TigerText, a company that develops a private SMS app, has raised $1.9 million in angel funding led by Herb Madan and co-founder of Akamai Randall Kaplan.

Launched in February of 2010, TigerText’s mobile apps allows users to send text messages or photos that can then be deleted off both the sender's and receiver's phone after a selected period of time.

Once a sender selects the message lifespan (from 1 minute up to 30 days), expired messages are not only deleted from both phones, but are not stored on any server and they cannot be retrieved once expired. Users can also select a "Delete on Read" option, which will delete the text 60 seconds after the recipient opens the message.

Coincidentally, the app launched as the infamous Tiger Woods mistress texts were revealed, with the app’s name even taking on a connection to the scandal. But TigerText’s co-founder Jeffrey Evans maintains that the his apps were not developed as a result of the Tiger Woods scandal.

Evans says that the app, which is available for Android, iPhone and Blackberry phones, will soon add the ability to text video and documents over the private network and that the company will also be releasing an API in the near future.

We recently wrote about the fast growing number of company profiles on professional social network LinkedIn (the network has over one million to be exact). Launched in April, the company profile gives organizations a centralized profile that has the look and feel of a member profile. LinkedIn also added the ability to “follow” companies, much like you would on Facebook or Twitter. In fact, 30 million LinkedIn users are following over 1 million company profiles Today, LinkedIn is expanding the use of company profiles; creating additional ways companies can interact with members on the platform.

Now profiles are getting more social. Administrators can publish blog posts, job opportunities, company news and incorporate Twitter feeds into a company profile. Of course, visitors will be able to see other LinkedIn members they know that work at company X.

And LinkedIn is doing way more than just allowing companies t post information. Data, such as composition a company’s employee base (i.e. a company could have a higher percentage of engineers compared to sales & marketing) , is being included as well. In the “University Attended ” tab, users can see which colleges most employees at company x graduated from, and more.

Companies will also be able to create and manage a “Careers Tab ” on their pages, giving visitors and potential job seekers insight into company’s hiring practices, hear employees @ the company talk about their experience and learn more about the profiles of other employees at the company – in terms of composition of the workforce, by department, feeder schools to the company, average tenure of employees at the company and more. And eople who are interested in jobs at company x can also see what current employees did before working at the company.

Some companies have already turned the new features on for some companies. For example, Google’s profile includes much of this Data. We used it to track how many Googlers are currently heading to Facebook.

This expansion seems to be part of LinkedIn’s strategy to not only make the network a more social place but to also provide meaningful data to users about the company. Providing ways to mash-up and use 75 million-plus members’ data is undoubtedly something that we are going to see more of from LinkedIn. In the end, it’s about democratizing the massive amount of career data on the network and providing more ways that users can consume this information in a useful way.

Forrester Research claims adoption of social networking continues to rise across the globe, while other forms of social interactions, such as content creation, experienced no substantial growth in the past twelve months.

Based on data from more than 275,000 consumers in Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America, the company has released a report dubbed "A Global Update Of Social Technographics".

You can buy the whole report for $499 here should you fancy, but here’s the gist:

The number of people who joined social networks increased by 11 percent in Europe, 18 percent in metropolitan China, and 11 percent in Australia. By comparison, North America saw slightly less growth, with only an 8 percent increase.

But, Forrester says, between 2009 and 2010 not a single market exhibited growth in the number of people who create social content.

More and more lurkers using social networking services around the world, in other words.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

(Photo via Flickr user Robert S. Donovan, with permission)

Amazon.com today introduced the beta version of "Kindle for the Web", which enables people to read and share digital book samples in their browsers without the need to install or download anything.

The company says it aims to lure bloggers and website publishers who participate in the Amazon Associates Program to embed samples of Kindle books on their websites (here’s how).

It seems like a win: these website owners will earn referral fees from Amazon when customers complete book purchases using the links on their websites.

Website visitors can simply click the "Read first chapter FREE" button on a book product page on Amazon or on other websites, and the first chapter will open within the web page.

Customers can change the font size and line spacing, adjust the background color, and share their favorite books with friends and family via Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail. There’s also a way to embed free chapters on your own site if you fancy.

To see examples of Kindle for the Web on authors' websites, go to the blog of author Karen McQuestion and the free sample of her bestselling Kindle book "A Scattered Life," or the website of author John Miller and the free sample of his book "The First Assassin."

Pretty neat if you ask me – what do you think?

AOL is buying video syndication network 5min Media, reports AllThingsD. According to Israeli news outlet YNews, this is indeed a done deal, and the price is between $50 and $65 million.

It isn’t exactly what you’d call a stellar exit for 5min’s investors, who pumped just south of $13 million into the company, but not a terrible one either.

The acquisition will reportedly be announced Tuesday morning.

Update: the official confirmation has arrived (press release below):

Launched back in 2007, the site was initially a portal for how-to videos, but eventually grew into a video syndication giant. That means 5min aggregates tens of thousands of instructional, knowledge and lifestyle videos across a wide variety of categories and dynamically distributes them to partner websites such as Answers.com and DailyMotion.

Video content originates from small indie producers to big-name brands and media companies, and the topic ranges from recipes, yoga and fitness routines, tech tutorials, DIY projects for home and garden and health videos on specific conditions to beauty and fashion tips.

5min claims its Video Syndication Platform currently reaches over 160 million uniques per month.

The company boasts proprietary semantic technology dubbed VideoSeed powering its Syndication offering and helping bring its “Video Everywhere vision” to life across virtually any site. VideoSeed contextually matches the most relevant videos in its library with a Syndication Partner site's existing text content.

You can see how this fits into AOL’s nichebuster content strategy, which is unsurprisingly taking some serious time and effort to translate into results that please its shareholders.

In January 2010, AOL moved to acquire StudioNow for $36.5 million in a bid to integrate a solid video creation platform into its content management system Seed.com.

AOL at the time said it would harness StudioNow's technology platform and network of more than 3,000 creatives to develop and produce professional videos at the request of AOL editors.

Update: official press release:

AOL Acquires 5min Media, Web's Largest Video Content Syndication Platform

Combination of 5min Media and AOL's Video Capabilities Creates Powerful End-to-End Offering

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–AOL Inc. [NYSE: AOL] today announced it has acquired 5min Media, the Web’s largest video syndication platform.* The acquisition allows AOL to significantly expand its consumer offering of contextually relevant, high-quality video across its sites, increasing the AOL Network's appeal to advertisers and is expected to further enhance the distribution and monetization of AOL-produced original video content throughout the Web.** Deal terms were not disclosed.

"Our acquisition of 5min Media is the latest in a number of steps we have taken this year to better position AOL to capture the growing video opportunity on the Web"
"Our acquisition of 5min Media is the latest in a number of steps we have taken this year to better position AOL to capture the growing video opportunity on the Web," said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AOL. "AOL is building a video ecosystem for the next decade. 5min Media is the perfect complement to our powerful video capabilities — it provides a missing piece in the AOL value chain that completes our end-to-end video offering from content creation through syndication and distribution to the consumer experience and monetization."

"AOL and 5min Media share the same excitement about the direction our industry is taking, and our complementary video capabilities make us a compelling fit and an attractive combination for content creators and publishers," said Ran Harnevo, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, 5min Media. "We've seen rapid and successful growth as an independent organization and becoming part of AOL is a natural next step. We're confident that AOL's organizational horsepower, combined with the vast library, audience and syndication capabilities 5min Media offers, present compelling opportunities for AOL as well as the content creators we work with and the publishers we serve."

Leading Video Syndication Network and Library to Enhance AOL's Properties

5min Media is the world's leading video syndication network with a library of more than 200,000 categorized, tagged and rated videos from more than 1,000 of the world’s largest media companies and professional independent video producers. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in New York City with offices in Tel Aviv, 5min Media has been named the largest U.S. independent video property by comScore, with more than 20 million unique viewers and more than 130 million video streams (including ad and content videos) in the U.S. in August 2010. 5min Media's growing network of 800 partner sites allows content creators to reach this audience of targeted viewers across 21 different verticals, including six verticals – Home, Food, Beauty / Fashion, Health, Travel and Pets – that lead their categories, according to comScore Video Metrix, August 2010. VideoSeed, 5min Media's proprietary semantic technology, contextually matches the most relevant videos with a partner site's text content to enhance the consumer experience and increase monetization rates.

AOL has already begun to integrate 5min Media's video content on its sites through a commercial agreement executed prior to the acquisition. "With 5min Media we'll be able to add more video inventory to our pages. Importantly, we'll also be able to identify video content holes among our sites, tap our StudioNow capabilities to fill those needs and create a truly 'demand informed' video library," Armstrong said.

Combination Completes Next Step in AOL's Value Chain

With the addition of 5min Media, AOL will significantly increase its consumer offering in video programming and connect consumers with high-quality video. In January, AOL acquired StudioNow, the premier online platform for quality video content creation and distribution. With StudioNow, AOL has formed a fully functional platform to produce high-quality video content in a rapid, cost-effective and scalable way for both AOL as well as third-party publishers. In addition, AOL is forging exciting new partnerships to provide relevant content to specific audiences, including partnering with: The Ellen DeGeneres Show; Marlo Thomas; The Jonas Group and MGX Lab to found Cambio (www.cambio.com); and A Squared Entertainment LLC to create children's content featuring Warren Buffett, Gisele Bündchen, Martha Stewart and the late Carl Sagan.

*comScore Media Metrix data, August 2010

**According to eMarketer, online video advertising spend is expected to grow from $1 billion in 2009 to more than $4 billion by 2014, making it the fastest growing format in online advertising. At the same time, the Cisco Visual Networking Index predicts that video will account for more than 60 percent of all consumer Internet traffic in 2013.

According to multiple sources familiar with the matter, Google has just bought Seattle-based mobile planning startup Plannr, which if you remember our coverage launched about two months ago as an Outlook for hipsters. Plannr, which targets groups of friends less than ten people, is attempting to tie together geolocation, email, SMS and phone calls in order to create an uber-scheduling tool.

Basically a social calendar which allows you to group message your friends with plans, Plannr fits in with Google’s recent mobile and social acquiring spree (neatly tying the two together in fact), though I suspect this the two person startup is more a Google Me-related talent acquisition than anything else. In fact we actually commented on the startup’s overlap with Google calendar in our original post.

Plannr founders and former Microsoft employees Ben Eidelson and Jason Prado denied rumors of the acquisition to me over the weekend but refused to comment on whether or not they were in talks with the search behemoth. Google remains tight lipped as well.

Plannr is bootstrapped which means that whatever the undisclosed purchase price was, Eidelson and Prado must be somewhere celebrating hard, which is probably why they haven’t responded to my most recent email. Something tells me however that I’ll be hearing from them soon.

Mobile ad network Millennial Media is releasing its monthly mobile mix report today. According to Nielsen, Millennial’s ads reach 63 million of a total of 77 million mobile web users in the U.S., or 81% of the U.S. mobile web. In August, Android smartphone impression share increased 7% month-over-month, and now makes up 26% of the Millennial network. Apple, of course, took the top spot, with 48% of impressions on Millennial’s network, up 7% since July.

In terms of ad requests, Android ad requests increased 39% month-over-month and are up 996% since January. That being said, the iPhone remained the top mobile phone on the Millennial network (by a significant margin), and iPad requests increased by 76% month-over-month. RIM ad requests increased 16% month-over-month.

In terms of devices, Motorola jumped ahead of RIM to become the third largest device manufacturer on Millennial’s network for the first time, thanks largely to the popularity of the Motorola Droid device, which had a 9% impression share. In fact, Android devices represented six of the Top 20 Mobile Phones on the network. Smartphones accounted for 13 of the Top 20 Mobile phones and represented over 54% impression share in August.

Interestingly, Millennial featured the BlackBerry platform this month in its report. Apparently, RIM is shopping around for a mobile ad network, and is eying Millennial. Could this be a coincidence? Millennial says that they highlighted the BlackBerry platform because of BlackBerry DEVCON, but who knows.

For example, Millennial says 45% of BlackBerry users are Women, while there were 11 Million BlackBerry devices sold last quarter (115 million were sold globally).

As one of the largest mobile ad networks in the space, Millennial has been growing like gangbusters. Millennial is now planning to IPO next year, CEO Paul Paulieri told us last month. As competition heats up in the mobile advertising space, with iAd and Google’s AdMob all vying for a pice of a $1 billion market, it should be interesting to see how things play out in the space.

Masabi, which develops mobile ticketing technology for the transport sector, has secured $2 million from London-based m8 Capital, the majority-owned affiliate of AGC Equity Partners that targets mobile startups and technology. In June, m8 invested $800k in the location-based startup Rummble. Masabi says the new funding will be used to support "commercial deployments" of the company's mobile ticketing systems with UK rail companies and for international expansion.

There’s a good chance you’ve seen prepaid credit cards on the shelves at 7-11, Walmart, CVS, Rite Aid, Radio Shack or a variety of other retail outlets. Those cards are usually issued by Green Dot, a Los Angeles based startup that went public earlier this year and is worth over $2 billion.

They allow people who normally can’t get credit cards – like teens and those with poor credit – a way to pay for things like the rest of us do, with a Visa or Mastercard. And people love them. The company made $64 million in profit in 2009 on sales of nearly $235 million. The company boasts over ten million customers.

That isn’t what makes Green Dot special though. You have to hear the story of the ten year old company from founder and CEO Steve Streit and early investor/board member Michael Moritz from Sequoia Capital.

There were ups and downs, many of them, over the years. And we’ll have both Streit and Moritz on stage this morning at TechCrunch Disrupt to talk about the good times, the bad times and, more recently, the exceptional times.

A few notes about the company taken from an investor presentation during the IPO process:

• Green Dot began its life ten years ago at a small table in the bedroom of my home in Pasadena, California. The idea was to provide MasterCard and Visa debit cards to people who otherwise couldn't get a card from a traditional bank.
• Our first big innovation was creating a way for consumers to buy and fund a bank debit card right off the rack at a neighborhood store. The first card we ever sold was a so called "prepaid" MasterCard at a Rite Aid store in Loudoun County, Virginia.
• Now ten years later, Green Dot products are sold at roughly 50,000 retail stores coast to coast with a Green Dot location within a short walk of just about everyone.
• These locations along with our Green Dot website enabled us to acquire over 5 million new accounts and process over $7 billion in deposits to those accounts over the past 12 months.
• Our second big innovation was in 2004 when we created the first "cash reload network" where any prepaid card issuer- including our competitors- could have their customers go to a Green Dot retailer to load money onto their prepaid debit card.
• Today, over 100 prepaid card programs rely on our "Green Dot Network" for reloading cash- with over 25 million reload transactions sold over the last 12 months.
• Our third innovation, developed along the way to serve our expanding business, is our Green Planet technology platform that today serves as the "operating system" for how regulated bank issued debit cards are purchased, activated and reloaded at retail stores.

This is one of the companies that Mortiz is most proud of. He’s been with them since the early days and put $10 million or so into the company. Total investments from others accounted for another $8.5 million, and Sequoia invested additional cash to buy out some of those early investors.

By the time Green Dot began the IPO process Sequoia Capital owned over 30% of the company. It netted up to 35.2% at the closing of the IPO. Sequoia has never sold a single share in Green Dot, before or after the IPO.

So what’s that investment worth now? Roughly 35% of $2.1 billion in highly liquid public company common stock. By my count that’s about $700,000,000 in gain from a $10 million investment (plus another $10 or so put in to buy out other shareholders over time.

That’s a 35x on $20 million investment. That is what the big boys in Silicon Valley call a big fucking home run deal.

You may be familiar with other Moritz/Sequoia deals recently – Flip selling to Cisco for $590 million or so. And Zappos being acquired by Amazon for nearly $1 billion.

Those deals, which most VCs would kill for, don’t get Moritz out of bed in the morning. He expects every single company he works with to go for the big score – an IPO and a life an an independent public company. Zappos and Flip didn’t make it over the hump. Green Dot, by God, did.

Laws of awesomeness ensure that founders with the right level of intelligence, risk tolerance and patience can stay the course and get over the IPO hump. These are the companies that will forge the future of Silicon Valley and help spawn countless new startups down the road. We celebrate Green Dot and we celebrate Sequoia Capital for taking an idea and running with it, patiently, until they became a $2 billion company.

We, too, were too busy breaking news about Google’s most recent $15 million acquisition of meto.com, or whatever, to even notice what Green Dot was doing down there in the glitzier part of our state. Shame on us – this company is providing a low cost solution for people unable to get credit cards to be able to participate more easily in our economy. It’s a good thing.

Tune in around 9:30 am later today (Tuesday) to watch me interview Mike and Steve at TechCrunch Disrupt. You can watch the live stream here. It will be a rare treat to hear Moritz himself, a Silicon Valley legend, talk about how he helps companies through good times and bad, not selling a single share until well past the IPO.

To put it another way, getting the chance to listen to Moritz talk about how he does what he does is like being able to watch Michael Jordan play baskedball with you, one on one. You’ll want to be there as he dunks the ball hard a few feet over your head.

The App Store review office at 1 Infinite Loop has officially frozen over: we’ve gotten word that the official Google Voice application is on its way to the iPhone in the next few weeks. In fact, we’ve heard from a source close to Google that it’s already been approved — Google just needs to revamp the application to work with the iPhone 4 and iOS’s multitasking capabilities. If you’re a Google Voice user and you’re on an iPhone, this is great news.

It’s been a long, long road to get here. Last July, we broke the news that Apple had blocked the official Google Voice application, which eventually sparked an FCC inquiry into the matter. Apple claimed that the application “duplicated existing functionality”, which didn’t do much to convince anyone as it subsequently accepted similar apps. Nothing happened for well over a year, and the odds of Google Voice ever making its way to the iPhone, at least as a native application, seemed bleak.

Everything changed on September 9, when Apple published a set of guidelines telling developers which applications would not be allowed into the App Store — and none of the rules seemed to apply to Google Voice. Rumors started swirling that third-party Google Voice apps might soon make their way to the App Store, and sure enough, a handful of applications have since been approved.

But the existing applications, nice as they may be, are all provided by third parties. We haven’t gotten the chance to use the official Google application, but it’s possible that it will include functionality that the others don’t. Namely, push notifications for inbound SMS and voicemail messages (Google doesn’t provide an API for these, so third parties would have to route these messages through their own servers to offer push notifications).

Reached for comment about the upcoming iPhone application, Google offered this non-answer of a statement:

“We currently offer Google Voice mobile apps for Blackberry and Android, and we offer an HTML5 web app for the iPhone. We have nothing further to announce at this time.”

While the main focus was center stage on Monday for day one of TechCrunch Disrupt, there was plenty of action backstage— or rather just a few yards to the right to the stage, where our ad-hoc TechCrunch TV studio is located.

Throughout the day, we ran follow-up interviews with a string of Disrupt notables, like KPCB’s John Doerr and Bing Gordon, Founders Fund’s Peter Thiel, Greylock’s Reid Hoffman, David Sze, GE’s CMO Beth Comstock and Intuit’s Scott Cook. If you didn’t catch the action on our live feed, they are all available on demand after the jump. A plethora of videos ahead.

Interviews

John Doerr and Bing Gordon of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers on Zynga’s potential, the challenge of sustaining growth and disruptive trends in gaming.

Chris Dixon, Co-Founder of Hunch & Chris Sacca, Founder of Lowercase Capital on putting Angelgate to bed, the trends their following and Sacca’s advertising analytics play.

David Sze and Reid Hoffman of Greylock on the firm’s new micro-VC fund, how Sze lured Hoffman and how Hoffman screens entreprenuers.

Peter Thiel, Managing Partner of the Founders Fund on why betting on China is wrong and his new initiative to fund young entrepreneurs.

Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit on mobile payments and managing innovation.

Beth Comstock, CMO of GE on surfacing innovation in a company like GE and why the company is creating solutions for local markets.

Babur Habib and Osman Rashid, Founders of Kno, discuss their latest announcement with Devin Coldewey.

Shervin Pishevar, Founder SGN and Sarah Lacy.

Dan Rosensweig, Founder of Chegg on the rise of e-books, the latest funding round and the challenge of anticipating his capital needs.

To come. Will update when video becomes available on demand.

Sarah Lacy & Paul Carr
To come. Will update when video becomes available on demand.

Startup Alley

Mike Butcher’s highlights.

Disrupt Battlefield: Reviews

Session 1 Break: Jason Kincaid & Leena Rao

Session 2 Break: Devin Coldewey, Alexia Tsotsis & Cyan Banister (founder, Zivity)
To come. Will update when video becomes available on demand.

The battlefield companies have finished their demonstrations, and video of the first session is processed and ready to watch. You can just hit play and watch the whole thing from start to finish, or you can refresh your memory with the summaries and links below, then jump directly to any presentation that piques your interest.

My opinions don’t count, by the way. These were just my personal thoughts on their products and presentations. Hit the links for more in-depth descriptions of the companies as well as rough transcriptions of the Q&A portions.

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Qwiki

This was a really great way to kick off the battlefield. Whether you think it has merit or not, it was a fun presentation. Qwiki makes looking things up interactive and beautiful, though not strictly speaking efficient. My advice: find a way around the computerized voice. Get some people mining archives of factual and literary references to the item, spoken by real people. Quotes from local people and mayors from cities, interviews and news coverage for other media. It’ll be like algorithmic NPR. Jump to Quiki at 5:00.

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Storify

This social media quoting tool looks very convenient to use, and that’s what scares me. When you make these “frankenstories,” as one judge so aptly called them, so easy to make, I feel you really encourage the dangerously self-amplifying tendencies of the web even further. While it makes original configurations of non-original material easy, it also makes avoiding any real expression easy. Jump to Storify at 16:00.

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Gunzoo

It’s… Cool Iris for videos. I suppose it was inevitable, since the only things that separate these two ideas are really processing power and bandwidth. Not even remotely disruptive, but I get the feeling it’s going to be in demand by companies craving flashy presentations or websites. And certainly these guys have some coding chops, so I doubt they’ll go hungry. Jump to Gunzoo at 28:30.

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Datasift

Deep social web analytics is a competitive field, and I don’t claim enough familiarity with it to do this startup justice. But they seem to have a powerful and useful platform, and their honesty in not trying to launch a straw product just to demonstrate their service (as we often see) is refreshing. It seems to work best with huge amounts of data, though; noise may prevail with the average user’s inputs. Jump to Datasift at 38:30.

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We’ll try to get the rest of the sessions up as soon as the streams are ready. Thanks for watching.

Okay, we know now that Amazon is on the verge of releasing an Android-based app store. But last week, before we knew that, we got an interesting tip that such a move was coming soon — this week, actually. And that tip came with a bonus attached — the tipster also heard that Amazon was going to be releasing an iPad competitor alongside the store.

Now, unlike the app store, we don’t have any further information to verify this tablet. But again, this tipster nailed the app store part of this news — and knew a couple other tidbits that turned out to be true. So it certainly seems possible that they’re right again.

There have been plenty of rumors that Amazon is hard at work on hardware beyond its Kindle device. But the Kindle runs Amazon’s own software — presumably this new tablet would run Android (for the app store to work). Others have speculated about this possibility in the past. No word on what this would mean for the up and coming Kindle apps.

We’re digging for more information about this. Stay tuned.

[photo: flickr/torley]

If you’ve had a guitar sitting in your closet collecting dust, now may be the perfect time to pick it up again and start learning some new tunes: Miso Music, an upcoming iPad application from Miso Media, looks like one of the niftiest guitar training applications I’ve seen. And it just won the People’s Choice Award at TechCrunch Disrupt, after receiving the most votes from conference attendees browsing the Disrupt Startup Alley.

The real meat of the application lies in its learning mode. First, you choose a song; Miso has licensed music from Sony/ATV, which gives them rights to include music from The Beatles, Justin Bieber, Carrie Underwood, and more. After picking a song, like the Beatles’ Black Bird, you’ll see a series of colorful dots scroll across the screen representing each note you’re supposed to play (this is called tablature, or tab for short, which is a simplified form of music notation often used for guitars). Tabs aren’t anything new. But Miso will actually listen to what you’re playing.

Every time you pluck a string, Miso will use its polyphonic note detection to hear what you’ve played — play the right note and the tab appearing on the screen will scroll a bit, which means you can keep playing continuously without having to turn the page. It’s quite slick. And while I’m sure there are other applications available for the PC with similar note detection, the fact that Miso is on the iPad makes it much more convenient (and the app looks very nice to boot).

The application also includes an array of virtual instruments, the sounds of which have been licensed from Fender guitars. That’s cool, but there are plenty of virtual instruments already available for the iPad — the learning mode is definitely the draw here.

Miso Music isn’t available just yet — you’ll have to wait two weeks or so until you’ll be able to buy it in the App Store — but once it goes live it will be free for a basic version. A pro application will be available for $2.99, which includes more virtual instruments. And songs will be sold as in-app purchases ranging from 99 cents to $2.99, with packs of songs available at a discount.

Q&A: Chi-Lua Chien, Keith Rabois, Sandya Venkatachalam and Lior Zorea weigh in on Miso Music:

CC: I’ll definitely use it.

SV: How did you figure out a good way to teach people how to learn the guitar.

MM: My dad was a guitar and we both come from a musical background. There are a lot of features included that help users learn the skill.

LZ: You talked about subscription revenue for the software; are there other revenue streams?

MM: You can purchase other instruments on the store and added features. We also have a strobe tuner you can purchase.

KR: How do you plan to market this?

MM: Cross-promotion.

CC: Is there a way to bring in social features? You might want to consider an achievement system.

MM: That’s something we’ve talked about as well.

Within businesses, employees can share information over email, and through collaboration platforms like Yammer, Salesforce’s Chatter and others. But Q&A platforms like Quora have recently taken off as a centralized knowledge repository for a vast number of topics that is easily searchable. Today at TechCrunch Disrupt, Opzi is launching a Q&A platform designed specially for businesses.

Opzi, which was incubated at Y Combinator, is essentially a white-label Q&A site that any organization can use internally to store questions and answers about their business processes. The site was founded by 25-year old Euwyn Poon, who graduated from Cornell University at the age of 18 and then received a J.D. from Cornell Law School in 2007. Poon worked as an associate in a law firm after school and found that it was difficult to sort through knowledge and instructions from his fellow associates online. Poon says that a Q&A-like site for business information within a company could help fill this gap and increase efficiency within an organization.

Similar to Yammer, users sign in with their corporate email address and can then search for information by keyword. You can also ask questions, and answer directly from the platform. There are a variety of uses cases for the platform. For example, an engineering firm could use the platform as a way to sort through commands. And because most companies are tied to email as a main communication platforms, questions and answers can be distributed and answered by email as well.

You can also post questions anonymously, and follow questions to receive updates to certain queries. Unlike a wiki, all the content on the platform is organized around the questions. Opzi is also working on ways to route questions to certain users if they could be experts in answering the question.

Opzi charges for the platform via a per seat licensing model. Even in stealth, Poon has already raised $1 million in funding from an impressive roster of angels, including SV Angel, First Round Capital, Naval Ravikant, Jeff Clavier's SoftTech VC, Hadi Partovi, Ali Partovi, Paul Buchheit, Fritz Lanman and Raymond Tonsing.

Q&A: Chi-Hua Chien, Keith Rabois, Sandya Venkatachalam and Lior Zorea weigh in on Opzi:

KR: WHat’s the value proposition for the first user at the company?

EP: It can work for only two users as a communication platform or a reference point. We want to build something that feels like a consumer software but is for the enterprise.

CC: One of the things that impresses me about Quora is the density of the network. Here it will be smaller groups-need a lot of participation?

EP: We’re not trying to compete with Quora; were just trying to add a centralized knowledge base within businesses. We are looking at organic growth but open to whatever makes sense.

SV: Our approach is to build a layer on top of a company. This a light and easy way to add that layer. And it can integrate with other silos of information.

KR: What about Yammer?

EP: Yammer seems to be trying to build a social network for the enterprise. This is more of a knowledge base.

SV: This would compete for time spent on email, Yammer and other communication platforms.

LZ: How do you get the word out?

EP: Here, today.

CC: I think the biggest issue is that some companies want to have their classified information on servers.

The act of DNA sequencing results in massive amounts of data around the human genome. Currently, this data is housed in standalone super computers, which doesn’t allow for collaboration between scientists. SeqCentral is launching at TechCrunch Disrupt today as a way for human genome scientists to match their data with publicly available data sets.

SeqCentral offers highly-scalable genetic sequence alignment in the cloud. The service allows you to upload your sequencing data in the clouds, and then compare your data with other scientists genome sequencing on the platform.

SeqCentral will allow scientists to compare their data to others to see if their sequencing is new or if it is “known.” The startup will bring in public data from universities, research organizations, and companies and allow you compare your sequencing to this existing data.

And SeqCentral, which costs $99 per year for scientists, wants to help you do more than just be able to find additional data, but also aims to connect members of the genomics community, encouraging collaboration around sequencing.

Q&A: Chi-Hua Chien, Keith Rabois, Sandya Venkatachalam and Lior Zorea weigh in on SeqCentral:

LZ: What’s the market for this?

SC: There’s a big market of individual scientists who will use this. Market is around 1 million individual scientists.

SV: What’s the value proposition for the scientists?

SC: Scientists will be able to do analysis more easily. The amount of time it will take to produce results will be significantly less.

CC: I think the company with the most data will win. There are a bunch of players in this space.

SC: There are few other players, but we believe we’ve simplified it.

We’ve written about Namesake, a stealthy startup founded by former MySpace execs Dan Gould and Brian Norgard, that aims to match opportunities with people in your network. Today, Namesake is launching its professional community at TechCrunch Disrupt.

Namesake, which aims to create a better way to match and route opportunities that come across your desk everyday, is part LinkedIn, part Twitter, and part Facebook. You essentially create a network on the platform by importing your Twitter and Facebook contacts (the sites doesn’t allow integration with LinkedIn contacts yet). You can then post jobs, recommend people for opportunities, connect people with each other and more.

Gould says that traditional search doesn’t work for professional match making opportunities, which is why Namesake can fill a gap in the market. You can get real-time opportunities routed to you from people you trust on the network, recommend others for jobs, endorse people as experts in certain subjects, post jobs and more. You can send messages to specific people in your network or route an opportunity outside your network. And you can simply post and update on what your working on professionally, similar to the way you would post this on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

Gould and Norgard sold their company Newroo to MySpace in 2006 and also founded Ad.ly, an in-stream advertising network for Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

Q&A: Chi-Hua Chien, Keith Rabois, Sandya Venkatachalam and Lior Zorea weigh in on NameSake:

CC: How do you compete with LinkedIn?

DG: We are trying to blend the value that LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter provides in one platform.

SV: How do you make money?

DG: Performance matching (people only pay if the match was consummated on NameSake); premium subscriptions and Premium advertising will be key. We can offer highly targeted advertising.

SV: But I’m not sure I would want people to sell my private information for ad keywords.

KR: Who is this optimized for?

BN: This is built for someone who is building out their community.

LZ: Why would I come to Namesake if LinkedIn solves this problem?

BN: We are wrapping structure around your professional and social network, to route opportunities to Twitter, Facebook and more.

DG: The Algorithm is a custom routing algorithm.

CC: Job Search might be a hard place to start as opposed to perhaps expertise.

LZ: Perhaps you could work with enterprise CRMs.

KR: What’s your benchmark for a vibrant community?

BN: I think it’s about engagement; whether it be on other networks.

It’s no secret that performance can play a significant factor in a website’s success — keep your users waiting, and they’ll get impatient and head somewhere else. There are solutions available to help keep things speedy, like CDNs, but most smaller websites don’t use them. TechCrunch Disrupt finalist CloudFlare wants to bring these speedy load times to the masses, and it’s offering some other benefits too, including robust security protection against online threats.  CEO Matthew Prince says that, in short, CloudFlare takes your average web admin and terms them into a full-fledged Ops team.

Prince says that speed issues can have a big impact on your site — one study showed that for every 100 milliseconds of time spent loading, you lose up to 2% of your visitors. He says CloudFlare offers an average of a 30% increase in speed and can “stop virtually all web spam attacks”. And he says that you can integrate it into your site in around five minutes. Oh, and it’s free, at least for its basic service.

Prince says that CloudFlare operates on the network level, so it supports any platform. Setup involves changing your DNS to route to CloudFlare’s servers. After setting up CloudFlare on your site, you can head to a control panel that shows how many data requests have been served to users, and how much bandwidth CloudFlare has saved for you. It also makes it easy to drop in Google Analytics

CloudFlare will also be offering a ‘Pro’ plan, with added features like SSL, better page optimization, and object pre-fetching to further enhance speed gains. The company has set up five data centers across three continents. It’s been in private beta until now, and has been tested on 1,000 websites that have served 6 million unique visitors.

Q&A: Chi-Hua Chien, Keith Rabois, Sandya Venkatachalam and Lior Zorea weigh in on CloudFlare:

SV: It’s a great idea, and you articulated the value proposition well. How do you make money?

MP: We have a pro plan where users are charged for usage.

CC: Seems like a great value proposition.

MP: We think we’re on to something really big. At South By Southwest, they used CloudFlare. We think individual sign ups will help drive traffic but the real opportunity could be with hosting companies.

KR: How does the technology work?

MP: We use a technology from Cisco called AnyCast.

LZ: What’s the difference between the free and paid service?

MP: The pro service has a more advanced security, with realtime lookups.