Twitter CEO Ev Williams posted a blog entry Thursday with an update on the microblogging service’s usage, which continues to grow sharply. More interesting than the numbers, though, was the message written between the lines: Twitter now has 145 million monthly users, and for the marketers who want to reach them, Twitter is the only way to go. The numbers don’t lie. Third-party developers, who played a large role in Twitter’s early growth and buzz, just don’t matter
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Twitter: 300,000 apps, but none of them matter
Nissan is taking orders today for the Leaf , the first mass-produced, all-electric vehicle, but it’s only offering up 200 cars for December delivery. Those Leafs will go to five states in the initial rollout market – California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Tennessee — which amounts to just few orders per dealer. Fleet sales manager Ray Ishak of the CampbellNelson dealership in Seattle (pictured below), who gave VentureBeat the initial rollout numbers, said his dealership has gotten six orders so far today. Customers who plunked down the $99 reservation fee would have gotten an email today if they were chosen to place an order, which would allow them to negotiate a price with the dealer and pick the color and trim
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Nissan limits its initial Leaf rollout to 200 cars in five states
(Editor’s note: Scott Edward Walker is the founder and CEO of Walker Corporate Law Group, PLLC, a law firm specializing in the representation of entrepreneurs. He submitted this column to VentureBeat.) A reader asks : I’m the founder of a mobile apps startup, and we’re starting to get some incredible traction. I’ve been bootstrapping the venture for the last year, but I’d really like to raise about $2 million to scale this thing. If a VC invests $2 million, what percentage of the company will he own? Answer: It depends upon the value of your company prior to the investment (commonly referred to as the “pre-money valuation” or “pre”). The VC’s percentage ownership is calculated by dividing the amount of its investment by the post-money valuation of the company (which is equal to the pre plus the amount of the investment). For example, if the pre were $4 million, the VC would get one-third ($2,000,000 divided by $6,000,000); on the other hand, if the pre were $1 million, the VC would get two-thirds ($2,000,000 divided by $3,000,000). The real issue then is — how do you determine the value of your company prior to the investment? Let’s look at that
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Here’s the best way to value your startup
Section: Communications , Cellular Providers , Smartphones , Mobile Every phone is going to go away at some point, however given two of these three are fairly new and the third has only been available for a few months this seems ahead of schedule. That said, the dates are still far off into the future, but it looks like the end of life dates have been set for three of the top Verizon branded Android smartphones. According to a recently leaked document, the Droid X, Droid 2 and Droid Incredible will be killed off on March 31, 2011
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Leaked document already offering Droid X, Droid 2 & Droid Incredible end-of-life dates
In an effort to increase the security of its extensions and themes galleries, Google announced today that it will be implementing some changes. It will charge developers a one-time $5 fee to list their extension and themes, and it’s also introducing a new domain verification system. The fee “is intended to create better safeguards against fraudulent extensions in the gallery and limit the activity of malicious developer accounts” Chrome product manager Gregor Hochmuth wrote
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Google to charge devs $5 to list Chrome extensions, themes, apps — adds domain verification for security
(Editor’s note: Scott Edward Walker is the founder and CEO of Walker Corporate Law Group, PLLC, a law firm specializing in the representation of entrepreneurs. He submitted this column to VentureBeat.) A reader asks :: I’m the co-founder and CEO of an e-commerce startup, and I’ve been meeting with different VC firms regarding an initial round of funding. I’ve started doing some reading on term sheets and the issues we will need to address and I’m a little confused with some of the VC terminology. Could you please explain to me what a liquidation preference is and how we should negotiate it? Answer: Welcome to the world of venture capital. A liquidation preference is one of the essential components of preferred stock and is generally considered to be the second most important deal term in a VC investment (the first being the company’s valuation prior to the investment, commonly referred to as the “pre-money valuation” or “pre”). Let’s start with the basics: A VC investor will be issued shares of preferred stock (the same shares issued to you and your co-founder(s)), not common stock. Preferred stock, as the name suggests, is preferable because it grants certain key rights to the holders – making it far more valuable than common stock. One of those rights is a liquidation preference
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Beware the trappings of liquidation preference
Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days: Oracle sues Google over Android — Oracle announced this week that it has filed suit against Google for alleged patent and copyright infringement. The business software giant, headed by Larry Ellison, said that the suit concerns intellectual property related to the Java programming language. HP’s PR nightmare spreads across the Internet with nude photos of Jodie Fisher — The PR nightmare that Hewlett-Packard sought to avoid showed no signs of petering out as Playboy posted nude photos of Jodie Fisher, the woman who brought down HP chief executive Mark Hurd. Console game sales shrink slightly in July, but StarCraft II makes PC game sales soar — Overall U.S
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Week in review: Oracles sues Google, Irrational Games unveils new BioShock
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Many houses, stores, and factories across the U.S. now have arrays of photovoltaic solar cells mounted on their roofs. These days, that’s hardly news. But Ford’s announcement that it will install half a megawatt of power-generating solar panels at its Wayne, Michigan, assembly plant has a new angle: The plant will also store some of that solar energy in lithium-ion batteries, letting Ford draw on it even after dark. Pairing lithium-ion storage batteries–which use large arrays of the same lithium-ion cells that power future plug-in hybrid and electric cars–is seen by utilities as a way to give solar energy more flexibility, making it useful beyond sunny daytime hours. 100 homes or 38 Tesla packs It’s not a huge system: 2 megawatt-hours of storage could power 100 average homes in the state for a year.
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Solar array, lithium cells to power part of Ford Focus plant
One of the most important aspects of electric-car ownership might not be how they drive, or how far you’ll go on a charge, but how you’ll actually charge it in the first place. That’s why we asked “ What comes first, the car or the charger? “, with many potential EV owners waiting for a public charging network to appear so they can be sure they’ll have somewhere to recharge. Yesterday we dialed in to a phone conference hosted by the Electric Drive Transportation Association , where representatives from groups including ChargePoint America, ECOtality, the Eaton Corporation and General Motors offered their views on the future of recharging for both the public and businesses alike. So how will you be charging your own EV?
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Charging your electric car at home: What you need to know
Hewlett-Packard ’s board was sued today over the departure of Mark Hurd. A Connecticut-based law firm filed a shareholder suit in Santa Clara County Superior Court against HP’s board, saying the directors violated their duty to shareholders in the investigation of Hurd. The suit alleges that the HP board violated corporate governance guidelines by failing to inform shareholders of the investigation and says that Hurd’s $35 million golden parachute is too high. It’s just one more expected headache from the fallout of HP’s latest soap opera. Hurd resigned on Friday after the board investigated a report of sexual harassment by Jodie Fisher, a former actress and a marketing contractor for HP’s CEO Summit events. The board said it could not substantiate the harassment charge, but it found that Hurd failed to disclose his close personal relationship with Fisher and filed incorrect expense reports. After the announcement, HP’s stock took a dive, wiping out $10 billion in shareholder value
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HP board hit with its first shareholder lawsuit over Hurd’s ouster
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