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Salesforce users are starting to understand that Chatter, the messaging and transactions system for the entire Force.com platform, is not a chat tool. Rather, it's a communications stream that substitutes for most internal email. Why isn't it a chat tool, you ask?  The only plausible answer - that Salesforce simply hasn't plugged in the chat capability yet - becomes moot next month.

Piece-by-piece, but by no means slowly, Salesforce has been assembling an integrated arsenal of cloud-based weapons aimed squarely at Microsoft's stronghold on enterprise applications, particularly with respect to communication. We've talked about its move to reduce workers' reliance on Outlook, and email in general, as their main mode of indirect contact. Outlook's trump card has been its tie-ins to Windows Live Messenger, which are certain to be augmented by tie-ins to Skype (hopefully within our lifetimes).

But Microsoft shedding light on its Skype integration plans would be like Fischer telling Spassky his queen is vulnerable. While Redmond scrambles to coordinate Skype with Office 14 and Windows 8, Salesforce is integrating its own direct IM system into Chatter. Beginning next month, users of Salesforce or apps built on its platform will be able to launch ad hoc chats in the context of their activity streams. 

Screen Sharing

And by fall 2012, the company will add screen sharing.

"For a lot of the ad hoc collaboration - when somebody needs help on a deal or they're trying to solve a case or write an answer quickly -  are they going to set up a meeting and structure that?  Usually not," says Kendall Collins, Salesforce's senior vice president and general manager for Chatter. Here, Collins is talking about Salesforce's existing tie-ins to Citrix GoToMeeting, its preferred tool for videoconferencing.

ReadWriteWeb asked Collins whether this new one-two punch of IM with videoconferencing endangers that partnership. His response was clever: Users are likely to kick in screen sharing on the fly or in the context of a support call. They'll continue to use GoToMeeting, he said, to set up scheduled conferences between multiple parties. 

"GoToMeeting is an incredible tool for structured meetings, webinars and large, external audiences," he said. "But we've seen as a gap in the market the ability to collaborate in context around a business process." In fact, Collins' meeting with us took place over GoToMeeting - it was scheduled in advance, it utilized single-source screen sharing, and it was moderated. It also involved someone outside the team members' network (myself). "I think that people will have the need for very structured meetings and content delivery," he added.

But this new screen-sharing feature will be localized to team members, and will pop up in the context of a chat initiated through the activity stream in the Chatter tab.

The chat process itself is less than revolutionary, though it fills the most prominent void in Salesforce's cloud arsenal. With the system engaged, users will see point-of-presence indicators beside each team member, indicating their current state of availability. Outlook users have had this ability with Office Communicator for several years now, and it's part of Microsoft's tie-in to its Lync server (formerly Unified Communications).

Mobile First? Not This Time

This is where Salesforce's strategy gets interesting, and maybe a little dicey: The company will roll out its inline chat feature to desktop users first, Collins told us. It's still testing mobile capabilities. Mobile is important because it impacts the very meaning of "available" in the context of Chatter's inline chat. Not long ago, "available" and "accessible" were different properties. You may be out of the office and thus unavailable, for example. If (and probably when) mobile accessibility goes live for inline chat, if you're accessible in any way (that is, if you're close to your smartphone), then you're probably available. Unless, of course, you shut your blinds and make yourself unavailable.

And that, strangely enough, plays into Salesforce's own emerging "karma" metric, which appears below each user's portrait on her profile page. The metric measures relative influence on other members of the team. It's an analytic measurement and a complicated one at that, explains Collins: "Customers have never had an ability to understand the influence and impact of any individual in the graph. So you're starting to see some interesting gamification." He tells a story of a fellow Salesforce employee who discovered to his own shock that, despite making the most comments to the team, he failed to score high on the influence bar. "That pushed him to contribute more," he adds, "and I think the value of any network is based on your contributions."

As Salesforce develops mobile chat, relative accessibility is likely to be a factor in the influence score.

Auditability

One of the barriers preventing big business from moving to a Salesforce-driven system right away has been the need to comply with federal mandates to retain emails and internal communications. If your business uses less email this year than it did last year, that might look suspicious to a judge.

Collins assures us that Salesforce is keeping this fact in mind, especially as it continues to roll out a separate, governments-only service.  "Trust has been a hallmark of Salesforce.com," he says. "Having auditable processes and audible ways to track data is part of who we are, and that's no different with Chatter. In fact, one of the reasons IT customers choose Chatter over competitors is that they trust us for compliance, scale, performance, disaster recovery and all the things they need in an enterprise-grade system. We spent a lot of time building out all the key compliance tables for Chatter... We have gone through audits with various financial institutions, many of whom use Chatter as their employee social network. And we know some customers have explicit requirements around e-discovery. We've had partners build various tools on top of those compliance tables. So, if you have a very stringent industry requirement or specific company requirement that is not something that Chatter does out of the box, we've got a host of partners."

They say that all work and no play makes for some dull boys, and I think brothers Darren and Derek Dodge certainly seem to agree with that sentiment. The two of them have just launched a new iPhone app called About Last Night here on our Disrupt stage that aims to connect fans of the nightlife and help them find the best parties, clubs, concerts, and games every night.

“We like to think of ourselves as a social network completely geared around nightlife,” Darren told me.

About Last Night is a simple service to get started with — after logging in with their Facebook credentials, users can photos and videos where they are, tag their Facebook friends, and upvote the events they attend if they’re particularly good. Images of events and venues that are especially well-rated are pushed to the top of the app’s main activity feed and can even garner bronze, silver, and gold medals to highlight just how good a time everyone is having. Those posts don’t last too long though, as they’ll disappear after 48 hours to keep users logging in again and again.

Users can navigate through the app by swiping left and right from the main landing page — they’ll always be just a swipe or two away from listings of nearby events, friend activity, and locations that they’ve chosen to follow. Tapping an icon on the top left causes the entire panel to slide to the right, revealing a control panel a la the Facebook iOS app from which users can search for their friends on ALN.

With all the location posting, About Last Night sounds a bit reminiscent of Foursquare. Indeed, the brothers Dodge told me that Foursquare got people into the rhythm of checking in, a behavior they’re clearly keen to harness. Still, their unwavering focus on the nightlife also means that their audience of potential users are avowed fans of finding things to do into the wee hours of the morning, an audience that they believe plenty of brands are itching to reach.

While the brothers are all about making sure you get to have a good time — the idea struck them while enjoying the heady party scene in college, after all — they also want brands and venues to be able to connect directly with their users.

“Brands spend billions of dollars yearly on the nightlife,” Darren noted to me. “But they’ve had no other way to reach these people other than advertising.”

Then plan to do this by giving them the ability to create sponsored and contextual posts to be injected into the streams of users who follow specific brands or venues. Those venues will also be able to offer discounts and deals a la Groupon to lure people through their doors. But that will all come in time, and they tell me that they don’t plan to monetize the service yet — they’re planning to flip that switch within the next few months.

In case you were wondering: Ron Conway says he will not be running for mayor of San Francisco.

Apparently that was on Mike Arrington’s mind when he interviewed Conway and SV Angel partner David Lee on-stage at Disrupt today. He said he heard from more than one source that Conway is considering a run “somewhere down the line,” and asked flat-out if that’s true.

“That’s a rumor I can assure you is false,” Conway replied. “There’s an old saying: ‘Never say never.’ I actually believe in that saying, but I will never run for mayor of San Francisco.” Had he explored it at all? “Not for a nanosecond.”

The idea isn’t quite as out-of-left-field as it sounds. Conway has been visibly involved in civic issues recently — apparently he met with Senator Chuck Schumer recently to discuss SOPA/PIPA and immigration issues, and along with current Mayor Ed Lee and former TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde, he recently helped launch a program called sfCITI aimed at helping the tech industry and the city work together. (In fact, Conway’s relationship with Mayor Lee seemed close enough to prompt a largely critical Bay Citizen article printed in The New York Times.) When grilled about how much of his time he’s “throwing away on government work” (Arrington’s words), Conway estimated that it was 20 percent.

On the mayoral question, Conway’s response might seem pretty definitive, but Arrington wasn’t satisfied. He asked if Conway might be lying. (Conway: “I would never lie to you about this.”) Later, he asked again Conway was running.

“Last time I checked 10 minutes ago, I was not running for mayor,” Conway said.

What good is a Foursquare check-in if it doesn’t lead to a coupon or freebie? Why bother tweeting about a brand you like if they don’t acknowledge your undying love and loyalty? With TechCrunch Disrupt finalist SocialStock, those types of actions may now be rewarded…or at least that’s the company’s vision. The service, founded by Subbu Rama, aims to be a stock market for people and places which assigns a point value to users’ social networking actions. Mimicking the framework of a real stock market, those actions become shares and then those shares can turn into real-world rewards from participating business or brands.

What’s interesting about the concept behind SocialStock, is that it makes the idea of someone’s social capital – their “worth” in terms of their social networking actions, check-ins, Foursquare mayorships, tweets, etc. – portable. If you lose your Starbucks mayorship after moving away, for example, you could just turn around and buy “shares” of another local coffee shop that doles out rewards. All your hard work in being a loyal coffee-drinking local doesn’t have to go to waste.

In addition to earning shares for your activity, users are assigned a share value of their own, too. The system is based on someone’s social capital, which is determined using algorithms that measure things like the number of friends and followers you have, your history of check-ins, as well as the influence and importance of those who you’re connected to.

It’s a bit of a simpler computation than Klout’s Kscore, perhaps, which measures your reach and influence in more sophisticated ways, but then again, it’s a different system than Klout, too. Instead of handing out special “perks” only to those who have mastered gathering “influence,” SocialStock has users building up their virtual shares through their actions – a tweet, a Facebook post, or a check-in as related to a business or venue. Further down the road, other actions will be rewarded, too, like a Yelp review or even an Instagram photo.

By aggregating the actions, businesses and brands would have better insight into who their most loyal customers really are. In other words, SocialStock is taking a more holistic view of the social networking ecosystem.

There aren’t any launch partners teamed up with SocialStock for today’s debut – only the framework itself is going live. But, if the concept proves successful, participating brands could use the system to set the conversion rate on translating these stock market-like “shares” to real-world rewards. For example, 1,000 shares could be exchanged for a free latte or a free meal. And then, to earn the same reward again, the customer would have to remain loyal by tweeting, Facebooking and checking in some more.

Based in Sunnyvale, SocialStock is basically in bootstrapping mode with under $100,000 in funding from a few friends. The website is launching today as is the mobile app, which lets you discover people and places nearby that have spikes in social activity.

Disrupt Q&A

Judges: Michael Abbott (KPCB), Soraya Darabi (Foodspotting), Patrick Gallagher (CrunchFund) & Charlie O’Donnell (Brooklyn Bridge Ventures)

(Note that the questions reflect a somewhat confusing pitch)

Q: Not sure I understand, is this loyalty thing? Why not pull up my Klout score? Who’s the target? A: If you move from NY to somewhere else, you lose your social capital. With Social Stock, you can transfer the social stock to the new place. Q: But aren’t you worth less because you can bring less people to that shop? A: More about your importance – it’s a bet on that person. Q: Do I get social capital dollars when I sign in? A: Everyone gets capital based on their influence on Twitter/Foursquare, etc. Buying and selling like stock market. Q: How are you picking social networks/how algorithm works? A: If person has a lot of activity on Facebook, their value is higher. On Twitter, it looks at followers. Existing social graph + frequency of visits to shops. Q: What’s the core reason for product? A: Goal is take social capital and make it a platform.

You’re crazy with your friends, serious with your co-workers, and sweet with your parents. Now you can share those distinct personalities with their matching audiences thanks to Hmmm, a mobile app launching today that aims to let you be yourself online, whoever that is.

Facebook friend lists and Google Circles have proven too clumsy for selective sharing. They’ve led to the rise of Path, which eliminates the decision making by creating a social micronetwork of your closest friends, but all your favorite people aren’t there, and not every post is appropriate for everyone you love. Hmmm lets you create separate avatars for each of your identities, and publish to pre-made sets of Hmmm and Facebook friends. Plus, Hmmm will soon be able to notify a friend that says they’re bored when you post that you want to see a movie.

Sol Studios just launched Hmmm at TechCrunch Disrupt New York, with an iOS app available now and an Android version coming in two weeks. Hmmm’s co-founder Archana Patchirajan tells me “I’m a daughter, I’m a student, I’m a co-founder. We all have nicknames and social groups. It’s unrealistic to have one profile. We wanted to give users a flexible platform to express themselves the way the do in real life.”

Hmmm doesn’t just structure who you share to, but what you share as well. There’s categories like activities, emotions, places, music, and photos, but also tags like “happy” or “inspired” for emotions, or “working” or “celebrating” for activities. The next version of Hmmm will include its “inference engine” that can match people with complementary posts. Like two people who are shopping nearby each other, or someone doing something exciting with someone bored.

You can also use Hmmm as a layer on top of Facebook. The app creates feeds of posts by Facebook and Hmmm friends of your avatars. You can like and comment from within Hmmm and that feedback will appear back on Facebook.

The bootstrapped Sol Studios plans to monetize Hmmm with Sponsored Stories-style social ads, where small businesses, record companies, and consumer packaged goods companies pay to increase the presence of posts that mention them. It originally considered sponsored gamification, but I persuaded the team that would clutter the app and make it confusing, so they stripped it out.

Hmmm’s biggest challenge will be convincing users to endure the friction of choosing an audience, content type, and sub-tags just to publish something to friends. Path’s near decision-less publishing is a pleasure and I fear Hmmm could be a pain. But those who want to share their split-personality but are serious about privacy should give Hmmm some thought.

Patent troll Lodsys became infamous after it extracted a license from Apple only to turn around and sue small iOS app developers for including features like in-app purchasing in their products. But one startup is now taking a stand and has asked a federal court to examine the case.

Lodsys, a shell company that doesn’t do anything but file lawsuits, appears undeterred by the pressure from Apple or by popular contempt. This month alone, it used the same patents to sue dozens more companies, including names like Dell, Rosetta Stone and Overstock.com. Last month, a federal court finally gave Apple permission to intervene in one of the lawsuits and argue that its own license should protect the app developers.

But it appears that Lodsys is continuing its shakedown of small app makers by offering them a “licensing solution” they can’t refuse in return for a share of their royalties. The troll’s latest antics came to light this week after a brave Seattle app maker, A Thinking Ape, refused the shakedown and instead asked a federal court to declare that apps like “In Your Dorm” don’t infringe the patents.

The complaint by A Thinking Ape lists Lodsys’ campaign of lawsuits against everyone from the New York Times to Wolfram Alpha and sums up the nature of the racket:

Defendant does not create products; it solely engages in aggressive litigation tactics to compel licenses of their AssertedPatents from companies that do produce products.

A handful of other developers have tried to stand up to Lodsys in the past but most capitulated soon after and agreed to pay the troll a tax (rumored to be 2.5 percent of revenues).

The Soul of a Patent Troll

Patent trolling took off after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office began issuing a flood of questionable “business method” patents related to things like software and, believe it or not, a crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich. In 2006, lawyers used such a patent to threaten Research in Motion with an injunction against the BlackBerry and extract a $612 million payout.

Lodsys appears to have perfected the art. The troll has been sending identical threat letters (you can see one below) that extol the virtues of patent developer Daniel Abelow. The letter explains that “Dan” has been to several Ivy League schools and “an independent consultant on presenting information via the internet.”

So who is this latter-day Ben Franklin? Here’s a shot from his homepage:

Dan repeatedly describes himself as an “inventor” but it doesn’t appear he has any training in science or engineering. An average person would be as likely to call Dan an inventor as they would call former Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson a computer scientist.

But given the state of the patent system, it appears we’re stuck with the likes of Dan for a while. Or at least until courageous app developers or Apple can flush Lodsys and its shadowy backers from the patent system once and for all.

Here’s a typical Lodsys letter. Scroll down to see Dan’s marvelous inventions in action:

Lodsys Letter Copy

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Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt makes for a pretty grueling experience when so many companies are pitching every passer-by. But Jordan Crook and I went in feet first to check out some of the startups there.

In scenes more reminiscent of tag-team pro-wrestling, or perhaps a sort of Startup relay race, we tag-teamed around and interviewed a bunch of them including Jaxx, Screach, Fanitics, Edaman, SnapCrowd, ColourDNA, Atticous and BuzzCard. Check all of Tuesday’s startups out here.

We also took a trip over to the Israeli Pavilion to check out the likes of Drippler and Vodio among others. Enjoy!

Stan Lee, titan of the comic book industry, will be interviewed by Mashable‘s Sam Laird on Thursday.

For those unfamiliar, Stan Lee is one of the creative forces behind Marvel Comics. He took part in the creation and development of some of the most famous superheroes and comic book series, such as the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk, and X-Men.

Without the vision and talent of Lee, the Marvel Comics franchise would not have grown to become the great success it is today. The company has converted many of the original comic book franchises into movies, including most recently The Avengers movie, which set a record for the highest grossing film on opening weekend.

Even at 89 years of age, Lee is taking full advantage of digital media. He is currently in the process of launching his own comic convention and plans to bring all sorts of social engagement for those attending and following online.

Lee has a showcase of awards and honors for his achievements including a member of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame as well as receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

We’re taking questions for Stan from you, our Mashable readers. We want to know: what would you like to be able to ask the comic book visionary?

We’ll choose some of the most unique, poignant, or just plain interesting reader-submitted questions to ask him. Submit your question in the comments below by Wednesday, May 23 at 8:00 P.M. EDT, and be sure to check back to read our interview with Stan Lee.

Image courtesy Gage Skidmore, Flickr.

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While a number of mobile payment startups are trying to retire the credit card, the old plastic continues to be a vital tool for a lot of new businesses. We’ve talked about other services like CardSpring that allows developers to build loyalty and offer programs that link to exiting credit cards. Some of the latest companies to try their hand at card-based programs are Mirth and Cardify, two start-ups that presented at TechCrunch Disrupt Tuesday. Both companies tap into CardSpring to sync card data.

Mirth allows a regular of a business to get a set discount when they use their synced credit card. As long as they visit twice in a month, they are considered a Mirth regular, which gives them a discount at any Mirth merchant. Merchants can get analytics about their customers and message their regular customers to remind them about seasonal specials. The service is just getting underway in a few stores in New York and no mobile app at this point.

Cardify enables consumers to unlock rewards and perks at the places they frequent the most. For users who link their credit and debit cards to their Cardify account, they will get points for every dollar they spend at a Cardify merchant. This can be used for simple discounts or special perks, like the ability to get a premium table. The app provides real-time analytics on how much users are spending and can also display for merchants the profile of customers inside their stores, if they opt in to geo-fencing.

Cardify has got a slick mobile app that lets people track their reward points and see what perks they can earn. It’s also got a deal with CityGrid Media and UrbanSpoon, which will help the service get distribution at half a million locations nationwide. That’s a testament to Cardify’s roots as project out of Hatch Labs, the mobile incubator of IAC, owner of CityGrid and UrbanSpoon.

When CardSpring debuted in February, I imagined a number of businesses would launch using the technology. LocalBonus, another loyalty start-up in New York, also got underway recently using CardSpring’s technology. Now that there are more card-linked loyalty programs, it’s going to be harder to stand out if a company is merely tying loyalty to credit card purchases. The winner will be the service that can provide more data and tools to merchants that helps them identify and reach out to their best customers. And it has to have a great user experience for consumers, so the process of earning points, checking on their progress and redeeming rewards is effortless.

Between Mirth and Cardify, I’m more impressed by Cardify, which has a better interface through its mobile app, more tools for merchants and a way to craft rewards that are unique to each location. I’m not sure people will go to the lengths of opting in for a geofencing, which can be a drag, but that’s also a nice touch, allowing a merchant to recognize a customer when they walk in the door. Ultimately, there’s going to be even more loyalty programs that tie into card data. They will all have to get consumers over any concerns about turning over their credit card numbers. But more and more, people are willing to share their payment data if they can get some real rewards or perks for their trouble.

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Business software giant SAP announced today that it will acquire Ariba’s cloud -based business commerce network for approximately $4.3 billion. SAP’s subsidiary, SAP America, Inc., is offering $45 per share for the platform, and plans to close the deal during the third quarter, pending Ariba shareholder approval of the sale. Ariba had 100.2 million shares on the market, as of March 31st, according to an AP report citing FactSet data.

The Ariba board of directors has already unanimously approved the transaction. The per share purchase price represents a 20% premium over the May 21 closing price and a 19% premium over the one month volume weighted average price per share, says SAP.

The deal will be  funded from SAP’s free cash and a €2.4 billion term loan facility and is expected to be accretive to SAP’s non-IFRS earnings per share in 2013. SAP says the acquisition will combine Ariba’s successful buyer-seller collaboration network with SAP’s own customer base and solutions in order to create new models for business-to-business collaboration in the cloud.

Sunnyvale-based Ariba has approximately 2,600 employees, $444 million in total revenue, and experienced 38.5 percent annual growth in 2011. Its business network recorded 62 percent organic growth in the same period. With the addition of Ariba, SAP will acquire the leader in cloud-based collaborative business commerce.

The focus of Ariba’s business is in procurement, spend management, and supplier discovery, and is partnered with major ERP suppliers, including SAP, as well as Salesforce, IBM and Oracle.

“The cloud has profoundly changed the way people interact. The impact will be even greater as enterprises connect and collaborate in new ways with their global networks of customers and partners,” SAP Co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe said in a statement. “Cloud-based collaboration is redefining business network innovation, and we are catching this wave in the early stage of its evolution. The addition of Ariba will create the business network of the future, deliver immediate value to our customers and provide another solid engine for driving SAP’s growth in the cloud.”

Google’s $12+ billion Motorola deal is closed, and Google veteran Dennis Woodside is taking over as Motorola CEO. Now the fun begins. For a variety of reasons, this has the potential to be Google’s most interesting project yet.

• This is Google’s first and biggest opportunity to make cool, real, physical things that could change the way people live. That sounds annoyingly optimistic, but it’s true. It is fun to laugh a little at Google’s glasses project, self-driving cars or whatever.  But try telling me with a straight face that your iPhone hasn’t changed your life. Many very smart, creative people work at Google, and I’d love to see them try some interesting things and really go for it in a way that Motorola would never have done before.
• This sort of stuff is not in Google’s comfort zone. Google has been excellent at building and acquiring web-based software, running it at scale and brokering the sale of keyword-based advertising. Google has done some hardware stuff for a long time, such as its homegrown servers and its Google Search Appliance. But Google has no background in creating, marketing or supporting consumer hardware for millions of people at a time. This means Google could either be really bad at it, or it could become really good at it. It helps that Motorola is a sort-of-functioning company today, but not successful enough that anything is sacred.
• Google has long maintained that Motorola will be kept at arm’s length, that it won’t be favored over other Android partners, that it will be separate from Google, etc. Some of that may be true, but my hunch is that a lot of that was just posturing to get the deal approved. Google has a huge opportunity to do fascinating, important work with Motorola, and even create a real business around Android-powered mobile devices. I expect Google and Motorola will eventually become a lot closer.
• This could present some soul-searching opportunities for Google, during which it will have to decide whether to do things that are better for its Android partners or better for Google. In some cases, what’s better for Google - and worse for the Android partners - may also be better for society. In some cases, the opposite may be true. This highlights the weird position that Google is in with Android. On one hand, it has built something huge that it doesn’t really control. If anything, its lack of control is what allowed it to become so huge, so fast, in the first place. On the other hand, Android-the-product probably needs more of Google’s control to improve. And Android-the-business definitely does.
• One opportunity would be to formally split Android devices into three tracks: plain-old-Android, do what you want with it; the Nexus program (significant Google control, available to select partners); and a third line (complete Google control, exclusive to Motorola, ideally the highest-quality line). We’ll see if that happens - and if it does, whether it works. Everyone has different motivations for Android: Google, phone manufacturers, carriers and consumers. They might never harmonize.
• Motorola Mobility isn’t just a cell phone company. It also owns a TV set-top box and infrastructure division. This could be helpful in getting Google deeper into the television industry, where the largest chunk of big-brand ad dollars are still spent. But Motorola’s set-top box customers - the world’s cable and telco giants - are probably some of the most Google-phobic companies around. Watching Google’s courtship here - or perhaps its decision to flip this business altogether - will be especially interesting.
• Lastly, Motorola is huge, which makes this interesting for totally different reasons. Google has had a lot of experience - and success - taking small and mid-sized companies and making them part of the Google story. In some cases, like YouTube, they’re sort-of left alone. In other cases, like AdMob, they’re built into Google and then Google is built around it. But this is a totally new experiment that incorporates moving large, unfamiliar objects at scale like nothing Google has done before. It could be a dramatic failure or a huge success. (Or Google could just decide to piece things apart and sell them!) And that’s unlike almost everything else Google does, which either starts out small and fizzles, or gradually grows bigger - Gmail, Chrome, etc. The fact that it’s already so big makes it special. And one of the first moves to watch will be to see how big Google keeps it.

 

This post originally appeared on SplatF. Logos by grostoryeu.

Silicon Valley is full of unsung heroes: Mike Krieger, Arash Ferdowsi, interns, the TechCrunch sales team, Heather Harde and the countless engineers that keep the products we love from failing to be the products we love. One of these unsung heroes is SV Angel’s David Lee, who has served as a mentor and sounding board for almost every smart person in the Valley as far as I can tell.

But as of today Lee is a little more “sung”; In a discussion with Michael Arrington on stage at TC Disrupt New York, investor Ron Conway made it even more clear that SV Angel is actually managing partner David Lee’s fund.

The fact that Lee, who used to work at StumbleUpon and Google before co-founding SV Angel, runs the fund is perhaps the Valley’s best-kept not-secret. While Conway actually is listed as investor and not partner on the firm’s Crunchbase profile, it doesn’t stop press and others from constantly writing stuff like, “Ron Conway’s SV Angel fund,” paying scant or no attention to the man actually behind the curtain.

“This is David’s fund,” Conway said to Arrington in response to questioning about financing rumors. “But I have a huge vested interest.” Conway is still the largest investor in SVAngel, which also loops in Arrington himself as a Limited Partner, Kevin Carter, Robert Pollak and Conway’s middle son Topher Conway. “I get to come in and help entrepreneurs, I get to do what I enjoy,” Conway went on.

Interestingly enough, LP Arrington pressed Lee and Conway to comment on the “rumors” that the fund might be raising $400 million, “We are exploring all options …” Lee responded, saying that they are indeed looking for investment but refusing to give more detail.

When asked what startups were particularly interesting to SV Angel, the dynamic duo listed Pinterest (of course), Airbnb, Stripe, Square and Boku. When asked the same question of VC firms, Lee and Conway singled out Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Greylock, Accel and General Catalyst as top choices.

In terms of where he saw the fund’s investment trajectory headed, Lee said that he read somewhere on TechCrunch that the way people are shopping is drastically changing (I’m going to hope he was talking about this post) and that he is most excited about companies like Warby Parker and Pinterest that are transforming the way people consume content, create relationships, and well buy stuff.

“The sharing economy,”"the open graph distributed economy,” and the “P2P sharing” model all got shout out as ecommerce movements that could soon see an influx of (new?) SV Angel cash. SV Angel’s last raise of $20 million happened a year ago last April and, with a rapidly expanding portfolio, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the “rumors” Arrington alluded onstage to are indeed true.

In an effort to expand Hellmann’s relevancy beyond the sandwich, the company and ad agency Ogilvy Brazil recently launched a campaign that told consumers how the groceries they had just purchased could be used to make a new mayonnaise-intensive dish.

They partnered with a large supermarket chain called St Marche to install software in cash registers at about 100 stores. When customers purchased Hellmann’s mayo at these stores, the software automatically looked at the other ingredients in their cart and compiled a recipe that used them. The recipe, complete with preparation instructions, was then printed on the customer’s receipt.

Within the first month, sales of Hellmann’s mayonnaise increased by 44% at stores with recipe receipts, according to a video about the campaign.

“We needed to take advantage of the moment when customers had all of the right ingredients at hand,” explains the same video.

More About: Advertising, Hellmann's, Marketing, retail

For SaaS companies, whose customers are usually signed up on recurring monthly billing cycles, the art of retaining customers is just as important as winning them over in the first place. In fact, it’s probably more important, since customers aren’t tied in to long-term deals. It’s also a lot cheaper to retain a customer than to acquire a new one. So they need to better understand them and work harder to keep them coming back, which is where Apptegic comes in.

The startup, which is being launched as part of TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Battlefield, uses big data to provide detailed analytics that companies can use to better engage with their customers. To do so, Apptegic is introducing what it calls a “customer guidance system” (CGS) to identify trends among customer usage and to give them tools to message users in real time and suggest new features that they can use.

Founders Karl Wirth and Greg Hinkle worked together at Red Hat, where they built operations management tools for SaaS companies. What they found was that there weren’t a lot of tools out there to help those businesses understand their customers and retain them. So they set out to build those tools.

Apptegic provides a cloud-based platform that essentially uses big data to analyze behavioral click-through data from customer interactions, then scores the engagement so that businesses can know which features customers find important, and which aren’t. What’s sticky, and what keeps customers coming back. Once a business recognizes that, it can build tools to improve the way that it interacts with those customers.

They can customize those reports based on the data that they find important. Apptegic customers can also use the platform to set rules around certain types of customer usage and message their users in real time. That can help guide them to features that they might not be aware of, or to help upsell them on features they haven’t yet bought.

Currently Apptegic is focused on web applications, but Wirth told me that it’s looking to extend onto other platforms, and could optimize for mobile applications. It’s currently working with 30 beta customers, but will be launching the cloud-based service this week to add more trial users.

Apptegic has five employees now, and has raised $2 million from Point Judith Capital, Advanced Technology Ventures, Jit Saxena, and other angel investors.

Disrupt Q&A

Q: What do you include that current systems don’t?

A: We combine real-time click-stream data and real-time messaging.

Q: What was the Ah-ha moment that told you the world needs this?

A: We were working with a lot of customers and realized that there were a lot of people building this themselves.

Q: How is this more than Google Analytics?

A: This gives you information down to the user and offer the opportunity to reach them in real-time.

Q: Where are you in terms of launching, and what’s the revenue model?

A: We’re launching today and starting to charge today. We charged based on the number of end users that our customers reach.

The winner of the Audience Choice Award during TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, CardFlick launched with an application for building digital business cards on your mobile device and sharing them with new contacts. Rather than bumping to share those cards, users “flick” them to other users who have downloaded the app.

After that, the next step was refining things. To do that, CardFlick has joined the most recent 500 Startups Accelerator class and is working on the next big transition in its evolution. To start, it’s adding more features and functionality around its core card product.

While CardFlick initially launched with a limited number of themes, it has been working on providing more customization for its users. The startup is currently doing that through its Instacards site. The next version of the CardFlick app — which will be released over the next few weeks — will bring similar customization features available to the app itself.

But CardFlick founder Ketan Anjaria sees an even bigger opportunity ahead. The team brought on Jared Kopf, cofounder and CEO of deals company HomeRun (acquired by Rearden Commerce last September), as an adviser. And as part of its 500 Startups experience, it’s begun working on expanding beyond just business cards and the way people present themselves to others. It’s all part of a pivot toward the introduction of a new product that will be introduced at 500 Startups Accelerator demo days on July 17-18 in Mountain View and July 23 in New York City.

Verizon Wireless revealed a new incarnation of its old V Cast streaming mobile video service on Tuesday; this one built on the back of its new LTE network. Called Viewdini, the Android app aggregates content from premium video services such as Hulu, mSpot — now a Samsung-owned property — and Netflix as well as Comcast’s Xfinity and Verizon’s own FiOS programming.

Verizon didn’t reveal any details about how this high-quality, long-form content would gel with its restricted data plans when the app launches later this month, but I suspect Viewdini may be Verizon’s first venture into the ‘toll-free’ mobile broadband: Rather than charge the customer for the gigabytes of video consumed, it charges the content provider.

Lately Verizon has been talking up the idea of reversing the mobile data business model (as has AT&T), giving its customers unlimited access to any video or over-the-top content service so long as the owner of the service pays the carriage charges. So far Verizon hasn’t implemented any specific policies – that we know of – but if it can secure the cooperation of content providers, it’s only a matter of time.

Viewdini would fit perfectly with that model because video consumes enormous bandwidth relative to other services. If Verizon customers were to make regular use of TV show and movie streaming they would quickly max out their data plans (or enter into throttling territory in the case of its grandfathered unlimited customers). Without any kind of tweak to Verizon’s capping policies, Viewdini practically invites customers to run up huge overage charges, which would hardly be a customer relations coup.

But the apps-charging structure provides a clue as to how Verizon might offer that pipe for free. “By simply searching for a title, topic, or star’s name, viewdini will let customers know which services have mobile video for streaming, and whether it is available  at no additional charge, by subscription, to rent or for purchase,” Verizon stated in its press release.

In each case, Verizon could skim a little from the top of each purchase, for instance collecting a portion of a movie rental or purchase fee. In the case of subscription video services like Hulu Plus or Netflix, Verizon could take a share of monthly revenue from every subscriber that used Viewdini or just charge the video providers flat per-gigabyte or per-stream fees.

Verizon plans to expand its initial line-up to movie studios and other TV sites. If it is able negotiate revenue sharing deals with every service it aggregates, Verizon could easily offer Viewdini as completely toll-free app.

That would make a lot of consumers happy, as they’d be free to stream away without worrying about their data caps, but it could have a chilling effect on the application developers. Netflix and Comcast may be able to afford bandwidth fees, but smaller companies may not be able to – especially if they’re offering up their content for free.

Comcast is already facing criticism that it’s running afoul of net neutrality rules for capping residential broadband data while giving a free ride to its own Xfinity traffic. But the net neutrality rules don’t apply wireless, so if Verizon wants to go the toll-free route, there’s nothing to stop it.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro: Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• What Amazon’s new Kindle line means for Apple, Netflix and online media
• Report: Monetizing Digital Content
• U.S. Wireless Data Market: Q4 and Year-End 2008

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Google now owns Motorola. Chinese regulators followed the U.S. and Europe in clearing the deal earlier this week, removing the last barrier. Although the acquisition opens new territory for the search giant, its most immediate effect could be remaking the existing Android landscape. Will Google use its new arm to pound all competitors, or just Apple?

Google, a Hardware Company?

The first big change will be to replace Motorola's chief. CEO Sanjay Jha is out, replaced by longtime Google employee Dennis Woodside, a man instrumental in the revenue growth of Google as a business over the last several years. Now his job will be to streamline Motorola’s smartphone product line, cut out the dead weight of Motorola Mobility and deliver on the Android geek’s wet dream.

Many pundits and analysts thought that when Google acquired Motorola, it was purely a patent deal. Google had just lost out on a boatload of critical mobile patents in the Nortel patent auction and Android looked more vulnerable to being taken down in the patent wars than ever. With Motorola in its war chest, Google all of a sudden had 17,000 patents from the company that basically invented the cell phone. With patents in hand, would Google spin off Motorola Mobility or sell it piece by piece?

Selling off Motorola's hardware division doesn't appear to be in the plan. If the search company were going to do that, Google CEO Larry Page likely would not have enticed one of his most effective lieutenants, Woodside, to take over. Yet, while the smartphone division will likely remain under Google's control, other hardware aspects of Motorola Mobility, such as its set-top cable box segment, may go on the block.

“Many users coming online today may never use a desktop machine, and the impact of that transition will be profound - as will the ability to just tap and pay with your phone. That’s why it’s a great time to be in the mobile business, and why I’m confident Dennis and the team at Motorola will be creating the next generation of mobile devices that will improve lives for years to come,” Page wrote. 

Balancing the Ecosystem

To prognosticate the future of Motorola and Google, it is pertinent to look at the guidelines various government bodies put in place when approving the merger. For instance, both the European Commission (the European Union version of the Federal Trade Commission) and the U.S. Department of Justice concentrated mostly on the patents aspect of the merger. The U.S. DOJ was obviously thinking that Motorola/Google was a pure patent play when it approved Google’s acquisition, the sale of Nortel’s patents to “RockStar Bidco” (a consortium of Apple, Research In Motion and Microsoft) and Apple’s acquisition of Novell’s patents in the same ruling. 

“The division's investigations focused on whether the acquiring firms could use these patents to raise rivals' costs or foreclose competition,” the DOJ stated in its release. “The division concluded that the specific transactions at issue are not likely to significantly change existing market dynamics.”

While the E.U. and the U.S. focused on the patents aspect of the deals, China had different motivations when it approved the deal earlier this week. China stipulated that Google had to keep Android free and open source for at least the next five years. China is clearly looking out for its smartphone manufacturers in this deal, with Huawei, Meizu, Lenovo and ZTE pumping out versions of Android smartphones on a regular basis. 

An acquisition of this size, with so many global entities sticking their fingers in the pie, is a fascinating study on the global impact of Android. While Google does not directly profit from Android hardware (for now), there are billions of dollars wrapped up in the Android ecosystem. And this is where Google needs to tread carefully. It needs to balance its desire to streamline the Android process while also not alienating its OEM and carrier partners in the process.

One way to appease the Android ecosystem would be to spread the love when it comes to flagship Android Nexus devices. According to reports, Google will be giving early access of its next Android operating system, likely called Jelly Bean, to five different manufacturing partners that could then sell the device directly to consumers. One motivation for this would be to wrest control of Android from mobile carriers, such as Verizon and AT&T (in the same way that Google originally had planned when it unveiled the first Nexus device and tried to sell it without the carriers). Another reason, and probably more important from Google’s perspective, would be that it could let Motorola create a quintessential Android Nexus device and avoid claims of favoritism.

Benefits of Motorola/Google Android Devices

The potential benefits of Google taking top-level control of the Android ecosystem are intriguing. Google benefits, consumers benefit, developers benefit. It remains to be seen if the carriers and other manufacturers will benefit, especially if Motorola and Google create an Android device that becomes a true “iPhone killer” and starts cannibalizing sales from other Android handsets. 

For consumers, the benefits are obvious: an extremely high-end smartphone and likely an equally impressive tablet that are streamlined to Android software and hardware specifications. The device would receive timely Android firmware upgrades and customer support from Google and Motorola. The very best of Android delivered at palatable price points.

Google benefits from these devices as well. It is hard to say that Page and the rest of the Google executives see the revenue that Apple is making from its iOS line of devices and don't want a bigger slice of that pie. For instance, Apple made more in profit from its hardware last quarter than Google made in total revenue. 

This is not going to be easy for Google and Motorola. Google is moving into an entirely new product category and that comes with its own problems outside of the balancing act that has to be performed with the rest of the Android ecosystem. There are a lot of balls to juggle, not only in incorporating Motorola into Google, but creating a vibrant division that operates and iterates with a high degree of quality. 

What can be said is this: In many, many ways, the best thing to ever happen to Android will be Google’s acquisition of Motorola. Google can now defend its mobile operating system with Motorola’s patents and create dynamic devices with Motorola’s hardware. At the same time, the E.U. and U.S. have put in measures concerning litigation around essential patents and China has ensured that Android will remain open and free. There will be losers in the Android ecosystem, among them several mobile manufacturers and maybe mobile carriers, depending on how much control Google can exercise over the sale of the devices. 

When the Motorola deal was announced last August and Page said that Google wanted to “supercharge” Android, he was not being facetious. Google has a tremendous opportunity in front of it. The path is paved with daggers but the benefit to the entire ecosystem at this point outweighs the risks. 

The Leaders in Digital Series is supported by Samsung. Follow Samsung USA on Google+ and Twitter, and like it on Facebook.

On Monday, Hulu revealed a slate of 10 original shows it plans to premiere on the site this summer.

The news followed a slew of announcements from the likes of Yahoo, AOL and other big media companies that are now developing original video content for the web — much of which looks much like traditional television (Mashable also recently premiered its first episodic series, Behind the Launch).

Earlier this month at Mashable Connect, we caught up with Wilson Cleveland, who is the creator and executive producer of Leap Year, a scripted series that debuted in 2011 and will go live with its second season in June. We chatted with Cleveland about what’s behind the sudden boom in premium web video content, why advertisers are jumping on board (Leap Year is funded by Hiscox insurance) and how audience consumption habits are changing.

Check out the interview above. You can also watch the first season of Leap Year on Mashable Video.

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Series presented by Samsung

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The Leaders in Digital Series is supported by Samsung. Follow Samsung USA on Google+ and Twitter, and like them on Facebook.

More About: features, leaders in digital series, mashable, mashable connect, mashable video, TV, web video

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Software is eating another part of the world. (Or at least the next generation of software is eating the older 1970s-era kind.)

Sunglass, which is coming out of beta today at TechCrunch Disrupt New York, should bring a bit of joy to longtime CAD users and professional architects and designers. The company is launching very social, browser-based software for 3D modeling.

“This is like Google Docs for 3D objects,” said CEO and co-founder Kaustuv DeBiswas. “We’re taking traditional desktop software from the architecture world and putting it in the cloud.” Sunglass is undercutting existing computer-aided design software dramatically. Normally, this older software can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000, he adds. In contrast, the most basic version of Sunglass is free and then designers can pay for extra apps or add ons.

This is not a total replacement, however. It’s meant to be a collaboration tool for teams of designers or individual hobbyists. “Software modeling has seen 30 to 40 years of development. We don’t want to compete on a feature-by-feature basis,” he said.

Inside Sunglass, designers can take a 3D model and rotate, flip or scale it without Adobe Flash. It’s built with HTML5 and WebGL. The team behind Sunglass comes from MIT. DeBiswas earned his Ph.D in design computation and was a TED fellow last year while his co-founder Nitin Rao is an MBA from Sloan that started his career out in social enterprise and microfinance.

DeBiswas has spent years thinking about the future of design technology. ”Sunglass is a product that’s fluid enough that everyone from a kid doing a Maker Bot to a professional firm can use it,” he said.

Sunglass works with more than different 40 different file formats, removing a hurdle that has long made it frustrating for designers to critique and give feedback on each other’s work. There’s also a Dropbox integration for storing and accessing 3-D files.

It’s also a bit social. Sunglass users can simultaneously access a single 3D model and suggest tweaks through chat or voice chat. There’s also a sketch tool for marking suggestions. It’s easier to share 3D models with embeds like this one on DeBiswas’ Tumblr. He says that helps with virally attracting new customers. There is also an API that lets designers build tools for others. Because Sunglass is a platform play, the company is hoping that developers will eventually build specific tools that others will want on an as-needed basis.

They’re not pursuing a classic monthly subscription model with one standard set of paid premium features. Instead, customers can pay for apps at a rate of about $25 a month.

“Our vision for software in the future is that it will be a collection selected parts,” Rao said. “It won’t be a big company giving you a one-size-fits-all set of toolbars.” He gave an example app that does very fast cloud-based rendering. It takes about 45 seconds per object.

Taking a page from Sequoia-backed Unity Technologies’ business model, there’s also a store where designers can buy one-off 3D models from others. Unity, which has a 3D gaming engine that powers titles like Shadowgun, has a store where game developers can buy 3D effects and models from other developers.

“After cutting costs and fixing interoperability, the third thing we want to go after is building a community with this store. We have a lot to learn from the gaming industry and we think the comparable opportunity in the product design and architecture market is really massive.”

Sunglass has raised $1.8 million in seed funding from General Catalyst, Sherpalo Ventures, Lerer Ventures and Maynard Webb.

Question: What are the biggest technical difficulties in bringing this to the browser? And what are the benefits versus doing this on the browser?

A: Most of the computation doing computation are doing it back stage. We have super computers. If you think about it one of our clients, their reactions were my client gives me large BIM files which I have no use for except that we have to go ahead and re-model. We support 45 file formats and you can drag at 3D file. We are working on technologies which will give you data on demand. We’ve taken this constraint as an opportunity.

Q: Is this for professional users? Or for regular people? The presentation implies that you’ll have users who are not fluent with CAD.

A: This spans from kids playing with the motorcycles above to professionals who are modeling fluid dynamics. Starting off, it’s aimed at professional designers, but it’s easy enough that you don’t need complex training.

Q: Can you talk about price points?

A: Bite-sized modules and apps for anywhere from $25 to 100 per month.

Q: You guys are latching on to a huge trend in terms of designs. How do you help synchronous collaboration? Many of these designers don’t see themselves as early adopters. They may not feel comfortable with this or with their work in the cloud. How do you deal with this?

A: Asynchronous collaboration is important. We’re working with a version where you can store a version. We have a version on Tumblr. Other people could view it on Tumblr. We have all the persistence of data on the back-end. It’s not transient. It’s not just real-time collaboration. The second thing is about behavior. Two things. We think the product has enough virality in it. I would send you a link. You don’t need a plug-in. It’s just HTML5, WebGL. We’ve made the interface light. We believe that tomorrow that software will be a collection of small pieces. We’ve intentionally kept it very simple. This has happened to every other industry. We believe it will also happen in design.

Most businesses need to be able keep in touch with their customers and provide customer service over the phone, but rolling out a call center can be expensive. Not just that, but most call center software today isn’t very good at keeping tabs on customers and presenting all the information that businesses need to serve them better. That’s why Talkdesk is launching its cloud-based call center software Tuesday as part of the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt.

The startup enables call agents to know everything about customers when they call, based on reverse lookup of the customer’s phone number, without having to ask for their information. It also integrates with the existing CRM systems that companies use, such as SalesForce, as well as helpdesk software like ZenDesk and Desk.com. But it also hooks into Twitter and Facebook to find public information about customers from social networks.

Not only does Talkdesk handle CRM and help desk features, but it also allows agents to make, receive, record and transcribe calls. It gives a history of the customers’ previous interactions, including items purchased and searched, the amount of money spent, and previous calls made. Since the service operates in the cloud, all of this information is available in the agent’s web browser when a customer calls.

Talkdesk is based on Twilio technology, and was founded as part of the Twilio Fund contest last year. Launching today, Talkdesk is making its cloud-based call center software generally available to anyone who wants to sign up. Because of its cloud-based infrastructure, businesses can sign up in less than five minutes.

Talkdesk was part of last summer’s 500 Startups Accelerator class, and has raised $450,000 to date. It has three employees, based in Mountain View, Calif.

Disrupt Q&A

Q: What are the things that company buying your product gets ROI?

A: When you use Talkdesk, you have all the information about the customer, and you can quickly answer problems and make suggestions.

Q: Do people replace existing software, or layering on top?

A: Customers we have now don’t have call center software.

Q: Regulatory issues from recording phone conversations?

A: You have to tell the person, but you can add information before someone answers the call.

Q: Pick one customer and explain the use case?

A: Chevy, for example, using for support and one for sales. They have two numbers, and can see all information about the customer.

Q: What would a customer use instead?

A: In the example of Chevy, they have big call centers, but nothing for this type of solution. Out goal is to eventually to go big in the enterprise.

Q: Price points?

A: First agent is free always. So customer tries one agent, and then expand. We charge $49 per month per agent.

Q: A lot of your focus is on the telephony side of things and that’s important, but a lot is moving to social media.

A: For now, we are only voice, but integrate with email systems like ZenDesk. But the phone is still the main avenue of conversation for all businesses.