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Sunday, February 9, 2014
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SportPursuit

As sites like Fab wean themselves off flash sales, with some VCs expressing scepticism towards the longevity of the flash sales model, others remain bullish. Perhaps it’s a case of flash sales working better in some verticals over others. Today, the UK’s SportPursuit, a 1 million member-strong flash sales site for sports enthusiasts, is announcing a series B round of funding.


Led by London-based VC firm DFJ Esprit, with participation from Silicon Valley Bank, it’s raised £5 million in new capital. Others who participated include angel investors William Reeve (chairman of Graze.com and co-founder of Amazon-owned LOVEFiLM), Alex Chesterman (founder of Zoopla), and Alex Saint (CEO of Secret Escapes). The round brings total raised since the flash sales site launched just over two years ago to ~£6.4 million.


Following the familiar flash sales model — and similar to U.S.-based The Clymb — SportPursuit members are sent time-limited “exclusive” offers, which usually expire after 7 days, for products from leading sports brands such as Marmot, Helly Hansen, Canterbury, Garmin, GoPro and Icebreaker. It counts more than 600 brands in total.


It’s also talking up the sports category as attracting passionate consumers, making the spontaneity and discovery draw of flash sales a good fit. Meanwhile, the company says its Internet-based, data-driven approach allows it to “give each member something new, relevant and interesting every day”, and that this enables brands to use SportPursuit (and flash sales) as a platform for growth.


The new funding will be used to bolster its product line in the UK, bringing on additional brands, as well as for European expansion. Scandinavia is name-checked in particular. Noteworthy, it already claims members outside of the UK, and says it’s shipped products to more than 40 countries.


I’m also told that a third of new sign-ups come through organic member-to-member or word of mouth activity. User acquisition is likely one of the main challenges of operating a vertical flash sales site, along with getting enough new and enticing offers in the pipeline to keep those users converting, of course.





4:08 PM

As sites like Fab wean themselves off flash sales, with some VCs expressing scepticism towards the longevity of the flash sales model, oth...

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secret

Open the app to see what’s new. Check updates that have been posted on the secrets I’ve commented on first. Click through each of them. Go into the main feed, read down to where I last left off. Scroll back to the top, pull down to refresh. Head back to updates.


Lather, rinse, repeat.


That’s been my life over the past week, as Secret has become all-consuming devourer of my time and attention. When I’m reading Secret I’m ignoring everyone and everything else around.


When I’m not reading Secret, I’m thinking about secret.


I’m pretty sure this is how an addict feels, and I’m becoming increasingly concerned that if I don’t stop soon, my abuse of this app will have dire circumstances for my work and social life.


Maybe I’ll open up too much, let slip something really damning in a moment of weakness, and someone will find me out. Maybe my friends will realize that I’m the one trolling them and they’ll cease to be my friends. Maybe people will just get tired of me ignoring them, while I scan for new Secrets over and over again. Maybe I’ll miss an important deadline because I was neck deep in my friends’ gossip.


It’s not even the gossip that gets me, not the mean-spiritedness or the trolling or the braggadocio, not the impossible lies or the regrettable truths.


It’s relating to other human beings in this weird, anonymous state where we’re stripped of all the trappings society defines us by. It’s being just another voice in the darkness, seeking to be heard for who we really are.





4:08 PM

Open the app to see what’s new. Check updates that have been posted on the secrets I’ve commented on first. Click through each of them. Go i...

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game over 2

game over 2Yesterday, the developer behind Flappy Bird said he would be removing the remarkably/mysteriously successful game from the App Store in just 22 hours.


Sure enough, the game appears to be gone. And in its spot on the #1 spot on the iOS leaderboard? A Flappy Birds clone.


Flappy Bird’s developer, Dong Nguyen of Vietnam, suggested that the many pressures of success had become overwhelming.




He later followed up to clarify that the game was not being removed for legal reasons, nor would he sell Flappy Birds to someone else.


According to an interview with The Verge last week, Dong Nguyen disclosed that the game was making upwards of $50K per day in ad revenue.


Many internet commenters had suggested that the tweet was something of a ploy to bump downloads up even higher; that Dong would have a “last minute change of heart” after the tweet lead to a surge of downloads and further secured the game its #1 spot. Given that the game is seemingly gone (with a million clones left in its stead when you search), that doesn’t appear to be the case.


The strikingly-similar game that now takes its place aboard the iOS App Store’s free games chart is called “Ironpants”, and the concepts are essentially identical: You’re controlling a flying thing. Tap to make flying thing go up. If your character touches anything, you lose. You’re a superhero instead of a bird, you’re dodging crates instead of Mario-inspired pipes — but at it’s core, it’s pretty much the same dang game. The main difference I’ve noticed so far: the ads are significantly more in-your-face.


For the curious: according to App Annie, Ironpants was first added to the app store on January 27th of 2014, 10 days after Flappy Bird first reached the number 1 spot (January 17th) and roughly 2 weeks before Flappypants was removed (February 9th.)


flappypants


Could the bird return, if Nguyen does decide to bring it back? It’s feasible. It depends on how it was “removed” from the App Store. If the app package was removed from iTunes Connect entirely, Nguyen would need to resubmit it and wait for Apple’s approval, and it will have lost its previous download count, reviews, etc. If he just turned off its country-by-country availability, bringing the game back could be a matter of ticking a few check boxes.


If you’d downloaded Flappy Bird before it got the self-dropped App Store ax, you should still be able to download it indefinitely if you ever delete it from your phone. The download button will be hiding in your iCloud “Purchased” list, which is in turn tucked away into the Updates screen in the app store.





11:54 AM

Yesterday, the developer behind Flappy Bird said he would be removing the remarkably/mysteriously successful game from the App Store in jus...

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Gillmor Gang test pattern

Gillmor Gang – Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Live recording session today at 10am Pacific. Find us on Facebook at http://ift.tt/1aWOd9g

10:38 AM

Gillmor Gang – Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Live recording session today at 10am Pacific. Find us on Facebo...

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Saturday, February 8, 2014
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3:09 PM

It’s that time of week for an episode of CrunchWeek, the show that brings a few TechCrunch writers together to chat about the most fascinat...

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flappy bird

The developer of the popular mobile game Flappy Bird just declared that he’s taking the game down tomorrow.


Dong Nguyen, an indie game developer based in Hanoi, Vietnam, tweeted, “I am sorry ‘Flappy Bird’ users, 22 hours from now, I will take ‘Flappy Bird’ down. I cannot take this anymore.” He then elaborated, “It is not anything related to legal issues. I just cannot keep it anymore.”


After his tweets first went out, others asked if he was willing to sell it, but he said no. Nguyen also said that he’s still making games.


TechCrunch interviewed Nguyen via email a week ago, after Flappy Bird took off (it’s still the number one free app in both the Apple App Store and Google Play). He said that he’s the only creator at his game studio .GEARS , and he seemed to be as surprised by Flappy Bird’s popularity as anyone else, telling us, “I have no resources to do anything else beside uploading the game.”


I’ve emailed Nguyen to find out more and will update this post if I hear back.





11:39 AM

The developer of the popular mobile game Flappy Bird just declared that he’s taking the game down tomorrow. Dong Nguyen, an indie game devel...

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Posted by at 11:39 AM 0 comments
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no image
Gillmor Gang test pattern

Gillmor Gang – Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Live recording session today at 10am Pacific. Find us on Facebook at http://ift.tt/1aWOd9g

10:09 AM

Gillmor Gang – Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Live recording session today at 10am Pacific. Find us on Facebo...

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Posted by at 10:09 AM 0 comments
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