Telegram Saw 8M Downloads After WhatsApp Got Acquired

 

The App Store is a strange and whimsical bedfellow. It is a kingmaker, but with that comes the tears of the anointed, the displaced and the never-rans.

As an example of the store’s fickle nature, Flappy Bird held the Free App pole position for so long that it could not handle the success, committing seppuku. Almost immediately three clones popped up to replace it, including “Flying Cyrus”, a Miley Cyrus-themed clone.

The news of WhatsApp, the world’s largest messaging app, being acquired on February 19 by the world’s largest social network also has birthed a new App Store star. Telegram, a messaging app of humble origins, has surpassed WhatsApp in the App Store rankings, just five days after the news of Facebook’s buy. Other messaging apps like TigerText and Confide could also see a related boost.

It’s easy to attribute the exodus to a specific mistrust of Facebook, whose own mobile apps are not particularly favored and weigh in below Telegram, WhatsApp and even Snapchat in the App Store’s score chart. But it could also be a mistrust of large tech platforms in general, the result ofEdward Snowden’s revelations that big companies like Apple and Facebook cooperated with the NSA’s tracking of user data.

Telegram, created by Pavel Durov, founder of Russian Facebook competitor VKontakte, wants to be the safest — and most NSA-proof — messaging app in the world. Before the WhatsApp bomb dropped last week, the service was growing by 300,000 – 400,000 downloads per day, Durov tells me.

Durov says that after the news, the app’s growth rate increased around 3x to 800,000 – 1 million new downloads a day across iOS, Android and Windows. On the day of WhatsApp’s downtime, it added 1.8 million users. Yesterday it added 4.9 million, and propelled itself to its current No. 4 slot in iOS right behind three, yes three, Flappy Bird-inspired apps.

“The No. 1 reason for me to support and help launch Telegram was to build a means of communication that can’t be accessed by the Russian security agencies, so I can talk about it for hours,” Durov tells me, adding that he stands by the app’s claim that its encryption is the most superior available, despite Hacker News threads to the contrary.

Like Secret, which also hinges on user trust, the bootstrapped product has a $200K bounty out for those who can hack it. “No one won so far, but a guy from Russia found a serious issue in December and received $100,000 from me,” Durov says.

The coolest thing about Telegram is that it combines elements of Snapchat and WhatsApp, allowing you to set a timer to “Secret” (extra encrypted) chats. To start a Secret chat, click on a user’s avatar and select “Secret Chat.” To set the self-destruct timer on the chat, click on their avatar again, and set the expiration time to anywhere from two seconds to one week. Then sit back and watch your chats automagically evaporate.

The second coolest thing about Telegram is that the founder seems extremely non-plussed with the app’s newfound success. When asked how he would beat all three Flappy Bird clones to the top spot, he jokingly replied, “I don’t like the idea of beating birds. I’m vegetarian.”

Dropbox Has Raised $350M In New Funding At A $10B Valuation

 

A regulatory filing seems to confirm reports from the past couple of months that Dropbox has raised a large round of additional funding.

Back in January, the Wall Street Journal said that the cloud storage and sharing company had raised an additional $250 million at a $10 billion valuation. Then, in February, it updated that number to $350 million (at the same valuation) from investors including BlackRock, T. Rowe Price, and Morgan Stanley. However, Dropbox did not confirm the stories.

The filing says that the round could be up to $450 million, with $325 million raised so far. It seems that $350 million is a likely number, since that’s what Fortune has heard, too.

Dropbox had previously raised a little more than $250 million. I’ve reached out to the company and will update if I hear back.

By the way, Dropbox co-founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi won the founder of the year award at the Crunchies this year, presented by myself and Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom. (I cropped myself out of the picture above because otherwise it just felt weird.)

Update: Yep, it was $350 million. A source with knowledge of the funding has confirmed to me as well that Dropbox has indeed raised a Series C of that amount from existing investors and major mutual funds at a $10 billion valuation.

WhatsApp Is Actually Worth More Than $19B, Says Facebook’s Zuckerberg

 

More than a few people were surprised when Facebook said it would pay $19 billion for messaging app startup WhatsApp, but today Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that he believed it was actually worth more.

“If we can do a good job with WhatsApp [and] grow it, it will be a huge business,” he said today during a keynote presentation at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

He also shed a bit of light on why WhatsApp, led by co-founder Jan Koum, became interested in a Facebook exit — by all accounts, a tie-up that Koum in 2012 claimed was not a route he would have wanted to take: it was because of Internet.org, the Facebook-led initiative to bring internet connectivity to developing economies.

“Why were we excited to do this together? It was the Internet.org vision and how we can connect the world,” Zuckerberg said. While Koum and WhatsApp also seemed to have had the same philanthropic motivation behind their world communications domination ambition, it would have not been possible for them to execute on it as easily as they will with Facebook.

“If they did this as an independent company they would have had to focus on how to build the company out, to scale it, but now they can focus on how to connect the one to two billion people.” He emphasized that WhatsApp would remain completely independent but have access to all of Facebook’s resources to grow.

But one thing that may not grow anytime soon is Facebook’s portfolio of acquired messaging startups. Asked by someone in the audience whether he would try again for Snapchat — a company that Facebook apparently has tried to acquire more than once — Zuckerberg initially completely blanked the question. Then, when interviewer David Kirkpatrick brought it up a second time, he shed a bit more of an answer.

“Look, when you’ve just bought a company for $16 billion (not counting the RSUs), chances are you are probably done with your acquisitions for a while,” Zuckerberg said.

“With you, I don’t know,” Kirkpatrick answered.

Today Zuckerberg also laid out a bit more detail about how he sees the role of Internet.org.

The idea, he said, is to develop a group of basic internet services that would be free of charge to use — “a 911 for the internet.” These could be a social networking service like Facebook, a messaging service, maybe search and other things like weather.

Providing a bundle of these free of charge to users will work like a gateway drug of sorts — users who may be able to afford data services and phones these days just don’t see the point of why they would pay for those data services. This would give them some context for why they are important, and that will lead them to paying for more services like this — or so the hope goes.

“What they envision for carriers is that it will be up to them to decide what basic services might be free. Our model and what we’re trying to build is putting in an onramp is better for the internet and their models. It’s something that we can work out and have a lot of choice in,” he said.

Zuckerberg — who geeked out on specific references to how mobile networks can be built out and the financials behind Internet.org (there are three areas here, he said: the overall infrastructure, decreasing the amount of data that is being used, increasing application efficiently) — was straightforward in admitting that Internet.org won’t be a lucrative endeavor from the start. But he was also very optimistic.

“I cannot describe any model for the near term of how this would work for advertising model… I think we will lose money on this for a while,” he noted. “But we’ve been doing this for only a few months and people using data in Philippines [where Internet.org has partnered with Globe Telecom] has doubled since then… From what we’ve seen and rate of improvement we’re highly confident this will be profitable.”

On the efficiency of data services alone, he used the example of Facebook itself. A year ago people used 14 megabytes per day on Facebook, he said. Now, with improvements in compression on their mobile apps, that’s now down to 2 megabytes. The aim is to bring that down to 1 megabyte next year. (Onavo and its data compression technology also comes into play here.)

Zuckerberg was speaking to a room full of carriers and he knew it. For someone who expertly helped lead his own company through fundraising and a public offering, now he’s turning his attention to getting buy-in from a new class of investors: he’s looking for between three and five more telcos to deliver national initiatives in new markets.

Samsung’s Dust And Water Resistant Galaxy S5 Gets Official With Heart Rate Monitor, Fingerprint Scanner

The Samsung Galaxy S5 is here, and now we know everything about the 2014 flagship from the Korean smartphone maker. It’s pushing into phablet territory with a 5.1-inch, 1920×1080 display, and it comes with a fingerprint reader on the home button, as well as a heart rate monitor around back near the camera flash. The Galaxy S5 is also dust and water resistant, which may be the most useful new feature to ship on the phone.

Samsung’s Android 4.4-powered flagship doesn’t deviate that far from its predecessors in terms of case design, packing the larger screen into a larger chassis but sticking with a plastic (though there is a higher end metal variant) backing, rounded corners and a pill-shaped home button, but the fingerprint scanner and heart-rate sensor are significant hardware additions. The Galaxy S5 also seems to have a significant focus on health and fitness with this update, which could preface a similar move with the next generation of iOS software and hardware.

‘Seeing’ Your Heart Beat

On the new Samsung phone, the heart rate monitor will track your pulse and provide that info in S Health 3.0, Samsung’s fitness monitoring app, which already tracks steps taken and calories burnt. An optical heart rate monitor that works with your fingertip also appears on the new Galaxy Gear 2 smartwatches. For those who are curious about the inclusion of such a feature, Withings ships a step counter with a built-in monitor, which adds another dimension to health tracking and can be used in combination with other data to give a clearer picture of overall health.

Pay By Finger Swipe

The other big new hardware feature here is the fingerprint sensor. Many will no doubt accuse Samsung of copying Apple once again, but the fingerprint sensor here is quite different from Apple’s on the iPhone 5s. It can register three separate fingerprints, and registration takes eight swipes (it’s swipe-based, rather than asking you to hold your fingerprint down as with Apple’s). You can unlock the phone using fingerprint recognition, but also use it to authorize PayPal to make payments online – for anything. That’s much wider-reaching than Apple’s usage of fingerprints, which is limited to unlocking and to finalizing purchases made via iTunes.

Since it’s using PayPal, that means this could be used to pay for physical goods at retail, too, which potentially opens up a lot of mobile payments options for Samsung. All will depend on how easy the fingerprint tech is to use in practice, however, and how resistant it is to attempts to foil or dupe the security system.

The finger swipe can also unlock Private Mode on the Galaxy S5, which provides access to content that a user would rather keep hidden from anyone else who might gain access to their phone, like kids and strangers. It’s a handy and much-needed addition to mobile, which so far hasn’t had any really easy way to limit access to on-device media and content selectively.

4K Video And Adjustable Focus

Another highlight of the Galaxy S5 is the new camera, which now offers 16 megpixels on the rear – and video capture of 4k resolution (even though the screen on the device itself can only manage 1080p, or one quarter of that). The Galaxy S5 isn’t the first phone announced to have 4K video capture capabilities, but it is part of a limited early group, and that’s something that might be more appealing to consumers now that 4K TVs are becoming more affordable and consumers are looking around for content sources: at this rate, home videos could beat broadcast TV to the punch.

The new camera also has a slow motion function like in the iPhone 5s, as well as post-capture refocus selection, like in the expensive and cumbersome Lytro light field camera. This is another feature that should make its way to many mobiles this year, but it should definitely help Samsung sell some smartphones to shutter-happy mobile photogs.

There’s also hybrid autofocus, which includes both contrast detection and phase detection, which is the same kind of system used in advanced DSLRs and mirrorless digital cameras. Samsung promises this autofocus will be able to lock on in as few as 0.3 seconds, making it the fastest ever for a smartphone.

Everything Else

Other specs for the Galaxy S5 include a microSD slot for expanding storage (which could work with the newly announced 128GB capacity for iPhone-beating storage) and a Download Booster software feature that combines LTE and Wi-Fi data connection for superfast downloading of larger files, though at the expense of your mobile data bandwidth. The rugged design means you can take it anywhere, but you’ll have to deal with a flap for the Micro USB 3.0 charging/power port on the bottom.

It packs a 2.5GHz Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, NFC, LTE, Bluetooth 4.0, and either 16GB or 32GB of storage, so no real surprises here. It does offer a black and white mode for power saving (and promises up to 10 hours of LTE web browsing or 12 hours of video playback), which is interesting, and it should go on sale on April 11 in a first crop of almost 150 countries according to Samsung.

Facebook’s WhatsApp Acquisition For $19 Billion

 

With Facebook’s massive $19 billion purchase of WhatsApp earlier today, any possible marriage between Facebook and Snapchat appears to be dead.

After spending $20 billion on a photo sharing company (Instagram) and messaging company (WhatsApp), can Facebook really justify spending billions more to acquire an ephemeral photo messaging company?

CEO Mark Zuckerberg wanted Snapchat very badly; from blatantly cloning the app in December 2012 to making multiple acquisition offers, Zuckerberg saw an obvious fit between the ephemeral app and his social network giant.

WhatsApp co-founder and CEO, Jan Koum, will join Facebook’s Board of Directors as part of today’s acquisition deal. WhatsApp’s other co-founder, Brian Acton, spoke very harshly about Snapchat to Wired earlier today:

“It’s not 100 per cent clear to me what’s working about Snapchat,” he says. “Great, teenagers can use it to get laid all day long. I don’t care. I’m 42, essentially married with a kid. I don’t give a shit about this. I’m not sexting with random strangers. I send the ‘I love you’s in text. She’s sending me photos of our baby. These are memories. It’s not clear to me that being goofy with Snapchat necessarily creates that level of intimacy.

Clearly [Snapchat cofounder] Evan Spiegel only has his pulse on one part of the world. We have a whole wall of stories about people who got to know each other long distance and eventually got married. You’re not going to do this over Snapchat. And people want chat histories. They’re a permanent testimony of a relationship.”

At first glance, it seems like Acton doesn’t really understand Snapchat’s appeal or value proposition, which is very, very strange given that he has created one of the world’s most successful messaging companies. What’s far more likely is that Acton understands Snapchat perfectly well, and is throwing a few jabs at one of his main competitors.

But are these barbs just competitiveness, or does Acton actually think so little of Snapchat? And how will Acton’s and Koum’s feelings toward Snapchat affect a potential future acqusition now that Koum sits on Facebook’s Board?

Snapchat rejected Facebook’s over $3 billion acquisition offer in 2013. The hot startup has luredEmily White away from Instagram to become COO. Most importantly, it competes more than ever with Instagram and Facebook with its 24-hour ephemeral timeline, Snapchat Stories.

While the earliest versions of Snapchat competed primarily with messaging apps, the Stories feature has people posting and consuming photos and videos in a strikingly similar manner to Facebook and Instagram.

Zuckerberg tried once to directly clone Snapchat and failed. If he isn’t able to purchase Snapchat, or no longer wants to at the price, perhaps Facebook will try to develop its own take on ephemerality. Apps like Whisper and Secret have taken off by allowing users to post anonymously, just as Snapchat is making content ephemeral. People clearly want a different way to share content besides merely posting on Facebook and Instagram. Facebook needs to find a way to provide that to its users.

Meanwhile, Snapchat is now left with very few options if co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy choose to sell.

Google, which reportedly offered up to $4 billion for Snapchat, would still make a ton of sense for both companies. And Tencent, which sources say has already invested in Snapchat, would also be an interesting match.

That’s about it.

Snapchat doesn’t seem keen on selling any time soon (although neither did WhatsApp). The company would likely have to struggle with growth or monetization, or have repeated issues with security or lawsuits to seriously consider accepting an acquisition offer.

Based on its trajectory to this point, and its substantial pile of cash, it seems unlikely that Snapchat would sell until at least 2015. The company could continue its insane growth and eventually go public. It could falter, lose popularity, and flame out or sell for an unremarkable sum. But the third route, a top dollar acquisition to a major company, just became a lot less clear.

Video Discovery Specialist Rovi Acquires Voice Search Startup Veveo For $69 Million

Rovi has announced that it will soon add advanced voice search to its portfolio of tricks, through the acquisition of video discovery startup Veveo. Rovi will pay $62 million in cash for the company and its IP at closing, and up to $7 million in additional payments based on certain performance milestones.

With Veveo’s technology, Rovi will be able to add a whole new voice search capability to its video discovery platform. The startup, which was founded years ago, uses a mix of natural language processing and semantic technologies to plug intuitive search and recommendation features into video discovery applications.

The voice search engine can follow a wide range of conversational commands and learns as it goes, so that users don’t have to keep repeating themselves when searching through a bunch of videos. It can understand when users are searching for a specific movie, cast member, or genre, and can refine searches within those parameters based on additional information that the user provides. Over time, it can even offer personalized recommendations based on previous searches.

In short, Veveo is basically like Siri, if Siri actually worked.

Already, Veveo is being used behind the scenes by a number of device manufacturers and service providers, and it has more than 80 patent applications filed, with 50 granted to date.

It’s that combination of IP and customers that probably has Rovi really excited. By combining Veveo with its own metadata offering, Rovi should be able to get more customers to use its video discovery services, which can be embedded in connected devices, set-top boxes, and third-party video apps.

Rovi announced that the acquisition will likely lower its adjusted pro forma income per share by 3-6 cents, but that it would contribute double-digit revenue growth and be accretive in fiscal 2015.

LinkedIn Goes East For Growth, Opens Its First Site In China

Big international news today for LinkedIn, the social media site for professionals to network with each other: the company is launching its first official site in China — in Simplified Chinese, in beta. Derek Shen, president of China for LinkedIn, notes in a blog post that the site will be branded “领英” and will aim to offer more localized content for Chinese-speaking users.

LinkedIn is not starting from zero: the company already has some four million registered users in the country from some 80,000 different companies, although they all currently only use an English language site that has been accessible in the country for over 10 years already. The state of affairs, Shen notes, is one of LinkedIn still in a “start-up phase” in the country.

And this new venture will not be forged alone: Shen says that LinkedIn has established a joint venture with Sequoia China and CBC “to explore expanding our business here.” This potentially means not just how the the site itself will grow, but could include the launch of new services and potential investments into local companies that can help LinkedIn develop more localised services.

Some of those local tweaks are already a part of the site: social platforms Sina and Tencent are already integrated — meaning users can link up their accounts on these to cross post with LinkedIn; users can import contacts from Weibo. Users of WeChat can also link their accounts to share content.

For a company of 277 milion users that has been criticised of late for slowing growth, the move is significant: China represents an opportunity of some 140 million professionals, or one in five of all knowledge workers globally, according to LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner. And given how strong the GDP is growing in China — currently the world’s second-fastest — the number of potential users is sure to go up.

“Given the rapid acceleration and development of China’s economy, the expansion of our offering in China marks a significant step forward in our mission to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful,” Weiner writes in a blog post.

While a move into China will help the company tap into a rapidly expanding base of new users, it will not be without its challenges. Weiner notes that the decision to move into China is one that the company has been weighing up for a while, balancing the opportunity against the fact that companies that operate in the country are subject to censorship and much more government control than they are in the U.S. For a company that effectively relies on user-generated content, conversations, and a general level of trust and engagement, this is a huge deal.

Weiner says that its workaround is to put into place a list of requirements for how it intends to proceed:

– Government restrictions on content will be implemented only when and to the extent required.

– LinkedIn will be transparent about how it conducts business in China and will use multiple avenues to notify members about our practices.

– The company will undertake extensive measures to protect the rights and data of our members.

“Within this framework, I believe that the benefits of LinkedIn’s evolution in China will prove compelling to our members, who are based in China, as well as members around the world,” Weiner writes. He says that LinkedIn will continue to talk to partners, policy makers and others to reassess how it is proceeding in the country. Those parties include Sequoia China and CBC, and our President of China, and LinkedIn’s head of China Derek Shen.

HackerEarth Raises $500K To Find Great Programmers For Startups

HackerEarth, a Bangalore-based startup that helps other startups hire programmers through technical challenges, has raised $500,000 in seed funding from Angelprime incubator.

Launched in late 2012 by former Google engineer Sachin Gupta and his IIT batch mate Vivek Prakash, HackerEarth helps India’s growth-stage startups find technical talent they so desperately need. Unlike in the Silicon Valley, where many engineers still find it more lucrative to work for a hot startup than an IBM, or even a Microsoft, Indian startups have to fight perception battles and work harder to attract engineers who mostly prefer to work with more stable, bigger tech companies.

HackerEarth is like a GItHub, except that it’s not only about the Open Source projects.

“For developers, LinkedIn profiles does not matter as much as a platform where they can showcase their work, and GitHub is mostly about Open Source projects,” Gupta told TechCrunch.

Recently, one of the fastest growing Indian startups, InMobi, was looking to hire a Python and Ruby programmer urgently. HackerEarth helped it find one programmer in Taiwan. The startup now wants to tap into Eastern Europe and other Asian markets. 

“Back in 2008, Java was hot around here. But now, many newer startups are looking to hire programmers who know Ruby, Python and even HTML in Javascript for front-end applications,” said Gupta.

With almost three million engineers currently employed in India’s over $100 billion technology sector, around one million software coders and programmers are added every year. Clearly, the supply is not the challenge, at least not for the country’s biggest software outsourcing powerhouses such as Infosys and TCS who still hire thousands of engineers and non-engineers every year to perform commoditized application development.

And it’s not just the startups looking to hire programmers who are not just Java developers. Many bigger companies scrambling to get high-paying software projects from WalMart and Citi are beginning to hunt for such talent.

Startups such as Practo, which develops online clinic management software, find it even more tough to hire programmers they really want.

“Finding a good developer is like looking for a needle in a haystack”, Sri Karthik Sayana, hiring manager at Practo said in a statement. “By using HackerEarth, we have experienced greater than 80% fit between the candidates identified by the platform and the ones we offered a role at our company”.

As we wrote in April last year, HackerEarth is able to help startups do real-time evaluation through its online engine.

HackerEarth competes with YC alum InterviewStreet, apart from several others in the recruitment space. But the startup says its obsessive focus on finding the right technical talent is a differentiator.

“We will be spending more on sales and big data matching engine,” said Gupta. HackerEarth was part of the GSF Accelerator’s first batch. GSF SuperAngels has also participated in the latest funding round.

Unlike traditional recruiters, the startup evaluates programmers on some of the very basic parameters including the computing memory footprint and quality of code. All this is achieved by holding programming challenges. In one such recent challenge, HackerEarth heaped InMobi hire around half a dozen programmers in one day, a process that could have taken at least a week.

With the latest seed round, HackerEarth joins a small, but growing alumni of startups incubated by Angelprime. Backed by Mayfield, Jerry Yang and Chamath Palihapitiya’sSocial+Capital Partnership among several Silicon Valley investors, Angelprime was launched in June 2011.

As I wrote recently, India’s accelerator ecosystem is facing some harsh realities, and many of them are beginning to work with late-stage startups without Y Combinator-like batches. For its part, Angelprime has always been focused on investing in fewer, but focused startups that have the potential to scale and become $10 million companies in three years. Since it was launched three years ago, Angelprime has incubated four companies — ZipDial, Ezetap,SmartOwner, and now HackerEarth.

The Samsung Galaxy S5 Leaks Ahead Of Official Announcement In A Big Batch Of New Photos

The Samsung Galaxy S5 will get its official debut in just a few hours at a special event in Barcelona at this year’s Mobile World Congress, but you can see what it looks like right now thanks to a massive leak of photos coming from two different sources, includingSaudiAndroid and HardwareZone. The pics show a device that remains very similar to previous generations, with a strongly dimpled plastic back, larger display and built-in fingerprint scanner.

The S5′s dimensions put it squarely between the Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S4, allowing for the larger 5-inch diagonal display that has been rumored already. The original Galaxy Note, you may recall, had a 5.3-inch diagonal display, which means the main flagship is approaching the original phablet’s dimensions slowly but surely.

In the pics, we also get a peek at some of the new software features of the Galaxy S5, including a “Download Booster” which apparently uses both LTE and Wi-Fi to speed up sizeable downloads of over 30MB, as well as the fingerprint scanning app itself. The device also apparently has IP67 water and dust-proofing, which should make it a very rugged device indeed, and that it carries a 16-megapixel camera on the back. Expect that camera to have some other special powers, as there appears to be potentially a small secondary lens or some other kind of sensor living next to the flash now.

The design looks overall pretty similar to its predecessor, and there’s still plastic being used on the rear panel. It has a dimpled look this time around, however, and comes in at least white or black, but it’s a little disappointing to see Samsung stick with essentially the same old formula for its flagship. Still, with high levels of water and dust resistance, this could prove to be one of the more durable smartphones out there (the plastic may not feel super premium, but it withstands drops pretty well).

We’ve also heard (via 9to5Google) that Samsung will offer up custom app deployments on the Galaxy S5 based on a shopper’s job and interests, so that could affect homescreen appearance and other UI factors on these new flagships. We’ll have to wait to see exactly what the new device is packing, but we won’t have to wait long: The Unpacked5 event kicks off at 2 PM ET (11 AM PT) today.

Google Explains How Not To Be A Glasshole

Here are the do’s and don’ts of wearing Google Glass. Right from Google.

Apparently — and I know this might be a shocker — you’re not supposed to stand in the corner of the room and record people with Google Glass. That would make you a glasshole, according to this list.

At this point, Google’s challenge is not building the Glass platform, but training the general public to welcome Glass wearers into society. Glass’s future rests largely on the public’s acceptance of the technology. If, like Bluetooth headsets, it’s deemed nerdy or, worse, if Glass is lumped in with the NSA privacy scandle, the technology will be an also-ran. A lot is riding on Google Glass Explorers.

Google introduced Glass with a bang, but the company has not advertised the technology to the general public. For most people, their only interaction with the device is with a random person wearing Google Glass. These so-called Explorers, for better or worse, are Glass advocates. The “no glass allowed” campaigns clearly state that these advocates are not putting Glass in the best light.

As the last point in this do’s and don’ts list states: 

Don’t Be creepy or rude (aka, a “Glasshole”). Respect others and if they have questions about Glass don’t get snappy. Be polite and explain what Glass does and remember, a quick demo can go a long way. In places where cell phone cameras aren’t allowed, the same rules will apply to Glass. If you’re asked to turn your phone off, turn Glass off as well. Breaking the rules or being rude will not get businesses excited about Glass and will ruin it for other Explorers.

The World’s First Carbon Fiber 3D Printer Is Now Available To Order

Just in case you have $4,999 lying around and have a hankering to print in carbon fiber, the Mark One 3D printer is now available for pre-order. When first announced last month, the Mark One was going to be available to order in March, but today is your lucky day.

Named aptly for its creator, Gregory Mark, who also owns Aeromotions, this desktop printer debuted at SolidWorks World 2014 in San Diego. After seeing the expense and time currently associated with carbon fiber manufacturing, Mark started down a path that eventually ended up at the Mark One.

“We took the idea of 3D printing, that process of laying things down strand by strand, and we used it as a manufacturing process to make composite parts,” he told Popular Mechanics. “We say it’s like regular 3D printers do the form — we do form and function.”

The printer can not only lay down carbon fiber, but also fiberglass, nylon and PLA. Of course, only one at a time. The printer employees some pretty nifty advancements, too, including a self-leveling printing bed that clicks into position before each print.

For a few dollars more, the company also offers a Mark One Developer Kit Pre-order that puts your order at the front of the line and includes a few extras, including more Kevlar and two extra beds.

Samsung Said To Be Tapping Tizen For Next Generation Galaxy Gear Smartwatch

Samsung is taking a completely different approach to its next-generation Galaxy Gear smartwatch, according to a new report from USA Today – that means eschewing Android altogether on the on-device OS. The Galaxy Gear launched last year ran Android, Google’s mobile OS, but that piece of wearable tech didn’t light any fires under consumers or critics, so why not go back to the drawing board?

To replace Android as the OS for its new smartwatch, Samsung is said to be using Tizen, its in-house mobile OS that appears to be nearing release on its first Samsung smartphone device. USA Today reports that ian HTML5 version of Tizen will ship with the new Galaxy Gear, and that both will be unveiled at Mobile World Congress this month in Barcelona.

Samsung is hosting an event at MWC called ‘Unpacked5′ February 24, where it seems likely tounveil its next Galaxy S flagship device. There’s also a chance we’ll see the Gear at the show, as has been reported previously by other outlets.

Tizen on the smartwatch would be a significant shift for Samsung, but moving to an HTML5-based platform on the device might make it easier for developers to craft simple partner apps for software resident on the phones themselves, and it could also help with things like improving battery life. Qualcomm’s Toq smartwatch, for instance, runs a “lightweight” OS that contributes to its five days of battery life, vs. around two days at best for the Galaxy Gear.

Another reason Samsung is eschewing Android for this generation of smartwatch, according to USA Today, is to keep more control over the device and platform in its own hands. The company’s Tizen efforts seemed stalled for a long time, but Samsung recently signed up a score of new high-profile partners. Investing in Tizen on the Gear probably can’t hurt that device’s chances – with wearables, there’s little reason yet for any consumer to choose one platform over another, and the initial version of the Galaxy Gear didn’t sell enough to create anything like lock-in for existing users.

Hopefully this next Gear isn’t just the same device with Tizen subbing in for Android, and the new watch offers many more improvements besides. In any case, if rumors are true, we should find out either way next week.

LinkedIn Opens Its Publishing Platform To All Members

To date, LinkedIn has allowed a small, editorially selected group of “Influencers” like Richard Branson, Bill Gates and Barack Obama to publish their thoughts and advice to its network as long-form blog posts. Now, that changes, as LinkedIn prepares to open up access to its publishing platform to all 277 million users on its network.

The company says the rollout is staged, with initial access arriving for some 25,000 English language users of LinkedIn, with a worldwide reach planned for a couple of months from today, give or take.

“One of our big, strategic bets for the company is for LinkedIn to become the definitive, professional publishing platform,” says Ryan Roslansky, Head of Content Products at LinkedIn. “We do this because we want LinkedIn to be the place where members can become productive, successful professionals – not just when you’re trying to find a job, or search for another person.”

In other words, LinkedIn needs a hook that would make it more of a daily or at least a weekly destination for end users, rather than a place you go to update your resume when looking for work.

The company first launched its “Influencer” network last fall with 150 “thought leaders,” and has since grown that to around 500 in the time since. That number will remain unchanged, though Roslansky tells us that the new open access to publishing on LinkedIn could potentially allow others to break into these more exclusive ranks by writing posts that find a wider audience engaging with and sharing their content.

Today, Influencer posts are well-trafficked on the site, he says, and see over 20,000 unique views, over 250 likes and 80 comments, on average. (Would-be-influencers, these are the metrics you’d have to hit to qualify for consideration, we’d wager.) The company is also adding a few new Influencers in conjunction with the wider publishing rollout, including Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, Financial Expert and CNBC host Suze Orman, and Summly founder and Yahoo! Product Manager Nick D’Aloisio.