News Panel with Jay Levy and Brian Kennish #290

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Today on This Week in Startups, news panelists Brian Kennish of Disconnect.me and Jay Levy of Zelkova VC shared their thoughts on the new iPhone, Twitter’s apps update, Zynga’s executive departures and more.

1:00 Welcome everyone, thanks for joining us for the News Panel today.
1:45 Welcome Kirin Kalia, our news reader and the managing editor of Launch.
4:30 Thank you to Squarespace for supporting the show. Everyone go to http://squarespace.com/thisweekin to sign up for a free 2 week trial.
8:30 Welcome to Brian Kennish, founder of Disconnect.me. Brian, what is Disconnect?
11:45 Jay Levy is here from Zelkova VC. Jay, how are you doing over there?
12:30 Twitter’s latest update removed the ability to use other photo-hosting services like Yfrog. Why did Twitter do this?
14:30 I think a new class of service will come out that’s API guaranteed forever.
16:00 Brian, you’re a developer, what do you think this all means?
16:45 Explain what building an ad-based business has to do with locking down your API.
18:45 Brian: Mozilla is working on something called Browser ID which is a follow-up to the Open ID stuff.
19:30 Jay, what’s your take on this move for Twitter? Is it smart?
25:00 Thank you to MailChimp for being an amazing partner for the show! Everyone thank them @MailChimp.
29:30 Let’s talk about the iPhone 5. The tech press was “meh” on it. What are your impressions for far?
33:00 Brian, are you an iPhone user?
34:30 Is this the end of the smartphone cycle? It seems like they can’t come up with anything else revolutionary.
37:00 Brian, do you think we can say that the smartphone has been perfected?
37:45 Jay: I don’t think the tablet has been perfected.
40:45 What’s the biggest change for you for the iPhone 5, Jay?
42:45 Jay: What was Apple’s motivation for rolling in their own maps app?
44:15 Kirin: Should we not hold Apple to the same standard for its software that we do for its hardware?
46:30 Jay: Are you saying Facebook should build a phone, Jason?
53:15 Yahoo closed a $7.6B deal with Alibabba this week. Will this money give them the ability to buy any interesting startups?
55:15 Jay, what’s the vibe in the venture community now that Marissa is at Yahoo?
58:00 Last story: Yet another exec left Zynga this week: chief security officer Nils Puhlmann. Have we seen the last of the departures? What’s going to happen next?
1:01:00 Kirin: Is the gambling business the right one for Zynga to get into?
1:02:00 Brian: Are they working on gambling internationally or just in the US?
1:05:00 Jay, what do you think about Zynga?
1:08:45 Groupon is coming out with a card reader device for merchant use that would compete with Square.
1:09:45 Brian, why don’t you think Square is making any money?
1:10:15 Jay, are you an investor in Square?
1:13:45 Jay, are you long or short on Groupon?
1:15:15 Why are we talking about Occupy Wall Street again? What’s going on?
1:17:00 Brian: Howard Stern did interviews with the OWS protesters and most people had no idea why they were there.
1:21:30 The data tracking is good because it benefits the user who will see more targeted, relevant ads.
1:24:30 Brian and Jay, thank you both for joining us on the show. Jay, what’s your new company, Uproot Wine, about? 
1:25:30 Thank you to Squarespace and MailChimp, and thank you to Kirin for reading the news today. We’ll see you next time. 

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Keep up with the latest from our sister company, LAUNCH:

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