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Teacher: “I told you to write this poem out 10 times to improve your handwriting and you’ve only done it 7 times?”

Little Johnny: “Looks like my counting isn’t too good either!”

Today at The Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Founder of Khan Academy, Salman Khan, took the stage to share a few quick stats on the growth of his online video education platform. For those unfamiliar, Khan Academy is, as John Batelle noted this afternoon, one of Bill Gates’ favorite educators.

It also happens to be one of mine, but I thought you’d probably resonate a bit more with Bill Gates. But Khan Academy is the institution of Salman Khan, who brought the idea of educating young people, self-starters, people who learn at their own pace — online. “Educational”-type YouTube videos have now been around for years, but Khan Academy’s repository is pretty ridiculous. The educational startup now counts over 2,600 videos in its library, with sessions or classes on everything from arithmetic to physics, including 211 practice exercises, to let students watch videos and learn at their own pace.

While Khan is a not-for-profit organization, the Academy has received donations from The Gates Foundation and also won Google’s “Project 10^100″. With the $2 million+ from Google and Gates in pocket, Khan told the crowd at Web 2.0 today that the academy is seeing 39 million pageviews and 3.5 million unique users per month. That 3.5 million unique users is up 309 percent year-over-year.

It looks like all the publicity and traction Khan Academy has been getting of late is really starting to pay off, which is great to see.

You may not be well-familiar with Rebtel, but the company is currently the largest independent mobile VoIP provider now that Skype is under the Microsoft umbrella. Rebtel, which routes international calls made from mobile phones and landlines to local numbers (specifically to minimize the cost of calling abroad), counts more than 13 million connected users and offers its services in more than 200 countries around the globe. (Not to mention an expected run-rate of $75 million by December of this year — and profitability since 2010.)

When Robin interviewed Rebtel CEO Andreas Bernstrom back in June, he expressed respect for companies like Viber “and the speed at which their mobile applications have gone viral”, but he held that dependence on WiFi and 3G would continue to “make for a poor user experience”.

“VoIP is essentially an improved fixed line service”, Bernstrom continued. “Mobile VoIP, however, has not been cracked due to the limitations of the data network”.

Well you can guess Rebtel has had a little something to say about that. The company launched its first versions of its iPhone and Android apps in 2010, followed by Blackberry in 2011, and today is announcing the launch of version 2.0 of its free iPhone app, which allows users to make and receive free international calls using WiFi, 3G, or local minutes. The app also allows texts and calls to be made to any non-Rebtel users (on any phone) for what Bernstrom says are 90 percent cheaper rates than standard international calling on an average carrier.

And perhaps the coolest feature of Rebtel’s app is a new proprietary technology called “KeepTalking”, which allows users to transition (mid-call, mind you) from WiFi/3G to local minutes. The iPhone and desktop apps will add to the Rebtel free call network already including Android and Blackberry apps, as well as facilitating free calls between existing platforms.

With the mobile VoIP market expected to reach $36 billion in revenues by 2016, and with 70 million mobile VoIP users expected to be in operation by the end of the year, Rebtel’s ability to call any phone or PC anywhere over WiFI/3G or local minutes and seamlessly switch between them if coverage deteriorates, seems to lend it a significant value proposition.

What’s more, the app also enables platform-independent free calls between Rebtel users, labeling these contacts as “free” in the app’s contact list to make it easy to see who’s already using the service. Whenever someone downloads Rebtel, the app automatically sends you a push notification and enables SMS to any mobile phone number, with an average cost savings of over 60 percent, according to the Rebtel team.

For more, check out the Rebtel app here.

“We’re at an inflection point”, eBay CEO John Donahoe said from the stage at Innovate, eBay’s brand new developer conference that launched today in San Francisco. “We’ll see more change in how consumers shop and pay in the next three years than we’ve seen in the last 15 years”.

Donahoe’s prediction for the future came as context for giving a more complete introduction today to X.commerce, the platform formed by eBay and its nest eggs PayPal, Magento and GSI — designed to create a robust, full-service and “open” eCommerce solution. The eCommerce solution “to rule them all”, one might say.

But the real kicker is that, as Leena wrote earlier today, what X.commerce really symbolizes is the first instance of eBay creating a business that truly caters to developers. In the past, eBay developers have been divided into the eBay marketplace, PayPal, etc., but now developers have all those technologies in one place, allowing them to create “new shopping and eCommerce experiences based on these interconnected suite of tools”.

One of the more anticipated announcements to come out of Innovate was a partnership between the world’s largest social network and eBay, which will see the latter integrating Facebook’s Open Graph (the tree of connections Facebookers create by sharing and interacting with friends and content on the social network) into its Magento and GSI global commerce platforms.

What does this mean? The partnership will basically give third party developers a bigger voice in the development of social commerce, allowing them to build new social shopping experiences for consumers and retailers, share their ideas, and create personalized apps for buying, selling, and sharing that have Facebook’s social features baked right into them.

While building Facebook’s features into eCommerce offerings may allow them to make shopping more personalized and display friends’ thoughts about products right in their eShops, the truth is that social commerce hasn’t exactly taken off over the last year. Merchants already have the opportunity to set up storefronts on Facebook to sell directly to their customers while they’re networking or surfing a brand’s fan page, but so far sales on the platform haven’t impressed.

It seems that consumers aren’t particularly jazzed about doing their shopping on Facebook — part of which may be due to the novelty of Facebook’s eCommerce or it could simply be a reluctance to embrace new commerce functionality on what is really a platform designed to share pictures and stalk former romances. It also may have something to do with the fact that many consumers are worried that their credit card and personal information is being scooped up by Facebook in the transaction process. Either buyers are redirected to a brand’s own online store, or they buy on Facebook and often have to accept an app request to make a purchase. That app request can give away a bunch of information on the user and it’s really something many consumers are still loathe to do.

Indeed, it’s a result of this that, as VP and General Manager of X.commerce Matthew Mengerink said today, online shopping remains “a very individualistic and lonely experience”. Which is a shame considering the fact that Facebook’s Director of Platform and Mobile Marketing Katie Mitic told the Innovate crowd that shopping is inherently a social activity and that the world is really just beginning to get a taste of “what’s possible with social commerce”.

Of course, to achieve what’s possible with social commerce eBay and Facebook need the developer community to get excited and want to be on board. Yet, as Reuters pointed out, some analysts and eCommerce experts were hoping for a deeper and perhaps more full-featured partnership between the two companies. And Mitic’s announcement was met with little to no applause from the 3,000+ developers and techies on hand.

This could of course be that they were tired, or that the recent changes to Facebook’s platform that took users beyond the “like” button to allowing them to share what they’ve “read” or want to “taste” just don’t sound that enthralling when applied to social commerce. With eBay’s new Facebook integration, developers will now be able to build social commerce apps that allow users to share what products they “buy”, “want”, “own”, or “recommend”. But is this enough to really change the face of social commerce?

Mengerink said that, in the market today, too many shopping apps target the point of sale, but that the real-life process of browsing, discussing what products are appealing or not, and trying different things on, for example, is inherently social, but it doesn’t always involve buying.

“What we’re encouraging developers to think about is to try out the more ‘pre-shopping’ social experience”, he said. Meaning that the process of joining friends at an online store, browsing, sharing, and chattering via enhanced social features is a way to encourage brand recognition, organic word-of-mouth familiarity with products — and is integral to making the online shopping experience more resemblant of offline shopping. And to grow online sales. The question is, of course, whether or not this is truly possible just with “want” and “own” buttons, and just how much these new pre-shopping features can boost a brand’s bottom line.

The virtual shopping experience is a long ways off from one that mimics its offline counterpart, and I’ve yet to be convinced that just because one of my grade school friends interacted with a product on Facebook, which then popped up in my news stream, that I’m more likely to interact with that product and buy it just because of some loose social connection manifesting while I’m in the process of turning off more Facebook sharing features. Yes, it adds to a brand’s network, and if I’m browsing friends’ profiles and see a product I want to learn about before buying, this is a great conversation starter.

What do you think? Is this a win for developers, consumers, eBay, or Facebook (or all of the above)?

Excerpt image courtesy of TechFouzan

eBay, Inc. is set to debut its brand new developer business tomorrow, X.commerce and we have many of the details that the e-commerce giant will be announcing at its annual developer conference. As we’ve written in the past, eBay, PayPal, Magento and GSI will be the pillars of the X.commerce platform, which will feature a “fabric” that stitches the platform together with other partners to create new experiences for retailers and their customers.

PayPal’s director of communications Anuj Nayar tells me that this is the first time eBay has created a business focused on developers as the customers. Previously developers were part of each business, with separate developer experiences for eBay’s marketplace, PayPal and other businesses. Now, developers will get access to all of these technologies in one place, and according to Nayar, will be able to create new shopping and e-commerce experiences based on these interconnected suite of tools.

X.commerce will also be an open ecosystem, with outside partners also integrating their technologies for the developer community. Adobe, Facebook and Kenshoo have all created experiences and APIs for developers to integrate into their applications relating to online shopping, mobile, and local components.

Local product inventory and shopping site Milo, which eBay acquired last year for $75 million is going to be launching an API for developers to integrate local inventory into their own applications. This will be part of the X.commerce platform as well.

eBay-acquired barcode scanning app RedLaser will soon be launching a 3.0 version of its applications which have been integrated with both Milo and PayPal. So you can scan a barcode, and the app will tell you if its available in a local store or on eBay, and let you pay for it (either in the store or on eBay) in the app via PayPal.

eBay also acquired Magento earlier this year for over $180 million. Magento’s open source software basically enables merchants and brands to create online storefronts and have a decent amount of control over the look, content, SEO, digital marketing and functionality of their online storefronts. Tomorrow, eBay will announce that Magento, via the X.commerce platform, will be launching an app store for Magento extensions. Developers can create applications on top of Magento, and retailers can use this functionality in their online storefronts via the app store. It’s similar in theory to the Salesforce App Exchange, but for online retailers.

In my opinion, one of the biggest products that will be debuted tomorrow is a new collaboration between PayPal and X.commerce called PayPal Access. Basically, PayPal Access is a payments identity technology that would allow you to carry your payments identity to various retailers on the web. So instead of signing up with a specific retailer’s credential’s on a site, you would sign up with your PayPal account which would include all of your financial, shipping and billing information, as well as your purchase history. It’s sort of a cross between Amazon’s payments platform and Facebook Connect. We’re told PayPal is partnering with Gigya and Janrain for PayPal Access.

As Nayar explains, identity is just another piece of the puzzle for PayPal and X.commerce. For now, PayPal has yet to announce any major retailers using Access but I’m sure we can expect a few to jump on board soon.

There’s still much more PayPal, eBay and X.commerce will announce tomorrow, I am told. For example, we don’t know the exact details of the Facebook announcement. Facebook Platform Marketing Chief Katie Burke Mitic just joined eBay’s board.

And considering how bullish both PayPal and eBay are on mobile, we can probably expect more in that area as well. PayPal is also expected to debut a new payments platform for merchants as well as in-store integrations. Stay tuned.

Mobile ad network InMobi has raised $200 million in financing from SoftBank to counter Apple and Google in the fast-growing market.

The investment will be be doled out in two tranches — $100 million this year and then the rest in 2012, according to SoftBank. SoftBank joins Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures in backing InMobi.

With the investment, the Bangalore, India-based InMobi will have more ammunition to take on Google, which bought AdMob, another mobile ad network, in 2009 for $750 million, and Apple, which bought Quattro Wireless in early 2010 for $275 million.

Despite the investment, mobile advertising is still a fairly small market. The total spend for such advertising is projected to hit $1.1 billion in the U.S. this year, according to eMarketer. That spend will hit $2.5 billion in 2014, the researcher estimates.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, webphotographeer

More About: admob, apple, Google, InMobi, mobile advertising, Quattro Wireless, softbank

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. We’re keeping our eyes on five particular stories of interest today.

Twitter Adds an Activity Stream

Twitter has partially redesigned its web application to expand the breadth of users’ individual newsfeeds.

FTC Probe Examines Android, Web Search Complaints

According to unnamed sources, members of the FTC’s antitrust division are looking into allegations that Google prevents smartphone manufacturers that use its Android operating system from using competitors’ services; that it promotes listings from its own products listings above most other results; and that it scrapes information collected by competitors — particularly local business review services, such as Yelp — in its own products and then demotes said competitors’ sites in its search results.

David Cameron Threatens To Prevent Suspected Criminals From Using Social Media

In the wake of riots in London, which were partly organized on social networks, UK Prime Minister David Cameron has told Parliament that the government is determining whether it is possible to prevent suspected criminals from sending messages via social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook in the future.

Twitpic Founder Launches Twitter Clone

In what may be merely a publicity stunt, Twitpic founder Noah Everett has unveiled Heello, his feature-for-feature copy of Twitter. The move comes just a day after Twitter rolled out a Twitpic competitor.

911 Will Soon Accept Texts, Photos

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has outlined a five-step plan to update the technology that powers the 911 emergency response system with support for text messages, voice calls, videos and photos, as well as automatic location information.

Further News

• Smartphone manufacturer HTC is purchasing a 51% stake in Beats Electronics for $309 million.
• The District Attorney of San Mateo County has determined that no one at Gawker Media-owned tech blog Gizmodo is criminally responsible for the purchase and reporting of a stolen iPhone 4 prototype last year.
• Hulu is plotting an international expansion, starting with a move into its first foreign market, Japan, later this year.
• Occipital, developer of the RedLaser and 360 Panoroma apps for iPhone, has raised $7 million in Series A funding to develop a next-generation computer vision platform.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59

More About: first to know series

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Quora has just launched a bundle of interesting initiatives over the past day or so, all signs that the Q&A site is trying to figure itself out.

First of all, the company has begun testing something called “Ask to Answer Suggestions” where users start out with a budget of 500 Quora credits (Quoins?) and can offer to pay other users in credits to answer questions. The price for questions will eventually increase or decrease based on answerer’s zeal for answering questions and level of topic expertise.

From an email sent out to beta testers (because I’m a TechCruncher I’m not in the beta, nor can I see the Quora FAQ, which I’ve included below).

“Since experts only have so much time to answer questions, we are also introducing credits as a bookkeeping mechanism so that incoming requests to a user stay at a manageable level.

How It’ll Work:When you use Ask to Answer, you’ll now see other beta testers suggested based on how likely they are to give you a good answer. With your credits, you can ask these users to answer questions. Note, however, that if you and another user are following each other, you can ask each other for free. The number of credits required to ask someone reflects how responsive she is to Ask to Answer requests; to give responsive users who are willing to provide answers more requests, their prices come down while their ranking in suggestions improves.”

Note, these credits aren’t something that can be exchanged for cash only for answers to questions. Basically as it scales the company is experimenting with incorporating game mechanics into its processes in order to get people to give more answers. The more and more mainstream/non-tech people join, the more likely it is that questions will go un-answered  because the incentive that makes techies answer questions (esteem within our close-knit community) just isn’t there for a wider audience.

Nothing is more depressing than an unanswered question. If Quora power user Semil Shah is currently offering people $100 on Zaarly to answer his Quora question about the most foundational web companies of all time, in-service credits are worth a shot.

In addition and more formerly, the Q&A site has also added the option to include location and employment information in user profiles, letting users broadcast social and business information like where they live, go to school and work. The new profiles also allow for Facebook-style status updates, presumably because people were already using the question functionality to post non-questions.

Quora designer Rebecca Cox explained the profile changes in a followup post to the one written yesterday, interestingly enough chalking up the profile changes to scaling issues,

“Quora is growing and the previous profile wasn’t scaling with that growth. We have a lot of systems in place to provide a good environment for everyone to learn and share, but those same systems can be difficult for people new to the site to understand. If you’re new and are reading an answer or receiving a notification that someone edited your question: You want to trust the answer that is given and knowing something about the person who gave it helps inform that; You want to know why an edit happened and you want to know about the person making that change.”

The startup exploded last December and has been rushing to catch up with its success ever since. With these recent steps we’re seeing the beginning of a more quantified user economy emerge, on based on reputation and expertise in providing information. Quora needs some kind of way to identify experts, and is figuring it out through iterating as it goes along.

The Quora Credits FAQ, below (btw, if anyone wants to send me a screencap of their credits budget, my email is really easy to figure out. And while you’re at it …).

Update: And we’ve got a screencap.

1. What are Quora Credits?

To help users get great answers faster, we’re launching Ask to Answer Suggestions, which help you find the people who are most likely to be able to answer your questions. Now instead of only being able to ask people you know or those whose answers you’ve seen, Suggestions identify people who have related expertise to help you. But since experts only have so much time to answer questions, we are also introducing credits as a bookkeeping mechanism so that incoming requests to a user stay at a manageable level.

Everyone starts out with a budget of credits, which can be used to ask other people to answer questions. (For now, only people who are in the private beta will be part of this system). To start, it will cost the same number of credits to ask anyone a question, but prices will change over time to keep the number of requests to a user manageable. Users who are responsive and signal that they enjoy answering questions will see their prices fall, making them affordable to more users, resulting in more requests. Prices increase for users who aren’t answering requests and might prefer fewer requests.

2. How are Quora credits earned?

You can earn more credits in a few ways.

Answering Ask to Answer requests: You’ll receive credits for answering ask-to-answer requests (an amount equal to your price).

Getting upvotes on answers you’ve written: You’ll get credits for any new upvotes (not just from beta users) on any answer or post you’ve written on Quora.

An answer you have solicited (via Ask to Answer request) receives upvotes.

Credits given to you by other users: Users can give credits to each other whenever they want.

Occasional system refreshes: We’ll provide credit refreshes if you go for a while without enough credits to ask the average priced user.

3. How is my price determined?

Credits are a bookkeeping mechanism for Ask to Answer Suggestions to ensure that frequently suggested users don’t get inundated with requests. The prices that are set for each user reflect how responsive a user has been to prior requests and have nothing to do with the quality of potential answers.

Users who are responsive to requests signal that they are willing to provide answers when asked. As a result, their prices come down while their ranking in suggestions improve to make them affordable to more users, resulting in more requests.

On the other hand, prices increase for users who aren’t answering requests and might prefer fewer of them. If you receive numerous requests to answer and do not respond by writing answers, the system increases your price and ranks you lower in suggestions; in essence, it infers that you are too busy to answer or not interested in answering, both of which mean, on average, that we should send fewer requests your way.

Two users with the same price may have different levels of expertise, because their prices reflect similar rates of responding to requests. Conversely, two users with similar levels of expertise may have different prices, based on different response rates.

4. What happens if someone does not respond to my request to answer? Do I get a refund?

If a user who is asked to answer responds with an answer within a week, he or she receives the price paid by the asker. If the user has not answered after a week has elapsed, or clicks to ignore the request during the week, 75% of the price is refunded to the asker; the remaining 25% is still paid to the potential answerer for having received and considered the request.

5. Why are some users free to ask?

If you and another user in the beta are both following each other, you can ask each other questions without having to pay in credits. This is because we assume you are likely to know each other and did not discover each other through Ask to Answer Suggestions.

6. What happens when I interact with users not in the beta?

You can request answers from users who aren’t in the beta by typing their name into the Ask to Answer box. These requests will neither require payment nor show up in your credits pages.

Similarly, people who are not in the beta test may still ask you to answer questions, too. These will work as they did before except they will not trigger notifications and you will not receive credits for answering these unpaid requests. They will not expire and will appear on at the bottom of your Ask to Answer page with old requests you received prior to the beta.

7. How does giving credits work?

You can give credits you have earned at any time to anyone else in the beta. The only restriction is that the amount you have available for gifting is your current balance minus 500 credits. This is to prevent users from creating many accounts and accumulating a huge amount of credits by transferring them to a single account.

8. What happens if I run out of credits?

If you do not have enough credits to ask someone to answer, you will not be able to do so. Periodically, users who have fewer than 100 credits will receive a refresh to top them up to 100. For example, if you had 0 credits left before the refresh, you would have 100 after the refresh. If you had 60 left before the refresh, you would also have 100 after the refresh.

9. What are the terms of the private beta?

As this is a beta, you can expect the features to evolve and change just like the rest of the site, potentially faster as we get your feedback. If we decide to roll out Ask to Answer Suggestions more broadly, we will cancel the beta credits and issue entirely new credits to all Quora users. We will issue the new credits to beta testers in proportion to the number of beta credits you have at the end of the beta period.

10. I have feedback, questions or bugs to report. What should I do?

Please email feedback@quora.com with “BETA” in the subject and describe what happened in details so we can help investigate.

11. Why is Quora introducing credits?

Our goal is to help make each question page on Quora a valuable, reusable resource. One part of getting more great answers is helping users find experts who can contribute to each page. We decided to focus now on Ask to Answer suggestions because it is an opportunity to discover great contributors who otherwise might be unknown to you, and also to find out where your expertise is sought. We’ve found that people generally like helping each other, and new Ask to Answer Suggestions are designed to make that easier.

In making suggestions prominent in the Quora interface, we have to be considerate of how available users are for answering questions on Quora. Credits allow us to calibrate how many requests a user might get, so that nobody is overwhelmed. Automatically setting the price of asking a user based on that user’s past responsiveness keeps the system flexible and dynamic while removing a complex decision. In developing credits, we’ve thought carefully about the economics — both at the level of each user, and of the system as a whole. Price movements and rewards are designed to help the system quickly reach a sustainable equilibrium, and to make using credits intuitive and fun.

As with all theory, we need to see how our ideas work in the wild, and that’s where this beta comes in. We welcome your questions as you use the features, and your feedback about how things can be improved. We have numerous ideas for how we might iterate on the product and look forward to continuing to improve Quora with you.

[crunchbase url="http://www.crunchbase.com/company/quora" name="Quora"]

Amazon has just announced a deal with CBS to allow Amazon Prime customers to stream television shows from CBS’s library of content. Financial terms of the non-exclusive deal were not disclosed.

According to the release, Amazon Prime customers will be able to instantly watch thousands of episodes from the CBS library at no additional cost to their membership. In February, Amazon officially launched the instant streaming service for movies and TV shows for Prime subscribers.

Additionally, CBS content will be added to Amazon Instant Video is a streaming video service that offers customers more than 90,000 movies and television shows available to purchase or rent. With the deal, Amazon will add 2,000 episodes to the content that Prime members can access, which now totals 8,000 movies and television shows. The CBS deal includes full seasons for 18 television series, including “The Tudors,” “Numb3rs,” “Medium,” the complete “Star Trek” franchise, “Frasier” and “Cheers.”

The deal is interesting because it’s one of the first formal media partnerships for Amazon in content streaming. Competitor Netflix has dominated the space because of its licensing deals for massive amounts of content. But similar to Netflix, Amazon’s content appears to be older content as opposed to new-releases, a market which Apple has been able to corner.