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Weekly Watch Round Up | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 19 | A few of the most forward thinking European watch designers have come together to bring the quirky and highly forward-thinking brand called . The brand offers watches that combine ease of telling the time with minimalism – and they are available in literally any color combination you can dream of. With a name like “TNT” what would you imagine a watch collection to look like? The combines independent Swiss watch making with aggressive sporty looks and open mechanics. As a pricey 40th anniversary gift, Audemars Piguet has given itself a limited edition of 40 pieces that features a solid platinum case and impressive skeletonized movement and dial. A reveals that it is a solid tool-watch with a designer spirit from the popular French brand. Unique to the BR02-94 is the barrel-shaped case design and large, yet comfortable size on the wrist. Leave it to the Italians to produce a watch that is specifically designed to match your Lamborghini. You choose the colors among a few available exotic materials and for your budding ego to expose to the world. [slideshow] |
Bag Week Review: The Chrome Anton | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 11 | 19 |
Is it a messenger bag? Is it a briefcase? How about both? Chrome’s Anton laptop bag is equal parts business and play. It comes in both green and black and has a real military feel to it, at least in army green. It may not have the most pockets, or be the lightest bag I’ve toted around, but I can’t help but love it. You can tell the user was in mind during the design process, as proven by swiveling shoulder strap hooks and the cross pattern of the Velcro. It is, after all, the little things that count. Made of nylon and military spec wax-coated canvas, the Anton is heavy duty enough for a tornado chaser. I got stuck in a downpour yesterday and was really worried about my laptop, but it was safe and dry thanks to the Anton. When the bag is full, it takes on a very boxy shape much like a brief case. When packed with a couple knick knacks, it sports a much more casual look.
The Anton Laptop bag won me over with simple design choices. They mean seem minute, but they make a big difference over time. For one thing, shoulder straps always seem to get twisted around on my bags, making them annoyingly uncomfortable. The Anton’s shoulder strap sports rotating hooks, so no matter how twisted you may find yourself it’s super easy to get settled again, without ever taking off the bag. Then there’s the cross pattern Velcro that holds the front flap down and closes off the main compartment. This seems reasonless, but I assure you there’s thought behind the madness. The flap itself sports vertical Velcro, while the inside of the bag where the flap connects has horizontal Velcro. That way, when you’re trying to pull the bag open, you don’t have to yank as hard as you would if the Velcro met on both sides all the way across. Just a small patch of Velcro is stuck together. Similarly, there’s a lot of real estate there for the Velcro to attach, so you don’t have to be as precise when closing the bag. Some other little accents were also apparent, like the inclusion of a slot for a wheelie bag handle. If this is, in fact, to be used as a briefcase then you can bet a wheelie bag will be involved at some point. Just don’t think that it’s a full-fledged pocket like I did at first and try to slide your phone in there. The bag offers a lot of space — enough to pack everything I need in a day and then some. The laptop sleeve can fit up to a 17-inch MacBook Pro, though if you’re packing a full 17-incher and a lot of other stuff the bag becomes a little heavy in briefcase mode. Overall, however, I found the Anton to be very comfortable and useful.
This bag would be perfect for the guy who’s a businessman during the week and a fan of the great outdoors on the weekend. It’s heavy-duty enough to pack tools in and take through the woods or on a hike, but has enough sophistication to easily pass at the office. It’d also be a great day bag for anyone who travels heavy, as I really didn’t have trouble carrying around a of stuff with this bag.
You bet I do. The Anton is a bit of a throw-back in terms of style which I appreciated, and I really liked how rugged it was. It’s comfortable, durable, and sports two entirely different looks depending on what you’re carrying/if the strap is connected. The little things won me over, and the bag in general had no trouble maintaining that impression. I give it an A+. [slideshow] |
Daily Crunch: Back | Bryce Durbin | 2,011 | 11 | 19 | Here are some recent posts on TechCrunch Gadgets:
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Josh Kopelman: “I Think 2012 Will Look More Like 2008 Than 2011” | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 26 | Remember, the Sequoia slide deck in 2008 warning its portfolio companies to batten down the hatches and “spend every dollar as if it were your last”? Things aren’t yet quite as dire as the last time the economy tailspinned into recession, but a number of factors are making some startup investors wary. “I think 2012 will look more like 2008 than 2011,” warns First Round Capital’s . His pace of investing has not slowed down. He’s just being realistic. Speaking to other early-stage investors recently, I get the same sense that the (dare I say “ “?) of the past 18 months is coming to an end. Many VCs (and founders) have been feasting, and now it might be time to take a breather. The number of seed-stage fundings is series A fundings. And whether you consider this a Series A Crunch or , many more seed stage companies got funded over the past 18 months than previously and many more will subsequently not continue to get funded when it comes time for a series A. Many of the top-tier VC firms who have been scrambling to get into as many seed deals as possible, are now being extra cautious and selective. When a big-name VC declines to invest again a second time around that sends a negative signal to the other potential investors and can often kill a deal. I am starting to hear stories of exactly that happening. At the same time, VCs are fighting each other more fiercely than ever to get into the top deals and will pay whatever the price. Yet, on the larger economic front, things don’t look so rosy. Overall economic at (a recently downward-revised) 2 percent last quarter, unemployment remains at a very high 9 percent, and governments around the world (including the U.S.) are in the throes of major debt and deficit crises. Both consumer and enterprise spending on technology is directly tied to the economy. Kopelman is right. It’s not R.I.P Good Times quite yet, but be prepared to see some bloodletting. The easy money might not be so easy anymore and the economy is still limping along. A shakeout isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It means less competition for those who survive and it forces them to find their business model faster. If you look back at companies that were founded in 2008, they include Airbnb, Groupon, and ngmoco. |
How to Make Your Startup Go Viral The Pinterest Way | Steve Cheney | 2,011 | 11 | 26 | On Thanksgiving, Pinterest’s co-founder sent an email to his entire user base saying thanks. It was fitting, as Pinterest was born two years ago on Thanksgiving day 2009. Ben had been working on a website with a few friends, and his girlfriend came up with the name while they were watching TV. Pinterest officially launched to the world 4 months later. Some startups go crazy with hype and users right after launch. And some don’t. I don’t know the founders, but I thought I’d take apart Pinterest’s story to discuss growth and virality in consumer web startups. Pinterest was not an overnight success. On the contrary, its growth was surprisingly modest after Turkey Day 2009. Take a look at from Oct 2010 to Oct 2011, which is the picture in this post, and shows Pinterest rising from 40,000 to 3.2 million monthly unique visitors. I took both ends of this chart and estimated monthly compounded growth over Pinterest’s lifetime, then interpolated the curve using constant growth and put the results in . Backing out of Compete’s numbers, we see Pinterest grew about 50% month over month from a base of zero since its inception (on average, smoothing the curve). Today growth is catching fire, as evidenced by the near doubling of traffic last month, and , according to comScore. Note these numbers are approximations and also do not count the significant traffic the service sees from mobile (Pinterest’s app currently takes the #6 social spot in the iTunes store). Also my guess is that a lot of its unique visitors arrive out of network (from Facebook / Twitter), and many of these uniques leave Pinterest without registering (more on this below) so it’s tough to know their exact user numbers. But let’s play pretend and use the data we have to do some projections on where Pinterest could be a year from today. Its recent VCs certainly did this, and decided to give the startup a $200M+ valuation. Ron Conway said recently that Pinterest is growing like Facebook did in 2006. Facebook actually from May 2006 to May 2007, then a year and half later they had , and were growing at about 20 million uniques per month. So monthly growth early on for Facebook was around 10-15%. Can Pinterest really sustain its wild 45% monthly growth? No, unless it’s destined to be the fastest growing startup in history. However, we can be pretty sure Pinterest has hit a tipping point… their page view numbers are simply insane. If they were to grow 20% month/month over the next year, Pinterest would be at 30 million uniques a year from today. And with 25% month/month growth, they’d be at 50 million. These are pure guesses, but Ron’s statements and last month’s growth make this look possible, so let’s examine virality and Pinterest’s underlying fundamentals. Viral sharing is typically emphasized in products or services where the cost to acquire a customer needs to be low, and you can’t afford to spend money on paid channels, like Mint.com did, or like a Living Social / Groupon. Having a free method, ideally a user-driven method, is critical to consumer web startups. But there’s a lot of confusion around virality. The reality is that you can build a sustainable business without “going viral” and this point is not understood well among techies or investors. The connotation “going viral” typically means having a viral growth coefficient of greater than 1. For every user that comes on your platform, he or she refers 1 additional user. This ensures a service will “hockey stick”. But what if every user only refers, say 0.2 new users? Contrary to popular belief, this can also lead to a sustainable business. However, the lack of pure virality implies that you absolutely must retain existing users to grow. This is why daily active users and monthly active users are such important metrics, and are tracked maniacally by CEOs and investors. Churn is your ultimate enemy. Sure, it will take longer to grow if each user brings in fewer new people, but as long as most users don’t leave, you’re all good. Viral cycle times also factor in – the shorter the “referrer” period, the faster the virality takes hold – for example, if a user invites 1 new user every month, that’s better than if she invites 1 per year. Social games like Zynga historically have extremely short viral cycles; however they must, because churn is extremely high (user lifetime is often measured in hours or days, because users get bored with games quickly and move on). Obviously, the more viral a service, the more sustainable it is, but it’s really in the details. And overnight success is not a guarantee for sustainability. Many startups are pushing way too prematurely on press before they’ve demonstrated real sustainability. I see this all the time and Eric Ries covered this in his discussion on . The truth is that startups often draft off of artificial success that originates simply from hype within the tech echo-chamber. Some sites go from 0 to 100K+ visitors in weeks and people high five one other, then look around and say “what’s next, how do we keep these users happy?” Pinterest’s story is much different – they didn’t have the same early “hype spikes” as many other startups do, standing at only 40K uniques 8 months after launch! It took Pinterest quite a while for a network-effect to take hold. Clearly every startup should hope for early virality. But if it doesn’t exist initially, you must work to perfect a soft onboarding of virality that’s based on high engagement, and create a product that people love and will come back to, while layering viral techniques on top of that. Today, Pinterest is clearly insanely addictive among its user base, and they are sharing. But one reason I see Pinterest as a valuable a case study is precisely because they didn’t experience the early adopter “hype” spike 18 months ago. Like many tech startups, I am sure some content was seeded within the tech community by the founders. But their “normal” user was a housewife in the Midwest, not a techie reading TechCrunch or Hacker News. And I’m sure Pinterest made a bunch of product tweaks early on to iterate around sharing and engagement, as virality took hold. Let’s compare Pinterest to Instagram for a minute, since both base off of photo content as their primary unit. Instagram has actually done nearly all its user acquisition virally out of network (sharing to Facebook and Twitter) and via word of mouth, with limited sharing in the network. This is remarkable when you think about it. By that I mean that there’s no real sharing inside the network other than liked photos surfacing due to popularity, and manual discovery via hashtags. There is no “regram” if you will. You also can’t follow people or like a photo from Instagram without an iPhone (even if it’s tweeted or posted to the web!) unless you’re a power user on an API mashup (see ). All this reveals just how impressive Instagram’s growth has been, as they went from about 1 million to 10 million users over the past year. Being realistic, Pinterest could have much higher growth than Instagram based on the fact that it’s unconstrained as a platform – it works from web, mobile web, in-app, and has easier baked-in virality around sharing. “Pinning” has this built in because many initial pins start as “repins” of other people’s content. In this way, existing content will often be the seed for a new user’s stream. The pin unit is genius. Users can also visit the Pinterest site and participate (i.e. browse endlessly) before signing up. This allows full consumptive access before registering and is a secret weapon if done right. Fred Wilson discussed this recently in his post about the , giving an example of his mom checking his tweet stream without logging into Twitter – she gets value out of the service while ironically Twitter’s monthly active user metric. Similar value can be granted to consumptive users who visit the site but don’t initially register. Then when a user is ready to pin content, they create an account and go wild – Pinterest leverages web content from Tumblr like no site that has ever existed, thus riding on top of its network-effect while not requiring user generated content like many services. They’ve also perfected in-network virality (pin, repin, like) in addition to out of network sharing (Facebook, Twitter) to grow virally. For these reasons Pinterest could conceivably grow as fast as any consumer service we have seen in recent memory. It’s fun to speculate on all this when you factor in Ron Conway’s statements comparing growth to Facebook’s early heydays. And perhaps most notably, though it will surely take a while, Pinterest is already threatening to monetize, as those Midwest housewives are literally , which Pinterest can profit off of by taking attribution for purchases that originate off its platform. I know several friends who’ve purchased stuff spontaneously via random discovery on the site. I expect Pinterest to be thriving a year from now (my guess is 30 million users next Thanksgiving) and also spawn hundreds of copycat startups in other verticals (“Pinterest for that”). Sadly, many of these will arrive on TechCrunch and spike in hype, then fail to nail any true virality before they are slowly forgotten… After all, this is the cycle of consumer startups. _________________________ |
Review: Super Mario 3D Land For The 3DS | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 26 | It’s not hard to love Mario. He’s had his ups and downs – what, for example, was the deal with ? And was pretty hard to love, at least for this non-sports fan – but darn it if the little guy doesn’t keep coming back for more and keeps you, at the very least, entertained. is the latest in the Mario saga. The story is fairly typical – something was stolen (a lot of leaves) and Bowser took Princess Peach. Your mission is to find the leaves (which are special and give you the Tanooki suit) and then find Peach. What you go through to find her, however, is where all of the fun comes in. The game is a 2D platformer turned 3D. You move swiftly through a nicely rendered 3D land and hop, stomp, and jump on enemies and into question blocks. Initially gameplay is a bit stiff and weird but once you realize you’re actually following a nicely and cleverly set path through this 3D world you can loosen up and explore a bit. Mario has existed in 3D before, most strikingly in in . This game has very little to do with that title and is instead a fully-formed platformer in 3D. It is more on par with in terms of gameplay and mechanics and it’s clear the 3D Land is a Galaxy title reduced in scope and, obviously, space flight. Now for the million-dollar question: how is the 3D on the 3DS? The problem with the 3DS is you often lose the 3D sweet spot while heavily into gameplay. This problem is quite pronounced in action titles like and less prevalent in SM3DL. However, it was a bit frustrating and I often resorted to turning 3D off while playing. Does this mean the 3D doesn’t work? No, but it wasn’t quite to my taste. The game itself offers excellent playability and the , namely a super leaf that essentially allows you to breeze through the level unharmed by enemies and with a flying Tanooki suit, makes it great for novices. The help system kicks in after two deaths – it gives you a power-up – and then when you die five times it gives you the special leaf. Basically it helps reduce the frustration for casual gamers. This is a Mario game. Mario is great. Is it worth buying a 3DS over? Probably not unless you’re also a Zelda fan as is superb on this device. However with the launch of the equally superb , Nintendo does offer some compelling reasons to pick up their console – and this game – for the holidays. [slideshow] |
Sing Now The Praises Of Klout’s Klumsy Kludges | Jon Evans | 2,011 | 11 | 26 | Over the last month, Charles Stross memorably called the online influence measurer “ ,” Rohn Miller of exhorted people to “ ,” John Scalzi lambasted it as “ ,” the when they discovered Klout was autogenerating accounts for minors, caustically mocked them with the insincerest form of flattery, and perhaps most damning of all–it’s one thing to be controversial, another and far worse to be irrelevant–our own Alexia Tsotsis convincingly argued that “ .” Why all the hate? Stross cites privacy violations, but it can’t be that alone which inspires such vitriol. As Mathew Ingram points out, “ .” Scalzi gets more to the heart of things: “Klout exists to turn the entire Internet into a high school cafeteria, in which everyone is defined by the table at which they sit.” Oh noes! It’s an online popularity contest! Stone them! Let me offer a different take: Klout, as flawed and clumsy as it is–and I’ll admit that in many ways it’s a terrible service–is an admirable pioneer, a first innovative step in an important direction. Everyone keeps talking about the , but there’s never been any such thing. Reputation, influence, and popularity have always been at least as big a deal as money–we’re social animals, it’s hardwired–but you can’t have an economy until you’ve quantified its measure. Klout is the first example of that quantification that’s gotten any kind of mass traction. That’s important. Let’s talk about . Never heard of it? Crack open a copy of , a novel by Canadian author Cory Doctorow that depicts a post-scarcity society where money has been replaced by “Whuffie”, a measure of reputation. (Doctorow doesn’t shy away from the dark side of his speculative future, either. At one point his protagonist falls into depression, loses all his Whuffie, is shunned by all … and the reputation-economy utopia suddenly looks a lot more like a Darwinian high-school popularity contest.) Is Whuffie the future? Well, no, money isn’t exactly about to go away. But there’s an aspect of prophecy to Doctorow’s vision: once a real reputation economy exists, it will become increasingly important, as it thrives and grows in parallel with–and interwoven with–the monetary economy. Will Klout be the measure of that forthcoming reputation economy? Well, er, no again. Klout only tries to measure “influence”, rather than the complex nuances of “reputation”, and it at that. The results of its allegedly sophisticated signal-crunching tend to range from the bewildering to the bizarre, making you wonder if, in fact, its algorithms were scribbled on the back of a napkin one drunken night and thrust hastily into production. But I still have some considerable sympathy for Klout’s CEO Joe Fernandez, and his . The hate that Klout elicits is wildly disproportionate to what it deserves. In the long run, the reputation economy will be incredibly important, and the company that codifies and defines that economy will be… …probably a company that doesn’t exist yet. I expect Klout will ultimately become to the real reputation economy what was to social media; a trailblazer that became a footnote. But that’s still no small thing, and certainly no cause to hate. Let’s all lighten up and give them, well, a little more credit. They’ve earned it. |
Thanksgiving + Black Friday Mobile Traffic Up 60% From 2010 | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 26 | Mobile is growing as a medium for ecommerce, with users sourcing deals from their phones and tablets before visiting physical stores according to a new study by , The company which powers mobile sites for 100 top U.S. retailers including JCPenney, Aeropostale, and REI tracked 18 million page views and 1 million mobile users over Thanksgiving and Black Friday. It saw mobile traffic to its clients was up 60% from the same period last year, with Thanksgiving sending more traffic than the following day. Usablenet also found that iOS devices accounted for 42% of the traffic, trumping Android, and trouncing the tiny traffic from Windows and Nokia devices. Earlier today, Leena reported that , and that mobile increased it share of total traffic and sales. In addition to driving sales directly, though, mobile is facilitating offline sales and product pick-ups. Usablenet tells me, “Thanksgiving activity focused on finding and purchasing deals such as deals of the day, driven from email marketing along with high usage of the purchase online and pick up in-store option.” On Black Friday, mobile usage centered around finding store locations, browsing reviews, and accessing previously saved wish lists while people walked aisles at their local merchants. These insights can help retailers plan for next year. They should look to send out email marketing and deal notices early on Thanksgiving, as that’s when people make decisions of where to shop. This could work better than distributing promotions right at the start of Black Friday when customers may have already set a shopping agenda. Traffic by mobile operating system also mirrored sales, with iOS taking the biggest cut, but less than last year. Android is creeping up, accounting for 34% of mobile traffic up from 28% in 2010. BlackBerry still represents a respectable 15% of mobile traffic, while Windows and Nokia each made up less than 3%. If this trend continues, by next year it may be just as important for big retailers to offer Android apps as iOS ones. |
Social Travel: Rediscovering the Friendly Skies | Semil Shah | 2,011 | 11 | 26 | We’ve heard endlessly how “social” will eventually disrupt and transform old, stodgy industries, perhaps even them for the . The promise of this change, of course, is often tempered by the reality that, if indeed this stuff actually happens, it will take time and we’re currently in the early stages of the game. And when it comes to travel, one of the most heavily regulated industries, disruption and transformation would be music to travelers’ ears. There are a number of reasons travel has become more of an onerous task (thank you, TSA), yet consumers continue to brave the elements to merrily trot around the globe. Brushing aside the fact that a significant portion of travel is business-related, decisions around leisure travel typically involve a number of factors, many of which are coming online. The catalyst for a personal trip can originate from different sources. One could have vacation time that will evaporate unless you use it. One could be offered a travel deal rate that motivates you to capitalize on it. One may want to catch up with old friends or families, or travel for entertainment, adventure, or to simply get away from your surroundings. In exploring the travel space through a social lens, most of today’s consumer web-related entrepreneurial attention is focused on what travelers do once they reach their intended destination. In the old days, travelers would book hotels directly (or through travel agents) and would rely on branded guides like or hotel concierges, and traditional tour companies to help address these needs. A few years later, services like and offered more options for users to organize their travel. Today’s traveler has many more options. They can “ ” or use others’ private spaces as lodging (thanks to ), and by comparison, could literally pick from over twenty different services to get information about their intended destinations. When I travel somewhere, I’ll typically ask friends on Facebook and Twitter for recommendations, which so far have tended to be excellent and satisfy my needs. If I happened to need even more information, I could continue my research through sites like , FlyerTalk, TripIt, Quora ( ), explore Foursquare , peruse Gowalla’s new social travel , or sign up for one of a new wave of startups focused on the space, such as (meet people at the airport or on your flight), (friend-sourced itineraries), (interactive mobile guides), (location-based Q&A), (currently in stealth), (traveler community service), (connect with your friends’ friends in other places), (tool to find travel partners), (where folks can gift travel to members), (scrapes social data and aggregates around places), (seems to be a slick iPad app, but not released yet), and many, many others I haven’t gotten around to trying. Jetlagged yet? The sheer number of startups focusing attention on this aspect of travel seems out of balance to me. Investors like this particular space because the path to victory is clearer, albeit its crowded, and because these types of apps and services could be inherently viral, both in terms of onboarding new users as well as benefitting from positive word-of-mouth. Instead of destination-based guides, however, I’ve started to wonder if the real opportunity is higher up the decision funnel, before we buy plane tickets and hotel rooms, at the point we first feel the urge to travel. The best travel recommendations I’ve received (and acted on) have come through having conversations with close friends in real life. They share slideshows of their trip and we get to interact with them in rich ways about their experience, to see if we want to sign up for the same feeling. That is a true recommendation with a real strong social signal. These moments of inspiration oftentimes ignite the travel spark and could trigger a transaction. Startups like Gtrot and , for instance, allow users to plan trips or record them after the fact, and research travel tips from social networks, organizing information around places. There’s simply no way that all the destination-based services listed so far will be able to survive such a cluttered field, so it may be worthwhile for some of them to at least consider the discovery-related aspect of travel and to design systems that help draw out and collect users’ preferences around travel, sort of how Gtrot and Gogobot currently do, but perhaps in deeper ways. The current offerings incorporate “social,” yes, but they seem to lack truly relevant social context. For a big decision like traveling, the strong signal usually originates from one trusted friend or source. Despite an unstable economy, rising fuel costs, and the hassles of air travel, people continue to jam airports worldwide. The majority of travel expenditures are eaten up by transportation and lodging, as well as food and entertainment at the destination. Therefore, today’s trend is to leverage social recommendations to help consumers shape their experiences in new places, though I’d argue this focus area actually ignores richer pastures. The real opportunities in social travel may lie closer to the top of the decision funnel, at the moment when a consumer discovers a new place he/she wants to travel to. It’s at this point where startups could build applications on top of existing social graphs to help people get inspired about travel, to plan and book their trips, and share them in ways with friends and family. There’s no reason TripAdvisor needs to continue to show up on the first page of Google results for travel searches anymore. With all of the data and pictures uploaded to Facebook, the opportunity is just sitting there, waiting for someone to jump on it. If done correctly, a new site or service could be created that actually acts as a modern travel collection and concierge in one, making travel arrangements easier and more affordable. In a nutshell, that is the challenge to startups in this space—to more intelligently incorporate data, to reinvent TripAdvisor’s existing offerings plus adding social, making results more relevant, personalized, and more emotional to interact with. Whomever can crack that code and present travelers with a better travel experience will find themselves in a very enviable seat, high up in the friendly skies. |
null | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 10 | null |
IBM: Black Friday Online Retail Spending Up 24.3 Percent | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 26 | Thanksgiving brought for the holiday, with spending up 39.3 percent over Thanksgiving 2010. And today, IBM Coremetrics data in online sales on Black Friday compared to the same period last year. Mobile traffic on Black Friday was 14.3 percent of all retail traffic compared to 5.6 percent in 2010. Sales on mobile devices surged to 9.8 percent from 3.2 percent year over year. As we saw with and Black Friday, mobile shopping volume is increasing by over 500 percent this year. Mobile shopping was actually led by Apple devices, with the iPhone and iPad ranking one and two for consumers shopping on mobile devices (5.4 percent and 4.8 percent respectively). Android came in third at 4.1 percent. Collectively iPhone and iPad accounted for 10.2 percent of all online retail traffic on Black Friday. As and others, tablets were a major platform for shoppers this year. IBM says that shoppers using the iPad led to more retail purchases more often per visit than other mobile devices with conversion rates reaching 4.6 percent compared to 2.8 percent for overall mobile devices. IBM took a deep dive on conversion rates of mobile shoppers vs. online shoppers and traffic from social networks. Mobile shoppers demonstrated a laser focus that surpassed that of other online shoppers with a 41.3 percent bounce rate on mobile devices versus online shopping rates of 33.1 percent. Shoppers referred from Social Networks generated 0.53 percent of all online sales on Black Friday. Facebook led the pack, accounting for 75 percent of all traffic from social networks. There was actually a 110 percent increase in discussion volume around Black Friday sales on social networks compared to 2010, with conversations centralized around sharing tips on how to avoid the rush. Topics included out-of-stock concerns, waiting times and parking, and a spike in positive sentiment around Cyber-Monday sales. Department stores sales were up 59.0 percent from this time last year, mainly because of the strong deals and online shipping incentives. Home goods also reported a 48.8 percent increase in sales from Black Friday 2010 and apparel sales were also strong this holiday with Black Friday numbers showing an increase of 47.2 percent over 2010. Health and Beauty online sales were up 34.2 percent year over year. eBay Mobile announced that shoppers in the U.S. purchased nearly two and a half times as many items via eBay Mobile this Black Friday when compared to 2010. PayPal Mobile announced a six-fold (516 percent) increase in global mobile payment volume compared to Black Friday 2010. There was a more than four-fold (371 percent) increase in the number of customers shopping through PayPal mobile on Black Friday compared to last year. And PayPal saw global mobile payment volume more than double (148 percent) compared to an average Friday. GSI Commerce announced a three-fold (254%) increase in U.S. mobile sales this Black Friday compared to 2010. And searches through the Milo.com platform increased 692 percent over Black Friday 2010. Considering the strength of online sales so far, it should be interesting to see if Cyber Monday, which tends to be a peak day for online retail, can surpass the sales from Black Friday. |
Daily Crunch: Hot Stuff | Bryce Durbin | 2,011 | 11 | 26 | Here are some recent posts on TechCrunch Gadgets:
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With Traffic Surging, NationBuilder Opens Its Doors To Larger Organizations | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | If you’re running a political campaign, a charity, or any other group where keeping in touch with community members — and/or delegating tasks to them — is critical, then you’ll probably be interested in a startup called . The service launched in April, closing a $500,000 seed funding round the following month that was led by . Hughes is best known for cofounding Facebook and leading President Obama’s online campaign efforts in 2008 (in other words, he’s exactly the sort of backer you’d want for this kind of startup). And this fall, it’s started getting some strong traction. In September it had almost 200k unique visitors doing 1.2 million page views — that jumped to 400k uniques the following month, with 2.5 million page views. The service now has 300 groups on board, with a total of some 1 million supporters signed up. One of the site’s core features is fundraising, and groups have raised $3.3 million so far using the platform. Now that it’s got its feet under it, NationBuilder is ready to ramp things up. Thus far the service has been limited to groups with fewer than 200,000 members, but now it’s opening up to larger groups, which will obviously pave the way for even more growth. And while many of the site’s current groups revolve around a political campaign or non-profit, other groups are using it too, like the and a community around the documentary . Gilliam says that ultimately the site’s target market is much broader than politics and non-profits — it’s “everyone building a community online”. You may also be interested in checking out social fundraising platform (you can find our previous coverage on it ). [vimeo 23455664]
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Gary Vaynerchuk’s ‘Wine Library’ Hacked | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | Earlier today patrons of received an email informing them that the credit card information they had used to sign up to the WineLibrary.com site may have been compromised in a data breach. The site is the hub of family business, made famous by his popular and now retired television show . While the email doesn’t reveal how many accounts were impacted, the site likely has hundreds of thousands of users. The company reveals that it started investigating a possible breach in October when they received initial customer complaints, complaints which increased towards the beginning of November. The company removed all credit card data from its site on November 11th and last week confirmed that an IP address originating in China was used in the attacks. The company says that its taking the breach “very seriously” and in addition to removing all existing credit card info, the new Wine Library site (with “new and best in class backend security protocols”) will use SSL, tokenized data and no longer store any credit card information on the site. The email says that all parties whose data was compromised will be notified by Wine Library on how to proceed. Full email below. Dear Valued Wine Library Customer: We are writing you today regarding a security breach that may have involved the credit card information you used to make a purchase at . While the full extent of the breach has not been verified – and it is possible you were not affected – we wanted to be sure to share with you what we could. This email is not intended to comply with statutory duties to notify you. We will comply with those duties separate and apart from this email. We wanted to get this email to you so that you could confirm that any credit accounts you used with us are not experiencing any adverse activity. Before we get into the specifics of what happened, we appreciate that you understandably want to know what you should do to ensure your private information is protected. We encourage you to consider the following: • Contact the financial institution that issued the credit card you used to make a purchase at and make it aware of this notice and discuss how this may impact your account. • If you call us, at this time it is unlikely we will be able to provide you with any more information than what is contained in this email. Voluminous calls and emails could prevent us from being able to answer your questions. • Additionally, per Federal law, you are entitled to a free credit report once a year via Please know that we are working hard and doing what we can to resolve this issue and make sure something like this does not happen again. The following is what we know, what we’re doing about it, and what you can expect next. When we began hearing from a few customers about possible fraudulent credit card charges in the middle of October, we launched an investigation. At that time, we did not know a data breach had occurred. However, as the number of these concerns increased in early November, we removed all credit card data from our site on November 11th since it became clearer that, although we couldn’t find a breach, something was going on. Last week we confirmed that an IP address from China was used to hack our website and potentially compromised customer credit card information. As far as we can tell, this did not affect any in store transactions. We are taking this breach very seriously. This is the first time in 15 years of being on the web and, in the 28-year history of our company, that we’ve ever encountered an issue as serious as this. Here’s what we’re doing to make sure it never happens again: – We already removed all credit card numbers from our website. – We are accelerating the launch of our new website, which has new and best in class backend security protocols to safeguard against these situations. On our new website: o o All credit card data will be tokenized through a third party, meaning that even if someone takes the data they can’t do anything with it o Will continue to use SSL (Secure Socket Layer) protocol to encrypt data o Will be run on an upgraded system using modern software – We have an independent forensic investigator looking into the situation to tell us the facts of the breach, to validate our new website protocols, and to tell us what we can do better moving forward. – We are notifying all relevant authorities and individuals required by law. If it has been confirmed that your data was breached you will receive formal notification in the coming weeks regarding any additional measures you can take. For future purchases, existing customers can utilize our new website by logging onto and clicking the beta link at the top of the page, even though some of the inventory, search capabilities, etc. are still being finalized. We will soon switch to this new site permanently. If you are having trouble using our new website, our current website is no longer storing credit card data at all. If you are not comfortable making purchases via the website, you can always call . We cannot stress enough how sorry we are that this happened. We are working as hard as we can, as quickly as we can, and with whatever internal and external resources necessary to ensure this doesn’t happen again and that you all can shop without concern. We know you may have questions or concerns and we are committed to keeping you up to date. However, as discussed above, if you call us, at this time it is unlikely we will be able to provide you with any more information than what is contained in this email. Voluminous calls and emails could prevent us from being able to answer your questions. Instead, we assure you that we will continue to keep you informed via email, our blog and in accordance with any applicable laws. We value your business tremendously and appreciate your support and confidence. Wine Library Wine Library | 586 Morris Ave | Springfield, NJ 07081 |
Samsung And Google Still Talking Google TV, Won’t Launch At CES Anyway | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | Uh-oh. Samsung and Google are still in talks regarding its upcoming Google TV offering. that Samsung’s president indicated that the two companies are in “late-stage talks” and that Samsung’s devices will launch in early 2012, just not at CES like it was previously thought. Google has been working with Samsung for sometime now. In fact Samsung demonstrated a Google TV companion device at CES. Here’s and the . But here we are, almost a full year later and Samsung has still yet to release a model, which in retrospect, was probably for the best. ? Reuters also reports that Sammy’s models will be different from the “those of competitors.” This begs a question, though: How will it be different? There are currently three mainstream Google TV products available: the Logitech Revue, the Sony Internet TV Blu-ray Player and the Sony Internet TV. The Logitech is a simple set-top box with a full size QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard is great for serious typing. I wrote the majority of TechCrunch’s directly on the device. Sony took a different route. Both of its models use a Playstation-style controller. One version is a Blu-ray Player while the other is a HDTV with Google TV directly baked in. The three models seem to cover all the hardware variations available. The only logical difference could be in a custom user interface. Google TV is essentially Honeycomb reskinned for a larger screen. If Samsung wants their models to stand out — and they usually do — perhaps they turned to the same engineers that designed its current line of Internet TVs. Samsung’s Smart TVs have been doing the app dance for several years now. The platform already has a modest app development community and the amount of downloaded apps . Samsung isn’t likely to abandon one already seemingly successful platform for a struggling one. But the talks aren’t done yet. Something could fall through. Samsung clearly doesn’t mind waiting until the time is right. Google TV needs Samsung more than Samsung needs Google TV. |
CrunchBase Reveals: The Largest Seed And Angel Fundings From The Past Thirty Days | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | As many of you already know, is a big, free resource for anyone trying to get the latest information on hot new startups, or competitors to their own hot new startups, the investing focus of various investors, and much more. The thing is, CrunchBase isn’t used all that much on TechCrunch itself beyond the widgets you see at the end of articles. So, I’m going to start testing out a variety of posts with the goal of surfacing new and interesting information for all of you. To kick things off, I’ll take a brief look at the largest seed and angel funding rounds that we recorded over the last 30 days — you’ll see just how big some of these rounds have been getting. But before I get into that, though, here are a few thoughts on using CrunchBase on TechCrunch. Why am I doing this? I am a big believer in trying to use data to help tell stories (in fact, that’s the direction good journalism is going, in my opinion). I’ve seen it how well it worked during my time at , where founder and the team have done a great job of building up editorial sites that break news about what was happening on the Facebook platform via tracking application traffic on . Weekly posts, on topics like which apps had gained the most daily active users in the past week, have become staples for developers, because they reveal exactly what is is or isn’t succeeding with users. CrunchBase is a different kind of service, but as with AppData I believe there are all sorts of ways that we can put it to use to help entrepreneurs make more informed decisions about their own companies. How am I doing this? I’m working with CrunchBase engineers and , and program manager , to come up with ideas and run custom reports for these articles. They’re also making corresponding tweaks to the CrunchBase product to help all of you better mine it for your own purposes. What other articles should you expect? I’m looking for both regular posts — weekly or monthly — that’ll create an ongoing flow of trend coverage. These could include, beyond seed and angel activity, regular looks at top investments by venture round, top exits, top international (non-US) investments, and anything else we can think of. We’re also looking to come up with broader one-off looks at trends within CrunchBase. On that point, please feel free to share your own ideas for what we should be covering. Either leave your suggestions on the comments below or email me at eldon(at)techcrunch(dot)com. Okay, so, back to the actual data I had mentioned, on the largest seed and angel rounds from the last 30 days. The overall trend is no surprise to anyone who has been following tech investing in the last several years — companies are now raising “seed” and “angel” rounds that are nearly as big as Series A rounds. And investors, including venture firms, are putting in smaller and smaller chunks of money to try to get in early on top deals. The largest round that we tracked, for Slovenian entrepreneur Andrej Nabergoj’s new mobile app discovery company, was for $3.5 million. It described the funding as “ ” to press, and the large number of investors suggests they all put in relatively small amounts in angel-round style. But the size still makes the round a category bender. The second-largest funding is , from another serial entrepreneur, Eric Alterman. As with Iddiction, it’s Series A size, but came in two parts, and features enough investors that it does appear to literally be a pre-Series A round. Scrolling down, you can see that each of the five largest rounds of the past 30 days had five or more investors total. Most are going to entrepreneurs with one or more established companies under their belt. Nothing breeds “me-too” investor confidence like past success. Once you scroll further to more traditionally-sized angel rounds, you can still see that many of them — where investor information is available — feature a combination of individuals, seed-focused outfits like Y Combinator, and venture firms. It’s a sign of the times. Expect these same trends to continue next month. Some final notes about this data: private companies don’t always disclose their investors, or at least all of their investors, or the total amounts of funding, especially at the earliest stages of their existence. And CrunchBase data can be provided by any number of sources including press reports from around the web and companies themselves. So it’s imperfect and subject to correction — and still useful for revealing trends. |
Microsoft Streamlines Windows Install, With An Eye To Web Distribution And Ease Of Use | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | Installing Windows has always been something of a joke. Not always warranted, of course, but we all know how funny and catastrophic anecdotes outlive the less thrilling reality of something as commonplace as an OS install. Yet we all have heard a few horror stories about Windows installs, or at the very least joked about how long it often takes. Microsoft actually went to some lengths in Windows 7 to correct this soft spot of theirs, and it’s true that the installation process is simpler and better. Seeing how well this was received, and also noting a number of market trends worth integrating, they are now . A one-click install or upgrade is still a ways out, but the new features are kin with Windows 8’s approach of marrying stability with mobility. I read an anecdote some time back about how in one publicity stunt, a kid was asked to set up a Mac while an IT pro set up a PC, both from scratch. Naturally the Mac was up and running in 20 minutes, and the PC took an hour and a half, or what have you. The tradeoffs enabling that kind of speed, however, were not something Microsoft was willing to make then, and even less so now, competing as they do with all manner of one-step and zero-step setups. So while the new features may reduce the minimum time and steps necessary, they don’t reduce the power of your IT guy to push a thousand custom installs to every workstation on the network. So the general idea, it seems, is to make installation something doable on any computer and intelligible to any user. I won’t go into the nitty gritty details, but the improvements seem to be substantial. For instance, by changing the way the install app moves files, they’ve reduced the time it takes to migrate by hours, in fact hitting a sort of asymptotic barrier at well under the one-hour mark: The interface itself has undergone a significant haircut, as well, bringing the number of screens you have to click through down to as little as a dozen for a standard upgrade. Users get nervous after a while, wondering if something went wrong whether they’d remember how they configured things, what screen they were at before, and of course no one wants to have to put in that serial number again. And there is an emphasis on improving the web install process, both in the interface (as described above) and in reducing the download size. 1.5GB is still a large download, but on average broadband it’s easily doable and won’t alarm users or stretch the limits of low-storage machines like netbooks. Naturally every company wants to make its devices easier to use, and Microsoft is no exception. The ways in which they do so, though, are telling and often breathe a bit of strategy through. In this case Microsoft is clearly gunning for consumers, and perhaps specifically the millions upon millions of people still running XP or Vista (though there surely can’t be many left of the latter). People seem to forget this sleeping giant, like they forget the many users of mobile networks who aren’t on smartphones, or the people for whom broadband internet is still a luxury. If Microsoft can reach this demographic, they will find it a valuable one because, it has to be said, it is easily exploited. Not that exploitation is all Microsoft has in mind, but naive users are the ones most likely to stick with the defaults, using Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer, and the many services Microsoft offers as easy defaults to loyal Windows users (Bing, Live, and so on). These people are difficult to reach, but a simple and fast upgrade process accessible easily via the web may make a difference. |
House of Cards | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | A funny thing happened on Techmeme yesterday. Though it may seem a subtle or even nonexistent shift, the stories I found most interesting took a turn away from the tech and toward the media. Gone were anything but the last vestiges of the Steve Jobs changed/tweaked the world argument, and along with it the Google + tracking poll. Instead, the media services are on the rise or fall, most notably Spotify, Netflix, Starz, and in general the unravelling/lash back of big cable/carrier cartel. The Starz news is most fascinating, with the movie aggregator moving from supporting Netflix to what may be a direct competitive strategy. By pulling back from a deal with Netflix, the company triggered the rationale for Netflix to compete more directly with HBO and Showtime by investing in series development. That in turn pushed Netflix toward focusing on the streaming side of its business and fire its DVD customers. Similarly, Spotify is beginning to get pushback from what’s left of the CD record business. Small record labels are apparently pulling their artists out on the theory that they’re leaving money on the table from record sales going to all you can stream subscribers. In both cases, the market has reacted by punishing the logic of these transformation drivers. The easy money is on the status quo reaping its payback as we reconfigure back to the Bad Old Days where nothing is available and we’re being “protected” from intellectual property theft. Actually this is not what is happening. Instead, we’ve gotten a taste of how it might work and there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. If we focus less on each individual player, and more on the Interplay between them, a different picture emerges. Starz is a case in point. Buried in its strategy of maintaining relationships with Comcast similar to the one abandoned with Netflix is the audacious plan to start offering some of its studio offerings a la carte in tablet form. Why would Comcast let the little player slice and dice its bundling strategy with network and early window film releases? Because Starz is also going into competition with Netflix by partnering with the streaming service’s competitors, especially Amazon and their incredible Fire hardware. By establishing themselves as a hybrid between streaming and cable aggregation, they have potentially just enough juice together with the second-line streamers to entice the studios to give them access to iPad and Fire rights in return for cutting Netflix down to size. Once that happens, Netflix could extract the same rights to keep the new competitors at bay. Or even more disruptive, join the coalition. On the Spotify side of the business, the threat of flight from the service is counter-balanced by the ability to buy most music to fill in the gaps from Apple and Amazon or even on CD from Amazon or Walmart. Already we’re getting used to the idea that we get streaming from Column A and Beatles from Column B and special promotions from all of the competitors that fall on either side. One of the players is offering exclusive Rolling Stones live recordings unavailable elsewhere, for example. The genie is out of the bottle and the record cartel is getting a taste of how digital can work for them. Another fascinating development from either the Times or the Journal — I can’t remember either when or which publication because the iPad has shifted my consumption to store and catch up mode. Shows with large social tweet numbers don’t translate to the shows that prove popular with mainstream audiences. Attempts to differentiate through the use of social signals may be lost in the widespread use of social this year. What happens when push notification becomes a trusted alert platform and Starz-like services give us the ability to mine social networks and directly link tweets or reviews to auto-downloading those programs to our tablets. Each small chink in the big network model translates to more and more user control by turning preferences into transactions, all completely outside the ratings game. Just as my Times/Journal consumption is moving to on-demand, so is the rest of the media. My choices begin to be managed by the immediacy with which I want the programming. Like a late-booked flight, I’ll pay more for how it fits into my ability to predict and consume the service. At some point, the economics shift from supporting the incumbents to supporting the new incumbents. The more I’m able to assemble a socially-aware version of Comcast that leverages the cloud of influentials I track, the less I pay in to the aggregated mainstream services that are relatively opaque to useful social signals. It’s possible new media will steal a page from the VCs and the economics of the Cloud, putting these streaming deals together on multiple networks (Facebook, YouTube, Ustream, iCloud) with talent owning the rights in return for low startup costs. Spotify could fight off the independents by offering contracts directly to the artists, and team with the streaming studios to live cast sessions and concerts over the federated network. Soundtrack compilations for stream network-owned series like House of Cards may be where music and gaming crossover first occurs. And just if by magical thinking, Techmeme tells me Netflix is bringing back Arrested Development, the popular comedy produced and voiced-over by Ron Howard and cancelled by Fox in 2004. What’s even more interesting is that the resurrection is exclusive to Netflix, a streaming version of what HBO pioneered with Sopranos et al. Premium original content bundled on what may well be the first example of streaming achieving a credible cable cutter foothold. With Twitter pushing breaking news and the studios beginning to go direct to Netflix and Amazon, can a return to the West Wing be far behind? |
Diagnosia secures seed round to create global drugs info search engine | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | Back in March we on , a startup that is aiming to become “a search engine for drugs” by providing a safe place for people looking up medicine information. Today it’s a secured an undisclosed “6-figure” seed round (though we know they were looking for €200,000) into the Vienna-based startup. The round was led by Johann Hansmann, a former pharma entrepreneur and now active angel investor whose recent investments include the leading language learning tool , weight-loss startup and luxury online retailer . He was joined by Christoph Sauermann, a former pharma executive and tech entrepreneur. Diagnosia basically aggregates those little leaflets you find in packets of prescription drugs and puts them online in a user friendly and accessible format across multiple formats and languages. The attraction to doctors is that none of this information is usually online, so this makes it way asier for them. Patients too, find this useful. And hypochondriacs, it must be said… The money will primarily be used for internationalization and they also plan to move into making the site a “drug decision tool”. Diagnosia’s competitors are largely U.S.-based, including , and . The team consists of Marco Vitula, Co-Founder and CEO, along with Fritz Höllerer, Stefan Weixelbaumer, Marco Vitula and Lukas Zinnagl. ( ). |
HouseTrip gets $17m Series B led by Balderton Capital – Look out AirBnB | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | , the holiday lettings marketplace raised $2.7m from back in April and relaunched to appeal to a wider market than its holiday apartments rental space. HouseTrip built a reputation by removing the need for guests to negotiate with homeowners directly, thus building in a degree of security. Today it’s completed a $17 million Series B funding round led by Balderton Capital. Index Ventures reinvested pro-rata. The funding will be used to develop the product, generate more inventory (through additional outreach to holiday apartment hosts) and reach (through marketing and localisation). The play against AirBnB here is obvious since HouseTrip founder and CEO Arnaud Bertrand says Housetrip aims to be “a powerful alternative to hotels around the world.” Sounds familiar. Tim Bunting, a Balderton Capital partner says they invested because HouseTrip offered “the best model in a rapidly-growing field.” Housetrip has offices in London, Lausanne and Lisbon, employes 70 staff. It went live in January 2010 and claims to have generated bookings for over 500,000 nights so far, with 55,000 properties already listed in thousands of global destinations. HouseTrip’s most popular host has already generated more than $1M in the first year – which makes me wonder which one this is? |
Textfree Users Have Sent And Received 20 Billion Text Messages, Free Of Charge | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | Turns out you don’t have to charge an arm and a leg for SMS messages to make money off of texting. One startup that’s proven this is Pinger, the company behind the massively popular free texting app . Today, the company is announcing that it’s reached a major milestone: since launching in March 2009, Textfree users have sent and received a total of 20 text messages. For free. And they’re sending and receiving another 1.5 billion messages every month (they were growing at per month in March of this year). Textfree is so popular because it gives users free texting to and from — here’s the important bit — their own, unique phone numbers. Fire up the app for the first time and you’ll be given a new phone number that people can text the same way they would any other mobile number. Textfree is available for both iOS and Android, and it’s particularly popular on devices like the iPod Touch, which wouldn’t otherwise have full texting functionality (the iOS version also offers free and low-cost phone calls, which will be released on the Android version down the line). Pinger makes money via advertising. Because of the huge text volume and number of installs, Pinger also gets some compelling insight into the trends being seen across the smartphone market — particularly among younger users who can’t afford a traditional SMS plan. Pinger CEO Greg Woock says that when the service’s many iPod Touch users do eventually upgrade to a ‘real’ phone, more often than not they’re choosing an Android device instead of an iPhone. This is likely because Android handsets are generally less expensive (yes, the iPhone 3GS is now ‘free’ with a contract, but from a performance perspective a ‘free’ Android device is likely going to be significantly faster). Another key stat: Android use across Textfree’s service has now equaled iOS — and the Android version of Textfree has only been out half as long and doesn’t include voice functionality yet. In other words, Android is growing fast. Woock also reports an encouraging trend for Textfree’s service: after around nine months or so of using Textfree, users become attached to their Textfree number, and are very likely to keep using it in the long-term. |
Despite Unproven Market, Facebook To Launch Custom Android OS Phone With HTC | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | Over the past few years, Facebook has partnered with a variety of handset makers to release smartphones and feature phones that deeply integrate the social network into software and hardware. These phones have sold poorly, though. Meanwhile iOS and Android are claiming more and more of the market such that they endanger Facebook’s future, cramping its mobile platform and relegating it to just being an app. Last year that Facebook was likely building a custom-version of Android, and now Facebook is, and it that it will run on an HTC-made Facebook phone. A custom operating system could attract users with even deeper software integrations, and let Facebook monetize in-app payments. The company hopes that despite a lack of proof that users want such a thing, its phone will sell well, and allow it more determination over the future of its mobile apps and platform. Facebook has partnered to build phones in the past, but these have never been huge sellers, nor have they furthered its goal of reducing Apple and Google’s leverage in mobile. Dumbphones like the and have seen slow sales because they don’t provide access to a top-tier app store. Their operating systems are essentially one-offs controlled by the device manufacturers so they’re less important to the future. The Facebook smartphones including the HTC Status (formerly ChaCha) and Sala that run the standard Android OS and include dedicated Facebook sharing buttons haven’t faired well either. and the price of the devices has been discounted. Since Facebook couldn’t customize the OS, it wasn’t able to integrate its features into the software they way . We broke the story that 14 months ago, and our indicated that a custom Android OS would be its plan. Now that looks more assured. By customizing Android, the Facebook phone might not be able to include some Google-developed apps like Gmail, Maps, or possibly even the Android Market. Instead, it could replace the Android Market with its recently launched HTML5 platform, and provide single sign-on where users could instantly access any these Facebook apps without having to reenter their credentials. This could in-turn help it fight off the Apple App Store, turn Android against Google, and make more money through in-app payments powered by Facebook Credits. It could also tap Bing for maps and let a web browser snagged through its provide access to other services. So though there’s no sure market for the device, still 1 to 2 years away, the potential gains of having a successful mobile operating system appear to have outweighed the risks. There are definitely issues with customizing Android, including native app compatibility, keeping up with OS updates, and getting more device manufacturers on board. If Facebook can work with HTC to produce a high-tech device with innovative social integrations that really sells, more manufacturers could integrate the Facebook OS and the mobile power balance could shift in its favor. Update: I was reluctant to republished AllThingsD’s assertion that this Facebook mobile project is codenamed Buffy because we all know how Spartan turned out, but it may make for convenient short-hand later. Also, in case it wan’t obvious, the codename is Buffy because it’s designed to slay the vampires Apple & Google who suck Facebook’s blood by preventing its native apps from processing in-app payments to third-parties developers via Credits. [image credit: Android Central] |
HP’s Failed webOS Experiment Cost Them $3.3 Billion, But What’s Next? | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | We knew that HP’s gamble on webOS was an expensive one, but thanks to the company’s , we’re finally getting a feel for just how dearly the webOS experiment cost them. This past year, the company lost a staggering $3.3 billion thanks to their most recent foray into the mobile space. I know I’m not the first to say this, nor will I be the last, but one word comes to mind: Ouch. HP’s financial results also reveal that the TouchPad fire sale netted HP in revenue, though the tablets were sold below cost. It certainly explains why the company seems intent on using their remaining TouchPads to drive sales across . It’s perhaps a fitting end for the TouchPads — the HP tablet that didn’t sell was used to support a division of HP’s business they nearly sold. I was a very big fan of webOS (the Pre was the first phone I ever sat in line for), and to see it lose support so unceremoniously was actually sort of painful. Frankly speaking it was unlikely that webOS would have ever become a major player in the market, but it still embodied a few concepts (cards/multitasking, for one) that deserve to live on. And live on they may, if HP can decide what the next step is. As Greg pointed out a few months ago, webOS yet — rather, it’s stuck in OS limbo while HP decides what to do with it. Earlier reports suggested that HP would sell off webOS to whomever wanted it most, but newly-installed CEO Meg Whitman said it was important to make “the right decision, not the fast decision,” and held off on the sale. Now that we understand how much webOS cost HP, I’m surprised HP didn’t cut webOS free as soon as they could, but the waiting game continues and we’re still left without answers. So, with the year’s numbers on the books, HP has a decision to make: should they go ahead and sell webOS? Or should they take the “expensive bet” and give webOS another go? Or should they pursue some other unseen option? Meg Whitman said that answers would come within , and that time is running out. What’s it going to be, Meg? |
A First Step Towards | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | You know that in where Tom Cruise is walking through a mall and all the digital signs are talking to him and showing him highly targeted ads? Yeah, well, we are not there yet. But we are moving that direction. A New York City company called is testing several prototype digital “Experience Stations” in malls and hotel lobbies like the one I demo in the video above. They combine several interactive technologies—including motion capture, large touch screens, and NFC readers—to create immersive experiences in physical locations. The unit I got a chance to play with above was loaded with a few typical apps designed to showcase its capabilities. These apps included everything from an interactive ad with a photobooth feature to a way to watch movie trailers and buy tickets with an NFC-enabled phone or unlock local deals from stores at that specific mall. The prototypes were built in partnership with Intel. As with any digital platform, the experience is only as good as the developers make each app. The challenge in a physical setting is to make it so engaging that people actually will want to stop what they are doing or delay their journey to play with these things. My sense is that traditional ads won’t work so well unless these are positioned at the point of sale for a specific product and they operate as information kiosks. But for general brand messaging, making the apps more game-like with rewards provided by advertisers is the way to go. |
Facebook Testing Messenger for Windows Ticker+Chat Desktop Client | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | Facebook today began allowing a limited test group of users to download a new 7 desktop client. It provides access to Chat, the Ticker feed, and notifications. Facebook is looking to gauge interest in desktop access to these real-time features that could keep users engaged with the service all day without having to keep a browser window open. The client could become popular, considering that the Facebook-integrated Windows Live Messenger desktop client that lets you Chat with friends as well as third-party instant messaging contacts is the top app on the Facebook Platform with daily active users. I’ve confirmed the client’s limited beta launch with Facebook, which pointed me to the new Help Center article with details and screenshots. The fraction of the total user base randomly selected to join the tester group are being notified via home page prompts. There is no public download link, and the client is only compatible with Windows 7, though it was developed entirely by Facebook and does not constitute a new partnership with Microsoft. Facebook is pushing to get more users onto its Chat service. This summer, it released its for iOS, Android, and BlackBerry as new distribution points for Chat. Through Messenger, Facebook is challenging instant messaging, SMS and to some extent, email. However, none of the other Messenger clients include the Ticker, which displays links back to Facebook.com. By combining Chat and Ticker, Facebook can hook users on its communication system that produces huge volumes of sustained attention, and then get them frequently returning to the site by clicking through Ticker and notification links. I’m awaiting a response from Facebook as to whether Sponsored Stories will also appear in the client, as these . If they do, Ticker-integrated Messenger clients could become a revenue stream as well as an engagement draw. By paring Facebook down to just its real-time elements, users may leave Messenger for Windows on throughout the day. This would expose them to desktop notifications about Facebook activity that could increase engagement with the site better than leaving a browser window open. If the Windows 7 version gains traction, clients for Mac and other operating systems could be on the way. |
Four Of The Best Apps From Microsoft’s NYC Mobile Acceleration Week | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | If you’ve been , you’re perhaps somewhat aware of a program Microsoft has in place called Mobile Acceleration Week (part of its ), where 12 hand-picked startups can access hands-on support and training to build compelling apps for the Windows Phone platform. MAWs happen all over the world all year long, but I was lucky enough to catch up with some of the participants of New York’s Mobile Acceleration Week, and was pretty pleased with the apps I saw. Microsoft gives each startup 60 days to push the app to market, so don’t get too excited and start hunting through the Marketplace. You won’t find what you’re looking for just yet. But considering that today’s theme (at least in my world) seems to be the , I thought it’d be worthwhile to give you a look at where the Marketplace is headed, and what you might find there in the coming weeks.
Flud launched on the back in 2010 and made quite a name for itself, winning the UI design award in 2010 and joining the likes of Flipboard and Pulse as one of the top 3 news reader apps on the platform. The app has since launched on , and is now looking to get its feet wet with Mango. So how did the company bring that award-winning UI to a platform with a totally different style than iOS and Android? In short, they built a brand new Flud — an app suited to the Metro UI of Mango that takes advantage of unique WP7.5 features. Within Flud for Windows, the user will be able to access their personalized news feed just like any experienced Flud user does now. But it goes further than that. Flud has built in a prominent social layer, allowing users to see what their friends read in a dedicated feed, and check out user profiles, too. I won’t spoil the surprise for all the features, as I’m sure that’ll be announced very soon, but you can expect to see the same features that are coming to Mango on iOS very soon, as well. The Windows version of the app will hit the Marketplace no later than early January. You may recognize Get-A-Game from your iPhone, but if not perhaps it’ll catch your eye over on the Windows platform. The app allows users to locate a pick-up game for any sport in real-time, while offering sporting goods services and stores to market promotions directly to users on the Get-A-Game map. I know what you’re thinking, and I’ll stop you right there. Obviously, if you search Central Park in Google Maps you’ll see one little red pin land smack dab in the center of that 843-acre park. But thanks to one lucky intern, Get-A-Game has geo-tagged each individual court in each park to make sure that users can find where they’re going and get their game on. The app has integrated with Facebook and MeetUp, with further social network integration in the works. A free beta version is currently but try not to get too attached. Windows Phone 7.5 gives a new look to every app, and Get-A-Game is no different. Bing will handle all of the mapping, for example, while the rest of the app will take on that Metro panoramic feel. Expect to see this one hit the Marketplace in mid-December, just in time for you to make your New Years Resolutions. The moment I first heard about this app I thought it’d be perfect for my dad, who travels at least once a week. (Dad, download this app.) It’s already up and running on and , but in December it’ll launch on Windows with a host of new features that will make it more of a service than an app. As of right now, the app offers up airport directories, ratings and reviews for shops within the airports, social media sharing, itinerary management, wait times for security lines, and reviews/tips for airports. When it launches on Windows Phone, the new and improved GateGuru version 3.0 will include flight status info, push notifications, baggage claim info, food ordering and delivery, and transit-related features. In other words, if you fly more than twice a year this may be the app you’ve been looking for. And with versions available across all three of our major platforms, you really don’t have an excuse anymore. Shop much? If so, you should definitely get acquainted with Taap.it. The app lets users check in to items rather than places, at which point users can purchase the item and rate it. It’s a Foursquare of sorts, but instead of getting points for being somewhere, you get Taap.it points for interacting with individual items, whether it be an entree on a menu or a pair of shoes at the FootLocker. But the user isn’t the only one who gets to enjoy Taap.it. Listing items for sale is as easy as taking a picture and typing in a little info. The only thing is that I’m not sure everyone will immediately understand the concept and be able to enjoy it. Buying and selling through social media is an excellent idea, and the more Taap.it stays focused on that the better. Taap.it is currently available on and , with a Windows Phone version on its way around Christmastime. These are just a few of the 40,000+ apps currently or soon to be available on the , and while they may not be “new” per se, Mango puts things in an entirely different light. So if you’re planning on picking up a Windows Phone, or happen to be one of the early adopters, these are just a handful of the lesser known iOS/Android apps that’ll be making the migration with you. |
Hands On With The Wimm One Data Device | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | We first talked about the in August, noting that no wearable device has ever made sense to me, at least in watch format. I believe I may need to eat my words. The Wimm is a clever little module – the watch band is removable – that runs simple applets. It runs a stripped down version of Android and includes a fairly complete SDK for programming little widgets. In this incarnation, it includes a stopwatch, worldtime clock, and a few other treats. The watch drops into transflexive LCD mode when it needs to conserve power. As it stands, the Wimm One is still a platform and I’d be hard-pressed to suggest you drop everything and develop for it. However, for the size, weight, and power, I think the device is outstanding and quite unique. I could see it as a platform for smaller devices although I’d worry about general adoption of the technology. This is more likely to be bought and assimilated into a bigger company than stand on its own. That said, if you’re looking for a small, wireless development platform.
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CTIA And ESRB To Unveil New Mobile App Rating System | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | Here’s something I’m sure no one expected to see today: the CTIA Wireless Trade Association has just issued a release stating that they have struck a partnership with the Entertainment Software Rating Board in order to . Yes, really. The ESRB, if you’ve managed to avoid picking up a video game in the last decade or so, are the folks that decide how appropriate a game is for certain age groups. This isn’t their first foray into the mobile space (that would be their ), but this new rating system is certainly going to make a splash when it debuts in Washington D.C. on November 29. The release doesn’t go into any further specifics aside from noting that a few senators will be in attendance, but this strikes me as a potentially good idea. Whether or not an app is appropriate for a given age group should be a problem that’s best left to each platform’s app review board, and a universal set of guidelines could only help. One only needs to look at the state of our current app stores to see what could be improved. Take Apple, for example: a peek inside their App Store shows that games like Bullet Time HD are rated for children 12 and up, citing “infrequent/mild realistic violence,” “frequent/intense cartoon or fantasy violence,” and “frequent/intense horror/fear themes.” Sounds pretty thorough, and that description appears both in iTunes and on the device in question before purchase. The Android Market, on the other hand, doesn’t seem quite so exhaustive: developers can rank an app’s maturity level as low, medium, or high, and simply leave it at that. The Market app usually doesn’t even show that information upfront; rather, one has to click “more” to see it, unless an app’s description is so short as to be useless. Windows Phone doesn’t seem to include maturity information at all, though they do have a “family” games section where young ones should presumably stay. So if all that is true, then why is a mobile app rating system only a potentially good idea? It all comes down to execution. Would developers have to re-submit apps for evaluation? Or would those with the responsibility of approving apps have to go back and re-rate all of them after the fact? Can some apps remain unrated? Too many hoops (whatever they may be) could stymie developers, and that’s the last thing that needs to happen. As it stands, the release raises more questions than answers, and I suppose we’ll have to see the CTIA and ESRB have come up with next week. |
Social Network For Families MyHeritage Furthers U.S. Presence With Acquisition Of FamilyLink | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | Israeli company , which operates a huge has acquired the developer behind family history
content sites FamilyLink.com and While financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed, this is MyHeritage’s seventh and largest acquisition since 2007. Past acquisitions include , , and most recently MyHeritage has a simple goal: to help people discover who they are related to and help maintain these connections. The company’s Smart Matching technology takes data entered in and matches info with other family trees and data that people have entered in to the site to find relatives and explore their family history. The site also offers a private home on the web for exploring family history and keeping in touch; allowing users to create their own family website, share pictures and videos, organize family events, create family trees and discover ancestors and long-lost relatives. Backed by Accel and Index Ventures, MyHeritage.com boasts an international registered member base of 60 million users, offers its services in 38 languages, and is home to more than 900 million profiles and 21 million family trees. And the company is profitable. For the company, Utah-based FamilyLink furthers MyHeritage’s presence in the US.>, and boosts MyHeritage’s offering to families with the addition of a database of more than 3 billion historical records. Founded in 2006, both FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com are subscription services which provide access to a huge database of historical content, covering several billion individuals within census, birth, marriage and death records, as well as the web’s largest archive of historical newspapers. With offices and staff in Europe, Australia and Israel; MyHeritage will now be adding its first US-based office in Utah, the home of FamilyLink.com. As MyHeritage founder and CEO Gilad Japhet says, “We’ll be able to find your mother’s yearbook, your great- grandfather’s will and your ancestor’s immigration record…We’ll do that on a massive, global scale, as we live in a world
that is smaller and more tightly connected than ever before”. The CEO of FamilyLink.com, Paul Brockbank, previously CEO of Logoworks and GM of Hewlett Packard Web Print Solutions, will later join the MyHeritage advisory board. FamilyLink.com founder Paul Allen, previously a co-founder of Ancestry.com, will not be part of the merger with MyHeritage. MyHeritage faces competition from the less social Ancestry.com, which is more US focused. But most people’s deep family trees span languages and borders. And while MyHeritage has a big global audience, FamilyLink should help the company broaden its user base in the U.S. |
In Whitman’s First Quarter As CEO, HP Beats The Street; Q4 Revenue Down 3 Percent | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | HP has just earnings today, with fourth quarter non-GAAP net revenue of $32.3 billion, down 3 percent from the same quarter in 2010. The company posted non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $1.17. Analysts expected HP to of $1.13 a share on revenue of $32.05 billion. Full year fiscal 2011 GAAP net revenue for the fiscal year 2011 was $127.2 billion, up 1% compared with the prior year. Non-GAAP net revenue for the full fiscal year 2011 was $127.4 billion, up 1% compared with the prior year. For the fourth quarter, GAAP net revenue of $32.1 billion was down 3% from the prior-year period. GAAP diluted EPS was $0.12, down 89% from the prior-year period. HP Software revenue grew 28% year over year, driven by revenue growth in licenses
and services. Revenue in HP’s commercial businesses declined 2% year over year. Revenue in HP’s consumer businesses, within PSG and IPG, was collectively down 9% year over year. “HP has a great opportunity to build on our strong hardware, software, and services franchises with leading market positions, customer relationships, and intellectual property,” said Meg Whitman, HP president and chief executive officer. Whitman . “We need to get back to the business fundamentals in fiscal 2012, including making prudent investments in the business and driving more consistent execution.” |
Facebook To Mix Sponsored Stories Ads With Content In The Site-Wide Ticker | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | Facebook has classically been very reluctant to adulterate its social content streams with advertisements. But today, Facebook begins showing its Sponsored Stories ad units in the site-wide Ticker of real-time social activity stories. This will open lucrative new ad inventory, including placements on the home page. While they are are paid ads, Sponsored Stories display the activity of friends or Pages users Like so they’re typically less annoying than standard ads. Still, the commingling of these commercials with content could offend users not expecting ads to escape their cage in the lower right sidebar. Last year, Facebook launched as its next step in social advertising, The ad unit lets brands buy additional exposure for mentions or interactions with them that typically appear as news feed stories. For 8 months these only appeared in the sidebar. Starting in August, though, Facebook began mixing Sponsored Stories about which games friends were playing into the Games Ticker that appears to those using Facebook canvas apps and games. This experiment seems to have gone without significant backlash, leading Facebook to allow Sponsored Stories to appear in the standard Ticker that shows activity stories such as users listening to songs, reading news articles, leaving wall posts, or adding new friends. Facebook PR’s Annie Ta tells me “Starting on Monday [today], we are continuing to slowly roll out Sponsored Stories in ticker across Facebook.” Sponsored Stories have been shown to receive a than standard ads, indicating they provide a better user experience and could attract advertisers. Facebook’s ad czar Gokul Rajaram says he envisions a future where . In fact, the majority of ads on the site . Twitter recently began displaying , and reactions as many would have expected. Facebook may see using Sponsored Stories rather than standard ads, and placing them in the Ticker rather than the primary news feed as the proper balance between monetization and maintaining the sanctity of content. I think Facebook is wise not to have injected ads into the primary news feed, as the quality of the news feed experience is a core reason the site is addictive. We’ll be watching for reactions as the rollout of Sponsored Stories to the Ticker continues. While the number of ad spots in the site’s sidebar is relatively stable, Facebook will be able to tweak how frequently ads appear in the Ticker. With proper optimization, Facebook may be able to fly just beneath the radar of widespread discontent while boosting ad revenues that could please investors waiting for its IPO. |
Zuckerberg’s Pitch To Harvard CS Students [Audio] | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbQPHEWxsaI&&w=630] Guys I’m still really sleepy from China jetlag so I don’t know if I’ll get through the entire hour of this, but I know it’ll interest some of you and probably me when I wake up so I’m posting it here so some other tech blogger doesn’t get to it first. Mobile developer and Harvard CS student has hooked us up with this recording of , Facebook VP of Engineering Mike Schroepfer and engineering director Jocelyn Goldfein’s visit to Harvard today — the purpose of which was to convince Harvard CS grads to pick the storied social network when choosing future employers. I’m about ten minutes in and it’s pretty fascinating from a historical standpoint (moderator David Malan is now reading an email from Zuck to one of his old CS profs describing one of his proto-projects, “Six Degrees of Harry Louis”). You can listen to the entire panel punctuated by the incessant nervous laughter of the classroom below. [soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/27446059″] And here’s the letter the Harvard Office of Career Services, pitching the panel to select students. Dear SEAS students, The Office of Career Services is pleased to announce a unique opportunity to learn what it is like to work at Facebook from a number of senior representatives, including Harvard alumnus Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO at Facebook. Hear about cutting edge technology at Facebook, opportunities to join the Facebook team, and the unique employment culture of this social-networking site with over 800 million users. Mark Zuckerberg and VP of Engineering at Facebook, Mike Schroepfer, will be on hand to answer your questions. David Malan, Senior Lecturer on Computer Science and head of CS50, will moderate the discussion. Space is extremely limited. Preference will be given to students who have computer science and engineering backgrounds or other strong technical skills. This talk is targeted toward students interested in both internship and full-time opportunities at Facebook. In order to attend, you must submit a draft resume by applying to the “OCS Special Event” posting in Crimson Careers (#31911). Students will also have the opportunity to submit questions for the panelists in advance by using the “other document” option on the application screen. Only those students who are selected to attend will receive notification and ticketing information. DATE: Monday, November 7, 2011
TIME: 5:00pm – 6:30pm (Students must commit to attend the entire duration of the event.)
TO ATTEND: Apply with a draft resume in Crimson Careers (keyword search “31911”).
DETAILS: Only students selected with tickets and Harvard IDs will be admitted! We look forward to receiving your application for this event in Crimson Careers! Best Regards, Harvard OCSOFFICE OF CAREER SERVICES
Harvard University
Harvard College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
54 Dunster Street * Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: (617) 495-7784 * Fax (617) 496-0647
www.ocs.fas.harvard.edu |
Strangeloop Nabs $10 Million From Canadian Angels To Give Your Web & Mobile Sites A Speed Boost | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | , the provider of web content optimization solutions and enterprise applications, today announced that it has raised $10 million in series B funding from a private investment group. Though Strangeloop wasn’t saying who this private investment group is, we’ve learned that the investment was made by a group of “Canadian super angels”. (Which sounds like a top flight hockey team. We’ll update when we learn more). According to Strangeloop CEO Jonathan Bixby, the startup’s new infusion of capital will be used to develop new products and features as well as to expand its global reach into Europe, Latin America, and Asia. The new round builds on the company’s $11.5 million series A, which it raised back in July 2007, bringing total investment to north of $22 million. For those unfamiliar, the Vancouver-based company was founded in 2006 with the goal of creating a “magic box” of website performance best practices to make websites faster. Or, put another way, the company wanted to build a workable platform that would offer superior front-end optimization via the cloud. It began with its flagship desktop product, , which allows website owners to quickly increase the load times of their sites. How? By taking HTML (one of the front-end languages of choice for your website and browser) that has already been optimized for readability, supportability, etc., and retaining these benefits, and focusing on offering speedier page rendering by implementing a number of tweaks to object names, reordering when and how objects are rendered, how scripts are executed, and so on — optimizing all of this content for the specific browser its customers are using. And so far it’s been working. Strangeloop has already seen companies like eBay, Visa, Petco, and Travelocity sign on as customers, thanks to what the company reports as speed improvements of up to 300 percent, conversion rates as high as 12 percent, and revenue increases of up to 52 percent. And, as one might guess from its customers, Strangeloop is targeting eCommerce companies, specifically, to enable these platforms to better retain their customers through faster load times — through a virtual appliance and through the cloud. And while fast load times are important to every website on the Web (with some exceptions), high-trafficked eCommerce platforms have a bit more at stake than my fantasy baseball blog. According to Bixby, shoppers today expect commerce websites to load in 2 seconds or less. With such demands, each second lost in load time can equate to another lost consumer. Strangeloop also recently took the logical next step from website optimization to mobile, launching its “Mobile Site Optimizer” to accelerate websites for mobile devices. But, according to Strangeloop, it’s not just a technology port, as it offers proprietary, mobile specific features (like Mobile SuperCache, Touch Event Conversion, and Dynamic Payload Decision Making) to leverage standards and protocols like HTML5 and Google’s SPDY. The real value proposition for site performance optimizers like Strangeloop is that they turn traditional content optimization (which can be a complex, time consuming operation) into an automated process that happens in realtime — at the direction of an intelligent appliance. Of course, it’s all about the results. Web content optimizers fly or die based on whether or not they can deliver the goods. Strangeloop has been making some great headway, but it’s got some competition from other awesome performance and security optimizers like Yottaa and CloudFlare. Both worthy startup competitors. Check it out and let us know what you think. , and . |
Republic Wireless Officially Unveils $19/Month Service: Unlimited Everything, No Contracts | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | Last week we on a previously-stealthy mobile carrier called , which I’ve been tracking closely since. The story so far: Bandwidth.com, which provides the VoIP backbone for services including Google Voice and Twilio, is launching an alternative mobile carrier called Republic Wireless. As GigaOm last week, it will cost only $19 a month for unlimited text, data, and voice. It can offer these low rates because its phones use a special ‘Hybrid Calling’ system that relies on Wifi whenever possible, falling back to cellular connections when Wifi isn’t available. The initial cellular partner is Sprint, but Republic is working to use other carriers as fallback options as well. Now the company has officially announced additional details about the service, which just . The key new details: The first phone being offered by Republic Wireless — which users will need to buy in order to use the service — is a modified version of The LG Optimus, running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). This phone is offered by other carriers and is generally regarded as a solid low-end device (it’s not going to look great next to a Galaxy S II, but it’ll more than suffice for a lot of people). The device will be sold for $199 with no contract, and it will be available at a discounted rate of $99 through November 27 if you use the promo code ‘welcome19’. Again, that’s with no contract — there are no termination fees. Here are additional details from the press release: The first month of service bundled with the start up fee
An LG Optimus smartphone running Android 2.3 (“Gingerbread”)
Month-to-month freedom from contracts and termination fees
Unlimited voice minutes
Unlimited text messages
Unlimited data megabytes
Automatic default to Wi-Fi when in range
Automatic Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calling over Wi-Fi
Internet protocol texting over Wi-Fi
Nationwide cellular coverage when Wi-Fi isn’t available
No overages or roaming fees, ever
No-risk, 30-day money back guarantee The service relies on users logging onto their Wifi. Republic Wireless says that people are around Wifi about 60% of the time, and you’re expected to log on when you can — the phone will montior your ‘Cellular Usage Index’, which plots how much data you’re sending over Wifi vs a cellular connection as compared to the rest of the community. Here’s the : if you’re routinely using a lot of cellular data, then the service reserves the right to boot you. “Everyone’s entitled to a bad day, week or month. Kicking the cell habit, however, isn’t for everyone. Membership here is a privilege. So, over time, if you don’t bring your CUI back into a reasonable range, we’ll help you find a more suitable, traditional cellular carrier.” But this probably isn’t as bad as it sounds. I’m personally near Wifi all the time, so I’m not too concerned about overusing my cellular connection — and the site says you could use 550 minutes, send 150 texts, and download 300 megabytes without using Wifi at all and not be at risk of receiving a warning. So why is this a big deal? There are other plans out there that are relatively inexpensive compared to the ridiculous smartphone bills we’re used to — notably Virgin Mobile, which offers $35 no-contract plans with unlimited data and texting. But this is cheaper than Virgin, and I think it has far more disruptive potential down the line (after all, Virgin Mobile is owned by Sprint). There’s also the Wifi-based calling, which I think is a killer feature on its own (I recently that Google Voice would offer VoIP calling via an Android app). The fact that I’m constantly surrounded by Wifi networks and still have to deal with dropped calls and bad cell coverage is maddening at times — having a phone that can automatically switch to Wifi whenever possible would go a long way toward solving that. Yes, there are other phones with Wifi calling that are already available (T-Mobile offers an app on some Android devices that can do this), but you still need to buy a full-fledged T-Mobile plan to get them to work. Republic Wireless is less than half the price of a T-Mobile plan. I still have plenty of questions that won’t be answered until I have a device in my hands (I’ll be buying one the moment they go on sale). Does the phone seamlessly take care of the handoff between Wifi and the cellular network? What kind of data speeds will I get on Sprint? And are there any other unforeseen gotchas? But I’m — dare I say it — excited. This really could be disruptive, and while I think it might take some time to pick up steam, the $20 monthly price point has a very broad appeal. Sounds like they have some more exciting handsets in the pipeline, too. In a comment below, Bandwidth.com SVP and General Manager of the Mobile Division Brian Dally : “Arron, we like the Galaxy too (pun intended). We’re launching our beta with just one, but more phones are on the way….” (For those who missed it, that was a reference to Samsung’s Galaxy S II). From the site’s FAQ: How do I make Wi-Fi calls?
Dial as you would any other call. There’s no app to open up or second number to manage. You don’t have to click a special button or take any special action. Instead, once you’re setup for a Wi-Fi network, your republic smartphone connects and routes calls over Wi-Fi automatically. How can I make sure that I am connected to Wi-Fi all the time?
First, make sure you set up your phone to access the Wi-Fi networks you frequent. Your phone will remember those networks and connect to them automatically. Want to login to public hotspots? Download one of several apps available from the Android Market to automate that for you. Can I bring my own phone?
No. The ultimate in smartphone freedom would be using the phone you want, on the network you want, whenever you want. We agree… and are working toward that ideal. For now, Big Cell makes the rules. Android phones, Wi-Fi and the Web fuel our optimism that the future could look very different. Can’t I just download this to my current phone?
No. There are, however, many apps you can download to make VoIP calls over Wi-Fi using any Android or Apple smartphone. Some of them require you to manage a second number, pay for minutes or take special steps to use them. All of them require you continue overpaying for a cellular plan. Only republic wireless provides Hybrid Calling that’s not only built into the phone, but also into the price. Only one phone? What’s that all about?
The LG Optimus is our first phone, and there will be more to follow. Affordable and well reviewed, we assure you this first phone is very well endowed with our Hybrid Calling technology and “Gingerbread,” Google’s code name for Android version 2.3. What phone should be next? Tell us with an email to yourvoice@republicwireless.com. I have DSL at home. Will it work on that or will I have to upgrade to something faster?
You need about 80kbps both ways to hold a call. The more bandwidth the better for improved call quality. Don’t forget that streaming video or downloading large files all use bandwidth, so your mileage may vary if you are trying to make or receive calls and watch Netflix at the same time. Here’s a quote from David Morken, CEO and cofounder of Bandwidth.com. (I rarely include these press release quotes, but this is a good one): “We hold this to be self-evident: that the best, fastest, and highest-value network is the Wi-Fi you already have in your home and office” said David Morken, co-founder and CEO of republic wireless’ parent company, Bandwidth.com. “We believe that most smartphones should be communicating over Wi-Fi natively, and only using cellular spectrum if needed, not all the time,” said Morken. “The cellular emperor has no clothes – smart consumers have been clamoring for someone to unlock the value of our home and office networks for years. republic wireless uniquely delivers what they’ve been asking for. Our beta, launched today, ushers in a new era in wireless and is the beginning of our mission to bring customers unprecedented value.” |
Hands On With Microsoft’s New Windows Phones | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | Our own Josh Zelman grabbed some video of the new Windows Phones announced today, including the $50 Samsung Focus Flash. These are Microsoft’s initial stabs at attacking the mid-range market in advance of upcoming WinPho models. The new phones include the Samsung Focus S and the HTC Radar HTC, priced at $199 and $99 respectively. These are clearly subsidized prices and an effort by Microsoft to grab a bit more than the current 2% market share they now control. I honestly believe that things are going to look a lot different in the next year or so as these WinPhones slowly grab market share and makes the mobile OS much more compelling – presumably eroding (albeit slightly) the iOS and the Android markets. We live, as they say, in interesting mobile times. |
Synaptics Demonstrates Windows 8 Trackpad Gestures On Video | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | We heard a while back that would support multi-touch via the trackpad. Sure, there’s some stuff you can do right now, but the promise made by Microsoft and Synaptics has been deferred for the most part. But they’ve put up a video that shows just how you can expect to interact with Windows 8 and Metro using a multi-touch trackpad. You can watch the video , but I’ve embedded it here as well for your convenience: I have to say that some of these things look extremely handy. I use a PC desktop and a Mac laptop, and each one is jealous of the other for several reasons. One of the things I love on my MacBook is the multitasking multi-touch gestures. Switching between desktops or applications with a swipe of a couple fingers becomes second nature, and it looks like that’s being nicely integrated in Synaptics’ concept. Essentially what they’re doing is just mapping your input on the large touchscreen into the normal touch driver; the difficulty is probably the precision and filtering, determining exactly where that finger is so you can provide touchscreen-level accuracy. Naturally there are obstacles. I wrote a long time ago about , and I can’t say that this video makes any difference to my opinion that we’ll likely always need both. After all, the feedback loop telling you where you’re putting your finger is a bit incomplete: it needs to let you know where your finger is hovering, since you can’t touch the items directly. As it is, I think you can touch and then press down to click, as we’ve been doing for a while, but that’s not cohesive enough. Yet the edge gestures look like a joy. Flipping between apps looks as natural and useful as it feels on the tablets, and I like the idea of bringing up the charm bar like that. There’s a danger of accidentally activating these, but that’s a matter of software optimization and Synaptics is no slouch. In fact, usually it’s ODMs and OS makers who their solutions properly. They’ll be showing this off at the Microsoft Ecosystem Summit later this week. In the meantime more info can be found at the . |
CloudFlare’s Matthew Prince On The Challenges Of China’s Internet Restrictions | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | With over (approximately 350 million uniques a month) and 20 billion page views per month passing through his network since its launch at TechCrunch Disrupt SF in September, — CEO of website protection service — might know a thing or two about the Internet. Therefore we took some time to chat with him on camera during our recent , when a bus conversation about how exactly China’s Internet censorship worked (like, why were we able to access Facebook and Twitter on our phones’ 3G networks but not via the web?) got way too interesting to limit to just our small group. Prince explained the Internet censorship issue is more bureaucratically and technically complicated than one night think, with 31 regional governments each controlling the restriction policy for their respective areas; “There are different rules and regulations from province to province, so something that might be controversial in one province might be extremely good news [in another].” He also explained that some of the site blockages could be the result of technical issues rather than purposeful censorship, “In order to create a network where you can have restrictions you must have very narrow bottlenecks and it would just be technical reasons where those bottlenecks fill up.” Nobody really knows for sure, he went, as the Chinese government has never really formerly outlined what the exact policy is. Prince’s ended the chat with some “Hang in there”-type advice to startups attempting to overcome the sometimes frustrating challenges of China’s changing Internet rules, “[You need] to really respect that this is a different market, we can’t come in and say ‘This is how it’s going to be done.’” |
Sheryl Sandberg: ‘Until Women Are As Ambitious As Men, They’re Not Going To Achieve As Much’ | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | By this point, women in technology, especially those in powerful positions, are probably tired of hearing about: Women in technology. But, tonight, during a conversation with Charlie Rose, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg was asked exactly that: If the tech industry is today a place where women can find the level of opportunity that she, as a top executive at one of the world’s most well-known companies, would like them to be able to find. Sandberg holds that women have made an incredible amount of progress in both higher education and management, gaining a larger share (if not taking the lead from men) in college and graduate degrees and leadership roles. But the glass ceiling refuses to crack completely. “Over the last ten years”, Sandberg tells Rose, “women have stalled out at the top”. In corporate America, she continues, women hold only 15 to 16 percent of the board seats and top level positions like CEO — women’s share of those top positions really hasn’t changed much in the last ten years or so. Let me talk two things about, one you, the empowerment of women and then a sense of who you represent. This is a place that you are — you stand out because you and Marissa [Mayer] and a few others, you know, is — is technology a place that women can find the kind of opportunity that you want them to find? Does it need mentoring and all kinds of other things that people like Sheryl Sandberg can deliver? Look, I think the issue of women in the economy and the country is a huge one. It’s something that I care passionately about and Mark cares passionately about and has helped me too. You know, we have basically a stalled revolution for women. You know, women became 50 percent of the college graduates in this country in 1981 and then made steady progress, more college degrees, more graduate degrees, more manager positions. Over — and we’re still making progress. Over the last ten years, women have stalled out at the top. Women in corporate America have 15 to 16 percent of the board seats and of the kind of CEO [spelled phonetically], the high-level jobs, and that has not moved in ten years. Why? Oh, it’s probably longer than we have time for. A lot of reasons, but I really think we need more women to lean into their careers and to be really dedicated to staying in the work force. I think the achievement gap is caused by a lot of things. It’s caused by institutional barriers and all kinds of stuff. But there’s also a really big ambition gap. If you survey men and women in college today in this country, the men are more ambitious than the women. And until women are as ambitious as men, they’re not going to achieve as much as men … While the sum total of the , it’s definitely worth the read. And worth watching when it airs tonight on PBS (midnight for you California folks out there). And here are some more good reads on women and technology: by Mike Arrington, “Women and Tech: Focus On Female Consumers And The Founders Will Follow” by Christina Brodbeck, by Vivek Wadhwa, and by Aileen Lee. |
Google+ Pages Age Selector Signals End of 18+ Age Limit | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | Judging by the age selector option in the new Google+ Pages that lets admins limit features to those over the age of 18, users under 18 will eventually be able to join the social network. Currently, Google+ is limited to those ages 18 and over, and excludes those ages 13-17 who are permitted to set up a Gmail account. While it was assumed that Google+ would lower its age restriction to the COPPA-compliant 13 and over demographic when it completed its “field test”, the age selector option makes this all but assured. Using the age selector on the , admins can set it so “interactive features that require the user to be logged in will be limited to users that are that minimum age or older” according to . The age options include ‘Any Google+ user’, and ‘Users 18 and over’. The second option would only be necessary if users under 18 could some day use the service. When Google+ first launched and again when it was opened to the public, some were surprised it excluded a demographic known for sharing high volumes of content. That sharing and the willingness of younger demographics to invite their whole network to new services could have helped Google+ grow. Google may have assessed that building in walls to separate minors from the rest of the user base wasn’t a priority. That might not have been the wisest move as I see Google+ as having squandered its initial growth momentum such that it will never attain the wildfire spread of Facebook. That growth may not be crucial to Google’s plans or the service’s longterm success. It could also have helped set more mature norms about the types of content and relationships hosted on Google+. Still, raw user count is important to attracting developers, brands, and more users. Now it seems that when Google+ is ready, it will admit those ages 13-17, and Pages related to topics unfit for minors such as tobacco will be able to exclude logged in youngsters. Furthermore, the potential ability for Google+ Pages to target posts to specific age groups such as minors could be a . |
Twitter Names Mass Relevance, Crimson Hexagon As Curation Partners | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | Twitter today formal partnerships with and to allow the two companies to repurpose tweets for use on websites, television shows, jumbotrons and more. Mass Relevance helps clients curate the Twitter firehose so they can display the highest quality tweets about a given subject. Crimson Hexagon performs sentiment analysis on the firehose to let clients determine the opinions of the Twitter user base. The two partners will act as intermediaries between the micro-blogging platform and companies that want to display its content elsewhere. This will allow Twitter to grow tweet syndication and analysis as revenues stream without having to build sales, design, and support teams. Twitter’s firehose includes 230 million tweets a day and over 1.5 billion a week. While social media monitoring tools can help brands find the mentions of them or a certain topic, it’s still difficult to filter out noise, spam, and low quality tweets and then pull out the best tweets or analyze their meaning. Mass Relevance and Crimson Hexagon take care of all of this for their clients, in addition to sounding like Bond villain secret weapons. For example, Mass Relevance helped E! Online find the from the audience, nominees, and critics and then display them on a microsite. Crimson Hexagon powered CNN’s analysis of Obama’s 2010 State of the Union address, allowing the television network to project graphs onto screens in the studio indicating the percentage of tweets that supported Obama’s address, thought it was too liberal, or had mixed reactions. It also helped us figure out . The two companies were already platform partners, but the new agreements will allow them to re-syndicate tweets or analyze their content in exchange for a fee without fear of suspension. In the blog post announcing the deals, Twitter’s developer relations manager Jason Costa wrote, “Expect to see additional partnerships of this kind as we look for new ways to help everyone get the best out of Twitter.” These types of deals will allow Twitter to stay lean while simultaneously building out revenue streams that don’t piss off users like the short-lived . |
Mozilla Festival salutes more Popcorn and less developer-ghetto | vaughn597 | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | The 600 participants at last weekend’s in London were a crowd of filmmakers, educators, coders, tech-savvy media professionals, media-sceptical hackers, hacking-ignorant journalists, gamers, government advisors – I could go on, but I think you get the idea. It was diverse. All of them however were thinkers and makers ready to explore the frontiers of the open web. Under the tagline ‘Media, Freedom and the Web’ non-profit organisation Mozilla designed this round of their yearly festival around the challenge of using the web for a more creative and collaborative media landscape. Plenty of ideas were spread, challenges were conquered, solutions were crowdsourced, a fair share of awesome new stuff presented and TechCrunch picked out somehighlights for you. Emmy-award winning filmmaker Kat Cizek described herself as ‘super-chuffed’ when she came on stage to present the world’s first HTML5 film at . It was the world premiere of ‘One Millionth Tower’, a documentary that works like the web itself: ever-changing, updated by the minute. The film was developed with the help of , Mozilla’s recently launched JavaScript library that works similarly to the hypertext principle in seamlessly mashing up online video with virtually anything online – the most obvious examples would be Wikipedia, Flickr or Twitter. It turns film into a more semantic experience, allowing for more dynamic and interaction. “We can’t just think about interaction at the end but need it from the beginning to create a conversation between the filmmaker and the audience,” agreed the students involved in the development of Popcorn. “This kind of storytelling is just getting started.” Wired UK’s editor-at-large called it ‘geek-ghetto’ and I think he hit the nail on the head with this one. What he meant was that only a small community knows how to code and that this skill should be integrated in various professions. It is upon the tech-savvy of us to make sure generations to follow will find coding as a skill more integrated in their daily lives. This doesn’t mean teaching kids how to build the next Firefox, it means making sure they know they could. The idea is to teach the language that will enable people to share ideas. “‘Build your dreams here’ could be the tagline for the web,” said , Mozilla’s Executive Director. Ben Hammersley went right ahead and called it “saving the world”. Yes, it sounds a tiny bit idealistic. However, coding means being able to create and to create means power. If they’re not saving the world, the brilliant start-ups appearing on this blog every day are at least changing it one bit after another. For more and more change, networks such as , or should be supported in every possible way. …We don’t.” Not my words; those of an angry developer. More or less tech-savvy journalists and more or less media-savvy hackers were discussing the rare breed of “hacking journalists” at Mozilla Festival. The concept follows the idea of making news more transparent and accessible by combining the two trades. This can range from teaching journalists to better present data-driven news all the way to introducing some form of iteration to the press. Being a tech journalists and a giant nerd, I had a very easy role in this discussion. I learned how to code – not very well, but enough for it to be useful – because it helps me to do a better job. After all, shouldn’t journalists be masters of collecting, analysing and presenting data? Some basic programming skills can help that cause a great deal. Writing the was a start. The first draft of the book to help journalists deal with large amounts of data as well as possible was written in the 48 hours of the festival by 55 contributors. No better place to make hacks a little bit more like hackers than in TechCity. |
How Google+ Could One-Up Facebook’s Brand Pages | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | Google today product for Google+. The company has some big choices to make about how it will flesh out this skeleton to challenge the Pages product Facebook has had years to work on. Still, comparing the two visions of brand presences now can give us a sense of what might be next on the product roadmap for Google+ Pages, and the opportunities Google has to exploit weaknesses stemming from Facebook’s need to promote its application platform and draw advertising dollars. Two core ways Google+ could make its Pages better than Facebook’s would be letting brands target updates to demographic subsets of their followers, and providing official app templates that let brands easily assemble their own custom apps rather than going through third-party developers. Over the next few days Google plans to give all users the ability to create Pages. The rollout is a bit of a mess now, though, as every existing Page features a “Create a Google+ Page” link that abruptly roadblocks some users with a notice that they can’t actually do that yet. Similar to Facebook, Google currently offers a few overarching types of Pages that break down into many sub-categories, . Both include a special format for local businesses that allows them to list information like an address and phone number. Facebook provides very little instruction about how to choose the right category and how that choice will impact functionality. A better in-line Page creation tutorial could keep brands on Google+ from worrying they’ve screwed up their crucial first steps. Google+ Pages lack custom vanity URLs, though you can assume that’s coming. Multiple admin support is reportedly on its way. The option to assign different roles and privileges for admins such as the ability to publish updates or remove other admins could make Google+ Pages more secure and easier for teams to manage. As Jason Kincaid points out in his article on the launch of Pages (linked above), Google confusingly lets users both add a Page to their circles, or +1 it. The former means a user will start seeing the Page’s updates in its main stream and the stream of any circle they add the Page to, while the latter lets users share a link to the Page. Google will need to make following a Page an obvious and straightforward experience if it wants Pages to gain enough followers for brands to invest resource in publishing through them. A great feature of Google+ Pages is Direct Connect, which lets users add a Page to their circles by searching +[brand name] on Google. This takes significantly less work than having to visit a Facebook Page in order to Like it. Direct Connect also builds on Google’s dominance in search — something it should exploit in other areas such as email and maps to differentiate its social network. Another big potential advantage of Google+ Pages is that they can create their own circles which can then be selected as the audience of a post. Currently Google creates “VIPs”, “Customers”, and “Team members” circles that admins can populate. If Google provides an efficient and accurate way to sort followers into circles by age, location, and other characteristics, Pages could publish different updates to different demographic subsets of their audience to maximize the relevancy of those updates. For example, if retailer Macy’s could publish updates to a circle of all their followers under the age of 30, it could serve its younger audience updates about more youthful products without annoying its older followers. Similarly, rather than creating separate Google+ Pages for their presences in different cities, brands could publish city-targeted updates about local promotions, and local businesses could publish zip-code targeted updates to those in their neighborhood. Facebook currently only allows Pages to target posts by country, city, and language, preventing age or more granular zip code location targeting. Google+ users can comment on the posts of Pages but can’t post directly to the wall of a Page. They can mention a Page in one of their own updates by typing a ‘+’ directly before its name, but this won’t appear on the Page the way Facebook mentions do. The ability to post questions and feedback to their walls and have discussions with admins and other fans is leading Facebook Pages to become a new customer service channel that brands can’t afford to ignore. Google+ should think carefully about how much of a two-way communication medium it wants Pages to be. As of right now, there appears to be no sign of analytics for Google+ Page admins. Being able measure engagement with posts and Page growth is critical to brands justifying allocation of resources to Google+, so it will need its own version of Facebook Page Insights at some point. This decision to keep Page performance opaque for now could be to keep brands from writing off the new social network before Google thinks it has attained a sufficient number of users. In addition to news feed posts, a key driver of engagement and new fans for Facebook Pages is the ability to host applications. Pages use these apps to create landing pages that encourage Likes, sign-up forms for email and mobile marketing, contests and sweepstakes, games, and ecommerce storefronts. However, to create these apps, Page admins have to find solutions from third-party developers, and in some cases have to license Page management platforms to offer the apps they want. Google has a chance to make Page applications more accessible to all businesses by creating official templates that can be customized with the images, copy, and functionality desired by brands. Rather than forcing admins to choose between apps built by unknown third-parties, it could give them free templates they can trust to work. This would also allow Google+ to offer Page apps without first having to create a robust set of APIs to support them. Facebook has forged a functional model for brand presences on social networks. Unfortunately, its focus on app developers and its desire to get brands advertising in order to target specific demographics has left Google some big opportunities to create a friendlier platform for brands. By adding app templates and granular Page update targeting it could convince brands that Google+ could be a powerful, free, and easy-to-adopt component of their digital marketing strategy. |
Short On Cash, Kodak Sells Its Sensor Business | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | , which has been struggling to make enough money to keep the lights on next year, . The buyer is holdings firm , which is also picking up a large R&D and manufacturing facility in Rochester. Kodak will continue to have access to (and presumably operate) the facility and staff, but who will ultimately end up with this piece isn’t clear. The price was not disclosed, but I would guess it’s probably somewhere around $100-$200 million, based on the scale of the purchase and the company’s year end estimates and necessities. The details of the deal are also obscure, and will likely come out in a press release during the next week. The question one asks, naturally, is if it’s worth this much today, that must be a cost the buyer hopes to recoup with some time and investment — and so why doesn’t Kodak make the time and investment itself? It simply doesn’t have the money. To compete with the likes of Sony and Canon in the sensor area, they’d need to be investing as much per year as they just sold the whole thing for. I wrote a while back that it was focusing on IP and giving up the privilege of being a household name. Without their sensor business that’s probably not a viable option. On the other hand, as we don’t know the details of the purchase, it could be that they do have that in mind, but had to surrender ownership in order to fund the R&D necessary to take that position over the next few years. In that case Platinum would be more of a partner than a purchaser. |
Facebook Acq-hires Mobile Video And Image Editing App Developer Digital Staircase | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | It looks like Facebook has just acq-hired mobile video and image app developer , according to a on the startup’s site. According to Facebook, Digital Staircase’s team will be joining the social network but Facebook has not acquired any of the technology assets from the startup. Digital Staircase has developed a number of apps for video recording, image editing and more. MovieCam, which is available as an iPad and iOS app, is a camcorder app that provides recording features like 8x digital zoom, pause-and-resume recording functionality, and contrast enhancement. The app also allows you to add 18 movie effects and filters while shooting video. iPhone app StereoCam aids in the quick creation of stereo image pairs. A stereo image pair consists of two specially designed images that are placed side-by-side to allow viewers (employing an appropriate viewing technique) to see the depicted scene in full. Another iOS app SmartSplice uses advanced graphics algorithms to improve the speed and ease of creating high-quality image selections and provides image filters and a way to create professional-looking image effects. From the post, it appears that the development team may be adding some of these functionalities to Facebook itself. Unfortunately, Digital Staircase will be removing its apps from the Apple App Store. |
null | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 21 | null |
Hands On With The Nook Tablet | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | We saw the reader, the video player, the comic book viewer, and the recording feature for kid’s books, a feature that will be especially pertinent for folks who are on the road all the time. Look for our full review in the next few days. |
Disruptive $19/Month Carrier Republic Wireless To Sell Handsets For $99 Until November 27 | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | Last week we the news that Bandwidth.com was launching a disruptive mobile carrier called . The service will use special handsets that take advantage of Wifi networks whenever possible, and will fallback to a ‘normal’ cellular connection whenever Wifi isn’t available. A report from pegs the price at a mere $19 per month — with unlimited text, data, and voice. That’s massive savings compared to the standard contracts offered by Verizon, AT&T, et al. But there’s a catch: to use Republic Wireless, you need to buy a new handset (the devices are Android-based, but they use a special combination of hardware and software that can’t be ported to other devices, at least not yet). Thankfully those handsets are going to be relatively inexpensive. Numerous tipsters have written in to say they’ve just received the following email from Republic Wireless — and we’ve just confirmed with the company — that the handsets will be $99 for anyone who uses the code ‘welcome19’ by November 27. And that’s with no contract. After that early-signup period ends, the price will jump to $199, which is still significantly less expensive than most off-contract phones. : The code is welcome19, with a lowercase w — it won’t work if you use a capital letter. Initially, Republic Wireless will be using Sprint as its fallback when Wifi isn’t available, but it sounds like it’s working to offer service from other carriers as well. Here’s the email that is starting to land in some early users’ inboxes — the service’s homepage is advertising a full launch tomorrow: Welcome to republic wireless. So what’s it like here? A reward for being first:
Join now, and pay $99. That’s $100 less than the normal $199 cost. You read that right. For $99 you get a new smartphone, and a whole new kind of mobile phone network. Freedom isn’t free. It’s $19.
Almost immediately you notice what’s missing. The hefty monthly bills, the endless nickel-and-diming, the big red contracts…yes, we can hear you now. Do you hear us? With republic wireless, you pay a flat $19 a month for everything. Period. How is that possible?
republic is a Wi-Fi network. Anything cellular can do, Wi-Fi can do better (and for less). That’s 21st Century technology. That’s also basic economics. So let’s all use Wi-Fi as much as possible. Change the way wireless works
Decide whether to become a member now, or maybe later. Either way, like minds for evolving the industry are wanted here, today. You have thoughts to share, ideas to spread. Bring them to our forums. Keep up with us via our blog. Tell the republic what’s up. Next stop: republicwireless.com
There’s so much more we have to show you. So visit, look around. Oh, that $99 offer we told you about? To get it, use the code welcome19 to join before November 27, 2011 at 11:59 pm ET. Looking forward to being your new wireless network! Yours,
republic wireless |
Zuckerberg: Facebook Is Not Going To Build Any Games | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | To many a casual Facebooker, Facebook is all the games. From riveting titles like “Feed your fish so they don’t die” to the action-packed adventure “Growing fake plants in virtual dirt”, Facebook games have captured the hearts and minds of the massive casual audience that so many others have failed to grasp. You might think, then, that Facebook might consider building a game or two of their very own? Heck no, says Zuck. Mark Zuckerberg dives into the logic of avoiding game development (which, while it may be a daunting wall of text, is definitely worth a read through if only to catch Sheryl Sandberg making fun of Zuckerberg for being too young to remember CallerID): Games is probably the biggest industry today that has gone really social, right. I mean, the incumbent game companies are really being disrupted and are quickly trying to become social. And you have companies like Zynga (which are going public soon and will be valued most likely at multibillion dollar valuations, and basically all of their games are built on top of Facebook for the most part) And a huge number of other companies as well. So I mean, does Facebook build any games? No. We build no games. You say that today – No, we — You say that today – No, I’m pretty sure we’re not going to build any games. I’m only saying this because people thought that Steve Jobs would never go into retail, and he did. I’ll tell you why. Because building games is really hard. And what we’re doing is really hard. And we think that we’re better off focusing on this piece. I think that building a great game service is really hard. Building a great music service is really hard. Building a great movie service is really hard. And we just believe that an independent entrepreneur will always beat a division of a big company which is why we think that the strategy of these other companies trying to do everything themselves will inevitably be less successful than an ecosystem where you have someone like Facebook trying to build the core product to help people connect and then independent great companies that are only focused on one or two things doing those things really well. In other words: Facebook is good at building platforms for other people to build on, and they know it. Why step on toes? Why do the work that others are better at, and willing to do for you? They’ll build the foundation, work in a way to , and let the cash roll in. They’ll let Zynga do the games, Netflix do the movies, myriad streaming services do the music, and Facebook will just connect the dots — or as Sheryl Sandberg repeats throughout the interview, “connect the world”. |
Zuckerberg Talks To Charlie Rose About Steve Jobs, IPOs, And Google’s “Little Version Of Facebook” | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQlPCflWP9k&w=640&h=385] Charlie Rose interviews Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg tonight on his . In the preview video above, he tried to get them to talk about what looks like a “flat out war” between Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon “for the future.” Zuckerberg says, “People like to talk about war.” While he admits there is competition, he doesn’t think one company will “win all the stuff.” But then he can’t help himself and makes a dig at Google, which is “trying to build their little version of Facebook.” In the full transcript of the interview below, Zuckerberg and Sandberg talk why they want to IPO (to attract and retain talent), social media’s role on political revolutions (“overblown”), and how even at its current size Facebook is still “focused on doing one thing incredibly well.” Well into the interview, Zuckerberg talks about Steve Jobs and the : Mark Zuckerberg:
There is this quote I think in the book that just came out about him where, I mean, it’s — Charlie Rose:
The Walter Isaacson book. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. I mean, it’s — and I took it as this amazing compliment. He said, I admire Facebook because you guys don’t want to sell out. …I know that’s one of the ways in which — in which we saw eye to eye on kind of what we were trying to do in the world.
Rose asks whether Apple ever tried to buy Facebook (no, Jobs never asked). While plenty of companies tried to buy Facebook in the early days, “No one even asks any more,” says Sandberg. Charlie Rose:
It’s too big. Nobody can afford you anymore. Sheryl Sandberg:
Exactly. Charlie Rose:
Is that the essential idea? Sheryl Sandberg:
Yeah. Towards the end, Sandberg offers some pretty strong opinons about women, ambition, and power. “Until women are as ambitious as men,” she says, “they’re not going to achieve as much as men.” And Zuckerberg explains how, despite his own wealth and power he tries to live a “pretty simple life”: Mark Zuckerberg:
I don’t know. I think a big piece is just to try to stay grounded and, I don’t know, have a pretty simple life, right. I mean, I don’t — so people say that, you know, the company is so valuable, and there are all these people there and all that. But I think the number of people who I work with I stay focused on keeping them who I think are really good people, really smart, intellectually curious. I spend a lot of time just, you know, with my girlfriend and my dog. And I mean, we don’t have a lot of furniture in our house, so it’s really simple. And we’re trying to build products for everyone in the world, right. And you don’t want to get isolated to do that. We have a very open culture at the company where we foster a lot of interaction between not just me and people but between everyone else. It’s an open floor plan. People have these desks where no one really has an office. I mean, I have a room where I meet with people. But it has all glass so everyone can see into it and see what’s going on. I don’t know. I just think that — actually, it’s really connected to the mission of the company. I think that more flow of information, the ability to stay connected to more people makes people more effective as people. And I mean, that’s true socially. It makes you have more fun, right. It feels better to be more connected to all these people. You have a richer life. But I also think in terms of doing work and in terms of learning and evolving as a person, you just grow more when you get more people’s perspectives and when you’re more connected and have more of a flow from people. So I don’t know. I think that’s really it. I mean, I really try to live the mission of the company and embody that for the company and keep everything else in my life extremely simple. ————————————————————————-
Charlie Rose:
Tell me what the mission is today for Facebook. You’ve got 800 million and counting — Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Charlie Rose:
— users. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Charlie Rose:
It’s an extraordinary reach. Someone said it’s the most expansive human enabler of communication, or an enabler of human communication there has ever been. Mark Zuckerberg:
We’re trying. Charlie Rose:
You’re doing well at it too. So what’s the mission? Where is this thing going? Mark Zuckerberg:
So the stated mission of the company is to make the world more open and connected, right? And the idea is that when you give people this ability to stay connected with all the people they care about, and you make it so they can express new things about themselves or in communication with other people who they care about, then you just open up all these new possibilities. You make it so people can stay connected in ways that they couldn’t before. They can learn about new things, whether it’s events that are happening in the world or ability to organize new things or learn about new products or new movies or music that they want to listen to. It opens up a lot of new possibility when you can keep all of these connections open to the people that you care about. So obviously, a big part of our mission is just connecting all these different people in the world. And one of the things that we are really proud of is that now 800 million people around the world are using Facebook every month and perhaps even crazier — it’s mind-blowing from my perspective. But more than half a billion people use Facebook every day. And I just think that’s crazy. Charlie Rose:
500 million plus people — Mark Zuckerberg:
500 million people, yeah. That’s growing. And it’s growing every day. And if you just look back, you know, seven years from when we were getting started, I mean, there would have been no way that we would have thought — Sheryl Sandberg:
500 million people in your dorm room. Mark Zuckerberg:
The funny thing is that, you know, I used to talk to a lot of my friends when I was at — when I was in college. We used to go out to get pizza every night. And we used to talk about what we thought was going to happen in the world and on the Internet. And we thought that there would be something like this, right, that, you know, it seemed pretty much inevitable that people would have a way to connect and that they would be able to express all these things and that there would be tools to make not just a social network, but that every product that you use is better off with your friends. We figured that there would be tools to do that. But the big surprise of this thing is that we’ve played a big role in making that happen. And when we were in college, we just figured, you know, who are we to do this, right? I mean, maybe we can create this cool little community for ourselves in college, but clearly it’s going to be some other company that does it. Charlie Rose:
That’s what it is, a web within a web, is it not? Mark Zuckerberg:
Well — Charlie Rose:
It’s a personalized web within the web. Mark Zuckerberg:
I think it’s shaping — it’s shaping the broader web. Charlie Rose:
Yeah. Mark Zuckerberg:
I mean, right now, if you look back for the past five or seven years, the story of social networking has really been about getting these 800 million people connected, right, so that they can stay in touch with all these people who they care about, and getting them signed up for Facebook and all that. But if you look forward for the next five years, I think that the story that people are going to remember five years from now isn’t how this one site was built. It was how every single service that you use is now going to be better with your friends because they can tap into your friends, right, so whether it’s, you know, music services that we just announced this new product a little more than a month ago and since then some of the music services that are out there, Spotify has grown from a little more than three million users with Facebook to now more than seven million users with Facebook. Another service called Mog [spelled phonetically] has grown from I think it’s a relatively small number of subscribers but it’s grown by four or five times in the last month alone. Sheryl Sandberg:
Yeah. Mark Zuckerberg:
And I think what that just shows is that all of these different products are better when you’re doing them with your friends. I mean think about it, do you want to go to the movies by yourself or do you want to go to the movies with your friends, right? You want to go with your friends. Charlie Rose:
Or do you want to know what your friends like rather than what a whole different [unintelligible] likes. Sheryl Sandberg:
That’s right. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Sheryl Sandberg:
It’s the wisdom of crowds to the wisdom of friends, you know. Charlie Rose:
The wisdom of crowds means — Sheryl Sandberg:
Yeah. Charlie Rose:
— so that’s Google versus Facebook right there. Sheryl Sandberg:
I don’t think it’s Google versus Facebook. I think it represents — Charlie Rose:
The wisdom of crowds versus the wisdom of friends? Sheryl Sandberg:
Well, I don’t think — I think the wisdom of crowds applies not just to Google but to a phase of the web — Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Sheryl Sandberg:
— which is about information and about links. And it was a lot of wonderful things, mostly based on anonymity and links between crowds. Charlie Rose:
Right, right, right, right, right, right, right. Sheryl Sandberg:
What does the crowd think? What is the best thing? Ours is just structured a totally different place so it is an evolution. The information web still exists, it’s still broadly used, but the social web didn’t exist before. The social web can’t exist until you are your real self online. I have to be me. You have to be Charlie Rose. He has to be Mark Zuckerberg. I have to be Sheryl Sandberg. Once we are online as ourselves, connected to each other and our other friends, then you can have the evolution of what becomes the social web, not just on Facebook but throughout. Charlie Rose:
What is it about that people want to be on Facebook, they want to talk about themselves, what is the sort of essence of that? Mark Zuckerberg:
I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think it’s always existed. Charlie Rose:
It’s as though — Mark Zuckerberg:
One of the things that I think makes us human. But yeah and obviously to know what’s going on with your friends’ lives or not just your friends but people you care about. Right? You know, people who you’re interested in who aren’t your friends who are maybe on the periphery of your social circle, yeah, I think that those are all just core human needs and until Facebook there wasn’t a great tool for doing that, but I think that a lot of that and building that up was the last five years. I think the next five years is going to be about, okay now you’re connected to all these people, now you can have a better music listening experience, you can have a better movie watching experience, you can see what your friends are reading and learn what news you should read first, all of these things I think are going to get better. And that’s the thing that I’m most excited about for the next five years. And if we do well I think five years from now people are really going to look back and say wow, over the last five years all these products have now gotten better because I’m not doing this stuff alone, I’m doing it with my friends. Sheryl Sandberg:
And it’s personal, it’s not just that you’re bringing your friends with you and then it becomes personal to you. So if you look at how people use most of the web, most products out there, even if you’re logged in, if I looked over your two shoulders, you see the same stuff because it’s basically produced for the masses. Charlie Rose:
Is the key to — Sheryl Sandberg:
And ours is different. Charlie Rose:
Is the key to the monitorization of the future the fact that advertising will believe this is the best way to reach people, who are likely to buy their products? Sheryl Sandberg:
Marketers have always wanted you know personal relationships with consumers or relationships where consumers do two things, consumers buy their products and consumers tell their friends to buy their — that they buy their products. Marketers have always been looking for that person who’s not just going to buy but spread the word to their friends. What we do on Facebook is we now enable marketers to find that and then if I do it on Facebook I’m sharing with an average of 130 people. And so it becomes a word of mouth marketing at scale, so people can tell each other what they like which is for marketers the thing they’ve been looking for I think for a long time. Charlie Rose:
Is there a limit in terms of how many friends you should have? Mark Zuckerberg:
I mean, I don’t think a limit in terms of should, they’re just — Sheryl Sandberg:
It’s very personnel. Mark Zuckerberg:
— I think that humans have a capacity for different amounts of social relationships. And I think it varies from person to person but it’s also not about what you should do. You should use the product to keep in touch with whatever set of people you want to. And we try to build all kinds of products that make it so you can stay in touch with small groups. All right, we have this groups product that you know it’s I think it’s 300 or 400 million people who are using it on a monthly basis now in order to communicate on Facebook with a subset of their friends, right, not their whole friends list, something that’s very widely used and a lot of people want to do that. And then we have functionality where people can publish things publicly, right? And some people have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or even in some cases millions of subscribers who they can publish to and communicate with. So I mean people have a variety of different communication needs and we strive to build products that help people set [spelled phonetically] all of those. Charlie Rose:
What’s the valuation today of Facebook? Sheryl Sandberg:
So we’re a private company so we don’t really have a valuation. Charlie Rose:
So then why do you want to be a public company? Why do you even think about an IPO? Mark Zuckerberg:
I actually think the biggest thing for us is that a big part of being a technology company is getting the best engineers and designers and talented people around the world. And one of the ways that you can do that is you compensate people with equity or options, right, so you get people who want to join the company, both for the mission, right, because they believe that Facebook is doing this awesome thing and they want to be a part of connecting everyone in the world, but also, if the company does well, then they get financially rewarded and can be set. And, you know, we’ve made this implicit promise to our investors and to our employees that by compensating them with equity and by giving them equity, that at some point we’re going to make that equity worth something publicly and liquidly, in a liquid way. Now, the promise isn’t that we’re going to do it on any kind of short-term time horizon. The promise is that we’re going to build this company so that it’s great over the long term, right. And that we’re always making these decisions for the long term, but at some point we’ll do that. Charlie Rose:
And it will be a liquid dividend for your — Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah, whether it’s a dividend or not, they’ll be able to trade their equity for money. And you know, that’s something that we take seriously, as a responsibility of running the company. And we just care deeply about all the employees and the investors who have been there with us. Charlie Rose:
Has the Groupon experience and has other things changed your sense of the timing of an IPO? Mark Zuckerberg:
I don’t — I don’t think so. Sheryl Sandberg:
Not really. Mark Zuckerberg:
No. Charlie Rose:
You’ll go when what? When will you decide? Sheryl Sandberg:
When we’re ready. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Charlie Rose:
No, but how — what will tell you it makes sense? Mark Zuckerberg:
I don’t know. It’s a good question. Yeah. Charlie Rose:
But you’ll just know? Mark Zuckerberg:
I mean, yeah. It’s — honestly, it’s not something I spend a lot of time on a day-to-day basis thinking about it now. Charlie Rose:
How do you measure the impact that we now believe social media play in the Arab Spring? Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah, my personal take on this is that it’s — the social media’s role is maybe a bit overblown in that. I mean, the way that I think about it is that if people want change, then they will find a way to get that change, right. So, whatever technology they may or may not have used was neither a necessary nor sufficient case for getting to the outcome that they got to, but having people who wanted change was. So, I mean, I hope that Facebook and other Internet technologies were able to help people, just like we hope that we help them communicate and organize and do whatever they want to every single day, but I don’t pretend that Facebook didn’t exist, that this wouldn’t even be possible. Of course, it would have. Charlie Rose:
Yeah, but it certainly accelerated it. And do you know of any effort in terms of where governments, because of that, are trying to shut down Facebook in terms of access? Mark Zuckerberg:
There are examples intermittently throughout the world all the time, but — Sheryl Sandberg:
And there are places we’re not available. Well, China’s obviously the big one. We’re not broadly available. Charlie Rose:
So how do you see that going into China, because — and if in fact it requires some sense of censorship, does that make it a “don’t go”? Sheryl Sandberg:
You know, if your mission is to connect the entire world for all the reasons we’ve been talking about, you can’t connect the whole world and not China. Charlie Rose:
Right. Sheryl Sandberg:
That’s not something we’re working on or focused on right now because it’s not a decision we have to make. So you are correct that when and if we go into China, we’ll have — Charlie Rose:
A billion and a half people. Mark Zuckerberg:
Well, we’ll issues. But since, for right now, we’re not available, and we don’t have an immediate path to become available, it not — these are not policy decisions we have to make. Charlie Rose:
So it’s not on the immediate horizon — Sheryl Sandberg:
Not on the immediate horizon. Charlie Rose:
— to go into China. And the reason is, though, is it because of what happened to Google? Sheryl Sandberg:
So it’s not really our choice. It’s the government’s choice, you know. We’re not available because they’ve chosen to make us not available. Charlie Rose:
Because they acted a certain way, you’ve chosen not to go there. Fair enough. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yes. Sheryl Sandberg:
No, it’s — yeah, yeah. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. And then at some point I think there would be some discussion around what it would take to go there, and then we’d at that point have to figure out whether we were willing to do that. Sheryl Sandberg:
Exactly. Mark Zuckerberg:
But honestly, the way that we look at it now is there’s so many other places in the world where we can connect more people more easily without having to face those hard questions that I think a simple rule in business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress. So then I assume, you know, we talk about running Facebook for the long term and over the decades in which we hope to run and build Facebook to be a great company, I would imagine that this will be a question that we have to answer. But, I mean, right now, there’s still so much room for growth in a lot of other countries that it’s just not — it’s not the top thing that we’re worried about right now. Charlie Rose:
To achieve your objectives that you want to do, the expansion, the — Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Charlie Rose:
— connections, the advertising revenue, how important and where do you put making sure that Facebook gets more of the best engineers than anybody else regardless of where you have to steal them? Sheryl Sandberg:
First, second and third. Charlie Rose:
That’s one, two, three, yeah. Mark Zuckerberg:
But it’s really important. Sheryl Sandberg:
Steal is not —
Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Sheryl Sandberg:
Attract. We attract them. Charlie Rose:
If you go to Google and you ask about you, they say, “Steal.” Sheryl Sandberg:
Attract. Attract. Charlie Rose:
He brought you from Google, and you brought other people from Google. Sheryl Sandberg:
He attracted me from Google. And I attracted — you know, I wanted to — but it’s — [unintelligible] hiring engineers, so Google — Charlie Rose:
Do you think Larry would believe it was attraction or theft? Sheryl Sandberg:
Well, we’re not proper in the United States. And I’m fairly certain he would say, but you’re getting at a really important question. Charlie Rose:
I am. Sheryl Sandberg:
Which is engineering talent in this country. Charlie Rose:
Yes. Sheryl Sandberg:
Which there is not enough of. Mark Zuckerberg:
Mm-hmm. Sheryl Sandberg:
So we would hire lots more people. Google would hire lots more people. Every company we know of has more desire for engineers — Charlie Rose:
And more need for the talented engineers — Sheryl Sandberg:
— than we have them. Charlie Rose:
And you can’t find them. Sheryl Sandberg:
Can’t find them. Charlie Rose:
How much of that is because of the U.S. immigration policy? Sheryl Sandberg:
Some. Mark Zuckerberg:
I’m not sure. I think some of it is that. But a lot of it is just education. I mean, I think that there’s not enough supply of engineers to meet the demand. I mean, all of my friends who have younger siblings who are going to college or high school, I mean, my number one piece of advice is you should learn how to program. I mean, I think that in the future, all kinds of jobs, not even just straight engineering jobs, but all kinds of different jobs are going to involve some element of programming. And, I mean, I just look at, you know, when I was at school, and I remember the average salary that an engineer, one of my computer science classmates got. And it’s gone up at least 50 percent, maybe even doubled in the last seven years since I was at school. And I think the reason is that the economy is shifting, and there are more companies that are growing that are these technology and software focused companies. And the skill set of being able to write code is so highly in demand that — and the amount of engineers who are graduating isn’t growing at a fast enough rate that the people who are there are just in more demand, and they get paid more. Sheryl Sandberg:
And we have both an education problem and an immigration problem. Mark Zuckerberg:
That’s true. Sheryl Sandberg:
So it’s an education problem. We do not train — we don’t graduate enough kids from high school. We don’t graduate enough kids from college in this country. And having these kind of skills, we’re just absolutely far off. And also, the immigration policy you talked about is very real. So, you know, someone made a joke. We give a huge percentage of the spots in our engineering undergrad and grad program to people from other countries, and then we kick them out. It’s like a company. We’d have Facebook training, and we train everyone, and then we’d say, but you can’t work here. Go work for our competitor. That’s what we’re doing as a country. People have talked about stapling. Charlie Rose:
Right. Sheryl Sandberg:
We should be stapling a visa. Charlie Rose:
Stapling a green card to every diploma. Sheryl Sandberg:
To every high-tech diploma because those people, not only do they not take jobs from other Americans. They create jobs for other Americans if we could keep them here and have them work in our [unintelligible]. Charlie Rose:
I don’t understand why they that can’t be changed, other than it’s caught up in the overall immigration politics. Sheryl Sandberg:
Yeah. Charlie Rose:
Otherwise you would think it’s so obvious. Sheryl Sandberg:
We’re not — we’re not experts on the political process. Mark Zuckerberg:
It’s above my pay grade. Charlie Rose:
But you’re having a different — you have to have, today, a company the size of Facebook, a presence in Washington. You have to have a sense of making sure that Washington knows who you are, and you know what they’re about. Do you know? Sheryl Sandberg:
We do. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yes. Sheryl Sandberg:
Yeah, no, we do. Mark Zuckerberg:
It’s an important — it’s an important part, I mean, for these issues and a lot of others. But I think changing the stuff is just such a long process, right. If we were actually going to effect any change in terms of getting more folks, each one be visas so we could not kick some of the best engineers out to other countries, I don’t know, I mean, that’s years, right. I mean — Sheryl Sandberg:
I mean, I think it’s a public education issue. I think, look, we have huge unemployment problem, and we have a growing crisis of people that not only want jobs and need jobs but deserve jobs. And it’s our job to — and so I think people don’t understand that these jobs do not take jobs from other Americans, but they create jobs around them. I mean, there are so many stories on this. We have one guy named Javier Oliveon who works here. He was one of the best engineering students in Spain, nationwide, came to Stanford to get his MBA. Charlie Rose:
Right. Sheryl Sandberg:
Started here, works with us, and he created our internationalization tool. He runs our internationalization projects. We serve most of the world from the United States. It’s the opposite of what everyone thinks is happening. We’re not hiring out there to serve here. We’re serving — we entered the visa lottery for him, and we won. We had the jobs for him. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah, yeah. Sheryl Sandberg:
If we had lost, we would have moved those jobs to wherever he could work. But because we got him a visa, those jobs stayed here. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Charlie Rose:
But let me ask this question, which is at the heart of the debate that’s going on in America. Mark Zuckerberg:
Mm-hmm. Charlie Rose:
Which is, you know, the competition of America with the rest of the world. Mark Zuckerberg:
Mm-hmm. Charlie Rose:
Facebook came out of America. Apple came out of America. Microsoft came out of America. Google came out of America. Are those things going to be coming — those kinds of companies, the kind of company you created — Mark Zuckerberg:
Mm-hmm. Charlie Rose:
— more likely to come from China tomorrow? Mark Zuckerberg:
Well, if you — I think that there’s actually two big ingredients, right. One of the big parts of the Facebook story was that — you know, I didn’t have to have some master plan at the beginning. I didn’t have to have a lot of money. I literally coded Facebook in my dorm room and launched it from my dorm room. I rented a server for $85 a month, and I funded it by putting an ad on the side, and we’ve funded ever since by putting ads on the side. Charlie Rose:
Right, right. Mark Zuckerberg:
And but literally just starting small and growing it. So I think you need two things. One is the ability to have engineers, right, and educate engineers who can just try out their own ideas. Charlie Rose:
Right. Mark Zuckerberg:
And the second is the ability to try out their own ideas, right, and the freedom to do that. And the U.S., I think historically has been extremely good at both. We’ve led in education, and we’ve led in freedom and supporting people trying risky things. Sheryl Sandberg:
Free market economics. Charlie Rose:
Right. Sheryl Sandberg:
Yeah. Charlie Rose:
And a sense of innovation and creativity and — Sheryl Sandberg:
Public policy that supports entrepreneurship. Charlie Rose:
Right, right. Sheryl Sandberg:
In America, you can hire and fire. Charlie Rose:
Right. Sheryl Sandberg:
In America, you can start a company without going through endless bureaucratic red tape, even though it’s growing a bit. Charlie Rose:
Yes. Sheryl Sandberg:
Right? I mean, in America, we’ve had a country of entrepreneurs. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Sheryl Sandberg:
We have set up our political system so you can start companies. You can close companies. I think people don’t always see the costs of increasing bureaucracy on entrepreneurship. The best people are going to go where they can get the best talent and where they have the best environment to hire. Charlie Rose:
Speaking of environment, how is your culture, say, different from the culture that you saw at Google? What is the Facebook culture? Sheryl Sandberg:
You know, when I think about this, if you compare Facebook and Google to, you know, most of the world, right, to other companies in other industries, they’re actually, in some ways, incredibly similar. They are founder led. Charlie Rose:
Right. Sheryl Sandberg:
Silicon Valley based technology companies that have broad [unintelligible]. Charlie Rose:
Driven by engineering. Sheryl Sandberg:
That’s right. Driven by engineering. They’re very similar. Charlie Rose:
Right. Sheryl Sandberg:
In the little Silicon Valley bubble in which we live, they’re truly different, totally different. Charlie Rose:
How so? Sheryl Sandberg:
Couple things. One is that, you know, Google is fundamentally — Charlie Rose:
You’re interested yourself. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah, I’m interested in hearing [unintelligible]. Sheryl Sandberg:
Yeah, but Google is fundamentally about, you know, algorithms and machine burning. Charlie Rose:
Right. Sheryl Sandberg:
And that — and that has been very important and continues to be very important. They’re doing a great job. We start from a totally different place. We start from an individual. Who are you? You know, what do you want to do? What do you want to share? You know, for us, the vision of the world is that we are like a hacking culture, and we mean that in the best of ways. We do not mean scary people breaking into your home or anything. Charlie Rose:
Or espionage. Sheryl Sandberg:
Or espionage. What we mean is we build things quickly and ship them. So we are not aiming for, you know, perfection that comes over, you know, years, then we ship a product. We don’t work on things for years and then ship it. We work on things. We ship them. We get feedback from the people who use it. We get feedback from the world. We iterate, we iterate, we iterate. We have these great signs around, you know, “Done is better than perfect.” “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” we’re very much a culture. Charlie Rose:
Because the notion of perfect is the enemy of good. Sheryl Sandberg:
Yeah. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Sheryl Sandberg:
And a culture of very, very rapid, very rapid innovation. Charlie Rose:
Okay. You set out — did you have a belief in a certain culture when you were building this company, that this is the kind of place I want to work? And this is how I want to — Sheryl Sandberg:
Well, he’s never worked anywhere else. Charlie Rose:
That’s true. So therefore how did you know what kind of culture you wanted? Mark Zuckerberg:
Well, I think it sits [spelled phonetically] from the type of things that we want to build, right? So we’re trying to help people connect with all these different folks, right, and that map of all those different connections needs to get built from the ground up, right? So it is fundamentally about giving people the tools that they need to share the things that they want with the people that they want, make the connections that they want, and bootstrap from nothing to something that’s broader. It is really different from a culture where you’re already taking the web and your primary mission is okay I want to organize something that’s out there, we have this culture where we place a really big premium on moving quickly right and one of the big theories that I had about that was that all technology companies and probably all companies just slow down dramatically as they grow, but if we can focus at every step along the way and moving quicker then maybe when we’re around 2,500 or 3,000 people now maybe we move as quickly as you know a company that only has 500 people, right, because we’ve invested so much in building up the infrastructure and tools and also the culture that tells people to take risks and try things out. And I just think that, that ability to build stuff quicker will be a big advantage for us and will help us build better products over the long term. Charlie Rose:
I want to talk about the future and competition. There are many people who look to the Silicon Valley and they say there are four platforms out here. It’s Amazon, it’s Apple, it’s Google, it’s Facebook. And what we’re going to witness over the next 10 years is a flat-out war between the four of you for the future. How do you see that? Mark Zuckerberg:
I mean, people like to talk about war. You know, there are a lot of ways in which the companies actually work together. There are real competitions in there. But I don’t think that this is going to be the type of situation where there’s one company that wins all the stuff. Charlie Rose:
But you’re already getting in each other’s businesses. You know that. They have something called Google+. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yes, and no. I mean, I think, you know, Google, I think, in some ways, is more competitive and certainly is trying to build their own little version of Facebook. But you know, when I look at Amazon and Apple and I see companies who are extremely aligned with us, right. And we have a lot of conversations with people at both companies just trying to figure out ways that we can do more together, and there is just a lot of reception there. I mean, I can’t think of an Apple product or an Amazon product that I look at and it’s like, oh, that’s really — Charlie Rose:
Yeah, but come on. Look at it. Apple just — Amazon just announced a new Kindle Fire, which is — Mark Zuckerberg:
I know, and they’re tablet — Charlie Rose:
— could deeply compete with the iPad. Mark Zuckerberg:
And that’s cool. I mean, we don’t have tablets, though, so we could care less about that. Charlie Rose:
There are no borders out here in terms of what you might want to do. Come on, Sheryl. Sheryl Sandberg:
There are no borders for us, certainly, right, because we want everything to be social, and we want — prefer everything to be social with Facebook. And so, for us, our goal is really to work across. We want to work on every tablet. Mark Zuckerberg:
Right, this is the important stuff. Sheryl Sandberg:
And Apple and Amazon, you know, God bless them. They can compete and build lots of different tablets. Charlie Rose:
You found a device, and we want to be seen on it. Sheryl Sandberg:
That’s right. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah, yeah. So if you’re Amazon, and one of the big strategies is sell Kindles so you can sell more things, right. If you’re Apple, a big part of your strategy is sell devices because that’s how you make money. If you’re Google, they want to get Android as widely adopted as possible, and our goal — Charlie Rose:
Therefore, they go out and they buy Motorola. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah, but our goal, I mean — [talking simultaneously] Charlie Rose:
And there are rumors that Microsoft may buy Nokia or something like that. Mark Zuckerberg:
Sure, but our goal is not to build a platform; it’s to be across all of them. I mean, because our mission is to help people connect and stay connected with people no matter what devices they’re on, we want to be in all these places. Charlie Rose:
You — go ahead — you — go ahead. Sheryl Sandberg:
This is also really — sorry — but this is really important. It actually gets back to the differences before retirement with Google and Facebook. There’s one thing that I think is most important that’s to Facebook, which is that we are focused on doing one thing incredibly well. We only really want to do one thing. Charlie Rose:
Social media. Sheryl Sandberg:
Connect the world. Charlie Rose:
Connect the world. Okay, fair enough. Sheryl Sandberg:
And be the social technology people use. I think if you look at other companies, all of these companies are doing lots of different things, but we are still, as we grow, doing exactly one thing. Charlie Rose:
But here’s the thing. There’s nothing you think you can’t do. I mean, you look at — Mark Zuckerberg:
[unintelligible] were going to go in a different direction with this, because, I mean, it is true, there’s a corollary to what you just said, right. So, it is true we are focused on this one thing, but because there’s all this other stuff out there, that means that Facebook has evolved as a partnership company. Sheryl Sandberg:
That’s right. Mark Zuckerberg:
— which is very different from the way that Apple or Google or Amazon or Microsoft or any of these folks are, right. I mean, if Apple or Google want to build a product, they typically go build it, right. Whereas if Facebook wants to make it so that, you know, we want to help rethink the way that people listen to music or watch movies. What do we do? We build a platform on top of which people connect, and we enable all these different companies, dozens of companies to plug in, companies that are big companies, companies that are small companies, things that don’t even exist. It’s a really different approach than what all these other companies have. Charlie Rose:
But the end result is you want to provide a means for people to look at movies, to listen to music, to do all kinds of things. Mark Zuckerberg:
But they’re all [unintelligible] other people’s services. Sheryl Sandberg:
We don’t want to provide the means. This is the thing. Our one thing that is the basis of our partnership strategy and our partnership approach, we build the social technology. They provide the music. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah, exactly. Sheryl Sandberg:
They — we don’t — we don’t want people to use Facebook to watch movies or read newspaper articles. Charlie Rose:
You want to do what? You want to — Sheryl Sandberg:
We want to provide the social technology. So we want them to listen to music on the iPhone or through Apple or through Spotify, anything they want. We want them to watch movies anywhere. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Sheryl Sandberg:
We just want Facebook to be how they share wherever they are. And so we do this one thing which is — underlies this huge partnership strategy, and it does make us, I think, pretty different than many of the other companies you’re talking about. Mark Zuckerberg:
Just take the movies thing as an example. Sheryl Sandberg:
Yeah. Mark Zuckerberg:
I mean, the biggest movie company — Sheryl Sandberg:
We don’t care where you watch. Mark Zuckerberg:
— is that — our partners right now and are building on top of our platform are Netflix and Hulu. Charlie Rose:
Right. Mark Zuckerberg:
Right? And I guess Hulu’s more on the TV side. But people can share all kinds of videos that they’re watching. You can see the top things that your friends are watching. So I go to your profile or your timeline and if you want, you can have a box up there that’s what are the TV shows that you watch the most? And I can go ahead and click on it, and it’ll take me right to the Hulu app, and I can start watching that. That, I think is really powerful. The piece that Facebook is doing is saying, okay, we’re friends, right, and allowing you to share that — I want to express to people what are the TV shows that I like. And now Facebook is giving me a place to go see what you want to watch if you want to share that. But then from there, you click on it, and it takes you to Hulu or takes you to Netflix. Or if you want to listen to music, it takes you to Spotify, or it takes you to one of these other companies. Charlie Rose:
But is central your sense that the future belongs to social networking, that that’s the future? Mark Zuckerberg:
I think that a big piece of it is — Charlie Rose:
Finish that. Mark Zuckerberg:
It’s not everything. Sheryl Sandberg:
Yeah. Mark Zuckerberg:
I mean, if you think about it, in your own life, right, with all the things that you do, how much — how many of the things that you do are better when you’re doing them with other people or with your friends? Probably a lot. But not everything, but a big piece of that. Charlie Rose:
Almost everything. Mark Zuckerberg:
And I think that we can help power that. But for all of those things, then, you know, some of them we’re going to build ourselves, right, so the core experience where I can go learn stuff about you, right, based on what you’ve shared, we’re going to build that piece, right. The core piece where you can see all of the stuff that’s going on with all of your friends that they wanted to share. We’ll build that piece. Charlie Rose:
Yeah. Mark Zuckerberg:
But the piece where, you know, you go to try to consume a specific type of content, right, I want to see what news my friends are reading. There will be newspapers. Sheryl Sandberg:
This is why this matters, right, because we can win along with lots of other people winning. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Sheryl Sandberg:
And that is totally different, I think about the strategy of what we’re trying to build. Charlie Rose:
What don’t you want — go ahead, finish. Sheryl Sandberg:
So we can — if — if news becomes more social, that’s great for Facebook if it happens with our technology. But — Charlie Rose:
Because you’re the great connector of the world. Sheryl Sandberg:
— it is great for the Washington Post and the New York Times and the Huffington Post and anyone who chooses to use our technology which we make available to every news service out there. We’re not trying to replace everyone or do everything. We want to enable everyone — everything to be more social for everyone else. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah, I think — it’s actually — it’s a lot more extreme even than you’re saying. I mean, take — and we’ve talking a lot here about — Sheryl Sandberg:
It’s always more extreme. Mark Zuckerberg:
One thing that we haven’t talked about at all here are games, right. I mean, games is probably the biggest industry today that has gone really social, right. I mean, the incumbent game companies are really being disrupted and are quickly trying to become social. And you have companies like Zynga. Charlie Rose:
Yeah, well — Mark Zuckerberg:
— which are going public soon and will be valued at most likely at multibillion dollar valuations. And basically all of their games are built on top of Facebook for the most part. Charlie Rose:
Exactly. Mark Zuckerberg:
And a huge number of other companies as well. So I mean, does Facebook build any games? No. We build no games. Charlie Rose:
You say that today — Mark Zuckerberg:
No, we — Charlie Rose:
You say that today. Mark Zuckerberg:
Actually — Sheryl Sandberg:
I’m pretty sure we’re not going to — Mark Zuckerberg:
No, I’m pretty sure we’re not going to build any games. Sheryl Sandberg:
[unintelligible] we’re not going to build games. Mark Zuckerberg:
We build — Charlie Rose:
Well, why are you so sure? Mark Zuckerberg:
Here’s why. Here’s why. Charlie Rose:
I’m only saying this because people thought that Steve Jobs — Mark Zuckerberg:
I’ll tell you why. Charlie Rose:
— would never go into retail, and he did. Mark Zuckerberg:
I’ll tell you why. Charlie Rose:
All right. Mark Zuckerberg:
Because building games is really hard. And so that’s — Charlie Rose:
So that’s the only reason. Mark Zuckerberg:
And we’re doing — what we’re doing is really hard. And we think that we’re better off focusing on this piece. I think that building a great game service is really hard. Building a great music service is really hard. Building a great movie service is really hard. And we just believe that an independent entrepreneur will always beat a division of a big company which is why we think that the strategy of these other companies trying to do everything themselves will inevitably be less successful than an ecosystem where you have someone like Facebook trying to build the core product to help people connect and then independent great companies that are only focused on one or two things doing those things really well. Sheryl Sandberg:
And those companies can’t — don’t have the discipline to do it, right. They get big, and everyone wants to do everything, and they just say yes. And then they don’t do everything well. Charlie Rose:
At this point, enter this name, Steve Jobs. I’ve had an experience with him once at TIME 100. And he walked over to say hello, and there was — I was talking to a young entrepreneur who was obviously in awe and in — you know, thrilled. It was the greatest moment of his life. There was Steve. Mark Zuckerberg:
Mm-hmm. Charlie Rose:
And I said to Steve, “What should he do?” and Steve said to me, “He should focus on his knitting. Not try to do everything. Do one thing well.” Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Charlie Rose:
Did you ever have that conversation with Steve Jobs? Mark Zuckerberg:
I don’t know. Sheryl Sandberg:
[unintelligible] conversations with — Mark Zuckerberg:
Well, you know, one of the funny things is when you agree with someone, you tend not to talk about it for too long because you just take it as an assumption. So I mean, I think in some of our conversations it might have been like, yeah, that thing, okay, now let’s go talk about something else. Charlie Rose:
So what were the conversations like? I mean, here is someone who’s — Mark Zuckerberg:
Oh, I don’t know. I mean, he — he’s amazing. He was amazing. I mean, he — I had a lot of questions for him on — Charlie Rose:
Like what? Mark Zuckerberg:
How to build a team around you, right, that’s focused on building as high quality and good things as you are. How to keep an organization focused, right, when I think the tendency for larger companies is to try to fray and go into all these different areas. Yeah, I mean a lot just on the aesthetics and kind of mission orientation of companies. I mean, Apple is a company that is so focused on just building products that — for their customers and their users. And — and that’s like — it’s such a deep part of their mission is build these beautiful products for their users. And I think we connected a lot on this level of, okay, Facebook has this mission that’s really more than just trying to build a company, right, that has a market cap or a value. It’s like we’re trying to do this thing in the world. And I don’t know, a lot of it I just think we connected on that level. Charlie Rose:
Did he ever suggest that Apple might buy Facebook? Mark Zuckerberg:
No. I don’t think it ever really got there. I mean, nor would I have wanted to sell it. He — and I remember talking to him — Sheryl Sandberg:
And I think he would have known that. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. And I — I mean — Sheryl Sandberg:
I talked to you about this and like I think — Charlie Rose:
About what, about the buying — Sheryl Sandberg:
I think he understood Mark enough to know that Mark didn’t want to sell his company because he didn’t want to sell — Charlie Rose:
Did he raise the question with you? Sheryl Sandberg:
No, but he — I think he — Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Sheryl Sandberg:
— having talked to him about Facebook and Apple, I — he didn’t raise it, but I don’t think he would have because he would have understood that about Mark. Mark Zuckerberg:
Actually, I mean, I think there was — Sheryl Sandberg:
He’s just like him. He wouldn’t have wanted to sell his company. [talking simultaneously] Charlie Rose:
Go ahead. Mark Zuckerberg:
There is this quote I think in the book that just came out about him where, I mean, it’s — Charlie Rose:
The Walter Isaacson book. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. I mean, it’s — and I took it as this amazing compliment. He said, I admire Facebook because you guys don’t want to sell out. Charlie Rose:
Right. Mark Zuckerberg:
Right, so I actually think that — Sheryl Sandberg:
And I don’t think he would have asked. Mark Zuckerberg:
I know that’s one of the ways in which — in which we saw eye to eye on kind of what we were trying to do in the world. And I just think because of that, it probably — Sheryl Sandberg:
Yeah. Mark Zuckerberg:
— just wouldn’t have come up. 15:17:31 Charlie Rose:
You’ve had — I mean, Microsoft owns a piece of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg:
Mm-hmm. Charlie Rose:
You’ve had an opportunity I’m sure to sell. You will never sell. Is that fair? Is that a fair — Sheryl Sandberg:
No one even asks any more. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Charlie Rose:
It’s too big. Nobody can afford you anymore. Sheryl Sandberg:
Exactly. Charlie Rose:
Is that the essential idea? Sheryl Sandberg:
Yeah. Charlie Rose:
But — and you, I mean, can you imagine wanting to buy somebody? Mark Zuckerberg:
We buy companies all the time. Charlie Rose:
I know, but they’re small, small companies. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Charlie Rose:
And they’re companies driven by certain expertise. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah, you know — Charlie Rose:
— or certain software. Mark Zuckerberg:
I don’t think that buying a company or selling a company is necessarily a good or a bad thing. I just think that the key thing that you need to realize is that when you go through a transaction like that, what you are changes, right. And if you’re now owned by someone else, then your goals are going to either quickly or over time become their goals, right? So there are actually I think a lot of compelling reasons why someone would sell a company and why it would advance their mission. I mean, I think, for example, YouTube might have been a good version of this right where they had these huge expenses, and Google funded it and has grown it, and it’s grown into, I think, a really good product, maybe beyond what the founders had even hoped. Charlie Rose:
And maybe if Microsoft were able to buy Yahoo!, it might have worked. Mark Zuckerberg:
Maybe. It’s hard to tell. But I mean, a lot of the acquisitions that we make at Facebook are, you know, we look at great entrepreneurs out there who are building things. And often, the acquisitions aren’t even to really buy their company or what they’re doing. It’s to get the really talented people who are out there trying to build something cool and say, you know, if you joined Facebook, you could work on this completely different problem. Isn’t this a more important problem? And for the people who answer that question yes, they join. And that’s how we’ve had the most success so far. Charlie Rose:
All right. Let me talk about what you know about all of us, it is this notion that constantly comes up, is there anything you do not want to know about — Mark Zuckerberg:
I just don’t even think we think about it that way. Sheryl Sandberg:
Yeah. Mark Zuckerberg:
I mean, it’s — Charlie Rose:
Okay, well, help me think about it in the right way, how you think about it, because I mean, like the “like” button, you know, it’s a powerful tool. Mark Zuckerberg:
It’s not for us though, right, I mean, it’s for — Charlie Rose:
It’s for advertisers. Mark Zuckerberg:
— people to express — no, not for advertisers. Sheryl Sandberg:
Other people. [talking simultaneously] Mark Zuckerberg:
This is a core part of what makes Facebook, Facebook, is that we really are focused on users first and for the long term, right? And we believe that if we build a product where people can connect and can express all the things that they want about themselves, that over the very long term we’ll have a lot of people doing that because that’s a core human thing where people want to do that, and they’ll be very active, and we’ll have opportunities to sell advertising and do all these things and build a great business but none of that is the leading thing that we’re pushing for. What we’re pushing for is the mission, we think that if we succeed on that then we’re going to build a great business. Now, if — I just think that there’s this core part of people where they want to express things about themselves. So the question isn’t what do we want to know about people, it’s what do people want to tell about themselves. Right? And we try to answer that question continuously, you know, what do people want to tell about themselves that they can’t tell now? Right, we think this year that one of the big things that people want to express that they haven’t had a way to are what are my favorite songs and different media that I consume. And you know there’s always — there’s been a way for you to type in, okay, my favorite band is Green Day or the Beatles or whatever, but there hasn’t been a way to say okay out of all the songs that I’ve listened to in the last month, here are the top ones, but in the month or so since we’ve launched that functionality on top of platform, people have already chosen to publish more than a billion songs that they’ve listened to into Facebook through partners. And it’s amazing so and it’s because they want to do that. Sheryl Sandberg:
And it’s really important to understand that we don’t want people to express anything, we want them to have an opportunity to express what they want to express to the people they want to express it, so privacy has been very core to this service. I think it’s actually one of the big innovations Facebook had, if you think about online services before Facebook, they’re basically open or closed, you know, something you publish on a blog, the blog is open, you’re corporate email [spelled phonetically] closed. Facebook was the first place that one of the core innovations Mark had was actually around privacy. I can take this photo, I can take a photo of the three of us here, I can share it just with my parents, I can share it just with my little group of my high school girlfriends, or I can share it with all of Facebook or the whole world, and every single time you share something on Facebook you have an opportunity to choose who you’re sharing it with. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Sheryl Sandberg:
And that commitment to our users, that their trust is sacred, that privacy is the most important thing we do, is something that’s been here throughout, and it’s really important for people. Charlie Rose:
But having said all of that, when you’ve gotten in trouble it’s bulk [spelled phonetically] on the issue of privacy. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah, I agree, and I mean it’s something that — I think that just speaks to how important and fundamental of an issue that is. Sheryl Sandberg:
Yeah. Mark Zuckerberg:
All right, when I was talking a minute ago about what are the ways that people want to share that we can make happen this year, one of the core things that flows through all of this is that I’d say probably this point still the vast majority of people don’t want to share everything, or don’t want to share anything with everyone publicly. But if you give people tools so that they can share with just their friends, or just one group of friends, or just their family, then they’ll do that. Charlie Rose:
Okay, but are they always the wisest people to know what they want to share and how sharing might be bound. Mark Zuckerberg:
I believe that they are. I mean, I think that — Charlie Rose:
You trust the judgment of most people to know who they want to share with. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah, and I think that people go through a learning process too where I mean maybe when social networks were first ramping up on the web some people shared a few things too broadly but I think that, that’s part of the reason why I think Facebook has grown is I think Facebook largely existed after that the friends [spelled phonetically] during the MySpace phase of the social web and at a point where people were already sophisticated enough to realize hey, you know, I want to share different things with different people, I’m going to use these privacy control that Facebook has given me, that Facebook is really the first company that has built these controls so that you can share things with just your friends or I can share vacation photos from my family vacation with just my family if I want, or I can do all these different things, and I think that, that’s one of the big enablers on the service. Sheryl Sandberg:
And it’s something we continue to evolve so control is what matters here. People want control. They want to share what they want with who they want and as long as, as we will allow [spelled phonetically] products, we continue on the control, so for example we are launching, we’ve already unveiled, Mark unveiled a number of weeks ago in the next bunch of weeks we’re making our timeline, our new profile available to everyone. Charlie Rose:
What is that? Sheryl Sandberg:
It’s — so right now you have a profile, and the timeline is a more visual representation of who you are and includes further back in your life, not just when Facebook started, but further back. So I’ve actually spent the last week uploading childhood pictures. But here’s what matters. I can go back and change the privacy controls on something I’ve already — so if I go back now and build my timeline and I say, “Oh, I shared that with this group of people. I actually want to share that with more people or fewer,” we are giving that control. So it matters as people learn is that they have the controls they need to share with who they want. And that’s something we are continuing to work on. Charlie Rose:
There are also these stories that you read about in terms of if somebody has something on their Facebook page that somebody got access to and therefore they didn’t get hired, something did not happen that might have happened because they were silly enough or somehow to put something on their Facebook page that rebounded to their detriment. Sheryl Sandberg:
And people make cell phone calls that rebound to their detriment. Charlie Rose:
Or e-mails as well. I mean — Sheryl Sandberg:
E-mail as well, or they put something down on their resume. It’s not that people don’t make mistakes, but the information you put on Facebook is only available to employers if you’ve shared it to those people, if you’ve shared it openly. Charlie Rose:
But once it’s there — Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah, if you choose to — Sheryl Sandberg:
And there’s a responsibility individuals have. Certainly we want to teach people, and people want to teach people to share the things they want to share. I think that if you look at the history of technology, what you always find is that every new technology brings unbelievable opportunities for advancement and living our lives differently, and it’s also scary. I mean, one of my favorite stories on this is caller ID. When caller ID was rolled out, and I’m actually old enough to remember this, unlike my friend over here — Mark Zuckerberg:
No, I had caller ID. Sheryl Sandberg:
Do you remember before caller ID? Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sheryl Sandberg:
Oh, oh, that’s good. Normally, normally — Charlie Rose:
But you don’t remember before caller ID. That’s the point — Sheryl Sandberg:
No, he says he does. Charlie Rose:
Oh, you do? Mark Zuckerberg:
I remember before everyone had it. And maybe it was — Charlie Rose:
Oh. Sheryl Sandberg:
All right, that kind of sort of counts, but when caller ID came out, there was a big privacy uproar. People thought it was a violation of the caller’s privacy that they’re number would show. There was talk of legislation. There was talk of states banning it. Charlie Rose:
There was talk of a way you could avoid it being seen and all that. Sheryl Sandberg:
Ways you could avoid it being seen because it was considered — I don’t know anyone who answers a call that doesn’t have caller ID now because it’s not considered a violation of that privacy. It’s considered my right to know who’s calling me. Otherwise, why would I answer? And so, yes, when you are an early leader like we are in technology, there is always concern, and you’re going to continue to hear concerns. Charlie Rose:
You know why I have caller ID? Because when I’m calling people, I want them to know it’s me calling, other than “unknown” because I feel that they’re more likely to answer my call if they know it’s me. Sheryl Sandberg:
But that is something that caller ID is widely accepted. It was a privacy uproar at its time. And so — Charlie Rose:
Okay, so, but tell me where the boundaries are about privacy, that you think that we ought to take note of at this moment. Because the privacy question most frequently comes back to Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg:
Well, here’s the way that I think about it. I think it’s really about control, right. People have things that they want to share with maybe a single person or a small group, and they have things that they’d want to share more broadly. And the real question for me is do people have the tools that they need in order to make those decisions well. And I think that it’s actually really important that Facebook continually makes it easier and easier to make those decisions, because the demographics of people who are using Facebook are changing as well, right. I mean, we started off with these people in college, right, who use computers every single day. And now, you know, we’re up to 800 million-plus users. We have people using the site who it’s one of the only things that they do on a computer, and maybe they’re not computer savvy, right, or they don’t have — they don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out privacy control. So what we’ve done in the last year is we’ve made it so that any time you to share anything, the privacy control is now right there, and it says exactly who you’re going to share with. If you’re going to be sharing publicly, there’s a little globe and it says the word “public.” And if you’re going to be sharing with friends, there’s this icon of a few people and it says the word “friends,” and you can just click and you can change that really easily every time you post anything. And back where we were getting started seven years ago, I don’t know if that was necessary because the college students and early adopter-type folks just had this intuitive understanding of how the service worked. But now, I just think that the boundaries, it’s getting more and more important to be increasingly clear and give people those controls. And that’s what we’re trying to do. And I don’t think we’re at the end. I think we’re going to need to keep on making it easier and easier, but that’s our mission, right. I mean, we have to do that because now, if people feel like they don’t have control over how they’re sharing things, then we’re failing them. I mean, we’re making it so they can share a lot of the stuff that they want to. Sheryl Sandberg:
I think it is the case that people talk about Facebook and privacy a lot, and I think it will continue to be the case, but it’s because we lead in this area, meaning that we are the most privacy-focused place for anyone to share anything. Charlie Rose:
Well, no, it’s because you have more information about everybody than anybody else. Mark Zuckerberg:
This is an important point though. Sheryl Sandberg:
Well, Elliot Trig [spelled phonetically] has this great — Elliot Trig has this great story he tells. He works [unintelligible] company. He says there’s this old joke, where, you know, the man loses his keys and he’s looking for the keys under the lamppost, and someone says, “Well, why are you looking under the light? They’re clearly not here.” He’s like, “Well, this is the only reason I can — only place I can see. If I go over there.” We are focused on privacy. We care the most about privacy. Our business model is by far the most privacy friendly to consumers. And we talk about it the most. And I think we’re the light. We’re the light. We are the transparent place where people can understand and I think you will continue to see conversations about Facebook in privacy. But it’s because we lead and we care so much about it. Mark Zuckerberg:
I think it’s worth explaining this a bit more, though. Sheryl Sandberg:
Yeah. Mark Zuckerberg:
I mean, when you’re saying that we’re the light, it’s because, sure, people have a lot of information on Facebook. But that’s information that they’ve put into the service. Sheryl Sandberg:
Exactly. Mark Zuckerberg:
If you look at companies, whether it’s Google or Yahoo! or Microsoft, right, that have search engines and ad networks, they also have a huge amount of information about you. It’s just that they’re collecting that about you behind your back, really. And it’s like you’re going — you’re going around the web, and they have cookies, and they’re collecting this huge amount of information about who you are. But you never know that. And I mean, some of these companies make an effort to give you a product where — Charlie Rose:
But do you find that a bit scary? Mark Zuckerberg:
Well, I just — I think it’s — it’s just less transparent — Sheryl Sandberg:
There’s no light. Mark Zuckerberg:
— than what’s happening on Facebook. Sheryl Sandberg:
It’s the dark. Mark Zuckerberg:
So on Facebook someone wants to — Sheryl Sandberg:
Contact. Mark Zuckerberg:
— target say, okay, I want to — I want to advertise — like I’m a band, and I’m coming to the Bay Area, I’m going to advertise to people who like a band, and they’re going to — those people only fit if they’ve put in that they like that band. Charlie Rose:
Right. Mark Zuckerberg:
On those other services, you can still do that kind of advertising, but you’re going to find people based on what they’ve browsed around on the web and the people have little or no control over the information that a company like Google or Yahoo! or Microsoft has about you. And, I don’t know, I think that some of those companies have made an effort to give people to give a payage that they can go see all the information that the company has about them. But, I mean, very few people are actually going to go do that. So in reality I think that these companies with those big ad networks are basically getting away with collecting huge amounts of information, likely way more information than people are sharing on Facebook about themselves. But I think because people can see how much information people are sharing about themselves on Facebook — Sheryl Sandberg:
Yes. Mark Zuckerberg:
— it appears scarier. But in reality, you have control over every single thing that you’ve shared on Facebook. You can take it down and — [unintelligible]. Charlie Rose:
If you take it down, you say look, enough, gone. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Charlie Rose:
And what else? What happens if you die? What happens then? Sheryl Sandberg:
If you let us know, we memorialize the page. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah, yeah. Sheryl Sandberg:
If a family member lets us know that someone has deceased — Charlie Rose:
And so anybody who wants to — Mark Zuckerberg:
— we’ll memorialize the page. Charlie Rose:
— take them down and erase forever. Sheryl Sandberg:
Yeah, you can erase forever. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Sheryl Sandberg:
It’s not perfect in the sense of if I put something up, I can take it down, it’s gone. Charlie Rose:
But — Sheryl Sandberg:
If I’ve shared it and someone’s reshared it — Charlie Rose:
Right. Exactly. Sheryl Sandberg:
— won’t go down. It’s out there. And that’s one of the things. But it really is the point that the only thing Facebook knows about you are things you’ve done and told us. It is self-reported. Charlie Rose:
But the genius of Facebook is that it has the possibility of sending it out like nothing else to more places. Sheryl Sandberg:
We never — Facebook never sends any information out about anyone. Charlie Rose:
I understand that. But it goes out because Facebook has a system that allows that. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah, because Facebook — Sheryl Sandberg:
Yes. Mark Zuckerberg:
— allows people — Sheryl Sandberg:
Allows other people to share. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Charlie Rose:
Exactly right. Sheryl Sandberg:
That’s right. Charlie Rose:
Right, right. Mark Zuckerberg:
Yeah. Charlie Rose:
Let me talk two things about, one you, the empowerment of women and then a sense of who you represent. This is a place that you are — you stand out because you and Marissa and a few others, you know, is — is technology a place that women can find the kind of opportunity that you want them to find? Does it need mentoring and all kinds of other things that people like Sheryl Sandberg can deliver? Sheryl Sandberg:
Look, I think the issue of women in the economy and the country is a huge one. It’s something that I care passionately about and Mark cares passionately about and has helped me too. You know, we have basically a stalled revolution for women. You know, women became 50 percent of the college graduates in this country in 1981 and then made steady progress, more college degrees, more graduate degrees, more manager positions. Over — and we’re still making progress. Over the last ten years, women have stalled out at the top. Women in corporate America have 15 to 16 percent of the board seats and of the kind of CEO [spelled phonetically], the high-level jobs, and that has not moved in ten years. Charlie Rose:
Why? Sheryl Sandberg:
Oh, it’s probably longer than we have time for. A lot of reasons, but I really think we need more women to lean into their careers and to be really dedicated to staying in the work force. I think the achievement gap is caused by a lot of things. It’s caused by institutional barriers and all kinds of stuff. But there’s also a really big ambition gap. If you survey men and women in college today in this country, the men are more ambitious than the women. And until women are as ambitious as men, they’re not going to achieve as much as men — Charlie Rose:
And you know, there’s that famous [unintelligible] between, you know, they changed the name in one case it was Howard, in another case it was — Sheryl Sandberg:
Howard and Heidi. Charlie Rose:
— Howard and Heidi, yeah. Sheryl Sandberg:
Yeah. And the point of that study is that success and likability are positively correlated for men and negatively for women. So as a man gets more powerful and more successful, everyone — men and women like him more. And as a woman gets more powerful and successful, everyone, including women like them less. Canaleta [spelled phonetically] called it self-doubt and self-defense. Charlie Rose:
Now, what does it mean to be Mark Zuckerberg today, in terms of what — the revolution, in terms of the attention? I mean, a sense of how you adjust and how you assimilate and how you, in a sense, make sure that you are in command of it, and it’s not in command of you. Mark Zuckerberg:
I don’t know. I think a big piece is just to try to stay grounded and, I don’t know, have a pretty simple life, right. I mean, I don’t — so people say that, you know, the company is so valuable, and there are all these people there and all that. But I think the number of people who I work with I stay focused on keeping them who I think are really good people, really smart, intellectually curious. I spend a lot of time just, you know, with my girlfriend and my dog. And I mean, we don’t have a lot of furniture in our house, so it’s really simple. And we’re trying to build products for everyone in the world, right. And you don’t want to get isolated to do that. We have a very open culture at the company where we foster a lot of interaction between not just me and people but between everyone else. It’s an open floor plan. People have these desks where no one really has an office. I mean, I have a room where I meet with people. But it has all glass so everyone can see into it and see what’s going on. I don’t know. I just think that — actually, it’s really connected to the mission of the company. I think that more flow of information, the ability to stay connected to more people makes people more effective as people. And I mean, that’s true socially. It makes you have more fun, right. It feels better to be more connected to all these people. You have a richer life. But I also think in terms of doing work and in terms of learning and evolving as a person, you just grow more when you get more people’s perspectives and when you’re more connected and have more of a flow from people. So I don’t know. I think that’s really it. I mean, I really try to live the mission of the company and embody that for the company and keep everything else in my life extremely simple. Sheryl Sandberg:
Yeah. It’s interesting to watch as closely as I have. Like since I’ve known Mark over the last four years, in some ways, everything’s changed, in some ways, nothing has changed. So what’s changed is, you know, he was on his way to being Mark Zuckerberg four years ago. But now he’s like Mark Zuckerberg. Charlie Rose:
He is Mark Zuckerberg. Sheryl Sandberg:
He’s Mark Zuckerberg. Well, you know what I mean, right. Like we used to — Charlie Rose:
Halloween, kids come to his house and knock on the door. It’s like — Sheryl Sandberg:
Yeah, we used to walk around — right. [talking simultaneously] Sheryl Sandberg:
But we could walk around Palo Alto four years ago, and people didn’t like look. And now they do. But when you actually know him, like nothing’s changed. He wears actually exactly the same thing even though it’s a new T-shirt. But he wears the same thing. He has the same girlfriend. Charlie Rose:
Right. Sheryl Sandberg:
He likes the same restaurants, not necessarily the restaurants I like, right. Like really nothing’s changed. He has the same group of friends. And I think the ability — I think we all focus on it here, but like stay grounded. Don’t change your social circles. You know, I have the same best friends I’ve had since I was in high school. Mark has the same friends he’s had since I was here. And that stuff really matters. Live your regular life and just try to build stuff that matters. It’s what we’re just trying to do. Charlie Rose:
Thank you for this. Great to see you. Mark Zuckerberg:
Thank you. Sheryl Sandberg:
Thank you for visiting us. Charlie Rose:
Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. Conversation with Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg at their place in California. Thank you for joining us. See you next time.
|
Panasonic Releases New Micro Four-Thirds And 3D Cameras, The GX1 And 3D1 | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | Panasonic was one of the first strong competitors in the micro four-thirds camera arena, and we’ve been waiting on the next iteration of the G-series cameras for months. They’ve finally announced the , aimed much more at enthusiasts than the simplified and . Panasonic also announced a 3D-oriented point and shoot, which to be honest doesn’t look so hot. The GX1 seems to improve on every aspect of its predecessors, and seems to me a strong response to Olympus’ . The new 16-megapixel sensor is apparently the same as in their G3, and the body has brought back some more “pro” features. Here are the basic specs: The separation of this more powerful line into a separate “GX” series suggests we can expect more in the simpler GF series, while more expensive features like a built-in EVF and more powerful image processors will creep into this line. Does it really compare to the competition, though? If you’re not too concerned with sensor size and image quality, this thing with the new 14-42 pancake could be a really sweet walkaround camera. But the truth is it’s a bit short on features when you look at the other enthusiast EVILs. , while overshadowed by its NEX-7 counterpart, seems like a decent alternative, with a larger sensor and articulating screen. And Samsung’s NX200 is also more than competitive, though it does have a rather higher price tag. There’s the option of a periscope-style EVF, but it’s not as good as the NEX’s. At $600 you just can’t expect an internal EVF, though. Personally I think it looks like sweet little camera, and says it has a nice hefty feel, which is always nice. though as usual the 1080i thing is ridiculous. If it’s 30p output (as they specify), then keep it 30p. No one wants interlacing. No one. As for that 3D camera, well, the less said the better. Without a 3D screen it’s kind of a waste, and the specs are nothing to write home about. If you’re interested in the camera, you can find its specs and such . |
Are We In A Series A “Crunch”? What CrunchBase Says … | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | Remember that time the wrote an about an influx of “start-up” companies raising seed/angel rounds and then all those companies subsequently trying to raise Series A rounds and failing hard? And then all these , on Twitter, and on their own blogs? Well, we pulled some rough funding data from (which come to think of it should be a National Treasure), and, as it turns out, more and more companies raising seed and angel rounds (we’re counting both as the same) and less and less companies are raising Series A. In fact the number of seed deals went up 33% from 2008 to 2010, while Series A deals were down 9.6% during the same period. In fact, we’re on track to have almost two times as many seed deals this year as Series A, while the two were neck and neck in 2008. It’s also worth noting the number of companies raising angel and seed rounds has gone up, but the dollar amount invested has either lessened or stayed the same. Last year, the cash invested in seed and angel rounds was $483 million, down 30 percent from 2009. Whereas the cash invested in Series As was $4.1 billion, up 17 percent—which means that seed investments are getting smaller and Series A investments are getting larger. But does this mean we’re in a “crunch”? Lightbank VC Paul Lee that the money is still there for Series A rounds – which would explain the investment amounts getting larger — just that the number of companies WHO NEED to raise Series A rounds has gone down, because they’re already profitable or have already been acquired — i.e. a good percentage of those startups in the seed/angel explosion we’re seeing don’t need to raise any further money. But that doesn’t make complete sense, don’t people to invest in successful startups? Are we supposed to look somewhere for an impending flood of successful startups that are “Series A” boot-strapped (we don’t track those in Crunchbase)? “I think it’s pretty clear there is a flight to quality,” says investor on what’s going on right now in the Valley, “And that’s not a bad thing. Facebook and Twitter have been such phenomenons that niche apps have been able to show up to pitch meetings with user growth charts up and to the right. [It was] easy to get a check written. By now though, investors have learned that a first day, week, or even month of user growth does not a sustainable business make and high churn can cause growth to flatten at even a modest sized base. Without a killer business model to fund paid acquisition, when viral growth stops so does overall growth and when growth stop investment stops. Even angels want big winners.” And the beat goes on … |
Samsung VP Gavin Kim Jumps Ship, Joins Windows Phone Team | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | Samsung can’t be too pleased about this. Gavin Kim, the company’s VP of Consumer and Enterprise Services, has just announced that he will be leaving in order to as general manager of the Windows Phone team. Kim has been with Samsung for several years, and was VP of Content Services before taking up his most current role. In a talk with , Kim briefly outlined some of the new duties he’ll be picking once he and his family relocate to Seattle. “I will be responsible to help set the future direction for the Windows Phone platform and to accelerate Microsoft’s trajectory to win the hearts and minds of consumers, carriers, device manufacturers, developers and partners,” said Kim. Those are some lofty ambitions, and Mr. Kim will certainly have his work cut out for him. A pegs Windows Phone’s market share at a mere 7%, making it a distant fourth behind Android, iOS, and BlackBerry OS. Even so, that hasn’t stopped Kim from being bullish about Windows Phone Mango. He feels that Microsoft is “closing the gap rapidly and removing all doubt about their place in mobile.” He may well be right — AT&T has already begun to roll out a new line of Windows Phones in time for the holidays, and Nokia is poised to re-enter the U.S. smartphone market with a full portfolio of Windows Phones come next year. If Windows Phone is ever going to break away from the pack it has to move quickly, and Microsoft can’t afford to screw these next few months up. Though I wish him well, I’ve got one bit of advice for Mr. Kim: be careful about . |
Accelerator Academy launches in London with 'elite' mentors | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | In recent years the fashion of incubating companies in physical spaces (desk, Wifi, funding combinations) has faded in favour of The Accelerator. These are typically a programme of a few weeks combined with teaching, networking and funding. In the UK we’ve seen , then then appear, among others. Today another joins the pack, , out of London. This time, however, it’s attempting to up the accelerator ‘arms race’ with only post-exit mentors, although it’s charging model is unconventional for something that bills itself as an accelerator (see update below). Billing itself as a new ‘training, mentoring and investment programme’ for innovative start-ups and early stage, high growth businesses in Tech/Media/Telecoms it’s aimed at pre-launch or first year businesses. The 12 week part time syllabus aims to cover all the bases of product development, market strategies, investor readiness etc, the list goes on. At present its not a formal fund, its a syndicate, moving to a seed fund of up to £10m in April, under the new BASIS seed investment tax incentives (extension of EIS scheme). Companies sell 3-5% in paid options to the Mentors and Academy (3% if trading, 5% if pre-revenue). The valuation is linked to the valuation of the next fundraising. By comparison Seedcamp takes an 8-10% cut, Springboard a 6% cut, along the Ycombinator model. Meanwhile there are rumours Springboard plans to launch in London later this year. Accelerator Academy is slightly different however. Whereas you will meet mentors from a range of backgrounds at other events, the Academy people are . Mentors also have the right to “buy in” to the businesses that are developed, something which happens less on other programmes where terms can be more restrictive. The Accelerator Academy is aiming to help create up to 100 companies per year. And they have the approval of Mayor of London Boris Johnson, who, in statement, said: “The Accelerator Academy represents exactly the type of investment in London’s future businesses that will secure our position as Europe’s digital capital.” Well, he would say that, admittedly. Ian Merricks, founder of the Accelerator Academy and Managing Partner at TMT investment advisors White Horse Capital says “We see 500 businesses a year looking for investment. It’s a competitive process, and frankly most are not of sufficient quality to be successful… The Accelerator Academy was created to educate emerging entrepreneurs, with training around growth issues for start-ups, delivered by successful entrepreneurs as mentors, and supported by access to appropriate seed capital or “smart money”.” Sponsoring the launch of the Academy are NatWest and haysmacintyre Accountants. Personally I think the more the merrier and given that White Horse Capital has a verifiable track record in this area I see no reason why entrepreneurs should kick the tyres on this new entrant and see what they have to offer before making a decision. Looking down the list of speakers I recognised Simon Campbell of SoDash and the Sandpit as a mentor so that’s a decent badge of recognition for me at least. We just confirmed there is a course fee, subsidised by sponsors. This is £695 for the 12 weeks (£55 a week). No other costs. Frankly it’s not an ideal scenario given entrepreneurs are already giving away part of their company, though it may appeal to some depending on their circumstances and how attractive the programme is. However, it is a quality filter. In addition the companies are not giving up the options, they are selling them to the mentors, attracting them as seed angels. So this is quite close to an organised Angel club, with a programme attached. I guess we will have to assess this when some companies start to emerge from it. |
Become An Artist With Mixel’s Remixable iPad Collage App | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | is a new iPad app that just hit the App Store, but it’s also a new art medium. Mixel allows users to assemble collages by manipulating images pulled from their device, Facebook photos, and Bing search. It’s different from glue and paper cut-outs and existing collage apps, though, because every finished Mixel creation is publicly available for other users to pick apart, remix, and share. Forget the sanctity of something hung in a gallery, Mixel’s tag line is “Please touch the art”. The app has been in development in New York’s Dogpatch Labs since February by Lascaux Co., founded by former New York Times digital design director Khoi Vinh and MIT computer science grad Scott Ostler. The background of the founders mirrors the intention of the app — to combine art and technology to democratize creative expression. Vinh tells me he wants art to be something you can make “while you’re on the couch, you don’t have to be sitting at a desk or standing at an easel.” Mixel is simple to use, but the remix feature provides depth so there’s always something to do. You start by cropping down some source images and adding them to a canvas. Then you resize and position the elements to create a finished Mixel before sharing it to Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr. Links lead to a standalone web view of a Mixel, similar to Instagram. Mixels can also be browsed within the app by following friends or checking out a Popular tab of creations with the most Likes and Loves. If you discover a single image or entire work you want to use, you can start a remix with it. These are threaded into a conversation with the original work in the app’s galleries and the web view. This lets you see how different people interpet the same subject, and lends the app to deep social interactions where you collaborate with strangers or play around with friends. Currently there are no privacy controls in Mixel. Everything’s public, which the app warns you of if you add your own photos. Lascaux has secured $600,000 in seed funding from investors including Polaris Venture Partners, Betaworks, and Allen & Company, plus a $100,000 TechFellow award from Founders Fund and New Enterprise Associates. Its next steps include adding Flickr, Tumblr, and Pinterest as image sources as well as privacy controls for sharing Mixels with small groups of friends. Lascaux is also planning an iPhone app that instead of being a shrunk-down clone of the app will be a complement for browsing Mixels, leaving feedback, and saving images for later user. Collage creation will be reserved for the big screened iPad. Built on an instantly familiar multi-touch display, those of all ages will soon be exploring the Mixel medium. Vinh explains that, “We don’t want art to be something monumental that makes people feel intimidated. Rather, we want to take people that would never really engage with art apps and turn them into engaged, passionate visual communicators.” Mixel is now . |
Glooko Connects Glucose Meters To iPhones For Tracking Diabetes | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | The iPhone in your pocket can do a lot more than just play games or music. Used properly, that computer can help save your life. Consumer health apps are increasingly hitting iTunes. The latest one to appear today is ( ). Glooko is a digital logbook for people with diabetes who have to check their blood sugar every day. There are dozens of glucose logbooks in iTunes, but almost all of them require manual entry. What makes Glooko different is that the company designed a $40 cable ( ) that works with six of the top glucose meters. You just plug it into both devices and it downloads your daily readings. The app itself is free. It lets you mark whether the reading was done before or after a meal, add notes, and email or fax a 14-day summary to your doctor. The company charges for the cable. “What people want to do is download these readings into Apple devices,” explains co-founder Anita Mathew. “Many of these meters don’t work with Apple devices.” There are an estimated 19 million diabetics in the U.S. alone, and 17 million of them test their blood sugar levels. By 2025, one in five people in the U.S. is projected to have diabetes. Simply connecting these medical devices to iPhones creates a market opportunity, but this is just the first step. Once Glooko starts collecting diabetes data it could start to analyze it (although there are regulatory barriers—just plotting the data points on a graph requires FDA clearance). It could also charge for premium features. Glooko is an ambitious startup. It’s chairman and co-founder is (Xerox Parc, Mayfield Fund). Mathew worked for ten years in product marketing at Johnson & Johnson, where she helped launch several glucose meters. The third co-founder is Sundeep Madra. Glooko also has some serious backers. The startup raised a $1 million seed round in November, 2010 from ‘s Social+Capital fund, , , , Judy Estrin, Bumptop founder Anand Agarawala, Kosmix co-founders Venky Harinarayan and Annad Rajaraman, Russel Hirsch, and Xtreme Labs. The company lends some of its Palo Alto office space to Social+Capital. |
Personalized Travel Search Engine Room 77 Now Allows You To Book Hotel Rooms | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | a comprehensive search engine and review site focused exclusively on hotel rooms, is rolling out the ability to actually book hotels from its site. Starting today, travelers can now use Room 77 to compare prices across a variety of room types, and book more than 120,000 hotels worldwide. Room 77, which in public beta in February, has collected and indexed data on more than 500,000 hotel rooms in 2,500 properties and also crowdsources reviews and ratings from travelers. The site provides travelers with specific details about each hotel room at a property, including the room category, square footage, bed type, elevator proximity and if it is a connecting room. For each room, Room 77 also generates a virtual Room View, simulating the actual view from that room’s window using Google Earth-enabled technology. For three- to five-star hotels booked through Room 77, travelers get access to a complimentary Room ConciergeS, who leverages Room 77’s proprietary RoomMatch technology to identify the best rooms for each traveler then works directly with the hotel to try to score one on the traveler’s behalf. With the new booking feature, Room 77 will reveals prices directly in search results, from Orbitz, Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, Hotels.com, Cheaptickets and others. You can compare pricing for multiple room categories in grid view, which allows you to see what the next category room includes and for how much more that will cost you. Travelers can also refine a hotel search based on unique hotel and room criteria, such as view type, free Wi-Fi, free parking, free breakfast and free airport shuttle in addition to common filters, such as price, star ratings, location, and amenities. And for thousands of hotels, Room 77 shares insider tips its team has “Heard in the Lobby,” offering advice on the best rooms for views, quietness and size, as well as: As we’ve written in the past, Room 77 is a useful service as long as it collects the right intelligence on hotels. That’s why the startup has been partnering with hotel groups to provider accurate information. And combining this with the ability to to book makes a lot of sense and could give it a leg up in terms of competition from user reviews giant TripAdvisor. |
Value Of Tech M&A Deals Up 22 Percent In Q3 2011 To $56.4 Billion | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | M&A activity in the technology sector continues to grow in terms of value. According to an Ernst & Young report released today, big acquisitions drove the aggregate value of global technology M&A to $56.5 billion in the third quarter of 2011, up 22 percent from a year ago, and up 8 percent from The report says that aggregate deal value (of deals with disclosed value) was the highest total value for any calendar quarter since 2007, before the global downturn. In particular, deals involving smart mobility and business analytics came on strong in the quarter, driving two deals each with values above $10 billion, the first time two deals of that size occurred in the same quarter since the first quarter of 2010. The top deals for the quarter included Google’s Motorola acquisition, HP’s acquisition of Autonomy, Broadcom’s buy of NetLogic, Innovation Network’s purchase of mobile display units from Sony, Hitachi and Toshiba; the $2.3 billion takeover of GoDaddy, Providence Equity’s acquisition of BlackBoard, EA’s purchase of PopCap and NCR’s buy of Radiant Systems. One particular focus of technology M&A in 3Q11 was “big data.” There were roughly two dozen deals in this business intelligence/analytics category in the third quarter, including one of the deals above $10 billion. Transactions were also driven by cloud computing, information security, social networking, online and mobile games, health care IT and internet and mobile video. Many deals combined two or more of these trends. Ernst & Young says that growth in the aggregate value of private equity transactions drove the overall sequential increase in value. PE aggregate value increased 82 percent sequentially to $14.6b in quarter and increased 86 percent year over year. PE firms contributed 6 of the 11 third quarter deals valued above $1 billion. Big-ticket deals dominated in quarter with the top 11 deals totaling $40.1 billion in value, or 71% of all disclosed in the quarter. This was only the second quarter since 2008 where the top 11 deals all had values of over $1 billion. Average values per deal also climbed, and were up 14 percent over the previous quarter and 26 percent year over year to $221 million, the highest level in 11 years. The aggregate value of the top 11 deals represented over 70 percent of the total deal volume for the quarter. In terms of volume, the number of M&A deals dropped 2 percent for the second consecutive quarter, to 759 deals in third quarter. Cross-border deals declined 11 percent each in volume and value in 3Q11, compared with the second quarter 2011.
Outlook clouded by global trends So will the values continue to grow in technology M&A deals. Ernst & Young cautions that market and economic volatility could cause a dip in value and amount of deals. But the disruptive technologies that continue to be developed (and are in demand) could mitigate this. |
Amazon Ups Orders From Kindle Fire Suppliers To 5 Million Units | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | Emboldened by for their new tablet, Amazon has bumped its order numbers from manufacturers yet again, this time to . Presumably they are looking to fulfill as many orders as possible before the all-important holiday rush. The change isn’t anything like an order of magnitude, as even early reports had Amazon ordering “millions” of screens, and leaked sales estimates were for four million units sold before 2011 ends. Considering the relative unpopularity of even the highest-profile Android tablets preceding it, these numbers appeared optimistic at first; now they appear to have been conservative. It’s a drop in the bucket , but the Amazon board is probably breathing a collective sigh of relief, having spent a huge sum of money developing the device. The Fire will likely be the second-place tablet for some time at this rate, which, when first place belongs to one of the best-selling gadgets of all time, isn’t a bad place to be. The tablet ships on the 15th (next Tuesday), and is of course still available for pre-order. We’ll have a full review up after we get our hands on a device. |
Facebook Adds Another Nail To The Proverbial RSS Coffin, Kills Off ‘Import’ In Notes | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | Bad news all ten of you that actually used this feature, Facebook has and will eventually eliminate the importing of blog items via RSS for personal Facebook pages. Because RSS has more times than Bill Murray in ‘ ‘ I’m going to let the pros and cons deck it out in the comments. Of course whether you are a pro or con will depend on your specific Internet usage habits. All I’m going to say is I’ve rarely actively used RSS in any sort of productive way (like in Google Reader), and when I asked some random person what they thought of this, I was met with the response, “Not really a big deal, RSS is kinda dead.” “RSS IS NOT DEAD,” you argue,”YOU TOO USED IT WHEN THIS POST GOT SENT AUTOMATICALLY TO TWITTER.” Okay fine you win. In fact, Facebook to Page updates via RSS which means even it’s not offing the thing out right. But MG was right when “The fact of the matter remains that RSS is not a consumer-friendly technology. If I said ‘RSS’ to my mother, she would have absolutely no idea what I was talking about. If I said “Twitter” or “Facebook” to her, she knows who those are — she even uses them. That said, RSS does still often provide at least a partial backbone for those services she does know.” MG held that over time reliance on RSS will start to diminish as people get used to sharing content via buttons (like what we’re seeing here with Facebook). “The best way to get people to interact with your content is to give them insight into the links you share on your Wall by adding personal comments and responding to feedback from fans,” chirps the Facebook Help page cheerfully. For the record I asked my stepmom if she knew what RSS was earlier and she said “Sort of.” Oh and |
Meet BMW’s New All-Electric i3 SUV And Hybrid-Electric i8 Sports Car | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | Because our up and decided to go camping this week, I was lucky enough to attend BMW’s sneak preview event in NYC today where I got a first look at two new eco-friendly vehicles: the BMW i3 and i8. Referred to as mega-city vehicles (or MCVs if you will), both are built with the urban driver in mind, capitalizing on green features and stability. The all-electric i3 is really more of a compact SUV, while the hybrid-electric i8 is a sexy little sports car. We were lucky enough to get a hold of Richard Kim, external designer for both vehicles, who details the what and why of these new cars. A couple key points he made is that the vehicles are much lighter than your average car, thanks to carbon fiber-reinforced plastic materials used for the cars’ frames. The i3 and i8 have also been created from the ground-up, as opposed to electric or hybrid-electric vehicles that are merely conversions of existing models. In this way, the assembly and design of the i3 and i8 are much more efficient, with bulky batteries laying flush along the bottom and the “life module” seamlessly sitting on top. You’ll see this in the video but it’s certainly worth reiterating that these are two of the most futuristic vehicles I’ve seen. There’s more glass than you’ll know what to do with (though it’s unclear how all that glass will do in a crash), and a nice hint of BMW’s i blue along design lines, seat belts, and lights makes for a streamlined and sporty look to complement BMW’s elegant style. As far as range goes, the i3 and i8 are very different. The all-electric i3 will offer between 80 to 100 miles per charge, however BMW knows how much range anxiety affects consumers and provided a solution. The i3 has an optional range extender (or REX, as BMW calls it) which uses gas and motor to offer an additional 80 to 100 miles. However, the gas and motor are merely running to further charge the battery, rather than power the wheels of the car. The i8, on the other hand, is a hybrid-electric vehicle, meaning it features both an electric motor along with an internal combustion engine. You’ll see around 20 to 30 miles per charge out of the i8, but when paired with the internal combustion engine that expands to about 300 miles combined. I know, I know… it all looks and sounds great. But patience is the name of the game here. We won’t see the all-electric i3 until 2013, and the i8 will follow after in 2014. Pricing has yet to be announced. |
One-Click Listen, Read, and Watch Ticker Buttons To Boost Facebook App Use | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | Facebook’s Ticker shows the music listening, article reading, and video watching activity of your friends. However, to join friends in consuming that content users have to first hover over the Ticker story before clicking through. Facebook wants more users interacting with Open Graph apps to create more shareable activity that populates the Ticker and powers ad targeting. To further this end, Facebook is testing one-click Listen, Read, and Watch buttons on Ticker stories that instantly open apps. These new buttons for consuming media shared by friends shouldn’t be confused with social plugins for websites Facebook might soon launch, including rumored for ecommerce sites. Those plugins could allow users to share a new activity story back to Facebook, which would then appear in the Ticker and might display one of these new consumption buttons. So far we’ve only spotted Listen and Read button, but Watch will most likely appear as well. While some Open Graph apps like , others like Rdio are struggling to gain new users. Facebook is depending on developers to join the Open Graph application platform to get users sharing more. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at f8 that his goal for Facebook was not increasing its user count but growing the volume of content shared through the network. That can’t happen unless Facebook can lure developers with the potential for viral growth. These one-click Listen, Read, and Watch buttons instantly start an app’s authorization flow or take users directly to content if that app is already installed. They’re only being seen by a few users right now. However, if rolled out they should reduce friction in trying new apps and help them attain the viral growth that will make the Open Graph platform attractive to more developers. |
As We Cut The Cord, Should Netflix And YouTube Recognize The Emergency Alert System? | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | Gather round, friends, for I bring tales of yesteryear. Once upon a time, people young and old huddled around the warmth of their vacuum tubes, welcoming whatever cathode rays came their way in the very same order as they left the tower. You’re watching ? No way! watching ! At the same time! And it’s the same episode! And they’re And we’re ?! Ridiculous. While curmudgeons damned the television for rotting brains and antiquating motivation, it long had one strength that even the most fervent of naysayers couldn’t deny: at any given time, one could reach the eyes and ears of the majority of the nation. In case of an emergency, there was no better way to tell the masses to batten down the hatches and duct tape the windows. Then came the DVR — an obstacle, but not one that went unconsidered. Then came the online streaming services — the Netflixes, the Hulus, the Youtubes — and the eyes found their new focus. Slowly but surely, the volume and efficacy of the Alert System began to taper… but does it have to? While my tone above is obviously a bit exaggerated (most homes, do, after all, still have cable), the trend is quite clear: each day, more people cut the cord. And even amongst those who haven’t and never will make such a move, hours spent consuming media bit-by-bit is skyrocketing. As the eyes and ears find new homes — or at least, new regular hang outs — is it the duty of the streaming services to act as the harbinger of bad news? Should Netflix, Hulu, et al. be required to fulfill the same emergency duties as the radio in the early 20th century and as the television in the latter half? If so: should streaming sites be required to comply, or just the biggest ones? Such requirements would introduce a host of new challenges, only the most obvious of which I’m familiar enough to foresee. Taking over a handful of manually controlled broadcasts is one thing; overriding many millions of unique streams spread across tens of thousands of servers and dozens of different video protocols is an entirely different beast. And how do we handle emergencies specific to certain locations? Right now, can hash things out with local network operators — but in an online world, the fences fade. Geolocation by IP is an option — but as any “206 hot people in [some location 150 miles from you] want to meet you!” ad might suggest, it isn’t anywhere near perfect. And of course, there’d be all kinds of security challenges. To be effective, such a system would require some degree of autonomy for whoever has the duty of flipping the appropriate switches… and, as a childhood friend’s wise uncle once ( ) said: with great power comes great responsibility. Given a bit of unintended access, a 15-year old me would have told an army of Beliebers “OMG! Asteroid coming! Hide in your basement for 2 weeks!” . Perhaps most debate-worthy: the Internet is still a largely unregulated place, and that’s a big part of the reason it’s so great. If a step like this is taken, is it a subtle step in the wrong direction? To be clear: right now, I’m neither advocating or opposing such an idea — I’m just cookin’ up some food for thought. Of course, such brainstorming may be a bit futile for now. It took until 2007 for satellite TV networks to become a part of the emergency broadcast system, and this morning’s test of the current system (the one that’s been in place for well over a decade) . Still, it’s something well worth considering as our world evolves. |
Are We At An Inflection Point For Mobile Search? | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | New data from search marketing platform and Ben Schachter, a stock analyst at the , indicates that mobile search advertising is at an important inflection point and may be ready to take off next year. Mobile search currently accounts for about 6 percent of the search advertising dollars in the U.S. as represented by Efficient Frontier’s clients. And that is up 2.7 times from 2010. But by the end of next year, it is projecting that mobile search could account for between 16 percent and 22 percent of total search advertising spending. If the growth rate of mobile search continues, it will be on the conservative end of that projection, and if it accelerates, it could be closer to the 22 percent. Schachter expects the “growth to accelerate in 2012 and beyond as more and more mobile devices with full Internet browsers enter the market.” Another illuminating data point is that click-through rates on search ads are actually higher on mobile than they are on the desktop. Clickthrough rates are 66 percent higher on phones and 37 percent higher on tablets. That makes sense since you only bother to search on a mobile phone when you are looking for something right that instant so you generally have a higher intent to purchase or learn about a commercial offering. Or maybe we just are more prone to click on links on small screens. Regardless of the higher clickthrough rates on phones, it is tablets that are taking a disproportionate share of search advertising clicks and spending. Tablets already account for 50 percent of all clicks on mobile search ads and 43 percent of the search advertising spending by Efficient Frontier’s clients. Tablets are not 50 percent of the mobile browsing device market (if you count all smartphones and tablets), but they are on track to get a lion’s share of the search ad spending. In some verticals, like retail, tablet search ads are already 77 percent of all mobile search spending. |
Miss “Most Recent”? Sort Facebook’s News Feed By Recent Stories First | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | Over the next few days, Facebook will at the top of the news feed that lets users select to see Recent Stories First instead of the default Highlighted Stories. The new feature should appease users miffed by into a single stream. Until now, the hybrid news feed launched in September forced users to first see what Facebook considered the most relevant content. Some users found these decisions inaccurate even though they have the option to teach the algorithm. The Sort feature lets users prioritize real-time updates over older content that’s been deemed compelling because of Likes, comments, clicks, and the viewer’s relationship to a story’s author. However, it doesn’t split the feed in two. Facebook tells me “The intent behind these updates is to make News Feed easier to navigate while still showing all the news in one place.” Facebook did away with the two-tabbed news feed because a significant portion of the user base never switched to the Most Recent feed from the default Top Stories. This led to a poor experience where they might see the same story multiple times, and miss out on urgent updates like invites to get together with friends or real-time conversations. With Sort, if you constantly visit the site and want to make your own decisions about what’s important, or want to know what friends are up to at that moment, you can set it to Recent Stories First. If you visit infrequently, you can leave it on Highlighted Stories first so you don’t miss popular content even if it was published hours or days ago. One’s Sort setting will presumably persist across sessions so you won’t have to reset it each time you log in. Facebook has informed me that the Sort button will reset after users have been away for awhile. This means those who don’t prefer Facebook’s Highlighted Stories will still have to see them first on occasion, so there will still be opportunities for discontent. Sort will empower Facebook’s more savvy and critical users to curate their own feed while maintaining a simple experience for those less adept at navigating the social network. |
Lion Install Numbers Nothing To Roar About | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | First, let me apologize for the headline. And now, the news. It appears that Mac OS X isn’t exactly taking the Mac world by storm: after following the July 20 release of 10.7, growth seems to have stagnated. This is based on visitor tracking by analytics firm , whose latest numbers indicate that Lion is still a long way from catching up to Snow Leopard and even plain old Leopard, which despite being several years old is still making up a fifth of their Mac visitors. Lion? Stalled at 16%, up just 2% from the end of September. It’s a reverse hockey stick. This chart shows the absolute representation of the OS in their stats. If you could zoom out, for perspective, Windows XP and 7 would probably be at around five or six times the height of this portion. What could be the reason for the slow adoption rate, if we can trust these numbers? My opinion would be simply that the aren’t attractive to the average user. While some of the new ideas and features are certainly useful, I confess my own bafflement at how irrelevant most are to everyday use. Few users will see Mission Control and Launchpad and think “yes, these are much better than Expose and a shortcut to the apps folder in the Dock.” Because really, they much better. Mail, Airdrop, and full screen apps are useless to the many users who have adopted web apps for email, sharing, and daily tasks. Resume and disk encryption are invisible and not really interesting to casual users who don’t understand them (“what, why wouldn’t I quit something when I’m done?”) and won’t see them in action. What’s left of the update apparently isn’t worth the thirty bucks. It’s not that Lion is bad, but I think I understand people’s trepidation to undergo the update process (backing up and so on, easier than ever but still beyond many users) for features that don’t pop. Snow Leopard is fast and stable, and has access to most key apps and services. What’s the hurry? Naturally the numbers will continue to grow, as Lion ships on all of Apple’s popular computers, and sales are better than ever. The rumored Air-style MacBook Pro series would provide a nice boost as well. But the trends suggest that Lion’s road to OS X dominance is going to be a long and slow one. |
Twitter Soars Past TwitPic and YFrog to Become #1 Photo Service | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | August 9th was a dark day for third-party Twitter photo sharing services like TwitPic and YFrog. Twitter with Photobucket as its hosting partner. Now, stats shared with us by photo search engine show that Twitter has become the number one photo sharing service on the platform, handling 36% of shares. TwitPic now processes 30% of tweeted photos and YFrog is down to 21%. Just 5 months ago, TwitPic had 45.7% and YFrog had 29.3%, but now it looks like they must differentiate or die a slow death. Things started getting scary for the third-parties in March when Twitter announced that in an effort to promote diversity on the platform. In fact, Twitter’s co-founder had back in April 2010. Still, then ecosystem leader by Twitter’s move, as the platform leader never briefed that company despite giving a heads up to YFrog and Plixi. Another critical blow as struck when Twitter announced it would for its photo sharing service, allowing app developers to build on and host their photos with it rather than through third-party photo services. And when it couldn’t get any worse, the roll out of the official photo service was accompanied by the launch of Twitter Galleries, which lets users view all tweeted photos including those from third-parties. With easier ways to share and view photos directly through Twitter, the decline of TwitPic and YFrog seemed assured. Twitter’s current overall lead comes way of its Twitter for iPhone client which accounts for 42% of photos shared to its photo service and 21% of all photos shared on Twitter. Its iOS5 integration is successful too, with iOS Photos and Camera combining to become the 7th biggest Twitter photo client, publishing 5% of tweeted photos. Instagram carries 12% of photos shared to Twitter. However, users seem ingrained in their behavior, as Skyline’s analysis of 24 million photos shared during a week in late October show users haven’t abandoned the third-party services overnight. TwitPic remains the most popular sharing service for Android devices, accounting for 39% of photo shares through Google’s mobile OS. YFrog meanwhile leads on BlackBerry devices with 47%. Still, if they don’t want their remaining user base to slip away, TwitPic, YFrog and others will need to offer something unique — ways to touch up or enhance photos as they’re shared, and innovative ways to sort galleries. |
null | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 11 | 7 | null |
A Look At The New Nook Software | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | In general, the original Nook was noticeably slower, especially when going from a page of text to a graphics-intensive page. Was it enough to warrant a wholesale upgrade? No, but as the 1.1 rolls out to older Nooks, owners of the previous version will be able to experience these savings. I did notice a very slight improvement in screen brightness on the new model, which could point to a different screen provider. Generally, however, the improvements are so minor as to be negligible but, given the battery improvements, 1.1 is definitely an upgrade path to follow once it comes online. |
Review: Motorola Atrix 2 | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | An attractive and comfortable phone with a great screen and solid camera. Not in fact a major update to the original Atrix, but it’s nice, despite some uncalled-for visual effects. Looking for an AT&T Android phone? This is probably your best bet right now. We’ll keep this one short. The Atrix 2 is a high-end Android phone (not to say “superphone” like the Galaxy S II) that improves on the original Atrix, adding a better display and camera, faster 4G, and a few other refinements. The body of the phone, I have to say, feels great. The 4.3″ screen is surrounded by a fairly wide bezel, giving it a sort of chubby look, but in my hand it feels very natural and comfortable. Buttons are well-placed, though they’re recessed to the point of being flush, making them occasionally hard to hit. The power button, which of course you’ll be hitting the most, feels a little too squishy but always activated promptly and without any extra effort to find or press. The chassis is stiff and strong, and didn’t creak or crack when I stressed it. The rear of the phone is a textured plastic that is very pleasant and grippy under your fingers. I much prefer this to the plain brushed or slick plastic of many other phones. I think it tends to pick up crumbs a bit more than them, though. It’s also nearly flat on the back; the camera unit sticks out just a millimeter, perhaps, not anything like the hump on other phones. The original Atrix had a fingerprint reader, which was ditched for this version, either to save on costs or because simply no one wanted it. But the Atrix 2 has gained a dedicated camera button. This doesn’t work very well as a “quick launch” solution (hitting home and touching the camera shortcut is just as fast), but it’s a welcome addition when you consider that the new camera is one of the big selling points. That camera is actually quite nice. My main criticism is that the shutter button should be a two-stage one, for setting an autofocus point. Also, it’s quite stiff, much more so than the others – to the point where it almost always moves the phone when you hit it. But I found the always-on autofocus to be fairly quick, accurate, and able to focus extremely close. Check out the clarity on these near-macro shots:
Even got a little nice foreground blur there. Naturally there’s a good amount of noise, which you’ll find at full size on any small-sensor camera. The colors are definitely not very vibrant, either, but that’s something you can easily control for. There was almost no delay between pressing the button and the shot being taken, and it was ready for another withing a second or two. There’s a multi-color notification LED, which I still don’t believe isn’t standard on all phones. Removing and replacing the battery cover is easy, and the rear panel flexes just enough to make it easier, but not enough to worry you about its quality. The MicroSD card slot is accessible without removing the battery, always preferable to the alternative. Stock Android has been modified somewhat, but not to the extent Motorola has previously with Blur. The AT&T blue theme pervades throughout, from a slightly janky lock screen to a really out-of-place browser icon featuring their logo prominently. There is also and extremely irritating and not-subtle flashlight-shining-on-icons effect whenever you go between home screens. It loses its novelty after literally the first time you see it. The animations also seem longer than stock ones, and can only be turned off altogether (there is no way to turn off the flashlight effect). Get a grip, Motorola. Nobody wants this. AT&T has included about 12 “bloatware” apps, depending on how you count, but they’ve also made it spectacularly easy to remove them. You go to your apps, and in the pulldown menu select “AT&T,” where they’ve kindly gathered all their apps. Little did they know how this app bucket would be used! From there you can long-press an app to delete it. No digging in menus, no waiting for app and component lists to populate. Easy peasy. The apps themselves are the usual account access and sponsored service fodder, unlikely to sway many users away from their established file, media, and doc syncing solutions. But nothing malicious. are middling. I got around 4 megabits (~500KB/s) in my neighborhood, where I recall the T-Mobile G2 used to get something like 8 megabits. Speedtest confirmed this (3857kbps down, 1641 up). Honestly in practice it was always quite fast enough, and few of these 4G phones really beat each other on the all-important latency. The improved wireless chipset doesn’t guarantee better speeds in every situation, but raises the ceiling. It all depends on the network conditions where you use the phone the most. In Seattle T-Mo is generally faster than AT&T, I’ve found, but elsewhere it will be the opposite. Take my informal measurements lightly. I found to be very good. I’ve had my phone unplugged since about midnight, receiving emails on a 4G network, taking pictures, sending photos to myself for this review, and so on, and it’s currently at 80% (as I’m editing this three hours later, it’s at 70%). Streaming media on 4G will naturally drain this more, but this seems to me to be an all-day phone, and it’s made it through plenty of days already. I’ve seen other reviews complain about battery, but personally I haven’t encountered anything out of the ordinary. Then there’s the webtop functionality. Unfortunately I wasn’t allocated a unit to test this out, so I’ll stay quiet on it and let you check other reviews for an opinion on this feature. If you’re on AT&T and not an iPhone user, I’d say that this is a bargain for $99. It beats out the competition from HTC in a number of ways, and feels to me like a solid phone plain and simple. As long as you can get around that stupid flashlight effect.
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Staples Slashes PlayBook Price To $199 On Black Friday | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | Those of you brave enough to venture into Staples on Black Friday will be rewarded with the chance to buy a 16 GB BlackBerry PlayBook for $199, if their is any indication. According to , the deal only applies in-store, so those of you looking to snag a PlayBook on the cheap had better bundle up. This isn’t the first time Staples has slashed prices on the PlayBook — they ran a special $ — and it almost certainly won’t be the last. Sales of RIM’s tablet have been anemic at best, is getting desperate to move their stock. Honestly, why anyone would go to the trouble of camping in front of Staples for hours in the frigid cold in order to snag one of these is beyond me. Call me lazy, but the idea of pre-ordering a Kindle Fire for the same price from home sure beats jostling in a massive line for a tablet that can’t even send email unless you have the right phone. Then again, you may as well pick one up if you were planning on camping out for the anyway. |
Sheryl Sandberg To Interview New Jersey Governor Chris Christie On Facebook Live | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | Enigmatic New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will be interviewed by Facebook COO at Facebook next Monday, according to the email I just received in my inbox (Source: Email in my inbox). In what has come to be the modus operandi for these things, Christie will also be taking . Christie, who was rumored to be seeking a Republican Presidential run in 2012, will be following in and as he visits the social network’s HQ and the Facebook Live studios. A Facebook townhall is a somewhat odd choice for the Governor, who has a modest social media presence; Christie’s 15K ‘Likes’ on Facebook pale in comparison to Obama’s 23 million plus and Bush’s 1.6 million plus. Perhaps the connecting factor here is the fact that Zuckerberg to the Newark school system in his home state of New Jersey last year, because he “believed” in Governor Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker? But if the education hook’s not it then I’m stumped; In any case it’ll be interesting to hear Christie’s views on our nation’s pressing issues — Including his endorsement of Mitt Romney for President. Email below. All – I am excited to inform you that Governor Christie will travel to Facebook’s Headquarters in Palo Alto California to take part in the Facebook Live event series. The Governor will take part in this live discussion with Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg, which will be broadcast live via Facebook here: The Governor will also be taking questions from Facebook users, which can be submitted here: Facebook Live with Governor Chris Christie
Monday, November 14, 2011, 5PM EST (2PM PST)
Watch live: http://www.facebook.com/FBLive?sk=app_127337483972992 If you have any questions about this event, don’t hesitate to ask. Thanks,
—
Riccardo Diaz
Director of Media Affairs
Office of the Governor, The State of New Jersey |
European Tech Bloggers Are Getting Angry And Why That's Awesome For Startups | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | Back in 2006 (hell, back in 2002!), it was kinda lonely being a tech blogger in Europe. Not that there weren’t plenty of tech sites and nascent blogs opining on ‘social media’. Oh no, plenty of those. But not many what I would call hard core sites, setting out to kick down the doors and make trouble. It’s taken a long time to get to where we are. In 2005/6, when I started blogging in earnest about tech on my site, I realised how hard the economics were likely to be. So when I met Mike Arrington in a London bar in 2006 (who took possibly the geekiest of me ever) and he offered me a job to create a TechCrunch blog in Europe, I jumped at the chance. (I won’t bore you with the abortive attempt that was “TechCrunch UK” in 2006). By the time the that was BlogNation had launched, I was already beating the TechCrunch drum on the streets of London, Paris and Berlin). Blognation put the cart before the horse. In 2007 there was, quite literally, not much of a tech scene to cover in Europe so perhaps it was just as well that the talent that was locked inside it went on to do better things, among them my awesome colleague at at TechCrunch, Mr Robin Wauters. But since its beginning, TC Europe has evolved as part stand-alone site, part “Correspondent’s blog” attached to a much larger entity. It’s a model. And in fact, TC Europe has consistently punched above its weight in Europe (a fragmented market) according to from Wikio. Now, in 2011, the scene and perhaps the economics, are starting to change. The tech scene itself is bigger, there is more potential money around. There’s just more heat. I daresay a few people are eyeing up the market. But even in standalone media terms it’s not a ‘straight’ play. Most of the European tech blogs are either run by people who also consult on the side, or, as in the case of , are attached, like a Pilot Fish to a their host shark, to a large annual conference. However, recently, a couple of things have changed. Other big guns have parked their tanks on the European lawn. now has a European writer, Bobbie Johnson (based in Brighton), so does (Ben Rooney, in London), has Ciara Byrne in Amsterdam and The Next Web (especially with Martin Bryant in Manchester) has done a pretty good job internationalising in English (although good luck trying to monetize that blog guys). ‘s magazine’s site has become an important adjunct to the print title. Some might say it’s the ‘Vanity Fair’ of tech. So, leaving aside the economics of online publishing, in editorial terms alone, pan-European coverage of tech and startups has never been better. Competition is no bad thing, and occasionally we even get to riff off, or even – heaven forfend! – disagree with each other, with GigaOm recently. Personally I welcome this. I have been attending TechCrunch 40/50 then TechCrunch Disrupt for the last few years in San Francisco and glancing back at the huge numbers of press in the room you can see the incredible power the US tech press has. Every nuance, nay, every angle of even the smallest story is picked over. It’s bizarre to watch a pack of bloggers try and out-do each other on headlines and angle, but it’s both amazing to watch and understandable. The US is one big homogenised market, there are a long of tech companies, and that equals a lot of tech press. How else do you think the need for something like , an incredible aggregator, was created? But in Europe it’s different. Although the UK and Ireland together make a decent sized English language market, you’ll find most of the tech media outlets – blogs and newspapers – writing not about native tech companies but about the big stories of the industry. Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon, are no-brainer stories to be covered. That’s only right and proper. But “local” tech startups – some of which are as big as the likes of Spotify – get a rare look-in until they start hitting big numbers, or – let’s admit it – launch in he US. And the same applies to the media in continental Europe. So where tech blogs write about their, now, ‘native’ startups the coverage tends to be far less international and far less, shall we say, internationalised. Let me explain. There are all sorts of ‘mini-TechCrunch’ style blogs out there, some bigger than others. Do you ever read in Poland or in Turkey? Maybe not – though I’ve made it a habit over the last few years to keep half an eye on these mavens. Some of them are even friends, people who ping me when they are covering a local startup that might be of interest to TechCrunch. Where I can I link out to these guys who break those local stories – assuming I don’t get contacted by the startup first. But there has been a limitation in all of this. Whereas the US tech press can riff and jive off each other in one common language (English) and create heat and light around the industry, the European tech media are limited either to local skirmishes in their own languages, if at all. Though, in fairness, often the local scenes are so relatively small that any kind of internecine warfare would end up in a Mexican standoff, where, perhaps the two big local blogs just end up making themselves look at little silly. In any blog fight, it helps to have several players – or at least a couple who fight and few more who can watch, poke fun, and fan the flames. But the European tech blog scene tends to be too small. Frustratingly, this is doing nothing for European tech startups. Sure, can do what I can to cover a market of 750 million people (the largest definition of ‘Europe’ btw) and thousands of startups, but inevitably things fall through the cracks. It’s not helped that there are so many blogs out there that just don’t write in English. Well, there’s an argument that they should. Or at least have an English version. Why? Well, the technology scene is a genuinely global one. If you have found a local startup that has done something amazing with the Twitter API, but only blog about it in, say Slovenian, that’s great. But it’s not going to get much further unless that startup does some leg-work trying to attract the attention of bigger blogs like us, or you do an English version of your post and try and get more attention to it somehow. Which is where I come to the most recent, and most interesting developments in tech blogging in Europe and one which I hope is going to start having a positive effect on everyone else. I think we’re at the beginning of an evolution here and we need to recognise this. The first was the recent emergence of a new trend in France around tech blogging. Recently, former Techcrunch France Editor Roxanne Varza, who now has a few projects of her own, has decided to launch, along with Paris-barsed American entrepreneur/blogger Liam Boogar, a blog called To quote: “Did we mention that we think the France has a better startup scene than California? Well, we do. And it does. And we’re here to tell the world about all the best new tech-startup-entrepreneur stuff that France has to offer. In English. So, apologies to the Académie française for raining on its parade.” If that isn’t a Johnny Rottenesque two fingers up to the establishment then I don’t know what is. Because the irony is that despite their often French market focus, many French entrepreneurs hanker after this international recognition. And they deserve it too, as much as any entrepreneur. The second, and most significant is the break-out that is happening in Berlin. Over the past year two new blogs emerged there, and . I wouldn’t say they are quite as high a frequency as TechCrunch… However, they are having a good crack at shining an international light on startups coming out of that city. Again, neither are employing full-time people, but they are clearly enthusiastic. The dynamics here are fascinating, not least because Berlin has already had two long-standing and full-time professional blogs in the shape of and . How the hell can they be full-time, professional and just focus on Germany I hear you ask? Well, the German-speaking “DACH” market (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) is amongst the largest in Europe: 90 million people. That creates a ‘lock in’ of readership. Secondly they are subsided by two heavyweight Incubators in Berlin. backs Grunderzene while Samwer incubator backs Deutsche Startups. Despite all this lovely coverage in German, it’s instructive that neither of those sites has really broken out into a global arena. The reason is so obvious it’s hardly worth saying but I’m just going to have to say it: They are not blogging in English. But there is problem here: Tech media outlets across the world are descending on European cities to cover the booming scenes there. Today I’m in Bucharest, Romania for instance at , a conference totally in English. In fact, European tech conference have started to realise that if they do the event in English they can live broadcast the event online, get a bigger international profile, attract more sponsors and thus lift their local tech scenes. Gone are the days when I would turn up at an event only to find all the startup pitches were in the local language, thankfully. And in particular the tech media is descending on Berlin, where the scene is really kicking off. Suddenly realising that half the tech media world seems to be descending on Berlin to cover the flowering of an interesting scene there, Gruenderszene has decided to launch a new brand. The new is an English-language blog. Kerching! The third example is what I would call, the next phase in the evolution of European tech blogging. It’s the war that broke out recently between Berlin startup and Grunderzene. Oh. Yes. The background is rather complex and a bit ‘inside baseball’, but I will do my best to summarise. Suffice it to say, that Grunderzene has started to feel the heat from the fact that it just can’t keep all these Berlin startups to itself any more. The ‘new wave’ of Berlin-based startups – Amen, , and others – are now aiming not for a ‘German’ Market but for an international one. So they are courting the international, English language speaking press, not the local guys. Evidence of this broke out at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco this year. I was privy to information that suggested Grunderzene – annoyed that as the local Berlin blog writing about local German startups it didn’t have ‘the scoop’ – planned to publish about Amen before it’s launch on the stage at Disrupt. This would have destroyed Amen’s chances of appearing in front of 2,500 of Silicon Valley’s most influential people, including Hollywood star (and their investor) Ashton Kutcher. This seemed to me like a ridiculous move on the part of a supposedly local champion of the German startup scene. Needless to say the Amen team were not happy. But incredibly the threat was never put to the test. Wheteher they reached an agreement with Amen or not, who knows. Amen launched on stage. But If ever you wanted a vision of a flaccid penis in blog form this was it. But the animosity has cleared bubbled under, and most recently Amen a post accusing Grunderzene of further underhand tactics and waring other startups off working with them. Grunderzene about how it has been working the numbers on Amen and says it’s not getting the traction its claims. Amen denies this and says Grunderzene is cherry-picking data to make its case. Fighting. Awesome. I’ve since contacted Grunderzene for their response. They deny there is a beef and that they are merely writing independently about Amen. To me it all sounds like what a British Prime Minister once called ‘a little local difficulty’. But it’s instructive that Amen’s initial blog post was in English. Grunderzene’s criticism was is in German. And there is the rub. Bluntly, we need more fights that everyone can understand. But, more seriously, we need more coverage that everyone can understand. Then we’ll know what we’re dealing with in terms of how tech operates in Europe. Plus, we need an aggregator. I have spoken to TechMeme about creating a TechMeme for Europe. I have spoken to other players. Frankly, and understandably, it’s not worth their while right now. It’s partly because here in Europe we’re writing about US companies, and there are plenty of well-funded US outlets doing that already. But it’s also partly because we’re all writing in other languages. So frankly, given there is more incentive to simple jump on breaking news to make it onto TechMeme, I don’t blame the of some. The “teardowns”, case studies, successes, failures, learnings… will all make a lot more sense when you are fighting for traffic with the other guy and there is a chance that your post will end up on a leader-board somewhere, like Techmeme’s. Ironically, in journalistic terms these piece are what some (or at least those of us have been doing this for a while) call ‘bread and butter’ journalism, something that was often considered, well, a chore. No heady exclusives here – only “Here’s how X did Y”, “How To’s” and “Top Ten Ways To…”. Effectively these are ‘paid’ for by the stuff a news blogger really brings to the party, which is breaking news. But when an inside investigative journalism piece can make TechMeme’s front page rather than a breaking news item, then writers are incentivised to create in that way. (In many respects writers are not motivated by money, much like engineers). And I don’t blame others for wanting to have a go. A London freelance journalist, Milo Yiannopoulos, seems about about the subject. For my part, as someone who has observed the scene for a while, my view is this: bring it on. The more the merrier. Perhaps then we’ll all get the resources we need to reflect the booming European tech scene – in all it’s richness. |
Robin Williams Blows Your Siri Impression Out Of The Water | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0dI-WZ5cvM0&w=630] If you’ve already seen this, watch it again. Here’s veteran comedian and star Robin Williams on the talking about “the new future” and bringing up the technology , . I mean just the fact that this is happening is absurd, but then, then … Commenter Peter Kjeldsen : “You have the normal Robin being gentle and ordinary fun.. then he goes in to french Siri mode, gets a laugh and that is when this man starts rolling.. there is no off switch when he does that… LOOK LOOK AND THEN PAINT.” My favorite part is “Why are you looking at a phone? LIVE YOUR LIFE …” Priceless advice. |
Accel Backs Brazilian Social Local Reviews Site Kekanto | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | , an Yelp-like local guide and site in Brazil, has raised a undisclosed amount of Series A funding led by Accel Partners with Kaszek Ventures participating. This actually marks Accel’s fifth investment in Brazil over the past twelve months. Accel Partner Andrew Braccia will join Kekanto’s Board of Directors. Kekanto, which translates as “In which corner?” in Portuguese, is a source of local reviews for millions of people in Brazil. The platform offers consumers the ability to quickly find information on local businesses, tourist attractions, public service offices, and other points of interest in the country. Kekanto´s search and recommendation system blends your social network and demographic information to replicate real life word of mouth. The startup is seeing around 3 million unique monthly visitors and Kekanto will use the new funding to expand to Argentina, Chile, Mexico and other countries in Latin America. It’s no secret that Accel views Brazil has a huge growth market for online services. The venture firm’s recent previous investments in Brazil include and |
The Narwhal Bacons On Your Phone: BaconReader Is A Reddit Reader For Android | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | Folks who use iOS devices can enjoy the fine, fresh flavor of any time day or night with the official Reddit app. But what about Android users? What are they, chopped bacon? is a new Android reader produced by OneLouder. It is, as you’d expect, heavily text-based but it allows you to view your own account and submit news to Reddit as well as browse image links like a champ. Why Reddit doesn’t have their own iReddit version for Android is beyond me, but there you have it. The free version includes ads but you can upgrade to ad-free for $1.99. Most important is this simple line that many wouldn’t notice in the product description and that I think shows the care and diligence these folks put into the app. – Rageface and look of disapproval support
There are plenty of Android Reddit readers out there but this one looks to be a bit more polished, with color coded comment threads and full inbox support. Sure, it may not get you a date with I_am_the_cheese or highlight stuff that’s already been on 4chan, but it’s a native Android Reddit client and I’m sure it will go more than OK.
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Path And Jawbone UP Should Band Together | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | If you are lucky enough to own one of the that doesn’t , then you’re probably pretty psyched at the potential the simple and streamlined life-tracking device holds. You know what else is psyching me up right now? The prettiness of s into a slicker, more agile life timeline, a way to curate the overwhelming amount of content you produce as a digital citizen. Path has two key features that indicate where social sharing is heading. The first is sleep mode. While some might not why people would want to share their sleep patterns with their friends, Dave Morin (and UP creator Hosain Rahman) do; Morin told me yesterday. Exactly. I love my UP wristband in just its own little app silo, but last night when I clicked it before I fell asleep, I wished that my sleep info would sync to Path so hard it hurt. Same goes for waking up. Both Path and UP devices play into natural human laziness: UP uses its accelerometer to automatically track and graph the number of steps you take a day, Path uses the iPhone’s GPS to automatically update your timeline with “Arrived @ Location” anytime you travel a distance that could be traveled by plane. Mind you, the sharing of this kind of extremely personal information like sleeping, eating and exercising (and trusting “smart” updating) is possible when you’re sharing with a limited amount of people. The difference between a being “journal that writes itself” and an invader of user privacy is 50 versus 500 friends. Path also has the beginner’s advantage of being new to the market; You’re more likely to want to share with a social graph you JUST picked, versus the one you started building on Facebook four years ago. I have little idea how I’m supposed to set up a “Team” on UP (yeah, I know you can manually search for people but somehow remembering people’s names has gone the way of remembering people’s phone numbers in the age of the instant Friends List). If only there was a mobile-based social network built specifically for private sharing … Think about Facebook versus Path like email versus texting, email is great if you’re on the web with a wide variety of people whereas texting is suited to mobile devices and few contacts. In the age of the almighty Facebook, micro-networks like Path can and will survive because of smartphone OS evolution and hardware advancements like UP, the Withing scale or Nike+. The UP bracelet progresses mobile life-tracking . And Path mobile life-sharing. Both have some kinks that need to be worked out (the food tracker on UP absolutely needs to be supplemented by something ). But it is early early days. |
MasterCard Backs And Partners With Mobile Banking Company mFoundry To Expand Reach Of NFC | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | After with Intel, MasterCard is revealing a new collaboration to help spread the use of its NFC technology through its PayPass program. The credit card giant is making a strategic investment in , a company that powers mobile banking solutions for more than 500 banks and credit unions nationwide. As part of the announcement, mFoundry will be offering MasterCard’s PayPass technology as a way for banks and credit unions to give their customers the option to pay for items with their mobile phones. As you may have heard, PayPass is MasterCard’s payment method that lets you make purchases without having to swipe the magnetic strip on your card or provide your signature at PayPass enabled terminals. The technology uses NFC to transmit information. MFoundry’s SaaS allows banks and other providers to give their customers mobile banking options, including payments. For example, mFoundry powers Starbucks’ Card Mobile. The company has capitalized on the recent growth in mobile banking. comScore recently reported that 32.5 million Americans accessed mobile banking information on their mobile devices, a 21% increase from the fourth quarter of 2010. And, almost 14 percent of all U.S. mobile subscribers now access banking information through their devices. With the MasterCard partnership, mFoundry will allow banks to be able to offer MasterCard mobile banking options, including the use of PayPass and the NFC technology. MasterCard and mFoundry also will collaborate to provide mobile phone operators an application that supports Mobile PayPass, which will allow them to offer mobile contactless payments to their customers. Obviously for MasterCard, the collaboration will help spread the use of its NFC technology to various banks, and thus consumers. And for mFoundry, the startup gets a strategic investment from one of the most well-known credit card companies in the world, and gets to gain some clout from the investment. |
Social-Mobile Game Developer Funzio Aims Its New Title, Modern War, At iOS | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | Funzio has managed to make hit versions of its first game, Crime City, for both Facebook and iOS devices. That’s a rare feat for any company, especially such a small one. Now it’s trying again with a role-playing simulation called Modern War, that it’s launching first on iOS. The game itself is closely patterned after the iOS version of Crime City. A slick graphical interface lets you move around various battle scenarios, where you click on enemy units and structures on the screen to attack them, and earn virtual cash and experience when you win. You also battle with various other players in a traditional role-playing format where you don’t actually do any battling, you just see the resulting losses and point gains. A home base lets you build structures that generate new troops and equipment. The free game has the standard virtual goods revenue model. The virtual cash currency and gold are dual currencies that let you do things like buy new buildings that provide more powerful improvements to your troops. Modern Wars improvements, from the quick look we got earlier today, go beyond just being a reskin of iOS Crime City. Additions include attacking options like aerial and naval bombardments, as well as more customization options for the buildings in your base. The graphics are also sharp, and designed to appeal to more traditional gamers. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-NIT-YKrbw&w=640&h=480] The larger story here is Funzio’s strategy for going after both iOS and Facebook markets. Crime City launched on Facebook in September of last year, and had a big run — although it has matured and is towards the last part of its life cycle now. The iOS version launched this past August, and has been the top 25 free as well as top grossing titles for most of its time since then. By launching Modern War on iOS now, Funzio could piggybacking off of the current enthusiasm for the iOS version of the street-themed first title. The Facebook version is coming later, vice president of business development Jamil Moledina tells me, once the Facebook development team finishes working on the company’s third game. (Social-mobile features are fairly limited so far, although you can do things like share the game with Facebook friends.) Large Facebook developers like Zynga have been slowly but steadily figuring out how to build mobile games. Mobile gaming startups have for the most part not been able to — or have decided not to — go after Facebook. Funzio is, along with Booyah and a few others, an exception. However, the focus on both platforms has been an increasingly common theme in game development in the last year, as the mobile virtual goods model has come into its own. And its track record so far isn’t the only reason this company and its new title are worth keeping an eye on. Funzio is comprised of from other top other social and mobile game developers. Cofounder and COO Anil Dharni was previously a cofounder at top mobile game developer Storm8. Cofounder and CEO Kenneth Chiu was a general manager at Zynga. Moledina was just from a senior business position at EA. Chairman and founder Rick Thompson had the same role at Playdom. Modern War isn’t quite live yet, but you can keep track of it . |
The First Ice Cream Sandwich Android Tablet Surfaces In China | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | Right now the only way to officially taste Ice Cream Sandwich on a device is on the Galaxy Nexus. Google stated that it would eventually hit tablets. Well, the wait is over. Somewhere in the bowels of China the first ICS tablet has appeared. It’s a Xoom clone powered by slightly-dated hardware but it’s running 4.0.1. That’s all that counts. The story goes that the tab shown here (and in the video after the jump) is the first 4.0.1 tablet. As and notes, the 10.1-inch tablet is a bit of a Xoom knockoff but sports respectable internal components. 1GB of RAM and a Tegra 2 chip powers the device. There’s 16GB of storage, dual cams, GPS, HDMI, a 7000mAh battery, and a 3G SIM card slot.
Looks good, right? Well, you can’t buy it yet. The company has yet to release pricing or a release date. But prepare yourself. The onslaught of Ice Cream Sandwich tablets is almost upon us. CES will be here in less than 45 days and you’re going to get fat from all the Ice Cream Sandwich’s pouring out of the Las Vegas Convention Center. |
Source: Zynga Lowering IPO Valuation To $10 Billion Range, Due To Larger Economic Fears | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | Social game developer Zynga will start talking to potential public investors this Monday ahead of a mid-December IPO, according to reports earlier this week. The question is: how much will it be selling its stock for? That information has been expected to surface in an amended filing on Monday, but has some early details, that we’ve confirmed with a source close to the company. Zynga is seeking to raise around $900 million by selling 10% of its stock at a range between $8 and $10 per share, for a valuation of around $10 billion, according to the report. Speculation had previously been that it would go for between $15 billion and $20 billion, and a third-party valuation analysis that Zynga had in a indicated it was worth $14.05 billion. Our source says Reuter’s range is correct, and attributes the decrease to Zynga’s concerns over larger economic issues, like any fallout out from Europe’s financial crisis, and the poor reception that other tech IPOs have had recently. The example everyone’s looking at is deals site group Groupon, which went at $17.8 billion, but has towards $10 billion recently (although it’s been back up in the last couple days). The lower price, of course, could also be aimed at addressing specific investor , the company — like in its Facebook traffic numbers, and reports about its intense company culture. Zynga’s bankers, some of whom apparently didn’t wait for the roadshow to begin talking to the press, could also still adjust the amount it seeks to above $900 million. The company had said it was looking to raise $1 billion when it had first filed in June. After Zynga’s wild ride to success over the past several years, the conservative pricing could also help set a new tone for it on the public stage. [Image via .] |
Startups, Investing, And Daily Deals: Five Questions With Mark Cuban | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | Some think is a genius, some think he’s lucky. Either way, the guy has a knack for seeing value where others may not, for locating long-term investments, and for ending up on the right side of the deal. Some may disagree with his approach, but Mark Cuban is a billionaire, and while making money is a lot easier when you have stacks of it to play with, becoming a billionaire doesn’t happen by accident. (Lotto winners not included.) For those on the younger side who haven’t yet made their first billion, the investor’s early story should be comforting: After graduating from college, Cuban started his career (auspiciously enough) as a bartender. Next, he worked for a year as a salesman at a PC software retailer, making $18K in salary, to close a deal instead of opening the retail store. He later founded MicroSolutions, a systems integrator and software reseller, but it wasn’t until eight years after grabbing his diploma that he sold his first business, which CompuServe acquired for $6 million in 1990. And then, a bit more famously, he founded a company based on his mutual love of college basketball and webcasting (Audionet), turned it into Broadcast.com, and sold it to Yahoo at the height of the dotcom boom for $5.9 billion in stock. Since then, he’s been involved in a number of projects, most notably helping build the Dallas Mavericks, a team in which he bought a majority stake back in 2000, into an annual playoff contender and Lebron-slaying NBA Champions in 2011. He’s also become an increasingly active angel investor in tech startups over the last decade, (you can get a brief sense of the companies he’s invested in on ), and spends quite a bit of his time coaching young entrepreneurs. So, seeing as he’s spent more than a few minutes growing businesses, investing in startups, and advising companies on how to grow, when to pivot, and how to make money ( ), we took the opportunity to ask the investor a few questions on some topical issues facing the tech industry. Check out his responses below: It really depends on where you live. The approach to startups is far different in Silicon Valley than it is in the rest of the world. Valley startups start big. Everywhere else we take the lean, mean startup machine approach. The former could run into cyclical financing problems because their success is dependent on exits first and operational profitability second. If the IPO market shuts again, and foreign investment dries up, the capital for Valley startups could be impacted. As far as overfunding, it seems to me that the prevailing wisdom out West is that the only way to exit big is to start big. With that mindset there is no such thing as overfunding. But its not an approach I ever take. I’m funding multiple companies across the country every quarter. Trust me, none are overfunded. If they execute, they will get the cash they need. I like Groupon. Their valuation is whatever the market says it is. They can’t pay attention to that noise. They have to be relentless and focused on continuously adding value to their customers at the consumer and retail sides. If they can do it, they will laugh all the way to the bank. It all comes down to licensing fees from the labels, both direct and statutory. One of my biggest professional mistakes at Broadcast.com was not fighting the DMCA harder. There are so many ridiculous and arbitrary limits that every music company has this as an overhang on their business. I also worry about patent trolls coming in and killing this business. Just remember one thing: The future of TV is TV. Television is still the best alternative to boredom. If you look at all the internet video companies that try to complement TV, they are doing well. If you look at those trying to replace TV, they are sucking wind. I categorize Netflix as doing well and a complement. They made a big mistake, but they are still the big dog. Right now they are the platform that counts. So yes they have a chance to be the end all, be all going forward. They have become the home page for many of us. That said, their mobile solutions as a platform suck. They are very vulnerable to someone coming along and making social built on mobile a far better and more engaging experience than Facebook currently is. And, what’s more, as a bonus for readers, Cuban has also agreed to answer a few of the “top” questions posted in the comment section of this post. The three that receive the most “likes” will be chosen, so ask your own questions and “like” away. Also, a word of warning: He won’t answer basketball related questions, so keep your inquiries focused on tech and business. Part of the reason that the investor and Mavs owner has been in a question-answering mood lately is that one of the startups to which he plays both investor and advisor — — recently launched a giveaway where the winner receives a free lunch with Cuban. Once users sign up for JungleCents’ newsletter, they can then tweet at the investor, asking him questions on whatever topics they choose, to which Cuban has been responding in kind. The Mavs owner is a good guy, but obviously JungleCents’ model is one that Cuban sees great value in — enough so that he’s allowed the startup to leverage his own personal brand for promotional purposes. Of course, this is in his best interest, but how many investors agree to do that? Cuban invested $1.5 million in JungleCents back October of last year and is joined by a board that includes Hollywood producer Peter Safran, Guy Kawasaki and Bill Reichert from Garage Ventures. The reason Cuban believes in this San Francisco-based startup? Aside from the fact that in less than a year the startup’s deals are reaching 2.2 million email addresses, publishers included, and the user sign-up rate has tripled over the last 3 months, the company is taking an alternative approach to daily deals. JungleCents uses a lead generation model — similar to how airlines and travel companies like Orbitz pay sites like Kayak for bringing them new customers — to give publishers supplemental revenue streams. To do this, JungleCents accepts gift cards from companies instead of cash, then runs those as daily deals, which it offers as discounts. ( .) In its , for example, the startup partnered with men’s merchandiser Bonobos to offer discounts on their products, which it then displayed both on JungleCents.com and AskMen.com. This allows readers of AskMen to take advantage of a deal that’s pertinent to the content of the magazine, without having to leave the site. Customers might pay $48 for a $100 voucher to spend at Bonobos, which users can cash in whenever they want — all at once, or over time. When I asked the owner what it was specifically that attracted him to JungleCents, he said: . There you have it. Here are Cuban’s answers to some of the top questions asked. Check ’em out. Professionally, it was not aggressively going after the MPAA and RIAA in negotiations for the DMCA. Another mistake was not applying for patents. I personally think patents are for the most part worthless and don’t protect your business, but at Broadcast.com we did so many original and unique things in streaming, multicasting, uploading of content that now that the climate of litigation has changed, that portfolio would be worth a ton of money. We were one of the first 5 companies in the country to begin selling/installing/integrating local area networks. Long before anyone knew what they were. The rules on unpaid internships are killer. It’s more hassle than it’s worth. I would start out by developing apps that allowed people to fine tune the wireless tech in their home. Best location for your wireless router. Testing connectivity between the two. Offering Siri like intelligence on what pieces should be integrated and how. Email. Be to the point and tell me why what you have is different versus the competition, what you want from me, and what I get if I give it to you. Simple. |
Walmart Launches Shopycat, A Social Gift Finder Built On Top Of Facebook | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | Retailing giant Walmart is launching its first-ever social gifting platform tonight, dubbed “ .” The service, previously in beta, is initially available as a Facebook application where it will also be promoted to the nearly 11 million Facebook users who have “liked” . The app, which suggests gifts for friends based on their Facebook use, was built with technology Walmart from social media startup Kosmix (now @WalmartLabs) earlier this year. And here’s the interesting part: the new app won’t just point you to pages on Walmart.com for its gift recommendations. It also recommends products from nearly two dozen other retailers, including Barnes & Noble, ThinkGeek, RedEnvelope, NBC Universal, Hot Topic and more. (Just not, of course, Amazon). The technology behind Walmart’s gift recommendations grew out of Kosmix’s Social Genome, a semantic technology platform that was originally used to power social media discovery services built primarily on top of Twitter. Now that Kosmix’s platform is a part of Walmart, those same algorithms are used to analyze people’s interests based on their Facebook posts, profile updates and “likes.” The system is smart enough to understand the sentiment behind a Facebook status update, too, not just the keywords involved. So, for example, if you posted as a Facebook status update, Shopycat won’t recommend that your friends buy you the “Breaking Dawn” Blu-Ray. It also knows what items are more “giftable” than others, using algorithms that examine a number of signals, including recency, uniqueness (e.g., a collector’s edition over a standard edition) and the aggregate buying behavior of shoppers on Walmart.com. While the obvious goal is to encourage traffic and purchases via Walmart’s e-commerce website, the company has taken a unique approach by not making it a Walmart-only application. That is, if Walmart doesn’t have the perfect gift in stock, either online or at your local store, it will point you to another retailer who does. For starters, this includes a list of around 20 third parties, but the company plans to increase that number next year. This effort also includes gift cards for things like iTunes, Starbucks and Zynga. These outside recommendations serve as a clever tactic to boost the viral nature of the Facebook app itself (i.e., it’s not Walmart only, so it’s actually kind of cool). But the design also helps Walmart take on its main online retailer: the virtually infinite online warehouse that is Amazon. Whether Walmart will then use these referrals (to which it receives no affiliate income, we’re told ), to later inform its own buying decisions has yet to be determined. We do know that the company does plan on integrating Facebook Connect within its own e-commerce site at some point in the future, allowing users to authenticate with Facebook to see social recommendations from friends. This, of course, could serve the even more valuable purpose of associating a Facebook user’s online identity with their actual transaction data, but whether or not (or to what extent) this will occur is still unknown. In the nearer future, the plan is to instead bring the Walmart.com online store to Facebook. The app currently shuffles users out of Facebook when it’s time to buy, but by mid-2012, Shopycat will function as an online store itself, allowing users to buy from Walmart without every having to leave Facebook. Walmart isn’t the first to use Facebook’s social signals to make gift recommendations, of course. The homemade goods outlet Etsy launched its recently, also on top of Facebook data, and , which is known for building a “taste graph” of recommendations by asking questions, back in 2010. However, as the world’s largest brick-and-mortar retailer, Walmart’s foray into social commerce can’t be overlooked. For what it’s worth, Amazon has had , and had for social gifting as far back as 2008. But Amazon’s focus lately has been more on mobile, with a plethora apps and its Kindle devices, and less on developing its Facebook recommendation technology. Its Facebook-enabled recommendations, in fact, are still listed as being in “beta” on the Amazon homepage. And frankly, their accuracy hasn’t improved much since last year’s launch. In early tests, Walmart’s Shopycat app seemed at least on par with Amazon’s recommendations, which is to say, only fair. (Do buy me Star Wars Jedi Bath Robes, for example.) But Shopycat doesn’t let you customize the recommendations beyond “unliking” a Facebook page to adjust the signals the app uses. Even though technology like this has existed for years, it’s still the early days for social e-commerce. Many of the kinks and problems with leveraging Facebook for recommendations, gifting and otherwise, will be overcome in time. To give Shopycat a go for yourself, visit . |
TechCrunch Giveaway: Last Chance To Win A Ticket To LeWeb’11 | Elin Blesener | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | LeWeb’11 is right around the corner. For those who do not know what LeWeb is — it is Europe’s number one tech event. This year they already have some amazing speakers lined up. Some of those include ones we’ve even seen at our very own Disrupt events. Those speaking at LeWeb’11 include: , , , , , and just to name a few. You can view the full list of speakers . Also, has just been added as a speaker. Many of you may know him as the head designer and creative director for . Très fantaisie, vous ne pensez pas? They have a number of other surprises in store for those attending as well. I can promise you that it is going to be a great event. Already over 3,000 participants from 60 different countries have registered and that number is continuing to grow, but not for long. I was just informed that tickets are almost sold out. Lucky for all of you, we have one of the last tickets to give away and we’re giving it away for free. If you are feeling lucky and want to go to LeWeb’11 from December 7th – 9th in Paris, all you have to do is follow the steps below. 1) 2) – Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TechCrunch hashtag)
– Leave us a comment below telling us why you want to go The contest starts and ends Friday, December 2nd, at 7:30pm PT. Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will choose at random and contact the winner on Friday with more details. Anyone in the world is eligible. Please understand this giveaway is for the ticket only and does not include airfare or hotel. Bonne chance à tous! |
Examination Of Privacy Policies Shows A Few Troubling Trends | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | A superficial comparison of privacy policies around the web by privacy service company has produced a few interesting statistics. Of course the most interesting bits are usually buried deep in the agreements and authorize things like the use of your child’s likeness for doll faces. Nothing sinister like that was discovered, but the standout stats should cause a bit of head-shaking. Only 2% of sites have a mobile-optimized privacy policy, for instance. There are surely separate considerations to be made when, say, location data can be determined from your access point or IP, or separate protections that need to be acknowledged because your data may not be as secured. Granted, many of these sites will be making such changes through native apps instead of mobile web apps, but still, 2% is probably a number that should be raised. 7% of sites explain how long they store your data for (and presumably what data is stored), and 32% tell you how to go about deleting your account and data for good. This information is probably available on request, but it seems to be a natural fit for entry into the privacy policy. Just as apps must declare what data they need access to (Carrier IQ excepted, of course) on Android, shouldn’t websites declare what data they’ll access, record, store locally, and so on? And of course there’s the length of the policies, which like the average EULA exceeds the attention span of the average internet-goer by orders of magnitude. TRUSTe found the average length was 2464 words. That’s 200 words longer than , though to be fair the privacy policies are probably a lot more fun to read. It’s not a new or original suggestion, but we really do need to take these enormous documents and reduce them to something intelligible to the average user. An analogous real-world situation, say a building that had a 2500-word behavior policy posted in small type near the door, wouldn’t stand up in court, though of course people are expected to adhere to simple posted regulations like “No Smoking” or “Employees must wash hands before leaving restroom.” Can a privacy policy or EULA really be boiled down to that size? Some do already, of course. I’ve seen policies as short as a few sentences. Hopefully we will see some precedents set over the next few years that discourage the impenetrable documents we sign so frequently and ensure a standard level of legibility. |
More Than One Million Listings A Week Are Now Made Through eBay Mobile | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | It’s no secret that eBay is in a big way. Especially during this holiday shopping season, the e-commerce giant is seeing . And today, eBay is announcing that more than 1 million listings are now made every week through eBay mobile. That means that now more than ever, eBay’s marketplace sellers are uploading items they want to sell via mobile devices. Last year, eBay its buying and selling iPhone apps, allowing seller to quickly take photos of items and post them on eBay from the same app that buyers browser items on. eBay is also publishing a new video series, called s, which will feature families who turned to eBay to make money in tough economic situations. |
Index Ventures forth, bridging Silicon Valley with Silicon Roundabout | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | Index Ventures is commonly regarded as once of the three “Big Cat” VCs stalking tech companies, in a pan-European sense out of London, alongside Accel Partners and Balderton Capital among others. I sat down with three of its key players today – Saul Klein, Robin Klein and Bernard Dallé – to tease out where they are right now and where they plan to head. This month it a €500 million growth fund (roughly $700 million), its second such fund meant for later-stage investments. It pipe-line to deals is now impressive. At the early stage it has its investment (alongside 30+ other investors) in Seedcamp, it has Index Seed (headed by Robin Klein), then it’s main fund and now a substantial growth fund. Although The Accelerator Group (created originally by father and son duo Robin Klein and Saul Klein) still has a live portfolio, in practice “all new deals are done with Index Seed”, Robin Klein says. The new growth fund will invest anything from €10 million to €50 million in ventures with proven business and revenue models located around the globe, but primarily companies based in Europe or U.S.. In fact, Index Ventures actually led Dropbox’s recent, high-profile $250 million round of financing. Arguably speaking, Index has hit it out of the park in terms of its investment strategy in the last few years. It moved faster than most VCs into the early stage startup investing sector and was a prime mover behind European startup accelerator Seedcamp. It’s also had big wins in the form of Betfair (floated on the LSE), Last.fm (exited to CBS), Lovefilm (Amazon), Playfish (EA), Net-a-Porter (Richemont) and Skype (eBay), Lovefilm (Amazon). And it’s backing the ‘newer’ companies like Groupspaces, Lanyrd, Lightbox, and recently LevelBusiness. Outside of the UK it is an investor in SoundCloud (in Germany) Adyen (The Netherlands, Ozon (Russia), Privalia (Spain) and Erply (Estonia) among others. So why sit down with TechCrunch now, I asked? Were they worried other VCs were getting press and they weren’t, I joked? “We’re not worried about not getting press!” says Saul Klein. “We’d be more worried if VCs weren’t getting any at all.” Klein admits there is a perception of VC doing the rounds in Europe that they are not up to par. This follows recent controversy around posts such as by Fred Destin of Atlas ventures, and European VCs being branded by the likes of Nick Halstead of Datasift. Saul Klein says if there is a failing it’s that European VCs are either not spending enough time “telling their story” and setting out their shop for entrepreneurs, or – on the other hand – that the media are paying too much attention to the high profile bloggers and Twitterers (he admits, like himself on ) rather than the VC partners who don’t blog or tweet. Saul Klein is not stranger to PR, having . Personally, I see his point, but what European entrepreneurs tell me all the time is that they prefer the noisy VCs to the quiet ones – at least they “sound” enthusiastic about startups. It’s in part why the likes of Dave McClure of 500 startups seem to ge so much attention when they are visiting Europe – at least they throw you some feedback. Time and again I hear from European entrepreneurs that they don’t get enough feedback, and not enough direct, fast “yeses” or “noes” to their pitches about funding. Whatever the case, Index has set a good pace. It’s invested over £185m in over 40 startups in the last ten years, creating – they say – over 5,000 new jobs and close to £1.5bn in new annual revenues. And that’s potential tax revenue the UK government would be pretty glad of right now. Doubling down on London as a base from which to invest appears to have paid off. While Index – alongside most VCs – seems to have a partner on a plane almost constantly, it’s London which has acted as the bedrock of its strategy. In terms of seed investment, Index has put in £26m in 15 London companies over the last decade. These include Moo, Moshi Monsters, PeoplePerHour, Seedcamp, Songkick and Stylelistpick – many of those have other co-investors of course. It’s also participated in Funding Circle, Glasses Direct, Housetrip and One Fine Stay, to name a few others. But out of the total 200 or so deals it’s done since 2002, says Saul Klien, around 40 have been in London, many of them ‘multi-stage (so from seed and follow-on funding). Index started in Geneva with Neil Rimer, David rimer and Giuseppe Zocco, while Danny Rimer (yes, three brothers) joined in 2002 to open the London office. But it’s celebrating it’s 10th anniversary in London next year and it would seem the international profile of its partners – variously American, Czech, French, Italian, South African, Swiss, Swedish and British – suits their London base, which is now an international city (about a third of people in London are not from London, according to the latest figures). London’s heady mix of creative, commercial, financial, media industries seems to be helping both startups and investors attract the talent for the next global companies like Badoo, Moneybookers, Spotify and Wonga. Indeed, the emergence of the ‘Silicon Roundabout’ cluster of tech companies is in part down to Index Ventures, which initially backed . It was Moo founder Richard Moross who convinced an – at first – bemused Index to allow him to get a much larger office than he needed, thus renting out desks to future companies including Dopplr (exited to Nokia) and Tweetdeck (acquired by Twitter), and Groupspaces. Today Index now has a satellite office in Moo’s building in Scrutton St, Shoreditch. Another Index portfolio company, Songkick, has since created the SiliconMilkRoundabout hiring festival, attracting over 1,500 developers in one day), something which has been a big boon to the area’s tech companies. That said, the tech scene in Europe does seem to be becoming “bi-polar” as Dallé puts it to me. “There seems to be an axis developing between London and Berlin across Europe.” And he points to the close relationships between Swedish entrepreneurs setting up in Berlin (Soundcloud and ReadMill both have Swedish founders) and London (TripBirds is in Stockholm but backed by Index – who led the investment with London-based Passion Capital). Does that mean Index is poised to open a Berlin office, I ask? “I don’t see us creating an office in Berlin when we have a partner there probably twice a month anyway,” says Dallé. “But it’s not inconceivable.” Saul Klein points out that it’s in the “DNA” of Index, founded as ti was in sleepy Geneva, to get out of the office anyway so having another office in Europe is not as important as it’s recent footprint office in Silicon Valley, enabling more bridging to take place with the Valley. Turning to the growth fund Index has announced, Dallé said that “Series B and growth funding is not necessarily ‘the next investing phase’.” “But,” he added, “it is a rich opportunity.” Saul Klien pointed out that there are those that say “2012 is going to be like 2008” – referring to the famous statements by some US VCs at the time that the money was going to dry up. However, “there are natural life cycles to startup investing and the economics mean that every pound put into 6 out of 10 startups will return less than the pound put in. It’s the putters that make the returns.” So what does Index invest in? “We tend to look at themes, not sectors. So marketplaces, cloud, music, fashion, financial services etc,” says Saul Klein. Part of how Index operates is via making the management teams at its startups share knowledge, particularly amongst CTOs in terms of best practice. It’s not unheard of at other VCs, but Index seems to think it has a unique approach with this culture. As backers of many startups in the East London area, what do they think about the UK government’s “Tech City” initiative? “We love it! It’s great. In fact we’ve ben trying to do the same thing for ten years [creating a tech cluster] and now it’s been down for us!” Robin Klein tells me. That’s probably the most enthusiastic response I’ve yet heard from a VC about the area, and interestingly from one deeply involved in many of the startups in East London. And with 10 years of startup investing under its belt, particularly out of London, it seems like the Index juggernaut is not about to lose pace any time soon. |
null | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 11 | 9 | null |
YouTube Analytics Slakes Your Thirst For Your Channel’s Viewing Stats | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | YouTube has upgraded its viewer demographics and video tracking tools and changed the name from Insight to Analytics. The changes should be rolling out to “everyone with a modern browser” today, though you can still access Insight if you want to do a little comparison of capabilities. The changes are non-destructive; some existing features have been tweaked and expanded, and there are a few new tools that could help the struggling YouTube-jockey pull in more views and better understand their viewers. The look has been overhauled to give the stats a little more space around them, and the amount of simple clickable text is removed. The layout has been mixed up somewhat and some crucial social stats (likes, comments, net subscriber change) are front and center. Search has also been made more obvious and some drilldown controls are placed prominently. All the usual reports supposedly now have more detailed information, perhaps only of interest to stat hounds, but appreciated nonetheless. The audience retention measure looks like a handy tool: Comparing to other videos of the same length seems ridiculous (this was the retention tool from Insight), but seeing the points of the video at which people stopped watching, or had their attention grabbed, is certainly handy. Is the intro sequence too long? Did that lull in the conversation kill viewship? Good info here for people looking to tweak their content. A few more details and links are available , and if you’re logged in should take you to the new stats page. |
Classic Gaming Mag And Site GamePro Buys The Farm | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | Gamers of the 8- and 16-bit generation will fondly remember GamePro, one of the leading publications covering and reviewing the growing games market during the console salad days of the 90s. But like so many publications before it, and surely many to come, the modern age was too much for it. Even after shifting to quarterly publication and focusing on an online presence, the venerable magazine is finally . Owner IDG has confirmed that ad revenue wasn’t enough and the whole operation is being rolled up, complete with layoffs. The brand will remain, both as a games-focused subsite at PCWorld and as a custom content publisher for events and such, known as GamePro Custom Solutions. So they may yet have a modest future as a trade show and private print producer. They put up a valiant fight and tried to change with the times, which is more than can be said of some “legacy” publications, but times are tough and that’s that. As a former GamePro reader and colleague in the business, I wish the company and employees all the best. |
Facebook Ups Character Limit to 60,000, Google+’s Is Still Bigger | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | There’s a pissing contest going on. Google+ launched saying it has no character limit, though my tests show it stops publishing at 100,000. Surely unrelated, Facebook upped its limit from 500 to 5,000 in September, and . That’s 1/9th the length of a novel. This gives users the flexibility to write full-fledged blog posts or even longer content. However, I suspect that Facebook was also trying to neutralize one more selling point of its competitor. I tested the character limits of both Facebook and Google+ today. If you try to publish any more than 63,206 characters on Facebook, it tells you “Status Update Too Long” and asks if you want to publish that text as a Note instead. That’s a pretty graceful move, actually. Wanna guess how it chose 63,206? Facebook engineer wrote, “I set the exact limit to something nerdy. Facebook … Face Boo K … hex(FACE) – K … 64206 – 1000 = 63206 :-)”, in response to VP of Engineering Mike Schroepfer’s post of the announcement. Google+ was less transparent. It wouldn’t publish anything over 100,000 characters, giving me the excuse that “There was a problem saving your post. Please try again.” So much for an infinite limit. Facebook’s enormous user base means people are using it in all sorts of ways. Maybe someone out there wanted to publish wordy blog posts or whole chapters of their book in installments. Both Google+ and Facebook thankfully curtail epic status updates with “Expand this post” and “Continue reading” links respectively. Still, a 60,000 character Facebook post is probably never going to be read in the tiny width of the news feed, and Notes are better place for them. That’s why I think this is another move by Facebook to whittle away Google+’s quantitative advantages. Facebook has been aggressively launching features found in Google+ since its competitor launched. In-line privacy controls, asymmetrical subscribe, better public posting capabilities, improved Friend Lists, and video chat are just a few examples. Facebook wants people comparing the user counts, time-on-site, and social graph density of the two services — things where it’s the clear front-runner. It doesn’t want people citing things Facebook doesn’t have, even if they’re unnecessary. Like 60,000 character status updates. |
Android Smartphone Round-Up: November Edition | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | Changing Leaves. Black Friday. And Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. These are the cornerstones of the month of November. Releasing new phones, however, is not. Unfortunately, this means that our Android Smartphone Round-Up for November is a bit lean, but we’ve still managed to pick out a few handsets worth your valuable consideration. Without further ado, these are our favorite November releases of the Gingerbread (2.3) persuasion: The Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket (AT&T), the HTC Rezound (Verizon), and the Samsung Captivate Glide (AT&T). They range between a solid $300 to a cool $149 (all with a two-year agreement, of course), and each has its claim to fame. Onward! The HTC Rezound is certainly a powerful little beast, but you can tell it’s already started packing on the pounds for winter (that joke was reaching at best, forgive me). It’s more than half an inch thick, and it feels that way at 6oz. It does have a nice textured finish on the back for extra grip, and seems to pull from the Droid Incredible 2 design style. Under the hood, things get way more impressive: the combination of that dual-core 1.5GHz processor and Verizon’s LTE is pretty unbeatable. It’s super responsive, and you can’t help but fall in love with its 4.3-inch 720p display. Beats integration doesn’t change my entire perspective on audio or anything, but the included set of Beats ear buds is definitely a plus. The Rezound is available now for $299 on-contract.
I won’t be shy about how much I like the Samsung Galaxy S II, and the Skyrocket merely adds faster speeds. It packs everything you can ask for out of an Android device, and at a relatively reasonable price. The screen is beautiful, the phone itself is super snappy, and it looks and feels pretty slick. What’s better, AT&T’s 4G support isn’t the only advantage the Skyrocket has over the other Galaxy S II variants. It also upgrades to a 1.5GHz dual-core processor instead of its original 1.2GHz CPU. The Galaxy S II Skyrocket is available now for $249 on-contract. The Captivate Glide is a nice marriage between the Samsung Galaxy S II and a full QWERTY keyboard, however the keyboard itself seems to be “irritatingly flat.” That said, the specs on this guy are pretty great considering its $149 price point, so if you can deal with a somewhat cheap feeling phone (re: plastic), the Glide certainly performs well. It’s what’s on the inside that counts, right? The Samsung Captivate Glide is available now for $149 on-contract.
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Nexus One Gets A Taste Of Ice Cream Sandwich Thanks To CM9 | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | Google may have run out of love for the Nexus One but that doesn’t mean the legions of loyal Android developers have. An intrepid dev named TexasIce on the has managed to get an early build of CyanogenMod 9 up and running on Google’s first Nexus device, and it looks mighty impressive for a work-in-progress. Most of the basics seem to run without a hitch: text input and phone dialing work with a minimum of lag, as does web browsing and poking around in the Android Market. Nearly all of Ice Cream Sandwich’s functionality is present and accounted for, though it isn’t all sunshine and roses. Neither the camera nor USB mass storage work yet, and the lack of hardware acceleration means the build has a tendency to chug when it comes to some of Ice Cream Sandwich’s more impressive animations. Fortunately, TexasIce is working to address the ROM’s issues at a respectable clip: the project only went live a few days ago, and already the 9th alpha build went online earlier today. It’s certainly a work in progress, but I’ve got high hopes for a smooth ride by the time a stable CM9 release sees the light of day. If I may indulge in a little bit of nostalgia, CyanogenMod was one of the first custom ROMs I ever flashed onto a device, and it made my G1 run like butter. Nexus One users who want to join in the fun now can head over to , but newbies (as always) should proceed with caution. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOmc4YH9iYE&w=640&h=360] |
Academia.edu Raises $4.5 Million To Help Researchers Share Their Scholarly Papers | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 11 | 30 | , a social network for researchers, is having a good year. In 2011 it’s tripled its total registered userbase to 800,000, and today it’s announcing some major news that ensures the site will be expanding well into the future: it’s just raised $4.5 million in a funding round led by Spark Capital, with participation from True Ventures. This is the company’s second round of funding, after a $2.2 million round in late 2009 (the investors from that round participated in this one as well). Academia.edu can be thought of as a social network for academics, in that it allows them to forge connections and follow updates around their field, but it has another benefit: it gives them a powerful, efficient way to distribute their research. Unlike, say, a personal website, which probably won’t have much in the way of analytics or search engine optimization, Academia.edu will let researchers keep tabs on how many people are reading their articles with specialized analytics tools, and it also does very well in Google search results. Academics are uploading 2,500 articles to the site each day, and, as a result, the site is now drawing some 3 million unique visitors, many of whom are arriving at the site’s articles via Google. Founder Richard Price (whose Academia profile you can check out ) says that aside from getting an increasing amount of traction with researchers, the site is also benefitting from a recent movement among universities and researchers that’s referred to as ‘ ‘. If you’ve ever tried looking up scholarly papers online, you’ve likely encountered one of the many paywalls put up by the journals those papers were published in. Access to these papers can be expensive, depending on the journal — in some cases prohibitively so. In short, the information is fragmented and doesn’t flow freely. Recently some scientists have begun to combat this by deeming their papers ‘open access’, thereby making them publicly accessible for free. Princeton now requires researchers to get a if they want to assign all copyright to a journal; MIT and Harvard have both enacted open access policies as well. Many researchers believe that this open access will help streamline the research itself, allowing for faster innovation. Academia.edu benefits from this movement because it means that researchers are free to share papers amongst themselves on the site. Price says that Academia.edu is already the largest platform for sharing these research articles, and the company looks to help foster this trend going forward. |
Walmart Goes Mobile With New Apps For iPhone & iPad | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 11 | 8 | Walmart is launching an updated iPhone application and a new iPad app, in an effort to better connect customers’ offline and online shopping experiences. The iPhone app in particular brings a number of new features, including voice-enabled shopping list creation, barcode scanning and integrated manufacturers’ coupons, while the iPad app offers the ability to find items both online and at the local store. The are among the first products to ship from @WalmartLabs, the recently formed group in Walmart’s Global eCommerce unit, which arose from the retailer’s of social media startup Kosmix earlier this year. The group is also behind Walmart’s new social shopping Facebook app, , which will recommend gifts for friends based on their Facebook activity. Although social integration is not present in the new apps just yet (that’s coming, though), they do offer some cool tricks of their own. For example, you can talk to your iPhone to build your shopping list, without having to pause or speak each item individually. That means you can say all in one breath, and the app knows to separate each item onto its own line. The speech component, like that found on the new iPhone 4S, is powered by Nuance. However, in this case, it’s baked into the app natively, allowing for backward compatibility with all existing models of iPhone. Shopping lists can also be updated manually or via barcode scanning, similar to other shopping list applications already available in iTunes. But unlike many of those apps, Walmart’s app will include the pricing information and a running total in real-time as the lists are built. Another useful feature for Walmart’s budget-conscious shoppers is the customized integration with Coupons.com. As you add items to your list, you’re able to immediately “clip” the associated coupon, if one is available. Coupons.com has its own app in the iTunes App Store, but it will not be integrated with Walmart’s, we’re told. When complete, the shopping list can be emailed to family and friends. A final notable feature in the updated iPhone app is the item finder, now in beta. This displays the in-store aisle location of each item in your local store. In the future, Walmart plans to build on top of this feature in order to sort your shopping lists and map out your path through the store for increased efficiency and speedier shopping. The newly launched iPad app, offers many of the same features as found on the iPhone, but expands upon the inventory checking functionality to include access Walmart.com inventory as well as local inventory. Both apps provide access to product information details, including customer ratings and reviews. As for Amazon, Walmart’s main online competitor, Gibu Thomas, Walmart’s Senior VP of Mobile and Digital would only comment that Walmart now has 3,800 stores in the U.S. and sees “Internet-scale” traffic in its brick-and-mortar locations every week, during which time 140 million people shop in its stores. Although he wouldn’t draw a direct comparison with Walmart’s efforts and Amazon’s, the increasingly integrated experiences of online, offline, mobile, and soon social, will clearly play an important role in Walmart’s competitive strategies in the months ahead, potentially turning the retailer’s foot traffic into online customers. |
Stroll Down Memory Lane With These Vintage PC Ads | John Biggs | 2,011 | 11 | 8 | I don’t usually link to huge collections of images focused on one theme unless I’m sending examples of potential frost maiden outfits to my LARP clan. However, this is too good to pass up: featuring some of the iconic images of my childhood, the equivalent of faded old Playboy page (it was an interview with Norman Mailer) you tore out and hid in a copy of Hoyle’s Rules Of Games and suddenly rediscovered years later while you’re at home cleaning out your old closet (true story). It produces, in short, an admixture of frisson and nostalgia that geeks love. The images include Think Different ads from Apple along with some highbrow commentary on Bill Clinton and some amazing VGA graphics. I always loved mid 1980s PC design, especially the Frog-esque HP below with its bold horizontal lines and futuristic airbrushing that is supposed to signal “high tech” but really screams “underemployed matte painter fired from the set of ” You can check out all of the ads . [slideshow] |
Kickstart The Next Angry Birds: Pota-Toss, With Gorgeous GPS-Based Levels | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 11 | 8 | Let me introduce you to , a gorgeous potato tossing artillery game currently seeking Kickstarter funding for development. It’s like Scorched Earth, or Angry Birds but where you aim at the bases of human opponents instead of computer pigs. What makes Pota-Toss special is that the beautifully drawn levels correspond to the GPS-location and local time of the players. If it’s 6pm and I’m playing from New York, I’ll play in front of the NYC skyline at sunset. on Friday, where the Costa Rican developer Saborstudio is looking for a lean $7,000 to finish production of an iOS version. With gorgeous level art, goofy characters, a proven physics-based game concept, and a sprinkling of innovation, I think Pota-Toss could be a hit. [ : Pota-Toss has reached its Kickstarter goal. Saborstudios should consider continuing to raise funding as it will need top notch engineering talent to get the game to market.] The developers seem to think so too because they’re not looking for venture capital yet. I’d imagine they want to get into the App Store and gain some traction before giving away too much equity at too low a valuation. Instead, big backers of their Kickstarter will get a piece of potato ammo with their name and face, or their own logo on one of the game’s backdrops. The funding will go towards legal fees, licenses, development and testing equipment, and manpower. A bit more on the premise of Pota-Toss (pronounced Po Tay Toss). Players can compete with friends on the same device or any opponent over the internet. They take turns flinging, rather than slingshotting, potatoes with different characteristics in an attempt to hit their opponent’s base. The game’s creator Phillip Casorla Sagot tells me he was originally inspired because “There’s a lack of simple head-to-head mobile games.” Saborstudio aims to launch Pota-toss with over 200 levels featuring obstacles corresponding to different locations around the world, and they plan to release more levels for better coverage of the world’s varying terrain in monthly updates. If two distant players are competing, their level will be split down the middle between the different local times and terrains. The graphical style is rich and textured, with a combination of water colors and paper cut-outs that I can see myself happy to gaze at while waiting for a friend to shoot. There are certainly some issues despite the basic premise seeming awesome. Even with the option to compete against someone next to you, requiring a human opponent can cause delays and limit how people play. A solid single player mode would be advised. Also, the developers will have to find a way to equalize the difficulty of different terrains so someone who lives near the Grand Canyon isn’t unbeatable because they’re protected by a cliff. The potatoes themselves already look kinda cute and goofy, though they still might not be quite as franchise-worthy as the cast of Angry Birds. Monetization strategies could include in-app purchases of more powerful potato ammo similar to the Golden Eagle, special defenses for your base, and levels containing popular landmarks. Paid versions could be released for different seasons. I’m imagining the Statue of Liberty covered in snow or triggering a landslide of Easter eggs into my opponent’s base. Judging from their plucky, endearing , the developers already have a good sense of marketing. I’m confident they would have reached their funding goal without this article. But I love the intersection between art and technology, and I love games, and I want to play Pota-Toss soon. |
Cloud Storage Startup CX Hires Former RIM CMO; Rolls Out Collaboration Suite, Free Storage | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 8 | Back in July, a new cloud computing and productivity platform called CX.com , bringing the startup’s total funding to $10 million. This is pretty impressive considering the company largely has been flying under the radar since its launch earlier this year. But is now officially ready to share the official news of their production release, a platform that enables users to backup, synchronize, share, and manage their data in the cloud — from any device to any device. This includes the ability to sync new, changed, offline or deleted files to all connected computers, maintaining a history for all of your devices as you make changes. What’s more, users can take advantage of realtime backup, synchronized file sharing among groups, across multiple platforms, including desktops, laptops, netbooks, and mobile devices. CX’s CEO Brad Robertson tells us that, through offering a 10 GB account for free, the company isn’t just trying to launch a lame marketing tactic to entice users, the company wants to make a bolder statement about the industry: That storage and sharing companies don’t have to set a low limit in which users will quickly hit their quote and be forced to pay. So, CX is giving away 10 GB for free and is only deducting storage space from the group creator, not every single user that the person shares with, nor does it include the size of their unlimited file revisions from their users’ quota. Free services are available for up to three groups, and users receive 10 GB of free storage. For $10 a month, customers can create 10 groups with unlimited group size and take advantage of realtime notifications, with 50 GB of storage. At $20 a month, groups are unlimited, and storage is at 100 GBs. By being transparents about how much they charge and by offering a realtime collaboration and social graph infrastructure, CX aims to become more than a storage commodity, but a platform that enables users to discover, search, and find their content in realtime. The new production release also offers all customers groups, even free users, with the capability to add up to 1 million members per group. The company also has a realtime notifications suite and collaboration feature set in limited beta that looks to be launched by the end of the year. Along with its production release, CX is also announcing that it has added Keith Pardy to its management team. Pardy was the former CMO at RIM, and has previously worked at Coke as well as Nokia. Will Lowry, Chief Product Designer and architect. CX’s new platform is available with apps for the Web, Mac, PC, iPad, and iPhone, with Android and BlackBerry releases coming before the holidays. |
Developers and designers encouraged to join Hackathon for Children in Need | vaughn597 | 2,011 | 11 | 8 |
A 48-hour Hackathon this weekend will bring web and app based games to life in aid for – and if you’re an iOS and Android developer or graphic designer, you can lend a hand. The project is due to take place at (BSPA) and hopefully result in lots of creative games to be submitted for sale in the Apple Store and Android Market Place. Ideas for the games were submitted by primary school kids across the West Midlands who were asked to sketch plots and characters they’d like to see come to life. Three of those ideas will be selected this week and the children behind them are invited to come along to the event and see them become a reality. The Hackathon was organised by , an investment programme designed to intensively mentor super-early stage startups in a 13-week long course. Teams currently participating in the programme will spend the weekend coding away for the cause, but the organisers are hoping for more young (and old) talent to join them in Birmingham. Said Oxygen Accelerator founder Mark Hales, “This Hackathon is about inspiring the young designers and developers of the future, while raising money for a hugely worthwhile cause. We have our fantastic teams at the ready, but are seeking extra support from anyone who thinks they can help us produce the best possible games in just 48-hours.” If you want to be coding for a cause this weekend or would like to get involved otherwise you can find more information . |
Steve’s Last Laugh: Adobe Killing Off Flash For Mobile Devices | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 11 | 8 | The year was 2008. I was at an event focused on mobile, sitting in on a roundtable discussion with several folks from key companies in the industry. One gentleman was from Adobe. The iPhone had launched the previous year, famously without any support for Flash. A lot of folks were up in arms about this — including several at this table. The guy from Adobe assured everyone: mobile Flash would be coming soon. And it was going to be wonderful. The notion that Apple wouldn’t include it on the iPhone because of performance issues was pure hogwash. The same thing was said in 2009. The same thing was said in 2010. The same thing was still being said in 2011. So you’ll forgive me when I snicker a bit at the news tonight that Adobe plans to cease development of their Flash player for mobile devices. , and it’s a doozy. Here’s the apparent forthcoming announcement from Adobe on the matter: Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates. This announcement, along with talk of a focus on HTML5, should be out in the next day or so, according to Perlow. Yes, Adobe is ending their efforts to get Flash onto mobile devices. But again, that’s odd, since all we’ve heard out of the company for the past 3+ years was either how mobile Flash was coming, or how it was just about to be perfected. While it did finally come — — it was far from perfect. That’s putting it nicely. Put less nicely, it sucked. The technology on mobile devices was never ready for primetime. As Harry McCracken put it this past February: . In that post, McCracken noted that Motorola was touting full Flash support as a big selling point of their then-new Xoom tablet. But there was an asterisk. Flash would not ship with the device itself. It would come later. It would always come later. Things got really heated in April 2010, when Steve Jobs took to Apple’s website to write a missive against Flash. Simply titled, , Jobs destroyed the technology . Perhaps most damning were his thoughts on mobile Flash in particular. The key parts: This letter prompted an ill-advised advertising campaign (which they ran all over the web, even on TechCrunch) by Adobe in which they proclaimed: “We Love Apple”. It was transparent and lame. Worse, it was just about the weakest response possible. Adobe didn’t address any of the issues Jobs brought up. They tried to be cute. They brought an advertisement to a gun fight, . When pressed, Adobe would only call Jobs’ dismissing of Flash “ “. And they would continue to that the technology would soon be perfected. Better, Adobe’s platform evangelist summed up his feelings with: “ “. It’s sad that Jobs is no longer with us to see this day. But the truth is that he probably didn’t need to see it — he knew he was right. In his post, he outlined the need for a move towards technologies like HTML5, and now that’s exactly where Adobe is heading. Steve gets the last laugh. |
AOL, Yahoo, And Microsoft Band Together To Fend Off Facebook’s Ad Assault | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 11 | 8 | There have been a number of rumors circulating around Yahoo, Microsoft, and Aol of late, most of them focusing on a potential Aol/Yahoo merger, or Yahoo’s acquisition by Aol or Microsoft, etc. Well, it seems the companies have officially become linked, but they’ve run into each other’s arms not by way of M&A, but by way of display ads. Yes, the three internet behemoths today announced agreements that they hope will improve the process of buying and selling premium online display inventory. In other words, the agreements will allow each to offer the other’s display ads to their respective customers. With agencies and advertisers now able to pick and choose between Yahoo’s Network Plus, Aol’s Advertising.com and Microsoft’s Media network, each of which has different strengths in data, optimization, packaging, etc., this strategic partnership creates somewhat of a mega ad network. Online advertising is all about scale, and with this threefold growth in inventory, the three companies are looking to more quickly achieve the scale that is far more difficult to reach alone. While the companies hope that this agreement will drive better returns for their customers ( ), it remains to be seen just how “premium” the partnership’s ads will be. Premium ad inventories are inherently a product of scarcity, which seems to be a bit at odds with the scale/network approach the companies are taking, where nobody really knows what they’re selling. What’s more, while this may improve the process of buying and selling online display inventory, it’s also a play to fend off the meteoric rise of Facebook (and, in turn, Google, which owns a 75 percent share of search advertising). Really, everyone is spending more time on Facebook, what with their measly 800 million users, and advertisers are following them there. To that point, Facebook now accounts for one out of every three ad impressions in the U.S. Up until now, no other web property in the U.S. really comes close. ( .) Thanks to the tables below from , we see that Facebook leads the way in net display revenues in the U.S. with over $2 billion this year. Yahoo comes in second, with Microsoft and Aol far behind Google in third and fourth. The same ranking is true for share of the online display ad market, with Facebook holding 16 percent over Yahoo’s 13 percent — and eMarketer expects both Google and Facebook’s share to increase significantly next year to 19 percent and 12 percent, putting Google neck-and-neck with Yahoo. What’s more, in terms of growth in online display advertising, Facebook saw a 66 percent increase this year, far outpacing the rest of the pack. I’ll hold off there, because you probably get the picture. Yahoo has the biggest ad network in terms of revenues and marketshare of this new ad trifecta, which certainly makes this an advantageous partnership for Microsoft and Aol, at least from this perspective. But, in the end, at least for the foreseeable future, it’s hard to see this as anything but a bandaid. Facebook’s growth in display advertising isn’t slowing down any time soon. |
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