Friday, September 25, 2009

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How Should RIM React to Increased Competition From Apple, Palm? Top
Poor RIM. One or two analysts lower your stock rating from "buy" to "neutral" (or the equivalent), and then your stock drops some 16 percent. You know who to blame, too: it's those busybodies at Apple and Palm, what with their iPhones and Palm Pres eating into your bottom line. (Never mind that your own "iPhone killer" was sorta meh.) What is RIM to do? TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Pandora: From Near-Death to Profitability in a Year Top
I've always liked how outspoken Tim Westergren of Pandora is. He's not one of those all-too-common founders who puffs up his chest and gives rationalizations for why everything is great even as user numbers are sliding or a competitor is stealing momentum. When his company is in trouble—which Pandora was for most of its life—he'll tell you in excruciating detail, even down to ugly employee lawsuits. And that's worked to Pandora's advantage. Westergren did such a good job of warning the site's rabid fans that the RIAA may be running it out of business that those fans actually broke fax machines on Capitol Hill with complaints. Westergren gets what a lot of entrepreneurs don't: It's about survival, not ego. That's especially true when you're an online music company. Of course, today Pandora is sitting pretty thanks to a hard work and a serendipitous one-two-three punch. Punch one: The iPhone app, which changed the nature of Internet radio by making it mobile. Punch two: A nice $35 million round of funding from top investors. Punch three: Finally a reasonable settlement from the RIAA. Pandora has 35 million registered users (double what it had last year), it's bringing in some $40 million in revenues and should be profitable by the end of the year, said Westergren on NBC's Press:Here. (The show airs Sunday, but you can watch it online now.) Most interesting were Westergren's comments about advertising. As you can see in the clip below, the show's host, Scott McGrew, and my co-panelist, NPR's Laura Sydell, claim to be huge Pandora fans but couldn't seem to remember hearing many ads. Said Westergren: That means we're doing it right. He said when he talks to Pandora users they always say they don't hear many ads, and they don't think they interact with the site much. In reality, users are hearing a good number of ads and most go to the site six times per hour to thumb up and down ads, where they get served another visual ad. “[Users] are always shocked to hear the actual data,” he said after the taping. “I think it’s because the interaction doesn’t feel like work. It’s a natural instinct tied to the ability to affect the listening, and it’s rewarding.” He added that click-through rates are way above industry average, which he credits to knowing each user’s taste so well. Depending on the product it can be ten times greater than the industry average. Pandora also has more creative ways of advertising. Westergren also talked off camera about a recent gig in LA for Aimee Mann. Pandora sent an email to users in driving distance of the club that it knew loved her music and the venue quickly filled up. "Can we do this every night?" the club owner panted. Pandora didn’t charge the club anything for this, but there’s clear opportunity to do so. This kind of promotion plays directly to Pandora's strengths especially now that it's on iPhones, Palm Pre and Android . While people gush today about Spotify's ability to play your music on any device and its a beautiful UI, Pandora's offering has always been about discovery. The heart of it is the "Music Genome Project," which analyzes why you like a song and gives recommendations based on the song's inherent characteristics, not what other people who liked that song also enjoy. If it can translate that to the physical world of gigs, it could do for venue owners and artists what Travelocity and Expedia first did for airlines—fill empty seats that are worthless once a gig is over. That's not only an "ad" that has value, it's one that actually uses the unique interactive elements of the mobile Web. “This is the part of Pandora’s future that I’m most excited about,” Westergren said. “I wish they had this when I was in a band!” Pandora may just be hitting on that much-talked-about but mostly elusive online advertising Holy Grail: Ads that users actually want. If they pull it off, and avoid the far-too-crowded online music graveyard, Pandora will be a textbook case for why execution matters more than vision in tech. CrunchBase Information Pandora Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Google Hits Back At AT&T Over New Google Voice FCC Complaint Top
Earlier today news broke that AT&T had filed a letter with the FCC asserting that Google is violating net neutrality principles with Google Voice by preventing users from calling certain numbers. Google has wasted no time in posting a response to its Public Policy Blog to defend itself against the accusations. For those who missed the initial letter: AT&T has long had to deal with local phone carriers who charge exorbitant prices to long-distance companies to connect their calls. These local carriers are further exploiting the system by partnering with phone sex operators and similar services to maximize the number of calls to these high-priced numbers. AT&T has tried to restrict such calls but was barred from doing so, and it’s angry that Google Voice — which does restrict calls to some of these pornographic numbers to save money — is getting away with it. Google’s response outlines AT&T’s concerns over the local operator abuses and actually says that it too believes the current carrier compensation system is “badly flawed.” But then it goes on to say that none of this should apply to Google Voice, because it’s not a phone service. Google writes that AT&T has tried to “blur the distinction between Google Voice and traditional phone service”, then offers the following bullets as evidence for why they are different: Unlike traditional carriers, Google Voice is a free, Web-based software application, and so not subject to common carrier laws. Google Voice is not intended to be a replacement for traditional phone service — in fact, you need an existing land or wireless line in order to use it. Importantly, users are still able to make outbound calls on any other phone device. Google Voice is currently invitation-only, serving a limited number of users. Finally, Google closes out the letter by saying: “The FCC’s open Internet principles apply only to the behavior of broadband carriers — not the creators of Web-based software applications. Even though the FCC does not have jurisdiction over how software applications function, AT&T apparently wants to use the regulatory process to undermine Web-based competition and innovation.” So who is right? Google may well be correct in its interpretation of the current open Internet principles, and given AT&T’s history of fighting against net neutrality it’s hard not to take its arguments for it with a nice big grain of salt. That said, the notion that a call traveling directly over carrier lines should be treated differently than those that go though software applications seems to be a distinction that is quickly blurring. And from the consumer’s perspective, having some phone services that can call any number and others that come with restrictions seems like a setup that’s ripe for confusion. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Measy Helps You Pick Gadgets With A Quiz (Private Beta Invites) Top
Picking out the right gadget to buy is so difficult that an entire publishing industry (Cnet, Engagdet, CrunchGear, GDGT) has grown around helping people sort through the process.  A new site in private beta called Measy is taking a different approach.  You take a quiz answering questions about what you are looking for in a digital camera, flat-screen TV, or netbook, and it comes up with the gadgets that match your requirements. We have invites for the first 200 people who redeem them here with the promotion code “techcrunchfriends.” Measy’s CEO Ian Manheimer is the creator of Glassbooth , a site which helped voters pick candidates based on taking a quiz about their political views and then matching those up with candidates’ positions. Measy takes a similar approach to helping people make decisions about what gadgets they should buy. Visitors set their budget and answer questions, pick brand preferences, and answer questions about what features, specs, and size they are looking for. For instance, the digital camera quiz asks how important is brand, picture quality, recording videos. The HDTV quiz asks about viewing angles and sound quality. After you answer all the questions, it presents you with the single best match, and you can also browse other close matches. (Contrast this to the crowdsourced wiki approach at GDGT ). While all of this sounds great in theory, the truth is that there are always a couple of factors that are more important than others to any given consumer. Measy seems to weight all the factors roughly the same. It is not going to eliminate the research you need to do before you buy your next gadget, but at least it gives you a starting point and helps cut down the overwhelming number of initial choices. When it comes to finding the best digital camera or TV, there never is one right answer, as much as we all wish that there was. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Squidoo Backs Down On 'Brand Campaign' As Many Are 'Not so Happy' About It Top
Squidoo founder and author Seth Godin has backed down on creating company pages by default as part of their new ‘Brands In Public’ service that launched a few days ago. The idea behind the new service is that brands are able to track feedback from customers on a public ‘lense’ (aka. a web page). Feedback is aggregated from multiple sources, but mostly twitter and mostly by matching against the brand name. The concept itself is not an evil one, but Squidoo setup feedback pages for over 200 brands at launch without the express permission from the vast majority of them. The hitch was that if a brand wanted to control the lense and the feedback, they would have to pay Squidoo $400 a month – and it was that part of the deal that made a large number of people rightfully angry. Godin says in a blog post today that they will remove the brands they created by default, and instead make the program opt-in. This is a big step back from yesterday where he left a comment on an excellent blog post by Lisa Barone, who criticized the product as being ‘brandjacking’, by saying : I'm not sure it's brandjacking any more than a Google search or a Twitter search is brandjacking. I guess the difference is that we're making it really easy for the brand to show up next to the stream of comments. Godin has built a reputation, on the back of his books, as being a marketing and community guru. He must have read some of his own work overnight because today on his blog he says the policy has changed to: When a brand wants a page, we’ll build it, they’ll run it and we’ll both have achieved our goals. Godin opens his post today with: The response from the brands we’ve shared it with has been terrific, but other people didn’t like elements of it. And they were direct in letting me know. Well we know he didn’t hear that ‘direct feedback’ using Squidoo’s own ‘Brands in Public’ page , which during the storm yesterday conspiquously didn’t mention a single point of negative feedback about the campaign. Godin also does not have comments enabled on his blog, but the launch of the new Squidoo service just happen to time with the launch of Google Sidewiki – which allows users to leave notes on a website. Many flocked to Sidewiki out of frustration, including SearchEngineLand editor Danny Sullivan , and left constructive and well thought out arguments against ‘Brands In Public’. It is ironic that the ‘customer feedback’ for a product that is meant to aggregate just that all came from other sources such as sidewiki, blog posts, twitter and comments on blogs. We were going to reach out to Godin yesterday, but instead figured we could write this story by aggregating what everybody in the world thinks of Squidoo, and then asking him to pay us $400 to remove the parts he may not agree with. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Chinese iPhone Pricing Revealed: It's The Exact Opposite Of Ours Top
China Unicom, the country's second-largest carrier, will offer the iPhone starting in mid-October. And in pricing that is rather the opposite of the low upfront cost and high monthly pricing at AT&T, they'll be selling the device almost at cost and pairing it with plans that make ours look positively extortionate. Prices will start around $300 for an 8GB iPhone 3G, which seems a bit high until you consider the fact that they'll be paying less than $20 per month for service. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
AT&T Goes After Google Voice, Net Neutrality And Double Standards (Full Letter To FCC) Top
Well this is interesting. Fresh off a wave of good karma following the revelation that it was not behind blocking Google Voice on the iPhone, AT&T appears to be looking to draw the ire of consumers with regards to the service once again. The telco giant has sent a letter (attached below) to the FCC asking them to investigate Google Voice. Yes, you read that right. But this actually goes much deeper than that. Once again , this is about net neutrality. While AT&T may have not blocked Google Voice from being on the iPhone, it clearly does not like the service (no surprise there). From AT&T’s letter: According to Google, non-discrimination ensures that a provider "cannot block fair access" to another provider.9  But that is exactly what Google is doing when it blocks calls that Google Voice customers make to telephone numbers associated with certain local exchange carriers. Yes, AT&T is calling out Google for violating net neutrality principles. Here’s where this gets pretty interesting. AT&T is really upset because they tried to do the same thing a couple years ago. Back in 2007, AT&T and the other telecos were trying to block access to some rural phone customers because the giants felt local carrier fees were too high, WSJ reports . Google has acknowledged that it does block some access, but says that it’s to things like adult voice lines. That’s obviously a big difference, but AT&T is claiming that Google doing exactly what it was banned from doing by the FCC two years ago. From Reuters : AT&T cited media reports that Google Voice was blocking some calls to phone numbers in certain rural areas in order to cut down on expenses. Phone companies are banned from blocking calls. And so now we’re stuck with the rather humorous situation where AT&T is playing the net neutrality card. Of course, what’s hilarious here is that AT&T (and Verizon) just got done saying that net neutrality should not apply to wireless communications mere days ago. AT&T is trying to argue there’s a difference between regular Internet net neutrality and wireless net neutrality, but that’s garbage. More and more, the lines are blurring with the way people access the web. Sure, it used to the case that people used wireless lines only for phone calls and text messages, but the rapid rise of smartphones and other mobile devices that use things like AT&T’s 3G wireless cards have changed everything. Meanwhile Google, a huge proponent of net neutrality, also appears to be going against it in this case. What a mess. Both of these companies need to realize that you can’t be selectively for and against net neutrality. Update : Google has responded on its public policy blog. Basically, they are saying that software should not have to be regulated by net neutrality rules, despite what AT&T says. Interesting, but it seems that Google Voice is going well beyond the range of your typical software. We’ll have more on this shortly. ATT Letter to FCC on Google Voice v7 clean – Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TransFS Launches Comparison Shopping Site For Credit Card Processing Fees Top
Accepting credit cards is crucial for any merchant but the obvious downside of this are the associated credit card processing fees which can amount to significant chunks of change. Usually fees range anywhere between 2 percent and 4 percent. Startup TransFS is hoping to help businesses sort through this issue by offering a comparison shopping website for credit card processing fees. On TransFS, businesses submit information about their transactions including the percentage of online, in-store, mail-order and phone transactions; the merchant’s current credit-card processing fees; and monthly volume of sales and average transaction size. This is all variable information used by processing firms when determining fees for a particular merchant. Once a merchant submit the form, their “auction” will begin. They will be presented with a series of competing bids from credit card processing companies and can review each proposal and select the bid that saves the most money. Bids are presented side by side to help users compare offers more easily and TransFS will also show businesses how much they will save vs. the fees associated with their existing credit card processing service. It’s a fairly simple and transparent process. TransFS says that from the data collected from beta testers, their comparison engine can save businesses and average of 40 percent from their credit card processing. Another comforting feature is that TransFS vets all bidders in the site to make sure the the companies can put the money where their mouth is, so to speak. The engine is completely free to the business or merchant and generates a small revenue from the processors if, and only if, a business chooses a new processor. And TransFS won’t pass on any merchant contact info to the bidders on the site until the business chooses a winning bidder (at which point the site only passes the info on to the winning bidder), assures TransFS’s co-founder and COO Eric Olsen. Olsen says that TransFS will eventually extend its comparison shopping engine functionality to help companies compare employee health insurance fees, payroll processing, and property insurance. TransFS faces competition from lead-gen sites like BuyerZone. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Spotted: Ultimate Apple Fanboy Visits The Mothership Top
People always send in tips about Steve Jobs ‘ Mercedes being spotted (usually parked at some weird angle or in the handicap spot) at Apple HQ in Cupertino, CA. But today we have an even better Apple parking lot tip. Just look at the license plate of the car that was parked at Apple HQ this morning. For those non-religious readers, or those less versed in comedy, I’ll go ahead and spell it out for you. WWSJD stands for What Would Steve Jobs Do? — a take on the popular religious meme WWJD ? which stands for What Would Jesus Do? Yes, this person is directly relating Steve Jobs to Jesus. And yes, they’re at Apple HQ today. Steve Jobs, if you are reading this, you may want to hide in your office. Stalker alert! Or what if this person actually works at Apple? Awkward. Update : Word is that this actually is someone who works at Apple. Again, awkward. CrunchBase Information Apple Steve Jobs Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Ridiculous: Verizon Pays ASCAP $5M Interim License Fee For … Ringtones Top
The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers ( ASCAP ) recently made the ridiculous assertion that cellphone ringtones are to be considered “public performances” of music under the Copyright Act and thus require a license. As Ars Technica eloquently pointed out, the claim is ridiculous because after all one doesn’t need a public performance license to drive around town in a convertible with the radio on. Even the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sided with the defendants in the case (AT&T and Verizon Wireless), called the organization’s claims downright ‘outlandish’ and urged a federal court to reject the “bogus” copyright claims. Imagine my surprise to find out that Verizon has now agreed to pay the ASCAP an interim license fee of more than $4.99 million for songs the phone service provider uses in ringtones for its customers. Meanwhile, the two sides will continue to debate how much the group should receive for the tunes. For the record: carriers already pay royalties to song owners for the right to sell snippets to their customers in the form of ringtones. The ASCAP, however, told a federal court that each time a phone rings in public, the phone user is violating copyright law and thus carriers must pay additional royalties or face legal liability for contributing to what the group claims is cell phone users’ copyright infringement. ASCAP has made it clear that it has no intentions to effectively start charging mobile phone users for playing ringtones, just mobile phone service providers for making it possible for them to do so. But as the EFF says in its rebuttal , consumers could find themselves targeted by other copyright owners for “public performances” if the ASCAP should prevail, not to mention the stifling of innovation in the field and the fact that it could ultimately increase the cost for the average mobile consumer. All this brouhaha brings back fond memories of the time the ASCAP went after Girl Scouts for singing around a campfire . I wonder if they ultimately complied to the copyright claims and coughed up a couple of millions for the right to sing “Row, Row, Row” at summer camp nights, too. CrunchBase Information Verizon Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 

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