The latest from TechCrunch
- Experimental Real-Time Location Tracking Comes To Google Latitude On Android
- Nearing Profitability, YouTube Hits 500 Million Promoted Video Views
- Moshi Monsters: $100 Million in Projected Product Sales and You've Never Heard of Them
- True Frenemies: Facebook Works Both Against And With Bit.ly
- Former Yahoo SVP David Ku Joins Microsoft As Corporate VP Of New Initiatives
| Experimental Real-Time Location Tracking Comes To Google Latitude On Android | Top |
| Google has just released a series of updates for their Google Maps Android application. Two of these updates are useful: Place page reviews and the ability to filter search results. But one of them is really interesting: real-time location updating in Google Latitude. To be clear, this feature is an experimental one that Google is trying out. But if you enable it, your friends on the service will be able to see where you are in real-time (and vice versa, if they enable it too). Previously, location updates through Latitude would occur regularly, but not in real-time. The reason is that this constant sending of location data can wear down mobile phone batteries much quicker. Many service that update location in the background instead tend to ping towers to see if you’ve moved periodically. But this new real-time feature is meant for short-term usage if you’re going to meet up with a friend, for example. It make sense to make this a more temporary option for both battery life, and because of the creepy factor. Even if people opt-in to using Latitude, if you know you’re being tracked in real-time, that’s fairly creepy. Sounds awesome. Can’t wait to try it out. This is all a part of Google Maps 4.6 for Android (1.6 and later). It’s available now in the Market or if you click here from your device. CrunchBase Information Google Latitude Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Nearing Profitability, YouTube Hits 500 Million Promoted Video Views | Top |
| YouTube has just announced that it has served its 500 millionth promoted video view. The video ad format, which the company launched a few years ago, essentially allows advertisers pay to promote videos in search results and on the YouTube home page. The product is similar to an AdWords for YouTube. So advertisers buy a keyword, and when someone did a search for that term, the advertiser’s video will show up as a promoted result. Last year, YouTube also started to place Promoted Videos on the 'Watch' pages, where videos are actually shown alongside comments and related other content, replicating AdSense in some ways. Promoted Video campaigns can now also implemented in a number of countries outside the U.S.. And YouTube’s Promoted Video API is now in AdWords in beta so agencies can use Promoted Videos to manage ad campaigns across multiple clients. YouTube also said that the average Promoted Video is approximately three minutes and it would take someone 2,853 years to watch them all. The company also says that they have seen “six-fold increase” in the number of times viewers have clicked to watch a Promoted Video. That’s of course good news for YouTube and for advertisers who are looking to attract eyes on the video platform. Advertising is a steadily growing for YouTube. During Google’s most recent earnings call, the company revealed that YouTube is now monetizing 2 billion views per week (there are about 2 billion total views per day through the service). The monetization rate is up 50 percent year-over-year. And after a number of years in the red, the platform is finally nearing profitability, according to comments made by Google CEO Eric Schmidt in September. This milestone could be accelerated by the increase in ad revenue coming through the platform. CrunchBase Information YouTube Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Moshi Monsters: $100 Million in Projected Product Sales and You've Never Heard of Them | Top |
| A quick disclosure: readers of my last book will be familiar with the story (which you can read here ) of London-based entrepreneur Michael Acton Smith. Smith co-founded boy's toys e-tailer Firebox.com straight out of university, before moving on to launch an interactive puzzle start-up called Mind Candy . By the end of the book, Mind Candy had gained success with its ambitious Perplexcity alternative reality game (ARG) but hadn't quite tipped over to the mass-market. Michael is a friend – and a fellow Brit – so, obviously, I was really rooting for the company to deliver on its potential. I was one of the first to write about Mind Candy when I was at the Guardian and I promised that, when the company finally tipped, I'd be the first to write a follow up. And yet, when I left London in 2008, that tipping point seemed further off than ever. Mind Candy had launched Moshi Monsters , a virtual pet product where kids can adopt little pet monsters and buy them cool stuff by solving puzzles — but everyone knew this was the company's last roll of the dice. Michael won't discuss specifics but rumours around London were that his investors (which include Accel, Index and Spark Ventures) were trying to force a change of management, and were all-but taking over what was left of Mind Candy. Speaking to Michael by phone earlier today, he still wouldn't comment on the specifics, but I did get him to admit one thing: "yeah, we were screwed". But he can laugh about all that now. Because some time between the end of 2008 and the middle of 2009, something strange happened to Moshi Monsters. It got successful. How successful? Today, the game has 29m registered accounts across 150 different countries, with 20m of those accounts added in the last year (35% of signups are in the US while the UK accounts for 30%). One in three children (aged 7-11) in the UK has adopted a Moshi Monster and 150 million+ puzzle games have been played. At TechCrunch we're slightly obsessed with Angry Birds, but Moshi's numbers eclipse it on almost every metric. What's even more impressive is that a growing number of these users are paying to further their Moshi obsession; or, the least, their parents are. The basic game is free, but for £5 (about $7.50), players can buy a "Moshi Passport" which gives them access to additional parts of the Moshi world. The company won't reveal exact subscription numbers but the company became cashflow positive in 2009 and has been profitable ever since. As promised then, I wanted to revisit the Mind Candy story; not least because it's one of the few companies coming out of London that's competing with the US in terms of profitability and traction. And yet, like Bebo before it, its profile in the US (except amongst those millions of young players) is virtually non-existent. First though, I wanted to understand how the company went from death's door to projected sales of $100 million next year. The first answer, according to Smith, is an understanding that, when parents are footing the bill, it's important to keep things simple and un-scammy. The five pounds subscription cost is the maximum possible cost for playing the game. There are no SMS payments for virtual goods, or any scamville-type nonsenses to buy credits. "That stuff might work when the person playing is the same as the person paying the credit card bill, but it wouldn't work for us." The second is the realisation that "kids want to communicate with their friends as much as adults". Moshi added a ‘friends tree’ and personal pinboards to allow players to connect around the game’s various puzzles, and user numbers exploded. The final secret to Moshi's success is breaking out into real-world products. Angry Birds has its plush toys , but Moshi is going several steps further: yes, there'll be toys (the company has signed licencing deals with Vivid Imaginations in the UK and Spin Master in the US) but the educational aspects of the Moshi puzzles has also lead to a contract with Scholastic to produce a range of puzzle books and other print spin-offs. The first of these physical goods roll off the production line in early 2011 and it's those sales which push the company towards their magical $100 million projection. But, but, but… even if 2011 is a bumper year, what will happen in 2012? The Bebo comparison works both ways, and provides a cautionary tale for anyone running a hugely successful social network for young users. In 2008, AOL bought Bebo for $850 million, two years later they sold it again for " around ten million dollars ". Kids are fickle and, as Smith admits, "the world is littered with forgotten fads." And yet, he argues, there are also countless fads that have stayed the course (he mentions Pokemon, Hot Wheels and Barbie). "The secret is to keep the world fresh, and that's what we're trying to do by making sure there's a continuing narrative, and new games, puzzles and animations." So what's next for Smith himself? Despite the fact that he's been building Mind Candy since 2004 and has – if the rumours are true – had a pretty bumpy relationship with his investors, he gives the standard entrepreneur's denial when I ask about an exit. "I'm very focussed on Moshi right now,” he says. And his relationship with his investors? "We've had our ups and downs," he concedes, coyly "but everything is fine now." And – well – yes, with $100 million in projected sales revenue, it probably should be. CrunchBase Information Moshi Monsters Information provided by CrunchBase CrunchBase Information Mind Candy Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| True Frenemies: Facebook Works Both Against And With Bit.ly | Top |
| Remember several months ago when both Google and Facebook decided to get into the URL shortening game? We wondered if Bit.ly, the market leader, was fu.kd ? And we were hardly alone. But nearly a year later, it seems like they’re doing more than fine as neither Facebook nor Google seemed to take their shortener too seriously for much of that time. It was only just about a month ago that Google opened up their goo.gl product to more directly compete with Bit.ly. But it looks like Facebook, which runs fb.me, has sort of gone the other way. They’re actually now working with Bit.ly. Have you noticed the URLs on Twitter and elsewhere with the “on.fb.me” domain? Those are actually Facebook links that have been shortened by Bit.ly. Don’t believe me? Just add a “+” to any of the on.fb.me domains and you’ll be taken to a Bit.ly page with detailed analytics for that link. For example, try this one that Facebook’s own Brandee Barker sent out on Twitter recently. To be clear, fb.me is still run by Facebook itself, but the company apparently realized that a lot of users (and even some employees like Barker) were still using Bit.ly to shorten links, so they decided to work with Bit.ly to have some branding on those links as well. Hence, on.fb.me. Google, meanwhile, doesn’t do this. Any Google link shortened with Bit.ly will just get the generic bit.ly URL. They remain frenemies minus the whole “fr” part. CrunchBase Information Facebook bit.ly Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Former Yahoo SVP David Ku Joins Microsoft As Corporate VP Of New Initiatives | Top |
| Last month, Yahoo SVP David Ku , who headed the company’s advertising products group, left the company. Yahoo has been hemorrhaging talent lately — including some high ranking executives — and Ku was an especially big loss because he’s been with the company since 2002. Now we’ve confirmed Ku’s next move: he’s joining Microsoft as Corporate Vice President, Online Services Division New Initiatives, effective October 29th, 2010. We initially heard that Ku would be working directly on Bing (which is part of Microsoft’s’ Online Services Division) but a Microsoft spokesperson tell us that he’ll be involved with a range of initiatives across the division. In addition to advertising experience, Ku has quite a bit of product experience as well: he was Yahoo’s VP Engineering, Search from April 2002 until December 2005. According to his LinkedIn profile , this included running Yahoo’s core search, social search, vertical search (images, video, shopping), Flickr, and more. CrunchBase Information David Ku Microsoft Yahoo! Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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