The latest from TechCrunch
- Windows Mobile Finally Checks Out Foursquare
- Citysearch Unleashes CityGrid, A Massive Local Advertising And Content Network
- The Subplots Of The iPad Blockbuster
| Windows Mobile Finally Checks Out Foursquare | Top |
| For much of the past year, the major criticism of Foursquare was that it only worked in a few select cities in the U.S. and was basically iPhone-only. In the past few months, both Foursquare itself and a growing core of third-party developers have changed that. Today brings yet another expansion in the Foursquare universe with the beta launch of a Windows Mobile app. To be clear, this app is only meant for touch screen Windows phones, and you need to be running either Windows Mobile 6.1 or 6.5. But if you have those, you can submit your email address here to be let into the beta. Once they kick the tires in beta for a bit, the plan is to submit the app to the Windows Marketplace for Mobile, Windows Mobile Sr. Product Manager Anand Iyer writes today on his personal blog . Iyer has been working on this project on the side for a few months now, and made the app along with the help of development house Touchality . This isn’t (yet) an officially sanctioned Foursquare app, but Iyer and crew have been working with the Foursquare team since before the public APIs were made available to get it done. Foursquare itself made its iPhone app and the just-launched BlackBerry app, but the Android app and the WebOS app (that works on the Palm Pre) were also done by a team outside the company. This addition of a Windows Mobile app leaves Symbian as the only major mobile OS with a native client, but work is also being done on that front. Foursquare also offers a limited mobile web version. Foursquare itself is hard at work on a complete revamping of their main website. While it currently serves as a way to view some of your location data, you can’t do things such as check-in from the site. For that, I’d recommend using the excellent FoursquareX application . Unfortunately, that is Mac-only for now. | |
| Citysearch Unleashes CityGrid, A Massive Local Advertising And Content Network | Top |
| The momentum around local online advertising is growing, especially with the expansion of the Web to mobile devices and flowering of Geo-mobile apps which need a way to make money. Today, Citysearch is throwing its hat into the local advertising ring with the launch of CityGrid , a set of APIs which makes all of Citysearch’s local listings content and advertising available to other Websites and mobile apps. The APIs include more than 15 million local business listings, 3 million user reviews, and access to 500,000 local advertisers looking to reach people near their places of business. I sat down with Citysearch CEO Jay Herratti at IAC headquarters in Manhattan to get an overview of CityGrid (watch the video interview above). Citysearch itself is a 12-year-old site which Herratti has been updating , but it is not really growing much anymore and it is feeling considerable competitive pressure from Yelp and, even more so, from Google Local . To counter that pressure, Citysearch already distributes its local listings content to about 100 sites and mobile apps with a collective reach of 100 million people (about a quarter of that is Citysearch.com). “I thought what if I took all the tools that we put together to build Citysearch and put it on a platter, an API and web services layer,” says Herratti. Specifically, he is referring to all the descriptions of local businesses, the reviews, photos, videos, hours of operation, offers, menus, metered phone numbers, merchant messages, and more. “What if I open that up to publishers big and small?” he asks. “I let them take it and enhance their experience, and get more pageviews.” You can see elements from Citysearch listings already scattered throughout the Web. A New York City bar like The Ainsworth, for instance, will have a CitySearch page , but the same summary description and reviews will show up in a Bing search , on Local.com (with a Citysearch photo), Urbanspoon , Yellowpages.com , MerchantCircle , and so on. Other existing partners include Mapquest and mobile apps like Loopt and Buzzd . Tons of Websites and mobile apps would love to have access to this database of content to build out their own sites and apps, and now they can via CityGrid. But much of this content is also advertising. Citysearch operates on a pay-per-action model. Local merchants can sign up to get sponsored spots in search and elsewhere, and they pay for things like every time someone clicks on their menu, a video, their own merchant description, or makes a phone call for a reservation. They are paying for leads, and the same actions trigger payments on partner sites as well. But in that case, Citysearch is splitting the ad revenue with the publisher. Many of the ads come from other local advertising sites as well, such as Superpages, Yodel, Spafinder, and limos.com. In that case each advertising dollar is split three ways. But ever since Citysearch opened up to those 100 partners, it went from 150,000 paid listings on its own site to 500,000 across its network. “My goal is to get to one million,” says Herratti. Now that it is an open API, he might just reach that goal. Developer who sign up for the API can create local directories on a self-serve basis and will start getting paid once they meet a minimum threshold of ad impressions or actions. While Yelp’s rise is certainly something to worry about, CitySearch’s biggest competitor is actually Google, which is driving a lot of local search to its own Local Pages and has been making a big push lately to sign up local merchants. Herratti positions CityGrid as a way fro local advertisers to reach consumers everywhere else. There is search marketing on Google and then there is the rest of the Web and mobile apps. Ironically, if you look up the Ainsworth on Google Local , the pictures and some of the reviews are also from Citysearch, but Google isn’t a paying partner (the content is made available through an older deal). It makes money off the search ads on the side. | |
| The Subplots Of The iPad Blockbuster | Top |
| Obviously, yesterday was all about the iPad . Actually, today is too . There have been thousands of stories already written about the device (including something like two dozen on TechCrunch alone), but a few points seem to be completely overshadowed by the glow of the iPad itself. Let’s revisit those. The A4 While only a few people really picked up on it, in my mind, the biggest news yesterday was not about the iPad itself, but rather about what powers it. Apple has created a new processor, the A4, a customized ARM A9 processor . Never mind that it appears to match the specs of the Snapdragon (the chip inside the Nexus One), the key point is that Apple is now in control of their processors. Is there really any doubt that these Apple-designed chips will end up in the next iterations of the iPhone from here on out? One of the things that makes Apple well, Apple, is the tight integration they weave between their hardware and software. That’s because, for the most part, they’re absolutely in charge of both unlike many other companies that do either one or the other. But for chips, Apple has still had to rely on outside parties to provide those. And in most cases, they’re the same chips that everyone else is using — Intel (in the Macs) or Samsung-built ARM chips (in the iPhone). There’s a reason Steve Jobs and Apple VP of Hardware Engineering, Bob Mansfield, were touting these new chips and their built-in GPU and power management systems yesterday during the keynote. With the A4, Apple really is in charge of the whole system. And when you consider a key quote from Jobs yesterday, “ Apple is a mobile devices company ,” it’s not hard to imagine that Apple hopes to create its own chips for all of its products one day — including the Macs. The 2008 acquisition of P.A. Semi has allowed them to do this. And just two years later, they’re clearly taking advantage of it. This was the big revelation yesterday. iPhone OS While it was somewhat surprising that the iPad runs on the iPhone OS rather than a separate (but similar) derivative, even more surprising may be that Apple announced the launch of the iPhone OS 3.2 SDK specifically for developers to get to work on making apps for the iPad. On one hand, it now makes complete sense why we haven’t seen an iPhone OS update in over three months — Apple was holding it back for the iPad launch. But on the other, why is iPhone OS 3.2 iPad-only right now? Wouldn’t you think a major product like the iPad would be worthy of an update to iPhone OS 4.0? Well, I have heard from a couple of sources that iPhone OS 4.0 is definitely coming along and soon. Usually, Apple shows off major iPhone SDK iterations in March so developers have some time to get used to the changes before the new OS rolls out alongside new iPhone hardware in the June or July timeframe. That would seem to be the case again. Since Apple wants to ship the first iPads in 60 days (the Wi-Fi version), iPhone OS 4.0 was likely out of the question. But I’d bet it will still be unveiled sometime in the next few months. And it seems likely that it will ship this summer for both the a new iPhone and the iPad. And with it, we could also see something that a lot of people were disappointed was missing from the iPad launch: the ability to run multiple applications at once. Since last summer, when I heard that Apple was definitely thinking about the problem , all I’ve heard is vague references to it being a priority to figure out. Now, with this new A4 processor (which again, I’d be shocked if we don’t see in the next iPhone), computing power clearly isn’t an issue. More importantly, power consumption shouldn’t be as big of an issue anymore either. Apple claims you’ll be able to get 10 hours of use from the iPad (on Wi-Fi) — and that’s with a huge screen sucking up much of the power. Just imagine what they think they can squeeze out of an iPhone with this chip (though yes, a much smaller battery). Google While Apple didn’t say much about Google during the event, Jobs did note that the Maps application on the iPad was equipped with the Google Maps backend. And despite the talk that Apple might be in discussions with Microsoft about making Bing the default search on the iPhone, Google remains the default on the iPad as well. He also demoed full YouTube integration on the device — including YouTube in HD. Google and Apple are definitely growing apart as they continue to compete, but with the iPad, at least for now, they seem cool. There Will Be Apps While the focus of the iPad event in terms of apps seemed to be on iPhone apps that would work on the iPad, it’s important to remember that developers are going to start developing apps specifically for the iPad. A few showed off their apps ported to the iPad for the event, but developers will also be able to create apps just for the iPad. This will be more important than a lot of people realize right now. Jobs’ Off-The-Glass Pass One other thing that struck me as odd during the keynote yesterday was the point where Jobs pointed out the price analysts had predicted for the iPad. Normally, Apple doesn’t do things like this. In basketball, from time to time when players decide they want to showboat, they throw the ball against the backboard to pass it to themselves so they can score. Jobs’ move yesterday, in my eyes, was largely the same thing. As I laid out a few weeks ago, it seems pretty likely that it was Apple that leaked much of the information to The Wall Street Journal about the tablet device prior to its launch — including the bogus $1,000 price from “analysts.” Later, a former Apple employee corroborated this . Why would they do this? It’s simple. As I said at the time, if they plant the idea in peoples’ minds that a product will be $1,000, then release it for significantly cheaper, it’s a huge win for Apple. So when Jobs announced the entry-level iPad would be $499 yesterday, it was an absolute home run. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a masterstroke of manipulating the media, but it’s still a showboating move. CrunchBase Information iPad Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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